Conclusion - Part 2

[bookhobbit]

Back to the Secularism Is Evil section.

Noebel talks some more about how Communism Slaughtered Millions, but I won't go over that again because we've had the "nuance, what nuance" discussion already. Let's look at this instead:

The historical fruits of both Marxism (e.g., Soviet and Chinese atrocities, the Cambodian killing fields) and Secular Humanism, Cosmic Humanism, and Postmodernism (e.g., the murder of 46 million unborn children worldwide every year) confirm the Bible's perspective.

I find it viscerally upsetting that he equates abortions with totalitarian regimes, but also weird that he attributes abortion to "Secular Humanism, Cosmic Humanism, and Postmodernism" specifically. I feel like he just really needed a way to claim that those three kill people somehow, because it's otherwise honestly impossible to do so.

If people are but helpless pawns of the dialectic, why bother to encourage workers to revolt—won't societal change happen inevitably when the dialectic demands it?

The dialectic isn't God and isn't a conscious entity. It's made up of people. I probably should have drilled down more on this point in the History section, but like. It's not an independent invisible force that guides human hands, it's a description of a process of human interaction. That would be like saying "Why be an activist if you want political change? Society will make it happen."

As Biblical Christianity declared all along, socialism robs us of any incentive to better ourself because it is contrary to human nature's built-in sense of justice.

Biblical Christianity cannot have declared this "all along" because socialism is a lot more recent than the Bible is. This makes it sound weirdly...deterministic. As if socialism and capitalism have always been opposing forces locked in an eternal struggle and the Bible has been warning us this whole time.

Those who are lazy and do not produce—whether grades in school or cars on an assembly line—should not receive an equal result with those who do. A student who studies hard and earns an "A" should not be required to share his or her grade with someone who studies little, sleeps a lot, or shoots cocaine. Socialism discriminates against the competent, the hardworking, the productive, and encourages envy and laziness among poor men and women who might, in a capitalist society, achieve productivity and cultivate feelings of self-worth rather than jealousy.

This is all purely theoretical; it's based on his personal religious view of human nature. He has no actual facts to back up his "socialism makes people lazy and envious" argument. And in fact, the strictest definition of socialism (means of production is publicly owned) has absolutely nothing to do with any of this. If we're talking about wealth redistribution and universal basic income, which obviously are common ideas that frequently get bundled with socialism, there actually are some studies on that. They're obviously limited, but not what Noebel predicts. 

And of course he goes "but the Soviet Union was unjust and failed" as his only Socialism Bad argument. 

The Marxist attitude toward private property removes the incentive to work and replaces it with governmental coercion—causing production to grind to a virtual halt—and then wants to remove the coercion!

How does it remove the incentive to work? You can still have stuff. You just can't own a company.

But the economies in China, Cuba, and every other Marxist country in the world demonstrate that even the pale shadow of such a socialist society creates an environment in which we are less and less willing to demonstrate ability and more and more willing to demonstrate need.

What does this mean? I think the argument is that the people of China, Cuba, etc are needy and grasping and unproductive. That seems....bad to me. I'm fine with criticisms of governments, but "Chinese people and Cuban people are lazy and selfish now" seems really ethnocentric and like, potentially racist.

This is the same problem faced by Secular Humanists and Postmodernists who call for wealth redistribution. They ignore the fact that redistribution encourages recipients to work not to earn a living but to demonstrate need, i.e., to get the biggest piece of the redistributed pie.

Okay first of all it's not a "fact" because it's not proven. See: studies I linked. Second of all, this makes no sense and contradicts his own argument? He argued first that wealth redistribution is bad because it would make people lazy and unwilling to work. But now he says it's bad because people would work "not to earn a living" "but to get the biggest piece of the pie". What's the difference? And how is that different from how capitalism works now? What do you think businesses are trying to do? It's like he can't conceptualize a system outside his own. 

Further, socialistic Secular Humanists and Marxists refuse to recognize that free enterprise and private property (a New Testament concept Acts 5:1-4), actually work to produce wealth. In capitalism, property and skills can be used to produce more, thereby creating a wealthier society. In contrast, wealth redistribution programs merely spread wealth around, encouraging a consumptive, rather than productive, mindset. The question becomes not "How can I produce more?" but "How can I get more?" 

What do you think has to happen when the goods are produced? They have to be consumed. Production and consumption are two sides of the same coin in a situation where most people have roughly the same amount of wealth. Again, I genuinely don't know how this is different from the profit-maximizing way that companies are run now.

More damningly, this is Acts 5:1-4:

Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. 2 With his wife’s full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles’ feet. 3 Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? 4 Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God.”

This is not a passage that supports the idea of capitalism or private property. Noebel can't even quote the Bible without distorting it wildly, and this isn't the first time he's done this.

Then he's like "and also central planners don't work" and "power corrupts". Cool. That doesn't actually have anything to do with socialism per se, nor does it have much to do with strict Marxism which, again, imagines a stateless society. So, a bit tangential to an actual deconstruction of either of those things.

Secular Humanists and Marxists are usually unwilling to admit that their views grant sovereignty to government, but the simple fact remains that, barring anarchy, human beings require an absolute basis on which to judge individual actions.  If God is denied, the state must usurp His role. Thus, absolute power falls into the hands of politicians—persons who are not, despite optimism to the contrary, infallible.

This is very funny because every leftist I know is always posting things that are like "stop trusting politicians, they're humans in a job and they get things wrong" and also because I know a lot of anarchists who are anti-state precisely because they're against absolute power being in the hands of politicians. This appears to be too far left for Noebel to be able to process.

Then he talks for a lot longer about how if we don't trust God as the ultimate authority, it means the state will become it. Again: he cannot conceive of a worldview outside his own, he can only conceive of replacing the parts with something else. In his view of secularism, God is replaced one to one by the State.

Only an absolute foundation can create absolute laws (i.e.. It is always unlawful and morally wrong for a judge to take a bribe; It is always and universally wrong for an adult to sexually molest and torture a child for fun). Systems of law based on relativism can declare only, "It is unlawful, in the present circumstances, to take a bribe" or "Thou shall not commit bribery...ordinarily."

So much to talk about here...let's start with the fact that he uses the most emotionally charged example possible (sexual molestation and torture of a child) and contrasts it with something a lot more small-time (taking bribes). 

I also can't get past that he has to specify "to sexually molest and torture a child for fun". Would it be okay to do that for a purpose? That would be moral relativism, then. If you have to specify "it's only wrong to torture children for fun; it's okay to torture them for Good Reasons", you have a morally relativistic foundation. It's about torturing children, the most knee-jerk obvious "don't do that" thing you could come up with, and you're implying there might be good reasons for it!

The truth is that law always requires interpretation, and interpretation requires humans to make decisions, and decisions make things somewhat relative. Is it wrong for a judge to take a bribe? Probably most people would agree. Is it wrong for them to take a bribe because their wife is dying of cancer and the bribe will pay for their treatment? Still yes, but that action is probably going to be treated with more grace than a judge taking a bribe because they really want a new car. The fact is, our view of actions is usually impacted by their context.

But all of that isn't even really relevant to what he's really arguing, which is that morals should be absolute across cultures. That's a whole other can of worms.

This is the height of relativism! Because our nature is always in evolutionary flux and every individual differs from his fellow human beings in terms of needs and capacities, it naturally follows that individual's rights must vary in proportion to these differences. 

Does it? Why? You can't just say "naturally" without explaining.

Does this mean, then, that I have fewer rights than a concert pianist because he is more capable than I? Do I have more rights than the needy in Ethiopia? 

Why would any of this follow from that?

Clearly, it is no good founding rights on human capacities or governmental policies. Rights and laws must be based on the character of God, or they will be humanly arbitrary, and consequently, most often in favor of the rich and powerful. 

A couple of chapters ago he was scaremongering that secularist law unfairly favors the poor.

Then there's a bunch of stuff about What If Animals Have The Same Rights As Us???? That Destroys Our Dignity, which I find funny as it's not all what I would say is the primary concern in that debate.

In the West, laws that many people considered inconceivable a few years ago are now the standards by which we must live. Abortion is legal because the state decided that a baby in the womb is not a baby. Perhaps, twenty years from now infanticide will be legal because the state will decide that a baby is not a human being until it can walk or talk.

It's twenty years later and that hasn't happened. Anyway, this idea that the state is some sentient all-powerful entity completely divorced from anyone living within it that gets to make decisions for people...he really does think it's just "replace God with State".

The distinction between right and wrong is tenuous in a society that subscribes to legal  positivism. Yesterday homosexual marriages were illegal; today homosexual marriages are the cry of political and moral liberals everywhere.

It's funny that when he thinks of right and wrong all he can think of is gay marriage, abortion, and the Holocaust (there was another mention of it in this passage but I spared you). Could you engage with anything else? Something like labor rights perhaps? Police brutality? Anything?

The Magna Charta resulted in a just government in England

Are you sure about that one?

If the atheistic and naturalistic assumptions of Secular Humanism and Marxism were correct, we would live in a disorderly universe that follows no discernible pattern and subscribes to no unalterable laws.

There's no reason why "no god" should equal "no natural laws". Physics can still exist without God.

The supreme irony is that modern public school classrooms, using the arbitrary power of positive law, bar the Christian worldview while welcoming both the Marxist and Secular Humanist perspectives.

I don't think anyone in a public school learns much about Marxism. I think what he really means is "they teach evolution".

Then there's a lot about scientism and also about how science couldn't exist without Christianity. And stuff about how ethics must proceed science and Secular Humanists and Marxists are clinging to science to explain stuff that science can't explain. It's all so incoherent that I'm having a lot of trouble picking up a representative piece to spork.

Moral absolutes abound: It is always wrong to steal from a blind man's tin cup. It is always right to be kind to the homeless. It is never right to murder a professor because of his or her atheism, etc. Even Jurgen Habermas, a Secular Humanist, admits that some sort of universally agreed upon framework is both possible and necessary in order to ensure that freedom and justice are achieved.

Okay...let's start from the top. The first two items are society-specific. Not every society has blind men who solicit donations of money to survive; not every society has homeless people; not every society has professors or a concept of atheism. So these are not really absolute rules, they are specific to a situation that is specific to a society. Next, there's no need to invoke God to handle actual absolutes. Last, it's FUCKING rich for a REPUBLICAN to be talking about being kind to homeless people.

Hitler again. Stalin again. Mao again. All he can think to bring up for morality is "dictator, dictator, dictator".

If ethical and cultural relativism are true, then human beings ultimately determine their own moral conduct, which means that Hitler, Stalin, and Mao never acted unethically (at least not according to their subjective standards). In fact, if these men succeeded in moving the evolutionary timetable forward, then Secular Humanists and Marxists should be consistent and applaud them for the work.

Well, uh, to be as crude as possible, did they succeed in moving the evolutionary timetable forward? I think not, so why should they applaud? I mean firstly that's not how evolution works, secondly they mainly succeeded in killing lots of people. "Killing lots of people" tends to be a thing that humans do disapprove of quite simply and frankly because most humans do not want to be killed. This is such a long reach and such a weird strawman I don't even know what else to say.

The belief that some people will always know better than others, regardless of actual concern with morality, has already severely wounded our world. 

Yeah. So maybe you should stop pretending that Christians will always know better than non-Christians?

It has allowed dictators to commit unspeakable acts of violence. It has encouraged the attitude in America that a mother knows what is right for her unborn baby, even if it means abortion; that doctors know when a fatally ill person would like to die; and that Planned Parenthood knows the proper means of sex education for all. The results of such morality range from the slaughter of Ukrainians and the unborn to a raging AIDS epidemic.

See what I mean? Gay, abortion, dictators. Dictators, gay, abortions. That's it. He can't think of any other ethical issues. Some euthanasia in there for spice, I guess, but involuntary euthanasia is illegal pretty much everwhere and even voluntary euthanasia (which by definition is the patient deciding, not the doctor) is only legal in a few US states so that's not a good example of things America lets you do. 

So, despite railing against absolute codes and traditional morality, secular worldviews must fall back on some form of Christian ethics when postulating specific moral suggestions.

Noebel thinks this because he can only see things through a Christian perspective.

Their conclusion should not shock us. Behaviorism is the logical extension of naturalism. What should shock us is that Marxists and Secular Humanists expect us to believe that this model accurately describes reality. A model that strips us of free will can lead only to nonsensical conclusions such as, "it means you literally have no choice about reading this book at this moment; your doing so was, as it were, determined by the stars. Nor have I any choice in what I'm writing, being, as it were, merely a stenographer for what is dictated by the dance of the atoms. Consequently, if I were to write that all naturalists were ugly useless cockroaches, the naturalist would have to agree that Nature herself forced me to say so."^

Holding in my all-caps-bold-and-italicized "what the fuck": that's not an accurate description of what behavorism says, and behaviorism has been out of date for decades, so you're twice inaccurate.

He bangs on in this vein for a while longer, and then goes on to claim that Secular Humanists and Marxists are hypocrites for not taking their beliefs to the logical conclusion (that only he sees as the logical conclusion to them). Again. For like, two pages straight. Skipping that. Then he says that secularism offers a paradise (future utopia), again describing it in strictly Christian terms. He debunks this and says that the Bible proves that it's not true because of human nature. I'm not copying any of it in because it's deeply repetitive from the previous subsections.

This is how he chooses to finish the section:

Marxists and Secular Humanists turn their backs on reality. They choose to deal in distortions, shadows and epiphenomena, advancing theories that deny the most important aspects of existence: God, the moral order, soul, mind, conscience, ideas, free will, and altruism. Their denial leads to inhuman theories and concepts, including "survival of the fittest" and the morality of violence against an entire class of people (the bourgeoisie). It leads to moral nonsense like "Thou shalt not commit murder . . . ordinarily," and a whole host of sexual perversions, disease, and death. Stewart Justman is correct—theirs is a Fool's Paradise.

Well. That's certainly a salad of miscellaneous unsourced claims, isn't it?

(If murder is never, ever, ever okay, we should probably disband the military.)

Thank FUCK, the next parts are much shorter. This one was 26 pages long, compared to what's normally 5-10 pages. The upcoming ones are more as expected, and I'll try not to copy in anything repetitive.

Noebel uses this section to say that relativism and New Age beliefs are bad. He starts off by saying that it can't be true that all religions are true because that's contradictory.

So the first step in setting free those who have been captured by New Age theology is to point out the illogic of their beliefs. They will likely counter that logic and rational thought cannot be trusted and we must instead trust our feelings. If they raise this objection, then ask this simple question: Did you just make a rational statement concerning what can be trusted? Since the answer to your questions is "yes," you can point out that their statement is self-fulfilling since they made a rational statement that says rational statements cannot be trusted.

In what world is this how that exchange would go? But note the like, reliance on this idea of Christianity as "rational" and the ways that the concept of being rational and logical has been used in like colonialist rhetoric.

On the one hand, the story claims that we—the blind men—have only limited knowledge. But if everyone is blind, no one can know the ultimate shape of the elephant. We need the perspective of someone who is not blind, a privileged position that the New Ager claims for herself or himself. But how is it that the New Age adherent knows the truth and the rest of us do not?

Nope. "No one can know the ultimate shape" is probably where most New Agers would stop. Again, Noebel cannot imagine a worldview that does not involve absolute authoritative claims to A Single Truth.

But without an objective source of truth as a plumb line, there is no way to determine whose feelings are correct, theirs or ours.

Yeah. Now you're getting it. And we don't have to know. You can just live with uncertainty and respect each other.

When it comes to the nature of God and reality, the Christian worldview offers a confidence not found in Cosmic Humanism.

I would wager that to so-called Cosmic Humanists, that's a bad thing, not a good thing.

He goes off on ethical and moral relativism again for a while. I won't spork it because it's the exact same arguments as he was using before. So much repetition.

Our first approach in countering non-Christian ideas is to start with the assumptions of a biblical worldview. We follow the logic that, beginning with a personal God, all people are created in God's image and have stamped upon their consciousness the knowledge of Him, even though this knowledge has been suppressed (Romans 1:18-20). Because of their refusal to embrace the truth, many fall prey to deceptive philosophies (Colossians 2:8). To rescue those who have been captured by these philosophies, we remind non-Christians of the truth they know but have suppressed, pointing out areas where they have been deceived in their thinking, then moving to the good news of God's forgiveness through Jesus Christ.

This is setting you up to fail real good. It's important, though, to understand it, because it's how fundamentalists are taught to approach everyone. And it's very...undermining. It makes a person feel like what they know about themself and their feelings is wrong.

And then there's a bunch of psychology questions that you're supposed to ask like "how can you, a person, come from an impersonal force" and "should you help a person in need?" and "do you believe in animal rights?" It's pretty awful, because it's setting you up with scripts to respond to these things, but in reality you can't predict how people are going to respond. This is another "you go out, you try to preach, you get snapped at because people feel threatened by your aggressive and intolerant behavior, you go back to the cult feeling like they were right about everyone" thing.

Also there's this:

The traditional Hindu idea is that one should never interfere with someone else's karma, which is why Hindus and Buddhists did not found hospitals. Hospitals were begun by Christians who were following Jesus' teaching about loving one's neighbor.

Seems racist. I genuinely don't even know how to fact-check it. I mean, the time when the British were colonizing India was also the time that they were building themselves infrastructure like hospitals, so naturally they would build them elsewhere, but that doesn't mean there was no way of caring for the sick before then or no interest in doing so.

More stuff about moral relativism, and that's...it? So basically he spent about six pages talking about the same stuff he talked about last section plus some word games where he came up with talking points involving wildly misunderstanding the claims being made.

Now we are onto Postmodernism.

Postmodernists most likely have difficulty living with their view of reality. They claim that "reality" is constructed by language. On one level, the statement "the train is coming" may convey a multitude of interpretations to different people. To some it may even simulate a train. But if people fail to get off the tracks, the result of their interpretation could prove fatal because there are indeed objective, non-verbal referents to words and texts. 

See, here's the thing. Here's the thing. Noebel doesn't know or understand that he's taking a critical framework and trying to apply it as a literal all-encompassing worldview when it was never meant to be that. I don't think most Postmodenists would disagree that if you stay on train tracks you will probably get hit by a train.

More of the classic "if everything is relative then you're wrong about everything being relative, CHECKMATE ATHEISTS." This is almost verbatim (aside from the last part, obviously) what he says repeatedly. 

He then copies another section verbatim from earlier in the book, about how if everyone is right, who decides who is right and there will be conflict??? I won't discuss this bc I sporked it last time, during Ethics I think. The whole section is a complete copy, about 4 paragraphs' worth of material. And then he repeats the Christian view: ethics AREN'T relative and god DOES exist. Then he says again that Postmodernists are leftists. My guy, why did you even write this if you were just going to literally copy and paste pieces from past sections?

Another difficulty is that Postmodernists fail to act consistently with their worldview. On the one hand, they say no metanarrative can capture the essence of truth. Yet, at the same time they say that a leftist vision of social justice is "right" for the world. 

BECAUSE THEIR PERSONAL BELIEFS AND THEIR THEORETICAL ANALYSES AREN'T NECESSARILY INEXTRICABLE. Besides, the point about Postmodernism is that it's more or less anti-consistency.

When it comes to social justice, Postmodernists begin with the wrong theology (atheism), which leads to a wrong philosophy (anti-realism), which in turn results in a wrong understanding of human nature (we are a product of social forces). Therefore, Postmodernists fall into a badly aimed approach to politics—trying to force an outward change upon society under the guise of social justice.

What makes it "wrong"? Just the fact that it doesn't agree with you. "This person doesn't agree with me, so they're wrong" isn't a very useful argument if you want people to convert to your side.

In contrast to the traditional definition of justice, the Postmodern concept of social justice seeks to "eliminate underserved disadvantages for selected groups."'" This they consider "fair."

What is the "traditional" definition of justice? And why don't you want to eliminate undeserved disadvantages?

Sowell points out that social justice can never be achieved because it demands vastly more knowledge then anyone has available. In reality, every individual has advantages or disadvantages in life. Some have beauty but lack intelligence, others are born into wealth but lack emotional stability, while others may have athletic ability but are crippled by a quick temper. The point is, how can anyone else be in a position to judge which advantages should be disregarded and which disadvantages should be remedied? 

Well, I mean...we can look at large, society-wide structural inequalities? This is conflating individual inequality and group inequality. It's not about the individual, but about the larger pattern.

For example, when a certain class of students is given preference for admittance to college in spite of low test scores, the additional cost to the college for providing scholarships to students who will eventually drop out is being overlooked.

This is a racist dogwhistle. It's not the main point, but test scores aren't actually a good predictor of ability to succeed in college.

Furthermore, helping the poor is accomplished through actions, not mere words. Richard John Neuhaus offers a critique of Postmodern rhetoric in contrast to the actions of faith-based groups: "In cities across the country and generally under conservative auspices, such street-level programs of personal and community renewal are rapidly multiplying. Nothing comparable is happening on the left."'"

The like three separate mutual aid societies in my city which focus on feeding and otherwise assisting the poor and unsheltered people here would beg to differ. Probably if you're not a leftist you're not going to be aware of street-level leftist programs.

If we do not take our responsibility seriously, then we have only ourselves to blame when we lose our liberty to those who would seek to impose their brand of social justice on us.

UggghhhHHHHH why is "liberty" always "the freedom to be cruel to other people"?

J.R.R. Tolkien provides an answer. In a scene from The Two Towers, Pippin and Merry entreat the peace-loving Ents (ancient trees that walk and talk) to join the battle against the forces of the evil Sauron. When the trees refuse. Pippin tries to solace Merry by saying, "Maybe Treebeard is right. We don't belong here. Merry. This is too big for us. What can we do in the end? We've got the Shire. Maybe we should go home." Merry replies with desperation in his voice, "The fires of Isengard will spread, and the woods of the Shire and Buckland will bum. And all that was once great and good in this world will be gone."

Okay I'm sorry but J.R.R TOLKIEN DIDN'T FUCKING WRITE THIS SCENE IT'S FROM THE FUCKING MOVIE. It's not in the book. Attribute your quotes correctly. (Also Tolkien was a Catholic, and Noebel otherwise hates Catholics, so I feel he has no right to quote him.)

To assert that only participants in particular groups can write the histories of those groups is to imply that the oppressed can never write the histories of their oppressors. Yet, such histories would be very appropriate, revealing what the oppressors might otherwise overlook as mundane.

Oh, yes. Absolutely. Postmodernists would agree, so he's misrepresenting Postmodernism badly here. Would Noebel actually read, say, a history of heterosexuality written by a queer person, though (such as Hanne Blank's Straight)? 

More dictators, more inappropriate quoting of LOTR from the movies rather than the books yet attributing it to J.R.R. Tolkien. It's a bit he's quoted before too, the dialogue between Gandalf and Frodo where Frodo offers Gandalf the ring.

And that's the note the section ends on. One more to go.

He starts off this section, which is basically a call to arms for fundies, by saying that Lots of Christians have Accepted Liberal Ideas and this is somehow the biggest shame of Christianity instead of like, oppression. Then it says that postmodernism is infiltrating Christianity. He rails for a while against Christians who are too moderate. Essentially, this section is "if you're not a fundamentalist, you're not really a Christian". He gets sufficiently heated for an exclamation mark:

Yet, while Christians should be the first to recognize the bankruptcy of secular religious views, all too often they are the first to embrace bits and pieces of them!

This is portrayed as a battle; secular worldviews have drawn "battle lines" and Christians must "take up arms". He gives examples of things you can do: pray, ask your professors to change their courses to be more balanced towards Christianity, immerse your children in Christianity and only Christianity.

For some reason, he also quotes Bruce Almighty favorably this time, noting that the director is a Christian. This from the same guy who was quoting it disfavorably earlier.

And then he ends by recommending you some Christian philosophers, some creationists, etc, who you should be reading. They're the same approximately 20 people he's been quoting this entire book.

We need Christian young people, strong in the faith, to follow Cal Thomas, Brit Hume and Fred Barnes into the media, to take charge of the universities, to run for Congress and school boards, and to take up Christian sociology (with a strong emphasis on traditional family values)^. We need Christian artists challenging us with something that feeds the spirit and fuels the imagination.

And that's the culture war stuff. The stuff we all thought we were going to do.

This is how he ends:

To follow Christ means, at a minimum, taking every idea captive for Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5) and not allowing humanistic worldviews to take us captive (Colossians 2:8). Then we must set our hearts and minds on fire for God, His creation, and coming again-hearts open to God's calling and minds open to receive His wisdom and instruction; hearts willing to love truth, God's creation, and each other as fallible fellow human beings.

That sounds nice, doesn't it? Maybe it doesn't to you. It doesn't to me having attempted to live it.

Here's what it comes down to: don't let yourself think in ways that the church doesn't approve of. Don't let yourself feel things the church doesn't approve of. Don't let yourself read books or watch movies the church doesn't approve of. Watch yourself obsessively for any sign of dissent. In this, Noebel says, is freedom and safety, and any illusion of freedom and safety you might have while leaving the church is just that: an illusion.

That's how they get you coming and going.

I should do some sort of summing-up, I guess? This book was shockingly incoherent and badly-sourced, and given that I didn't find it so when I was learning, I think I feel comfortable in stating that this is up to the standard for Christian fundamentalist texts. The point isn't even that I disagree with his arguments; the point is that his work severely lacks rigour.

The secret is that you have to restrict the flow of information. Because if you get full information, you might change your mind. So you can't use lots of sources. And that means you have to fall back on, like, bodging something together with the Allowed Sources, and filling in the gaps with "obviously" and "logically" and "rational".

I don't know. Shaking fundamentalist Christianity is one thing but shaking the worldview of "there's absolute, concrete right-and-wrong answers to every question" is a lot harder. I'm still trying to work on that, I guess. I hope I haven't been too dogmatic in this series. I know I got a lot more heated at the end than at the beginning, and I apologise. At least I'm done now.