Kierkegaard on the State

Kim Fabricius, my favourite God-bothering-blogger, has a quote from Kierkegaard on the state. I wanted to highlight this as a way of saying that Nietzsche, Marx and other atheists were hardly the first to realise that Christianity has been used for less than noble purposes.

It seems odd that many critics of Christianity liberally quote from atheist critics of religion such as Marx, yet never find room to quote its Christian critics. If they did their arguments would carry more weight. I suspect that they choose not to because they are pushing an agenda much more radical than a fair critique of Christianity, and are not being completely honest about it.

Kierkegaard on the State

Fear-driven Conservatism

Political conservatives more jumpy: study

I think many of us already knew this.

So to move forward with peace, civil rights and humanitarian aid we will have to do a better job of allaying the fears of our Conservative brethren.

Stave-off-starvation theory of value

We live in a culture in which everything has a price, but nothing has value.

When you go to purchase a loaf of bread you see the price – perhaps $2 – and if you are really health-conscious you may also check out the caloric content. But what if that loaf of bread also had a value printed on the side in terms of provision of nutrition to the poorest of the poor? Perhaps it would be quantified in terms of ‘days starvation staved’ for a typical dangerously underweight, starving African male.

Of course, this would never happen. Our economic system dictates that the only value an item has is its price received at the market. We can pig out and throw out what we don’t eat, not caring what value that food might have for others because ‘hey, we paid for it!’

Oh, what great myths we indulge in, and how tremendous the empathy and humanity sacrified to that God we call the market.