Maverick Philosopher

Richard Dawkins on Christianity and Islam

Here (HT: Catacomb Joe):

Famed atheist and self-styled intellectual Richard Dawkins shared in a recent interview that he was “horrified” to find that Oxford Street in London had lit up its public signs and displays to celebrate the Muslim fasting period called Ramadan, just days before Easter Sunday. “I have to choose my words carefully: If I had to choose between Christianity and Islam, I’d choose Christianity every single time,” Dawkins declared, expressing concern over the thousands of Muslim mosques being constructed across the U.K. He added, “It seems to me to be a fundamentally decent religion, in a way that I think Islam is not.”

I hope to say more about this later. Now I have to prepare for a meeting with Brian the Calvinist.  First lunch and casual conversation about the events of the day and the latest outrages of the depredatory Left, then intense philosophical conversation about Jesus and the Powers, a stimulating albeit flawed book, and finally  two or so hours of battling over the 64 squares. 

That's the kind of socializing I like. Otherwise, solitude rules. 

'Insurrection' as 'Fedsurrection' and the 'Vibe Shift'

The Jan 6 narrative crumbles as Roger Kimball reports in his Navigating the Vibe Shift of a Cultural Reckoning.

But the 'vibe shift' in the direction of optimism faces stiff resistance. And so our man ends on a less-than-optimistic note:

I, too, discern cracks in the Narrative. I seem to see the Overton Window being forced open here and there.  But I also sense an aroma of panic among the dispensers and enforcers of the Narrative. You can feel it in the arrogant incredulousness of Nicolle Wallace attempting to digest the novel idea that maybe, just possibly, her snotty but ill-informed idea of what happened on January 6, 2021, is completely wrong.

You also see it in the minatory actions of the Deep State and its increasingly blatant resort to intimidation and coercion.  We might ask former Trump adviser Peter Navarro about that, but he is now moldering in jail, yet another political prisoner of the regime.  His tort? Ignoring a Congressional subpoena—the same thing that Barack Obama’s Attorney General Eric “wingman” Holder did, but of course he belongs to a protected class, so nothing was done to him.

My point is this: as evidence of a “vibe shift” grows more numerous and more substantive, so too will the vibe-stiffening reaction among the guardians of the status quo.

The melancholy datum to bear in mind is that those guardians control virtually all of the levers of power in our society, beginning with the regime’s police power and wending its way down to the soft but ingratiating power of the media, the ditto-head cultural establishment, and practically the entire educational apparat.

What this means is that for any serious “vibe shift” to happen, something like cultural warfare, if not the other kind, is going to have to unfold.  I do not expect the coming months to be tranquil or pleasant. I do think they will tell us whether we get to resuscitate our constitutional republic or whether we will continue the long and rebarbative slide into woke socialist conformity.

Theme music: Good Vibrations