Progressive atheism celebrates being irrational. The rejection of logical positivism, the high church atheism of Haldane, Russell Anthony Daniels and David Stove is rejected. Instead we have the philosophy of disadvantage, where what matters is your state within a finely graded power structure maintained by the secular priests. David Stove knew better. He was an atheist, but he could find the flaws in the theses of the enlightenment the post-moderns worship. For their heroes, their Gods did lie, at least by omission.
Secularism condemns marriage-vows, along with all other vows, oaths, and promises, as being relics of superstition. The greatest-happiness axiom condemns clerical (and almost any other) celibacy. For these reasons, the Enlightenment had always promised an immense future increase in sexual gratification. But universal sexual emancipation, on its own, would be sure to have an effect directly contrary to “the greatest happiness”: namely, too many hungry or unhealthy or neglected children.
There are only four possible ways of preventing that result: infanticide; abortion; sexual abstinence; and contraception. The first three are condemned, again, by the greatest-happiness axiom. But that axiom does not condemn contraception. When you are comparing amounts of happiness, you have to take into account future people as well as present ones; but you do not have to take into account merely possible future people. Ergo, contraception is what Enlightenment prescribes.
At least as early as Condorcet, the leaders of the Enlightenment saw this derivation perfectly clearly, even if not all their followers did. They simply took care to say nothing about it in their books.
Such are fools. Hedonism is no basis for any nation: honour is. Honour requires that you do your duty. Being married is about restricting yourself. You are tempted to find more beautiful partners — either more at once (typical male behaviour) or one after another (typical female behaviour). The latter is called empowerment by the feminists, the former is condemned. Both should be.
Being a father and mother is what marriage is designed to do. So a future generation may glorify God. To him we should be faithful, as our ancestors did, whose witness stands against this fallen time. The ancients were in error and damned, but the current post moderns were not even wrong.
1The same thing occurred in Iconium, where Paul and Barnabas went into the Jewish synagogue and spoke in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks became believers. 2But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers. 3So they remained for a long time, speaking boldly for the Lord, who testified to the word of his grace by granting signs and wonders to be done through them. 4But the residents of the city were divided; some sided with the Jews, and some with the apostles. 5And when an attempt was made by both Gentiles and Jews, with their rulers, to maltreat them and to stone them, 6the apostles learned of it and fled to Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia, and to the surrounding country; 7and there they continued proclaiming the good news.
8In Lystra there was a man sitting who could not use his feet and had never walked, for he had been crippled from birth. 9He listened to Paul as he was speaking. And Paul, looking at him intently and seeing that he had faith to be healed, 10said in a loud voice, “Stand upright on your feet.” And the man sprang up and began to walk. 11When the crowds saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, “The gods have come down to us in human form!” 12Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes, because he was the chief speaker. 13The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates; he and the crowds wanted to offer sacrifice. 14When the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of it, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting, 15“Friends, why are you doing this? We are mortals just like you, and we bring you good news, that you should turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. 16In past generations he allowed all the nations to follow their own ways; 17yet he has not left himself without a witness in doing good — giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, and filling you with food and your hearts with joy.” 18Even with these words, they scarcely restrained the crowds from offering sacrifice to them.
Paul and Silas were horrified with the idea that they would be Gods. They were Jews: this was blasphemy, and it offended them to the bottom of their souls. They showed their distress in the manner of their times: they tore their clothes and they started telling the locals that they were no God.
They started preaching the gospel, and they restrained sacrifice. They did not want to be accounted as Gods. They wanted no part in paganism.
They were not interested in their self esteem or virtue. They wanted conversions, not public religion.
But the progressives demand that we join their cultus, which does not see anything but a virtue cycle, driven by the mob.
Just look at that list. It sounds like a combination of the Shakers and 1970’s new age mysticism. In order to save the planet, according to researchers and experts no less, is to avoid having more humans and make the ones waiting around to die as miserable as possible. The unspoken reason for selling the car and sitting in the dark with your nothing burger is so you can suffer and atone for your sins. In other words, it is not enough to be a green, you have to kill yourself as the ultimate sign of your virtue.
This is not new. The Shakers, obviously, are an example of what happens when a religion cannot imagine a limit to virtue. The Shakers, though, had the decency to mind their own business and not try to inflict themselves on the rest of the world. In the long run, they were a slow-motion suicide cult, but they were willing to let nature take its course. The modern nature cults not only want to rush their demise, they want to take the rest of us with them, or at least make us suffer for their religion.
This is the problem that has haunted the Left in America. There’s no concept of good enough. They are always chanting, “we can do more” or “there is more work to do.” No matter how much damage they do in the holy cause, they are sure that more needs doing, more must be done. It’s why their causes tend to burn out in fits of insanity like we see with the whole transgender thing. The quest for the ultimate victim has led them to celebrate mental illness as a virtue and deny biological reality.
There is no virtue. Without Christ, we are all oathbreakers, thieves, liars, covetous and lecherous. We know what is right, and we do what is wrong. We struggle with any form of discipline. With Christ, our sins are forgiven, and boasting of our righteousness is foolishness, for we could not earn our way to salvation: it is impossible in this fallen time to attain the righteousness of God.
We hate self esteem, for we know we are not worthy of any worship. We are not God.
Those who reject God fall into a deep delusion. The utilitarian principle leads to evil. And the denial of this has made the cathedral mad.
Do not be them. Do not be like them.