When reading a chapter this morning from the Life of Enoch Powell I discovered something particularly interesting. I have been thinking upon similar lines as Powell in this matter and it is not something I have thought to discuss prior to now. Powell spent 20 years of his life a hard line atheist. When searching for a university to teach in he even sought one that would be compatible with his beliefs. This was an opinion he held up until 1949 when the allure of the church compelled him to sit in for a session, and within a short space of time he found himself attending regularly.
What I learned which is unsurprising is that even in his old age he told a close friend that he never truly believed in life after death. There are also many occasions he pointed to supporting religion due to its social and cultural impact on society. This is initially, and still is what attracts myself to religion. It’s ability to keep the state small by giving communities the opportunity to police themselves. Hitchens once said that most atheists will be more likely converted through ‘ambushed poetry to the heart’ than reasoned argument. This is a feeling I have not yet been party to, but there was a similar experience I wish to share.
About a year or two ago I attended a school play in the local church, in which my sister had a small amount of lines to read out. It was much the same format as when I was part of the very same form group almost 15 years earlier. Many of the hymns were still the same and I was immediately hit by a sense of nostalgia, but perhaps more importantly a genuine sense of appreciation that the primary school I attended had placed so much importance on gifting and equipping its pupils with the culture and belief that is the foundation of our civilization and liberty.
The destruction of said liberty can be seen with the transition I have observed from my siblings and my own experiences from primary school to entering secondary school. In which the act of teaching children an invaluable lesson of self-restraint through religion and culture is completely abolished at the secondary level. Leaving only a token offering in the form of one religious education lesson a week, which from personal memory is a time in which the level of unrestraint among the class is similar to that of a typical lunch break.
As someone who classes himself as an Agnostic Theist and is yet to be convinced that there truly exists a deity. I can see how problematic my belief in theism may seem. If you strip religion of god then you are turning religion into a sort of alternate governing power. Using it as a device to your own ends rather than teaching that one day we shall all be judged. I have actually thought about attending church but found myself unable to for a reason which highlighted to me the true nature of our post-Christian society. As the purpose of religious morality is to offer people a method of policing themselves through ostracism, to keep the state at bay. I found that the roles had completely reversed, and that I had the distinct feeling that the people I knew would poke fun at me for attending church. The very method of ostracism used to keep liberty intact has since been switched to ensure its destruction.
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