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Wednesday February 4, 2015
Chesterton on the virtue of dogma, atheistic Iceland desires religion, Pope Benedict loves you.
Quote of the Day
We call a man a bigot or slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end
-G.K. Chesterton
It’s not a sin to come to a conclusion on something and actually believe it. It’s sort of the point of thinking at all.
The anti-temple temple for anti-worship worship
Despite a large, serious minority of Christians, Scandinavian countries have been seemingly wearing their non-Christian and neo-pagan views on their sleeves in recent years. While I’m not sure if this is the truth or exaggeration from New Atheists, that Iceland built the first temple to Norse gods since Christianity rendered them irrelevant a thousand years ago is telling. Not about the rise of paganism in Scandinavia as much as the natural human desire for ceremony. And that Christianity is still their greatest influence.
The people behind the erection of the temple claim that the gods they extol represent “poetic metaphors and a manifestation of the forces of nature and human psychology.” Although boldly denying the worship of anything (except the almighty human mind, I guess) the temple is created for the sake of a vague sort of thing that they do call “worship.” They also have “priests.” Essentially they are doing all the things they ridicule in Christianity, especially Catholicism.
This obvious contradiction is easy to explain. Their desire for ceremony, and to take life seriously enough to put an order to it, is an innate, natural human desire. It’s what G.K. Chesterton called cosmic common sense. That they desire to have priests and a place for worship only reinforces this fact that is foundationally Christian (and comes from its Jewish roots, not anything it “stole” from pagans).
If it wasn’t for the continuing cultural sway of Christianity, which actually claims a belief in the divine that these sorts of people find repugnant, there would be no need for pointless gestures like erecting a temple to Norse gods that nobody believes in. That Scandinavians are doing it only reinforces the fact that non-Christian people are more guided by their distaste for Christianity, and their desire to combat it and bother Christians, than they are with anything else.
You mad, bro?