Friday, September 14, 2018

Faith's Late 20th century revival

What caused it? Modern technology. Up until the 50's the religious were in retreat but with radio and tv they were given a new lease of life. The Wizard of Oz syndrome -the idiots with megaphones now had a larger audience determined by their wattage and the religious right came out of this technological revolution and into the political mainstream.

The internet has given the mystics even greater reach and once again we see how primitive superstition and supernaturalism is purveyed using the very technology they profess to despise and which would not exist at all if their irrational anti reason anti science philosophy had prevailed. Ditto the New Age and conspiracy theory mongers. Crackpots now fill large stadiums and command a huge following.

It is these kinds of irrational people who voted Trump into the Whitehouse and he shares the same paranoiac world view with its hideous distortions and fairground mirror version of reality.

Islam too, the darkest of all dark age religions has used the internet to spread its barbaric anti science anti reason primitivism proving that in the very act of denying rationality its opponents have to rely upon and utilize it.

The only good coming out of all this is that atheism has benefited from the technological revolution and for the first time has gathered a vast world wide audience which hitherto it could not command. It was not until into my 50's for instance that I heard an  atheist argument for the first time(!) such has been the  centuries-long stranglehold on public debate by the mystics.

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