I once waded through an article on the coming new world order that read like a final exam essay written against the clock for a Hail Mary passing grade[i]. I mention this because of its continuing relevance to shallow thinking regarding matters of great importance – in this case, world order no less! The gist of the article was that with the “old order” collapsed and in disarray, the “new order” faces the danger of fundamentalism – whether Islamic, Christian, or yours, wasn’t clear and didn’t seem to matter.
The call, in so many words, was to root out “bad guys” who interfere with “good guys” trying to spread “democracy” throughout the world. Shooting clichés from the hip and trotting wild through a hodgepodge of tatty assumptions, the author took aim at those who follow sacred scripture instead of secular scripts regularly dished out with news and entertainment. A kernel of enlightenment was offered, for the benefit of the benighted orthodox out there:
“America has had more than its share of [fundamentalists…]. But the fact that the New Testament is, in effect, a symposium dilutes any claim that it is God’s word in the sense of direct dictation, enabling the controversial but erudite British ex-politician Enoch Powell (a professor of Greek at age 25) to claim that according to his reading of the original Gospel of St. Matthew, Jesus Christ was not crucified but stoned to death...”There you have it. “Fundamentalists” – those ignorant “bad guys” of society – need to be stopped by the knowledgeable “good” guys, or else . . . what a disaster!.............To Read More....
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