I imagine the angst in their minds must be coming intolerable to them<\/p>\n
Atheists are warning that Christianity may be necessary for the survival of Western civilization<\/a><\/p>\n Historian Tom Holland is known primarily as a storyteller of the ancient world. Thus, his newest book\u00a0Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World<\/em><\/a>, came as something of a surprise for several reasons. First, Tom Holland is not a Christian. Second, Holland\u2019s book is one of the most ambitious historical defenses of Christianity in a very long time.<\/p>\n While studying the ancient world, Holland writes, he realized something. Simply, the ancients were cruel, and their values utterly foreign to him. The Spartans routinely murdered \u201cimperfect\u201d children. The bodies of slaves were treated like outlets for the physical pleasure of those with power. Infanticide was common. The poor and the weak had no rights.<\/p>\n How did we get from\u00a0there<\/em>\u00a0to\u00a0here<\/em>? It was Christianity, Holland writes. Christianity revolutionized sex and marriage, demanding that men control themselves and prohibiting all forms of rape. Christianity confined sexuality within monogamy. (It is ironic, Holland notes, that these are now the very standards for which Christianity is derided.) Christianity elevated women. In short, Christianity utterly transformed the world.<\/p>\n In fact, Holland points out that without Christianity, the Western world\u00a0would not exist<\/em>. Even the claims of the social justice warriors who despise the faith of their ancestors rest on a foundation of Judeo-Christian values. Those who make arguments based on love, tolerance, and compassion are borrowing fundamentally Christian arguments. If the West had not become Christian, Holland writes, \u201cno one would have gotten woke.\u201d<\/p>\n Holland\u2019s book-length defense of the belief system the elites love to despise has unsurprisingly attracted some criticism. He\u00a0faced off<\/a>\u00a0with militant atheist and prominent philosopher A.C. Grayling on the question \u201cDid Christianity give us our human values?\u201d Grayling struggled to rebut Holland, sounding more petty than philosophical. Holland, on the other hand, became positively passionate in his defense of Christianity. If Western civilization is the fishbowl, he stated, then the water is Christianity.<\/p>\n While many \u2014 including Holland \u2014 cannot quite bring themselves to believe Christianity is true, they are starting to believe that Christianity might be necessary.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In fact,\u00a0the very critiques of those who condemn Christianity for various perceived injustices are rooted in Christian precepts<\/em>.<\/p>\n Holland\u2019s passionate defense of Christianity is fascinating because it appears to be part of a trend. As the West becomes definitively post-Christian, many secularists are suddenly realizing that Christianity may have been more valuable than they thought. While many \u2014 including Holland \u2014 cannot quite bring themselves to believe Christianity is\u00a0true<\/em>, they are starting to believe that Christianity might be\u00a0necessary<\/em>.<\/p>\n Douglas Murray, the conservative author and columnist, is also an atheist. In recent years, however, he has started to\u00a0warn<\/a>\u00a0that the decline of Christianity is a dangerous thing. Society now faces three options. First, Murray says, is to reject the idea that all human life is precious. \u201cAnother is to work furiously to nail down an atheist version of the sanctity of the individual.\u201d And if that doesn\u2019t work? \u201cThen there is only one other place to go. Which is back to faith, whether we like it or not.\u201d<\/p>\n Murray now occasionally refers to himself as a \u201cChristian atheist.\u201d Speaking with Esther O\u2019Reilly\u00a0on the\u00a0Unbelievable<\/em>\u00a0podcast<\/a>, Murray lauded the \u201crevolutionary moral insights\u201d of Christianity. He told her that while visiting the Sea of Galilee, he couldn\u2019t shake the feeling that \u201csomething happened here.\u201d And he admitted that as atheists consider morality, \u201cthe more we may have to accept that \u2026 the sanctity of human life is a Judeo-Christian notion which might very easily not survive [the disappearance of] Judeo-Christian civilization.\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking on\u00a0The Darren Grimes Show<\/em>\u00a0last month, he\u00a0was even blunter<\/a>. \u201cThere seems to be little point to me in a life spent talking about Labour Party politics rather than God.\u201d<\/p>\n The phenomenon of atheists praising Christianity appears to be growing. Gone are the days when Christopher Hitchens (a good friend of Murray\u2019s) and his fellow secularists raged against the \u201cpoison\u201d of religion. Even Richard Dawkins\u00a0has now admitted<\/a>\u00a0that Christianity might be preferable to the alternatives. He once called for Christianity to be destroyed. Now he begrudgingly says it has good effects on society.<\/p>\n There is also Jordan Peterson. The famous psychologist refuses to say whether he believes in God. Or at least, he refuses to say what he\u00a0means<\/em>\u00a0by God, or Christ or faith. Peterson is attempting to synthesize Scripture with Jung and Darwin, and the result is predictably tortured. But Peterson knows that without Christianity, unspeakable cruelty is inevitable. He speaks like a secular Calvinist. He believes in human depravity, but has not yet worked out redemption.<\/p>\n Charles Murray, the American social scientist and sociologist, is an agnostic. Yet, he\u00a0told me in an interview<\/a>\u00a0that he believes the American republic will not survive without a resurgence of Christianity. \u201cYou cannot have a free society with a constitution\u201d like the American one \u201cunless you are trying to govern a religious people,\u201d he observed.<\/p>\n The late Sir Roger Scruton, too, headed back to church. He struggled with many of Christianity\u2019s truth claims. But still, he came to believe that Christianity was necessary. While nursing doubts, he played the organ in his local Anglican church during Sunday services. Perhaps practice, he once said, would help him along. He wasn\u2019t sure he could believe it all. But he wanted to.<\/p>\n These men are King Agrippa Christians. As King Agrippa told the Apostle Paul: \u201cAlmost thou persuadest me to be a Christian<\/em>.\u201d They\u00a0almost<\/em>\u00a0believe it. They believe Christianity is good. Some believe it is necessary. As Murray put it, he \u201cbelieves in belief.\u201d But they cannot (yet) bring themselves to believe that it is\u00a0literally<\/em>\u00a0true \u2014 that Jesus Christ actually\u00a0rose from the dead<\/em>.<\/p>\n These strange struggles also deliver a warning to the West. Without Christianity, we are heading into a thick and impenetrable darkness. Christianity gave us human rights. It gave us protection for the weak. Compassion rooted in commands to love. Forgiveness for enemies. It revolutionized the world. We are now in the process of undoing that revolution. In fact, we are replacing it with the Sexual Revolution.<\/p>\n We should look at what we are destroying before we carry on. We should ask why fences were built before tearing them down. We should listen to the atheists nervously telling us that Christianity is necessary. And we should fight to ensure that our post-Christian culture is again a pre-Christian one.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I imagine the angst in their minds must be coming intolerable to them Atheists are warning that Christianity may be necessary for the survival of Western civilization Historian Tom Holland is known primarily as a storyteller of the ancient world. Thus, his newest book\u00a0Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, came as something of … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55184"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55185,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55184\/revisions\/55185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}From\u00a0There<\/em>\u00a0to\u00a0Here<\/em>\u00a0\u2026<\/h4>\n
Attracting Criticism<\/h4>\n
A Trend Identified \u2014 Defense of Christianity<\/h4>\n
King Agrippa Christians<\/h4>\n
Listen to the Warnings of the Atheists \u2014 Christianity is Necessary<\/h4>\n