philosoraptor42

John Milbank was a theology lecturer I came into contact during my degree. His Radical Orthodoxy movement apparently had a major following in academic circles, though there appeared to be very little mainstream knowledge of it. More recently he's been putting forward a number of articles into major news sources. He released a couple of articles in The Guardian's "Comment Is Free" section including one advocating "Red Toryism" (i.e. I want to vote Conservative yet still call myself a lefty) and another (which really infuriated me) advocating a new feminism biased in favour of men *facepalm*

So what's he done now? Well it turns out he's really pleased about certain recent comments by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but he doesn't think she quite kisses Christianity's arse enough. So he's published a new public article. this time on abc.net.

I don't know if John Milbank mistook extracts from Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book "Nomad" for an individual article or whether he is simply treating them that way. In any case the extracts on that website are no longer available, but I was able to find a cached copy of them which you can find in my un-edited post about this along with a copy of John Milbank's reply. Click here for my original un-edited article.

So how does John Milbank's article frustrate me? Let me count the ways....




1. The Enlightenment was Christian...
( Read more... )

2. Christianity is the source of feminism...
( Read more... )

3. TRADITIONAL Christians are NEVER biblical literalists...
( Read more... )

4. Science was nurtured by Christianity and is the direct result of monotheism.

( Read more... )


5. Christians have historically been against forced conversions...
( Read more... )

6. In various theocracies and dictatorships around the world Islam has an unfair privilege. Why don't we give the same unfair privilege to Christianity in the west? (Also, Christians don't get enough opportunities to proselytise. Blah Blah Fatwa Envy Blah Blah...)

( Read more... )

7. Muslims will prefer Christianity if they are properly informed, whereas they tend to choose Islam because they are coerced.

( Read more... )

8. Muslims ought to be apolitical mystics. Christians on the other hand...
( Read more... )

9. Rowan Williams advocated "parallel legal jurisdictions"...

( Read more... )

10. Rowan Williams and Tariq Ramadan are idiots - therefore that whole Christian proselytising scheme...( Read more... )

11. "The lamentably premature collapse of the Western colonial empires."
( Read more... )

Bits I actually agreed with
( Read more... )

Some silly links

( Read more... ) (Cross-posted to atheism)

 

Okay, this has seriously puzzled me.

S.E. Cupp is an atheist. She expresses her atheism pretty clearly. However, she's also highly conservative politically. Where it gets bizarre is that she's released a book explaining that where the "evil liberal media" criticises Conservative views, it is actually attacking Christianity.

So far, so bizarre. The way she has sided with the Christian Right reminds me of how Ayaan Hirsi Ali was siding with the Anti-Immigration Right in Holland. The difference is that while Ayaan Hirsi Ali's words seemed to depend on how you read them and the biggest issues tended to be with the sub-text, there seems to be little doubt that S.E. Cupp's arguments involve very unsubtle manipulation of the truth and, in many cases, outright lies.

Here's an interview she had on Fox News. It's all very buddy buddy at the beginning. Sean Hannity introduces her book as follows:

SEAN HANNITY, HOST: The mainstream media's hostility towards Christianity is no secret. But a new book explores why the liberal elite is only suspicious when conservatives invoke religion. Now, the book is called "Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media's Attack on Christianity."

The author, S.E. Cupp, joins me now.

( A bit of rambling... )

HANNITY: Alright. And your father and I — this is the strangest thing in the world. You write a book defending Christianity...

CUPP: Yes.

HANNITY: ... and you're an atheist?

CUPP: I am. But doesn't that make me the perfect candidate? I mean, how objective can I be about this when I don't have a dog in this fight?

HANNITY: Yes, but see, I don't believe you're an atheist. I think you're more agnostic. An atheist holds out no possibility that there's a God. Do you hold out a possibility that universes within universes, the majesty of creation, that there's — you don't hold out any possibility there's a god?

CUPP: Sean, today I don't believe in God, but I'm open to being converted. I am. And you know...

HANNITY: You're agnostic, then. You're not an atheist.

CUPP: Alright. Today I don't believe in God. I don't believe that there's a God today.

HANNITY: So how do you — and see, I think to be an atheist, you have to believe that something can come from nothing. I mean, because the majesty of creation is so beyond our comprehension. You know, Steven Hawking, how many universes within universes within universes, the depths of this that you think it just happened randomly?

CUPP: I don't purport to have the answers.

HANNITY: Alright, just checking.

CUPP: I'm not prepared to fill in that gap in my knowledge with God just yet.

So as you can see, this isn't someone who doesn't know what atheism is. She's able to clearly express why she is an atheist rather than an agnostic. Yet while she might be able to identify the difference between those two positions, her understanding of the wider political landscape is rather less subtle.

But anyway, the next thing she does is to highlight a few examples of secular worship within the "evil atheist liberal media". (They're evil atheists, but she's not. She's a nice atheist because she holds to Conservative values):

HANNITY: Yes. Alright. I love the book. You make a great point here, because you say liberal media worships Hollywood. They worship celebrity. They worship politicians.

CUPP: Yes. Environmentalism.

HANNITY: And environmentalism. You say all of this. So they — worship is OK as long as it's secular.

CUPP: Well, yes, as long as it doesn't involve Christ or God. I mean, God is like porn. They want it to be sort of on the bottom shelf in a brown bag. You know, they're really embarrassed by Christianity. And it's the faith of 80 percent of this country. I think we deserve a more responsible press and a more representative press.

She's an atheist who thinks that the media isn't mentioning God enough. And environmentalism is a religion.

There's an essay in Bertrand Russell's "Why I Am Not A Christian" where he tackles the argument that promoting Christianity is important for a stable society. I wonder whether she's not got the same argument in mind. The idea is that, while I don't need Christianity to be a good person, other people aren't as morally upright as me. What they they really need is a promise of an afterlife to keep them in line. It's actually highly elitist since it relies on the idea that the person making the argument is somehow an ultra-special exception to the general rule amongst the unclean masses that without the firm hand of religion they will all run amok.

( More rambling... )

CUPP: Because if you're conservative and a Christian, for them it's a double whammy. They can conflate the two, and they can say everyone on the right is a crazy, dangerous, religious fanatic. And that's their — that's their bread and butter, fear mongering.

But I think it comes from a place. You know, liberalism is really threatened by fixed value systems like Christianity that has a list of do's and don'ts.

See, what she thinks society really needs is a fixed-value system. It doesn't matter whether she believes in it. Just that she supports it. And just supporting the conservative values without the Christianity isn't enough. It seems that it's vital to her that Christianity is in place to keep the masses in check and she's just as worried about faith in that system being called into question as any right-wing believer would be.

( More rambling, with a few minor points... )



So it's at this point where she decides to lay into Obama. Now, I'm not Obama's greatest fan, but I have been impressed by his focus on ensuring a heightened inclusion for people of all faiths and none. Even Hannity notes that her assessment of the situation is a little odd. Obama has spoken about religion fondly and embraces various religious groups. So how is that anti-Christian? Well, in one sense the answer is fairly obvious. Focussing on other religions is treating them as if they are on the same level as Christianity. The far-right will often claim that other faiths getting a fair shake involves persecuting the Christian majority. However, the other reason Obama's religious position upsets her is that it's too lefty. She doesn't like Obama's liberation theology for the same reason the Vatican doesn't like liberation theology: Liberation Theology is not a conservative movement.

HANNITY: You mentioned Obama and when he made the comment about people clinging to their guns and religion.

CUPP: Yes.

HANNITY: He also said America is not a —

CUPP: Christian nation.

HANNITY: Christian nation. And he made those comments. And you said Obama demotes Christianity, and the liberal media rejoices. That struck me.

CUPP: Right. I mean, it's the first time that they've had a comrade, an ally in the White House to back up their secular agenda. This is a guy who's very uncomfortable with public worship. He's always elevating atheism to the level of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, when they're not the same. They're apples and oranges.

HANNITY: But he spent — it look him a long time to denounce Reverend Wright, which I think — and he embraced black liberation theology.

CUPP: Yes.

HANNITY: When you read his books. He was inspired.

CUPP: Absolutely.

HANNITY: He was fortified. As he was out on road he would listen...

CUPP: The liberal media didn't cover that, though. I mean, I do a comparison in one chapter between Sarah Palin's Pentecostalism and Barack Obama's black liberation theology.

Sarah Palin's Pentecostalism is basically the broad Christianity of the majority of the country. Black liberation theology is radical. It is frightening.

HANNITY: Yes.

CUPP: And it's not representative. But the liberal media didn't tell us that story.
( Finishing off rambling... )



HANNITY: And you know, for example, you point out some of the hypocrisy. Here you have best-selling books by Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, others, and you mention them in the book. They don't get reviewed by The New York Times.

CUPP: Right. It's not just a question of, you know, do we cover Christian issues? Which they don't. Or when we do cover Christian issues, do we do it fairly? They don't.
( Yet more rambling... )



CUPP: I want — I want some of these people gone. I want to take names. You're religious. I want this to be like the rapture, and all that's left of them is their shoes.

( Final ramble... )

Yes, you did hear what you heard. Ann Coulter is discriminated against by the NY Times and Cupp wants the "evil atheist liberal media" to get 'raptured'.

What do you think about this stuff?

(Source)

Bill Maher interviews her (video here). He's fairly irritating and he's particularly all over the place on the occasion, but he does at least manage to point out the number of TIME magazine covers with Jesus on the front. Cupp responds that one of those covers is in relation to a story claiming that reading the Bible correctly means supporting gay marriage (which naturally the writer didn't really believe and only wrote just to attack Christians *facepalm*).

Also the amazon page contains a review from Chris Rodda from the MRFF explaining just how badly she's been misrepresented in the book.

Oh, and Cupp doesn't believe in evolution either:

"The debate over the legitimacy of evolution isn't really about a battle between fact and fiction. It's about Christianity, and the liberal media's attempt to eradicate it from all corners of society."

A recent article by 'Miz Daisy Cutter' does not actually have much in the way of comments, but what she says strikes me as very odd (and, to be honest, uncharacteristic of her). She provides a video of a programme called 'On The Map' presented by Avi Lewis.

Daisy Cutter's blog entry

You Tube video


Above the embedded media she writes:

 "...because you do not know what is not to have freedom. I haven't."

Below she writes:

"Ayaan Hirsi Ali, 1. Avi Lewis, 0"

In case anyone is confused by Daisy Cutter's quotation with its triple negative (I certainly had trouble understanding it from the quotation alone) it works as follows in context. She (Ayaan Hirsi Ali) knows what it is like not to have freedom and the interviewer (Avi Lewis) does not. It seems a bit odd that Daisy Cutter is praising Hirsi Ali for pretty much claiming that Lewis 'hates freedom'. (Surely Daisy Cutter would not buy into that kind of Fox News rhetoric?)

It wasn't obvious to me that Hirsi Ali won the debate (if indeed, there was a winner or loser). Where I was particularly horrified was where she was claiming that if Muslims really didn't like their situation in the US they would leave, as if the fact that Muslims had not gone as far as fleeing the country meant that they had no cause for complaint. I wonder whether that means that no atheists are really discriminated in the US either, since they too have not decided to leave the country.

Atheist Blog     Original source of video