An earlier thread here wondered which group (presumably, Darwinists or IDists/Creationists) was more charitable. At TSZ, a rhetorical post full of anti-ID venom popped up asking if IDists “deserved” charity (as in, charitable interaction & debate). (Previously, I would have provided a link to the TSZ post, but I’m no longer interested in “fair play”.)
I used to be one that diligently attempted to provide Darwinists charitable interaction. I tried not to ridicule, demean, or use terms that would cause hurt or defensive feelings. My hope was that reason, politely offered, would win the day. My theistic perspective is that returning the bad behavior I received at sites like TSZ would be wrong on my part. I thought I should stick to politely producing logical and evidence-based exchanges, regardless of what Darwinists did. I note that several others here at UD do the same. Lately, however, I’ve come to the conclusion that what I’m attempting to do is the equivalent of bringing a knife to a gun fight; polite reasoning with Darwinists, for the most part, is simply setting up our own failure. It’s like entering a war zone with rules of engagement that effectively undermine a soldier’s capacity to adequately defend themselves, let alone win a war. While pacifism is a laudable idea, it does not win wars. It simply gives the world to the barbarians.
And that’s the problem; a lot of us don’t realize we’re in a war, a war where reason, truth, religion and spirituality is under direct assault by the post-modern equivalent of barbarians. They, for the most part, have no compunction about lying, misleading, dissembling, attacking, blacklisting, ridiculing, bullying and marginalizing; more than that, they have no problem using every resource at their means, legal or not, polite or not, reasonable or not, to destroy theism, and in particular Christianity (as wells as conservative/libertarian values in general). They have infiltrated the media, academia and the entertainment industry and use their influence to generate narratives with complete disregard for the truth, and entirely ignore even the most egregious barbarism against those holding beliefs they disagree with.
Wars are what happen when there is no common ground between those that believe in something worth fighting for. There is no common ground between the universal post-modern acid of materialist Darwinism and virtually any modern theism. There is no common ground between Orwellian statism-as-God and individual libertarianism with freedom of (not “from”) religion. There is only war. One of the unfortunate problems of war is that certain distasteful methods must be employed simply because they are the only way to win. In this war, in a society that is largely a low-information, media-controlled battleground, logic and reason are, for the most part, ineffective. The truth is ineffective because it is drowned out by a concerted cacophony of lies, or simply ignored by the gatekeepers of low-information infotainment. What has been shown effective is the Alinsky arsenal of rhetoric, emotional manipulation, and narrative control.
I would find it distasteful to pick up a gun in a ground war and have to shoot others to defend my family and way of life, but I would do so. Should I not pick up Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and employ the weapons of my adversaries, if it is the most effective way – perhaps the only way – of winning the cultural war? There comes a point in time where all the high ground offers is one’s back against the precipice as the barbarian horde advances.
Does it make one a barbarian if one employs the tactics of the barbarian to win the war? I’ve seen that argument countless times in the media: we will become that which we are fighting against. I used to identify with that – I wouldn’t lower myself to “their” level. The war wasn’t worth winning if it meant using the tactics of the enemy. Now, however, I see that sentiment as part of the cultural conditioning towards the failure of good, principled people while the post-modernists employ our principles, our sense of reason, of good, of fair play, against us. They have no compunction using the principles of Christianity (or any rational theistic morality) as a bludgeon to coerce the religious/spiritual into giving up social ground.
I would never pick up a gun and use it on anyone other than in circumstances where myself or my loved ones or way of life was at risk; and, after protecting those things, I would set it aside. I have realized that there are weapons that must be used in a cultural war like we now face that I would never employ otherwise. Using them in such a case doesn’t make me like those who use them all the time, in every case and instance, for whatever they want. Using a club to beat the barbarians back doesn’t make me a barbarian; it keeps the barbarians from taking over. Politely reasoning with them to protect a politely reasoning society only serves to hand the city over to the horde.
It isn’t using a club, or Alinsky-style tactics, that makes one a barbarian; it’s what one uses those tools in service of that makes the difference. Would you lie to, ridicule, blacklist, bully a Nazi, if it meant saving your civilization? Make no mistake: that’s how they see us – as neanderthal Nazis standing in the way of their utopian, statist, religion-free, morally relative, science-as-gospel society – and they are willing to do anything to win their goal.
So, the question isn’t, to paraphrase the TSZ heading, “do Darwinists deserve charity”; of course they deserve it. Everyone does. That’s part of our modern, moral, rational theistic morality. But the sad fact is, we cannot afford to give them charity, because to give them charity, IMO, is to give aid and comfort to an enemy bent upon our destruction, and the destruction of our way of life.