15 February 2011

A Dozen Bad Ideas for the 21st Century | Free Christian Press

Here is a list of of a dozen bad ideas for the 21st century, which I came across on a web site. Actually, I didn't just come across them, a tweet on Twitter led me to them.

On the whole I agree that they are not good ideas. Looking at them, I can't see any one of them that I think is a good idea, and, more important, I can't see any one of them that I would think of as a true idea.

I've met people who believe some of those things, and and who regard some, at least of those propositions as good ideas, but what is it about those ideas that make the author of the list say that they are so bad?

  1. The belief that all religions are the same.
  2. The belief that religion is irrelevant as a cause of anything.
  3. The belief that we all worship the same God.
  4. The belief that one can justify anything from any sacred text.
  5. The belief that the Christian Reformation was a progressive movement.
  6. The belief that dispelling ignorance will increase positive regard for the other.
  7. The belief that everyone is good and decent, and if you just make a sincere effort to get to know another person, you will always come to respect them.
  8. The belief that putting something in context will always produce a more innocuous interpretation.
  9. The belief that extremism is the problem, and moderation the solution.
  10. The belief that the West is always guilty.
  11. Two wrongs make a right reasoning.
  12. Belief in progress: everything will always get better in the end.
It seems a very bland list, and they are the kind of things that might be believed by bland and innocuous people, and they don't seem worth making a fuss about.

Until you put them in context.

Then they take on a whole new meaning.

As the the author says, one of the bad beliefs is:

The belief that putting something in context will always produce a more innocuous interpretation. This is not true. Attending properly to context can make a text even more offensive than it would otherwise have been. Conversely, if you take something out of context you may regard it more positively than you ought to.

So let's put it in context:

A Dozen Bad Ideas for the 21st Century | Free Christian Press:
Here is a list of false beliefs and modes of thought which make it hard for people in the West to come to terms with the challenge of Islam today. If you are deeply attached to any of these ideas or ways of thinking, you will have difficulty accepting the truth about Islam’s teachings and their impact.


And when you put it in context the whole thing is an anti-Islamic rant, and the impression one gets is that for the author the only good ideas for the 21st century are:

  1. To promote as much hostility as possible between Christians and Muslims.
  2. If you meet a Muslim on the road, kill him.
Actually one group that would probably agree that the author's 12 points, or at least 11 of them, are very bad ideas are Wahhabi Muslims. They would disagree with the notion that the West is always wrong, because they would see the other 11 points as characteristic of the West, and therefore exemplifying everything that they see wrong with the West.

Let's reword the opening statement, but substituting Christianity for Islam:

Here is a list of false beliefs and modes of thought which make it hard for people in the West to come to terms with the challenge of Christianity today. If you are deeply attached to any of these ideas or ways of thinking, you will have difficulty accepting the truth about Christianity's teachings and their impact.

Isn't that equally true?

And shouldn't Christian theologians be more concerned with positively promoting the Christian faith rather than promoting the religion of anti-Islam?

As it is, the whole piece is so perverse that it smacks of perversity even to attack its perversions.

6 comments:

Clarissa said...

Putting the list in context definitely helps. Your analysis is really useful and lucid. Why don't more people understand that discrediting Islam will not help anybody turn to Christianity?Do the creators of the list expect people to read it and say, "I used to be Muslim but after reading this list I have seen the error of my ways and will now convert to Christianity"?

PamBG said...

Reference the ideas that all religions are the same and that we all worship the same God, I actually think that my religion is similar to that of a devout Muslim and that my God is the same God.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that I have a different God than the person who wrote the post and that I don't have the same religion either.

Ain't life ironic.

Steve Hayes said...

PamBG,

I suspect that that's because the "ideas" set out are not actual ideas that anyone holds, but most of them are simplistic caricatures.

That's what makes the whole thing so perverse and evil. It is an attempt to avoid discussion by real people who hold complex ideas by turning it into an enounter of caricatures with caricatures, stereotyoes with stereotypes. The author doesn't merely give a caricature of the ideas he disagrees with, he turns himself into a caricature as well.

Take, for example, the assertion that "The West is always wrong". Wrong about what? The author doesn't say. Does anyone actually believe that the West is always wrong? I doubt it. So the author caricatures himself as someone who believes that the West is always right, and that if you criticise the West for anything, you must be criticising it for everything. If you read that idea in context it comes across as an assertion that the West is always right and never wrong.

PamBG said...

Steve: I agree totally about your analysis of this being dualistic. However, if the author has made a caricature of himself, it often feels to me from where I'm sitting in the conservative US Midwest that it's only a slight caricature.

It is easy for us humans to slip into the idea that "There has to be a right and there has to be a wrong. I want to be right so therefore the other guy must be wrong."

Rene Girard talked about how societies maintain internal cohesion by naming scapegoats. I think that's what's going on now and even moreso that many people feel threatened by the recession. (I appreciate that it's nothing like what people in Zimbabwe or other parts of the world are going through but we do tend to see the world from our own perspectives).

We need people like you to keep pointing these things out for us. Thanks.

Jarred said...

Proof yet again that some forms of Christianity are better identified not by what they stand for, but by what they stand against.

James Higham said...

N9 is quite wise.

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