Liberal Who Doesn't Really Understand Anything About Religion Is Condescending In His Ignorance
We've apparently been unfortunate enough to recieve the attention of Len from esoterically.net. Len lives in Dallas and would like everyone to know that he is a liberal Democrat. He awarded us his "stuck on stupid award"(actually, we had to share it with Scott from Power Line... sigh). Anyway, he's not pleased with our little diatribe against the NYT:
Omri wins for this blog entry in which he attacks The New York Times for having the audacity to claim that FOX News employees Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig were released by the kidnappers in Gaza unharmed despite the fact that they were forced at gunpoint to “convert” to Islam. Omri maintains that this forced conversion did Centanni and Wiig irreparable harm and that the folks at the Times were “blistering idiots” for claiming that they were released without harm... Does Mr. Ceren sincerely believe that Centanni and Wiig “converted” to Islam and will now become practitioners of that faith? Is not conversion a matter of the soul? Do you really convert to another religion simply by being forced to speak some words by someone holding a gun to your head?
Actually, as a matter of fact, no it's not just a "matter of the soul". Faith has never been divorced from physical actions and utterances in this world, either metaphorically or theologically. This has been true for everyone from the most sparkling Protestant thinkers (CS Lewis: a physical weight was removed) to Catholic theologians (Pascal: kneel and you will believe) to Jewish and Christian martyrs in the Bible who died rather than utter blasphemy. The entire tradition of Judeo-Christianity emphasizes the productive intertwining and tension between material corporeality and immaterial substance. The physical movements that congregants enact and the words that they utter mediate their relationship with the eternal. That's why there are readings and recitations in shul and church. That's why Christians cross themselves instead of just imagining themselves crossing themselves. This isn't even a debate. Of course Judeo-Christianity holds that "speaking some words" matters - that's why literally millions of people have been tortured to death rather than verbally deny their faith. How could anyone who doesn't realize that ever be confident enough to engage anyone in any debate about theology - let alone to be as insufferable as Len the liberal Democrat is when doing it.
We know this might be difficult for Len the liberal Democrat to understand: words matter. No, no don't argue. They really do. There's this impulse in some activist circles to pretend that they don't - to pretend that 'what you really believe' is more important than either what you say or what you accomplish. And if our social projects were as routinely disastrous as theirs, we'd hold on to that impulse just for the sake of sanity. But the great religions have been around far too long and have had far too many theological debates for that absurd abdication of responsibility to seem reasonable.
You know what really bothers us? It's not the pathetically self-important stunt of naming an award and then ironically handing it out. It's this insufferable liberal conceit that (1) presumes to walk into a discussion the contours of which one doesn't understand, (2) substitutes feel-good mantras for rigorous thought ('it's a matter of the soul, man'), and (3) is actually sarcastic and arrogant despite being hopelessly out of depth. You see it across the board, from vexing economic problems to brewing international crises to complicated moral questions. There's this unblinking and shameless overconfidence that presumes that people who have been talking about these things for decades and centuries have simply missed a very obvious (coincidentally liberal) platitude that solves everything. As if millions of martyrs and the best theological minds in history simply missed Len's insight that saying you're converting isn't the same thing as converting. It's so obvious, he even asks it in the form of a condescending rhetorical question. It's like you have to be an idiot not to realize that, right? Too bad he hasn't been around through the ages to comfort all those martyrs with his theological brilliance: words don't count.
"Is not conversion a matter of the soul?" What an tool.
Omri wins for this blog entry in which he attacks The New York Times for having the audacity to claim that FOX News employees Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig were released by the kidnappers in Gaza unharmed despite the fact that they were forced at gunpoint to “convert” to Islam. Omri maintains that this forced conversion did Centanni and Wiig irreparable harm and that the folks at the Times were “blistering idiots” for claiming that they were released without harm... Does Mr. Ceren sincerely believe that Centanni and Wiig “converted” to Islam and will now become practitioners of that faith? Is not conversion a matter of the soul? Do you really convert to another religion simply by being forced to speak some words by someone holding a gun to your head?
Actually, as a matter of fact, no it's not just a "matter of the soul". Faith has never been divorced from physical actions and utterances in this world, either metaphorically or theologically. This has been true for everyone from the most sparkling Protestant thinkers (CS Lewis: a physical weight was removed) to Catholic theologians (Pascal: kneel and you will believe) to Jewish and Christian martyrs in the Bible who died rather than utter blasphemy. The entire tradition of Judeo-Christianity emphasizes the productive intertwining and tension between material corporeality and immaterial substance. The physical movements that congregants enact and the words that they utter mediate their relationship with the eternal. That's why there are readings and recitations in shul and church. That's why Christians cross themselves instead of just imagining themselves crossing themselves. This isn't even a debate. Of course Judeo-Christianity holds that "speaking some words" matters - that's why literally millions of people have been tortured to death rather than verbally deny their faith. How could anyone who doesn't realize that ever be confident enough to engage anyone in any debate about theology - let alone to be as insufferable as Len the liberal Democrat is when doing it.
We know this might be difficult for Len the liberal Democrat to understand: words matter. No, no don't argue. They really do. There's this impulse in some activist circles to pretend that they don't - to pretend that 'what you really believe' is more important than either what you say or what you accomplish. And if our social projects were as routinely disastrous as theirs, we'd hold on to that impulse just for the sake of sanity. But the great religions have been around far too long and have had far too many theological debates for that absurd abdication of responsibility to seem reasonable.
You know what really bothers us? It's not the pathetically self-important stunt of naming an award and then ironically handing it out. It's this insufferable liberal conceit that (1) presumes to walk into a discussion the contours of which one doesn't understand, (2) substitutes feel-good mantras for rigorous thought ('it's a matter of the soul, man'), and (3) is actually sarcastic and arrogant despite being hopelessly out of depth. You see it across the board, from vexing economic problems to brewing international crises to complicated moral questions. There's this unblinking and shameless overconfidence that presumes that people who have been talking about these things for decades and centuries have simply missed a very obvious (coincidentally liberal) platitude that solves everything. As if millions of martyrs and the best theological minds in history simply missed Len's insight that saying you're converting isn't the same thing as converting. It's so obvious, he even asks it in the form of a condescending rhetorical question. It's like you have to be an idiot not to realize that, right? Too bad he hasn't been around through the ages to comfort all those martyrs with his theological brilliance: words don't count.
"Is not conversion a matter of the soul?" What an tool.
