REVIEW: THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN BY MELANIE PHILLIPS
The book by Melanie Phillips The World Turned Upside Down, The Global Battle
over God, Truth, and Power is a criticism of myths and fallacies that she feels
society has embraced and even turned into part of its identity. She writes that
it appears to her that public discourse has significantly departed from reality
and self-evident commonsense has been turned on its head. (Also she is the
author of Londonistan.)
Here are my favourite quotes from this book which gives us a lot to think about.
I respond to the quotes accordingly.
I asked [Richard] Dawkins whether he believed that the origin of all matter was
most likely to have been an entirely spontaneous event. He agreed that he did
think so. I put it to him that he seemed therefore to be arguing that something
could be created out of nothing—which surely runs counter to the scientific
principles of verifiable evidence that he tells us should govern all our
thinking.
COMMENT: The notion that something made all things out of nothing spontaneously
and without being aware of it is a denial that there is anything like a personal
or real God there. As the bottom line is that atheism and Dawkins are saying the
universe is purposeless that takes us to our next quote.
Without purposefulness, then, there can be no rationality. And that is the
consequence of Dawkins' proposition, as John Polkinghorne summed it up: "Thought
is replaced by electro-chemical neural events. Two such events cannot confront
each other in rational discourse. They are neither right or wrong. They just
happen."
COMMENT: Feelings just happen. Most thoughts just happen. If you can add up two
numbers and take a block and get no answer that shows that thoughts just happen
and we are lucky enough that they happen enough. These things are facts whether
there is a purpose or not. The purpose would pale into something rather
unimportant. So the problem Polkinghorne, "I want us to be more than natural
events", has is nothing in comparison to how our feelings and thoughts don't act
as if they care about that anyway. He worries too much! In fact his overreaction
only adds fuel to the problem. It makes people think they should not be
rational. Christianity agrees with him so it is an outrage.
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God by definition does not belong to the natural world because he is said to
have created it.
COMMENT: She is telling God not to find a way to belong to it at all so that she
can say science cannot find God. I do not belong to Australia for I am in Europe
but that does not mean I cannot find a way to connect to Australia and cross the
barrier. Maybe I can send my DNA there? God being different to the universe does
not amount to God making himself undetectable. God is not necessarily just a
philosophical question.
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She says that to say that science might understand the origin of the universe
problematic for you cannot really stop learning - it should go on and on with no
stopping. She thinks this shows that materialism or naturalism is wrong for it
says you can stop learning.
COMMENT: That does not follow for each person is only a tiny part of the
universe so materialistic or naturalistic understandings of the universe do fit
the idea of learning being infinite in its potential. Later on she quotes with
approval, Swinburne, who says that instead of assuming that the problems of
physics, the problems with understanding our universe, can be solved by saying
there are "a trillion" universes we should assume one God to do the job. So the
assumption that God has not made a multiverse is sneaked in to get rid of the
idea of a multiverse!
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To the Western mind, the individual has free will and power over his or her own
actions. As far as the Islamists are concerned, the individual has no status
except as a vehicle for God’s will. That means there can be no place for
temporal governance. Since Islam holds that submission to God means “freedom,”
the democratic systems that actually give rise to freedom are considered a form
of subjugation. Thus, language is turned inside out.
COMMENT: Islam is merely saying that if God creates all and all depends on him
100% then there is no such thing as being independent of him - ie exercising
free will against the will of God. The doctrine of God says that we are free
because of God which means he creates our choices not us. His power and will are
like the substance our will is made out of so it is not really our will. So when
we go against God we only think we are doing it and even the idea that we are
doing it is created by him. So the degradation of human nature comes from God
belief of which Islam is just one example.
Psychologists tell us we are rarely as free as we want to think for there is so
much influence and error and subtle pressure around us. If that makes free will
virtually inactive imagine what the God creator straitjacket can do to it! You
will lose the feeling of being free when you become aware of all the pressures
and when you hold a strong belief in God. The feeling free illusion will
diminish and maybe go altogether.
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Many non-Muslims claim that any aggressiveness in the Qur’an is no big deal.
After all, they say, isn’t the Old Testament also full of blood-curdling calls
to wipe out whole populations? And doesn’t the New Testament contain the
denunciations of the Jews that caused centuries of anti-Jewish persecution?
Well, the latter is certainly true, because the New Testament accuses the Jews
of deicide and curses them for all time—a particular extremity that cannot be
laid at the door of the Qur’an. But the New Testament does not contain, as the
Qur’an does, a purportedly divine injunction to kill Jews and other
“unbelievers.” As for the Hebrew Bible, its wars are merely a historical record
and its injunctions to smite the foes of the Jews are specific and confined to
the participants in those historic events. There are no divine injunctions in
the Hebrew Bible to kill unbelievers.
COMMENT: This shows how parents putting children into religions with violent
scriptures is so terrible. It leads to Christians enabling the promotion of
other religions with violent scriptures. It leads to excusing. The logic is that
if your religion does not obey the bad bits the other religion will not either.
That is nonsense and the presence of the texts shows the religion was violent
one day and thus can be again. The Bible God does command the killing of
unbelievers for it defines adulterers and other sinners as unbelievers. Bible
belief is linked to acting on that belief. You are punished for a thought crime
in action.
We have to be careful when a religion says violence in its name is wrong. We
need to be told how wrong for if they see it as akin to stubbing a toe that is
alarming.
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Richard Dawkins ... doesn’t only dismiss opponents’ arguments: he maintains that
such opponents could not possibly have meant what they said. His own gnostic
infallibility apparently means that he alone knows what was really in someone’s
mind.
COMMENT: Christians do that too especially liberals. Everybody sincere including
an atheist is regarded as servant of God and a Christian who does not realise
it. It is just liberal intolerance to do that. We do not accept you unless we
find a way to imagine you are one of us.
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Darwinism reduced human reason to a mere mechanism for survival, since genetic
determinism left no basis for humans to have a disinterested impulse to discover
the truth for its own sake. Marxism said that humans were prisoners not of their
genes but of society.
COMMENT: But reason is a tool for survival! Many simply use reason to survive in
a world where everybody else talks rubbish! You need truth so you can protect
yourself and others. Lining up to truth is the only way to protect yourself from
the truth for the truth does not care what you want or think and will hurt you
if you defy it. Better not antagonise or defy that enemy!
Survival does not have to mean something savage and animalistic like wolves
fighting each other. That is the strawman of survival that she has created in
that statement. That kind of survival and the more softer kind are both about
trying to live in reality.
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Foucault taught that truth was not disinterested or neutral, but rather an
instrument of power, an attempt to conceal biases under a mask of objectivity.
In his view, “all knowledge rests upon injustice”; and further, “there is no
right, not even in the act of knowing, to truth or a foundation for truth; and
the instinct for knowledge is malicious (something murderous, opposed to the
happiness of mankind).”34 The idea that objectivity is dishonest and malicious
found its way into British journalism during the 1980s.
COMMENT: He mixes up the abuse of truth with truth. If you falsely claim what
you say is true then you indeed are trying to do what Focault said.
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The belief central to environmentalism that mankind must no longer be allowed to
dominate the planet has had further inevitable consequences. As the value of
human beings has gone down, that of animals has gone up. Prioritizing humans
over animals has been labeled “speciesism,” which according to the prominent
anti-speciesist and bioethicist Professor Peter Singer is as bad as sexism or
racism. From this moral equivalence between animals and humans, it follows that
if animals can be killed for reasons of utility, so too can human beings.
COMMENT: It is complex. Believers in God who think an unborn baby 9 weeks in the
womb has more value than a fully grown chimp are not making sense. They are
indeed unfair.
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REGARDING DAWKINS SAYING THE BIBLE COMMANDS RACIAL HATE, The Hebrew Bible
explicitly commands the Jewish people to “love the alien as yourself for you
were strangers in Egypt.” Dawkins appears to have drawn heavily for his analysis
upon an article by one John Hartung, which he warmly commends. But Hartung’s
twisted hatred of Judaism emerged in another article in which he expressed the
view that antisemitism was merely a form of “reactive racism” in response to the
(as perceived by him) genocidal behavior of the Jews. Yet Dawkins has treated
Hartung, the justifier of Jew-hatred, as an authoritative source on the Bible.
COMMENT: Does not change the fact that the Bible God is telling the people to
remember they were once strangers themselves so to treat the stranger well. That
amounts to saying that if they were never strangers in Egypt they could abuse
the alien. To treat a person according to how you would like to be treated if
you were in their shoes is really just being good to yourself. You have to treat
them as you for they are not enough in themselves to warrant your help. This is
not love and respect but hypocrisy. It will not last.
Religion always promotes its most toxic teachings using such tactics. The
nastiness is dressed up in some way to make it more lasting and influential.
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She opposes Comte's argument that "human experience is intrinsically subjective"
for that means everything is programmed by a feeling. It means thinking and
arguments are only covers for feelings:
Comte posited instead that knowledge had to be based on experience, but this
led straight into a trap, since human experience is intrinsically subjective.
COMMENT: It does not need to be and is a mixture of objective and subjective.
If my experience of my dinner is too subjective then imagine how subjective it
must be if I think God is in my heart communicating with me and me with him!
There is no test for that at all! At least there is with the dinner!
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Darwinism, meanwhile, is not so much science as materialism applied to biology.
COMMENT:
Materialism means there is nothing but the physical. Some belief there are
non-physical realities such as spirit. Once we start talking about non-physical
spirit we are talking about what cannot be detected or understood. If it cannot
be detected then it could be a different kind of physical we do not detect.
Using spirit to get out of the problems of materialistic views of reality does
not work and shifts from one problem to a worse one. Ethically it is just
cheating. We have no way of knowing if spirit could make sense. It is a mere
assumption and thus is anti-science.
Even if materialism is wrong it does not mean that biology shows signs of
supernatural guidance and of being helped along by an intelligent God. Believers
say that God has the right to design what is in the universe and let other
things just act as if they are on their own.
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At a deeper level still, whether or not scientists admit it, there is an impulse
within science that is akin to religious faith. It is the belief that there is
always more to be known about the world. Stephen Barr, a theoretical physicist
at the University of Delaware, observed that the search for this knowledge
involves an element of faith: The scientist has confidence in the
intelligibility ofthe world. He has questions about nature. And he expects - no,
more than expects, he is absolutely convinced-that these questions have
intelligible answers."
COMMENT: She is telling us that a normal human feeling is a religious one? She
is revealing that she clairvoyantly knows what is inside the scientist? The
religious doctrine that God didn’t use anything to make all things is hardly
intelligible!
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The idea that religious belief and reason don’t go together is contradicted by
the innumerable scientists throughout history who have been staunch religious
believers, and for whom science has actually served to confirm their faith.
COMMENT: Those scientists did not have today's opportunities to learn and are
too far in the past to count. Plus to keep their careers they had to please the
Church. The Church ruled the universities and the schools.
Contradicted is too strong of a word.
A lot of science does not overlap on religion so there is no contradiction then.
It depends on the scientist's field. But to have a more complete picture of
science means ruling out religion.
A scientist who is religious is not a theologian and if you are busy with
science you may not spot the stupidity of your religion. Scientists being
religious has nothing to do with making religion plausible or true.
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The established Church of England, which has succumbed in so many areas to the
march of secularism and paganism, has sided with the forces of hatred, bigotry
and unreason over Israel. Along with the Episcopalians and other liberal
denominations in America, it lends its voice to the demonization of Israel and
parrots the mendacious and hateful narrative propagated by the Arab and Muslim
world. In the face of suicide bomb and rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, the
bishops and archbishops are silent. Instead they attack Israel for the measures
it takes in self-defense.
COMMENT: Good. It is proof that liberal religion is sometimes more toxic than
fundamentalist religion. We should use moderate religion as a weapon against
extremist religion for it is no better itself.
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The real root of the extreme hostility within the church towards Israel lies in
the resurrection of the previously discredited doctrine of “replacement
theology,” also known as “supersessionism,” wrapped up in politics and ideology.
Replacement theology goes back to the third century CE when Origen, regarded as
the father of Christian doctrine, concluded that the Jews had lost their favored
position with God and that Christians were now the “New Israel.” The Jews’
divine election was revoked.
COMMENT: But the Christian doctrine that it is the true religion of God while
Judaism is outdated implies that Jews and Judaism are less than Christians in
terms of being accepted by God. The success of supersessionism and its endurance
clearly shows it should be regarded as part of the Christian faith. Origin only
took the idea from his forerunners. It is nonsense to blame him for its
creation.
The word Catholic really means non-racist and meant to invite all nations and
people. The use of the term by the Church is a slap against the Jewish minority.
Judaism is not a universal religion and is about the chosen race - the people of
Israel wherever they are.
Even the doctrine that God has given seven sacraments, seven gifts to the
Church, to prepare them and grant them everlasting happiness with him in Heaven
is supersessionism - the Jews have not got these sacraments or any sacraments.
Supersessionism in action and supersessionism in doctrine - that is a toxic mix
of two things each one of which is toxic enough itself!
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She quotes the Talmud Yerushalmi as saying that if one soul of Israel is killed
then scripture regards him as having killed the whole world.
COMMENT: That shows where the Koran got the saying that whoever kills, kills all
the world in the eyes of Allah.
It goes, Because of that, We decreed upon the Children of Israel that whoever
kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land – it is as
if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one – it is as if he had
saved mankind entirely. And our messengers had certainly come to them with clear
proofs. Then indeed many of them, [even] after that, throughout the land, were
transgressors – Sura 5:32.
People love the Islamic version of the quote but it is clearly hate speech when
you read it in context. It says it is okay to kill criminals. It is vague on how
bad they need to be thus giving a loophole if you want to be a liberal
executioner who slays those who murder along with those who steal a joint of
beef.
The Koran has validated a totally racist statement as well by even daring to
honour such reasoning even if it uses it in a different way. Allah says the
quote is his word though it is not in the Bible but the Talmud.
SO?:
The book is quite good but picks on atheists too much! It's warnings on
liberalism and Islam are timely. The role of Christianity in fuelling anti-Jew
hate is clear in this book. When people who barely know who Jesus' mother
was or when he supposedly lived identify as Christians thanks to parents and
schools and yet miraculously have enough religion to hate the Jews we will find
that disturbing. Christians do not pick on Jews over the nasty Old
Testament laws for Christians went out of their way to keep these laws though
obsolete enshrined in honour in the Bible. It is racism with a strong
religious flavour. Some think the texts are in to make the Jews look bad.
Some think the texts are in for they are seen as a burden to Jews and the
Christians rub it in by validating them while they themselves are smugly exempt.
Whatever the truth is, the Christians have no right to take any moral high
ground.
Amazon review 9 11 2020
