How to be a Young Earth Creationist

Let’s face it, very few people take Young Earth Creationism seriously these days.  The Darwinian mythos has so permeated the Western mind that few are able to consider non-Darwinian explanations of Earth’s history.   Those of us who do embrace some form of Young Earth narrative, are seen as quacks, oddballs, or at best, extremely naive and uneducated.

The situation is even worse when we consider that some of the most vocal proponents of Young Earth models, end up being intellectually unsophisticated, or cartoonish public figures.  And what’s more, many associate their Young Earth Creationism with outlandish end-time views, or, as is the case with the popular Answers in Genesis organization, they tie politically correct garbage in so thoroughly with their Creationism, that many conservative whites are repulsed by the entire package.

Young Earth Creationism finds its stronghold among anti-intellectual fundamentalists who look at you suspiciously if you ask too many hard questions in Sunday School.  Reading books and thinking outside whatever box the local pastor has established, is frowned upon in practice (even if it’s encouraged in principle).

Despite all this, I’m a Young Earth Creationist – holding that the Earth is something like six thousand years old, that men and dinosaurs (the really big ones) walked the Earth at the same time (on second thought, men were probably running  instead of walking), and that God destroyed the entire world with a giant flood that wiped out everything except for the animals Noah and his family rescued on the Ark.

How can I possibly believe this in light of the “overwhelming” (lol) evidence to the contrary?  Do I shut off my mind completely?  Do I stick my fingers in my ears and hum?

Quite the opposite, actually.

Young Earth Creationists infuriate modernists so much, that I can’t resist being one.  And further, when I sit down and read my Bible, without any bias or agendas, I read a simple fairy tale story, and it’s that story and the hero it describes, that I fell in love with and owe my allegiance to.

But, to defend Young Earth Creationism on exegetical grounds, is to face the myriad of modernist seminary students, who are experts in the Greek and Hebrew, and who are hell-bent on putting us naive “fundamentalists” in our place, by patiently (though condescendingly) teaching us that the words in Genesis do not mean what they appear to mean, or that the genre of Genesis renders the contents irrelevant historical commentary.

So the Young Earther, unless he’s ready to go head to head with many well trained Hebrew scholars, need not take that line of defense.  (I note that Young Earthers have their own Hebrew scholars, with their own counter-arguments and heremeneutical models.  So Young Earthers needn’t, and indeed shouldn’t, give up the exegetical arguments; nevertheless, the debate doesn’t hinge on Scriptural interpretation).

What of the Science?  To defend Young Earth Creationism on factual grounds is to wade into an endless mire of specialized debates about any given area of Scientific inquiry.  The Young Earther might find himself having to be an expert in biology, astrophysics, or the finer points of geology and genetics.  He might be engaged in mathematics or astronomy.  Young Earthers have their own models in each of these fields, and to debate which model “best” adheres to the facts, is always going to end up in a quagmire of specialities; and no layman can possibly handle all of that.

In fact, to try handling all that is a mistake, and this leads me to the punchline:  how can one be an intellectually sophisticated Young Earth Creationist?

It’s a matter of a slight (though necessary) epistemological flourish; a move popularized by the secular philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine in his essay “Web of Belief”, though popularized throughout the Reformed theological community by the late great Dr. Greg Bahnsen.

Before laying this out, however, it’s important to set up the syllogism so everyone can clearly see what is taking place.  I browse a philosophy of religion blog from time to time, The Prosblogian.  It’s full of pretentious rationalists who debate among themselves about which of them has the world figured out.  Depressing reading, really, but their occasional syllogisms help clarify some issues.  The following is from an attempt by blogger Alexander Pruss, to defend Genesis 1-3:

Consider this argument:

1.If Christianity is right, every assertion of rightly interpreted Scripture is true.

2.Genesis 1-3 is rightly interpreted literalistically.

3.The approximate truth of our best relevant science contradicts the assertions of Genesis 1-3 when these texts are interpreted literalistically.

4.Our best relevant science is approximately true.

5.So, Christianity is not right.

As a hip modernist, Pruss repeatedly declares that the “obvious” way out of this argument is to deny (2).  What sane “hip” theist (they can’t bring themselves to use the title “Christian” in public – they must be “theists”) could do otherwise?  Nevertheless, philosophers do like being clever and playing games, and so he intends to deny (3) by offering some off-the-cuff narrative that will fit equally well with a literal reading of Genesis, as well as modern Darwinian scientific paradigms.

You can read his blog for yourself to see if you think his proffered story is at all interesting.  (While it may possibly defeat premise 3, it’s not a story anyone would take seriously, and is useful for little more than a demonstration that it is possible to defeat 3, even if no one cares to do so).

Here’s where we need to consider Quine.

As a Young Earth Creationist, I would reject (4), even though Pruss would call my doing so, “engaging in revisionist science”.  He says that as a slur, as if anyone who would disagree with contemporary scientific paradigms must be a loon, or otherwise intellectually unstable.

I’d like to make two points in response to this:

1.  Considering what we’ve learned from the Postmodernists thinkers, it’s naive to dogmatically stick within one paradigm, and act as if there is no possible explanation of the facts other than what you’ve been taught in your undergrad biology class.  It’s almost as if Pruss thinks that anyone who doesn’t live within his chosen paradigm, is mentally handicapped or something.  You can almost see these people snuff their noses and look away, chins held high, as they callously dismiss the outsider.

So, rejecting point (4) may necessarily require doing some “revision” of modern scientific paradigms, but that shouldn’t be seen as an absurdity.  Rather, it should be accepted with a spirit of Scientific inquisitiveness and curiosity; who knows what new discoveries await, outside the pre-packaged Darwinian box?

And

2.  It’s a mistake to assume that “facts” speak for themselves.  This is where Quine comes in, with his web of belief.  Suppose, after investigating the world, one of your beliefs was proven false.  We all hold our beliefs in tandem with many other beliefs, and thus, upon discovering one is false, we must change the other supporting beliefs.  Dr. Bahnsen was fond of the following illustration:

1.  We believe gods are immortal.

2.  We believe Apollo is a god.

3.  While doing scientific study on the battlefield, we empirically witness Apollo dying (after having been run through with a sword).

In this illustration, 3 is an empirical “fact” that we’ve discovered about the world.

The question is, which of the first two beliefs does (3) require us to give up?  Maybe you think, “oh, (2) must be wrong, Apollo wasn’t a god, I guess.”  But someone else may say “No, no, Apollo was a God, we were just wrong to believe in (1):  god’s aren’t immortal after all”.

Actually, there is no way of telling which premise the “fact” of (3) will cause a person to give up.  He may give up (1) or he may give up (2).  Which the person will give up and which he will keep, depends on which proposition he has more of an emotional attachment to.

The same is true (though on a much more complex level) with any “fact” the Scientific community lays before us.  Any of these “facts” can be interpreted in any number of ways, depending on the underlying emotional commitments (or biases) of the ones doing the interpreting.

Thus, we Young Earthers are fully within our rights to accept the field of scientific data, while rejecting the accepted “paradigms” through which these data are interpreted and explained; even if pretentious modernists like Pruss insult us by calling it “revisionist” to do so.

I’ll offer a very generalized illustration of how this might work:

1. A certain rock has a given ratio of potassium to argon.

2.  Potassium breaks down into argon at an even rate.

Conclusion – we can measure how much potassium is in the rock, and how much argon, and determine how old the rock is by looking at how much of the one there is vs. how much of the other.   This particular rock has a high amount of argon, and a low amount of potassium, so it must be … so many millions of years old.

Premise (1) and (2) are “scientific facts”, that no one can possibly deny, and that have (presumably) been empirically verified countless times.  What stupid Young Earth Creationist, then, could possibly deny that the rock is millions of years old?

I’ll be yer’ huckleberry.

The scientists know that argon is a gas and tends to “bubble out” of liquid magma, so when the rock cooled, it presumably had all potassium, and no argon.  Any argon content in the rock after that, is the result of potassium break-down over the years.

All of these data are most likely true – but the assumption that there was no argon in the rocks when they formed, is pure speculation.  If, for instance, a giant flood instantly hardened the rock before the argon could “bubble out”, then the scientists who assume there was no argon in it initially could potentially be off in the date by millions of years.

Is this “revisionist” science?  If it is, then it doesn’t sound so bad to me.

In any case, the Young Earth Creationist is well within his intellectual rights to reject contemporary models in favor of Young Earth models (which, however shaky or unreliable they may be, do exist and are getting better and more sophisticated by the day).

Plus, it’s just plain fun to infuriate modernists with talk of dinosaurs and man living together.

~ Lazy Cat ~

~ Lazy Cat ~

Mouser walked along from
one end of the porch to the other.

He normally wouldn’t move,
but something caused a clutter.

He jerked his paws and stretched,
we could hear him pop and sputter,

When he reached his goal, all that he saw,
was he’d traded one spot for another.

Three Mean Orthodox Christians Attack Poor ol’ Shotgun

While at the Council Conference this weekend, three of my Orthodox Christian friends cornered me, and wanted to debate the merits of Orthodoxy vs. the merits of Reformed Presbyterianism (Kinism).

I’ve never been interested in exegetical debates (I see them as treating Holy Scripture like so much mud in a flinging contest) and despite my conduct on Facebook (and elsewhere in the online universe), I have little stomach for debating my friends; I prefer fostering a spirit of camaraderie and laid back fun.

Despite that, their efforts got heated, and I replied in turn by going nuclear, and offering an off-the-cuff transcendental argument (I’ll expound more on transcendental criticism of Orthodox theology another time).

Their big talking point is that their church is the original one – a point that reduces the Kingdom to a mere bureaucracy. Physical succession of an earth-bound institution doesn’t strike me as a bragging point (even if the physical succession could be proven). But, I don’t mean to critique this further here.

What I want to note is that we Kinists hold something very similar to an Orthodox view of “supranationalism” (where God’s Kingdom expands over many particular, well-defined, diverse nations).

Over at Faith and Heritage, Nathan Strickland posted the “Church and Nation” segment of “Bases of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church” and I can completely agree with all of the listed points (except number 4).

So, the Eastern Orthodox theory of a “supranational” Kingdom sits very well with Kinists, who have been arguing much the same in Presbyterian circles. Orthodox emphasis on ethnic traditionalism and strict hierarchy is very agreeable as well.

But at the same time, their church is alien to Western cultural norms and social mores.

Presbyterianism, on the other hand, particularly that practiced by Kinists, would provide a Western-friendly theological context in which to express the traditionalism, hierarchy, and ethno-nationalist concepts…

… while also having the benefit of actually being true. (You bunch of dang pagans need to repent and accept Calvin!) ;)

Shape-Shifting Lizard Men Have Invaded White Nationalism!

I had a long conversation with a friend of mine at the Council of Conservative Citizens conference this weekend.  (~ EDIT ~ The comments that follow have nothing at all to do with the Council – an organization that is highly respectable, open, and very friendly.  I mean the following to be directed towards a general “spirit” in the white nationalist movement I’ve noticed over the past few years.)

We were talking about secret societies and inner circles.  Immediately at the sound of this sort of talk, most of my readers will bring to mind the Masons, or the Trilateral commission, or the Illuminati.

But there’s a problem with “cliquishness” even closer to home, that is:  within the dissident right movement itself.

You get a bunch of power-hungry, metro-sexual white boys, who (among other faux pas) use the word “redneck” in a derogatory way, wear suits and ties, and who believe they’re going to convert masses of upper middle class, effeminate, tech-geeks to some polished and abstract notion of racial nationalism.

They band together and talk about what “we” so clearly “must” do for our “movement” (all ambiguous terms).  They stand off to themselves during conferences, leaving us non-important movement types to mill about as we see fit; and they say to themselves “Maybe those poor creatures will survive long enough for us to implement our god-like vision onto the world?”

Opposed to this sort of cliquishness, is C.S. Lewis, in his brilliant article “The Inner Ring”.  Being drawn into the “clique” game is to be resisted, to paraphrase Lewis, in favor of good, honest hard work.  Keep your nose clean by working hard and office-place drama seems to disappear.  Don’t allow friends to gossip to you or around you, and just be honest, open and a hard worker.

This will automatically grant you membership into the only clique or “circle” that matters:  the secret order of hard-working white folks.

So, roll up your sleeves and join me in the inner sanctum.  Leave the cliquishness, standoffishness, and general disagreeableness, to the shape-shifting lizards.

Shotgun Plows Barlow’s Farm

Google  “Kinism refutation” or some variant there of, and you’ll eventually run into Barlow Farm’s 2007 blog post “The Kinists are Back”.  The tone is presumptuous; typical of wanna-be hip Reformed writers who can’t look outside the politically correct box to save their lives.  And while there’s nothing in the article that threatens Kinism, I’ll provide a brief line by line critique anyway, if for no other reason than to even out the Google discourse:

——————————————————————————-

As most of you know, I presented a paper critiquing the “Kinism” movement at the regional American Academy of Religion meeting back in March.

Anyone want to guess how many Kinists were in the audience for this?  Anyone want to guess how many Kinists this man actually dialogues with either in person or over the phone?  I don’t know, but I’d guess he’s taken a page from Brian Schwertley’s book, and refused to have a discussion with actual Kinists.  This is standard fare for the oh-so-brave defenders of politically correct Christendom… in the name of Marx, Rousseau, and Dr. King, amen.

In short, Kinism is back, and racial separatism is becoming respectable again in secular circles too.

So, after a brief internet “pause” this ugly doctrine resurfaces, and the brave Barlow Farms blogger is here to meet it head on!  It’s enough to make baby Martin Luther King Jr. cry tears of compassionate joy.  I wonder if Barlow is having trouble sleeping at night knowing how large Kinism has become since 2007?

Now, I’m enough of a classic conservative…

You’re not a conservative…

…to recognize that there is a certain truth to the idea that nations are more than ideas. And certainly we all recognize that ethnic and cultural diversity is as difficult and challenging as it is enriching.

Here, without cause or argument, he naively presupposes the trendy “Diversity is our Strength” mantra.

Now, every Kinist would agree that “diversity” is a beautiful thing.  God made a diverse creation after all.  In fact, not only is diversity beautiful, it’s a necessary component of any objective theory of aesthetics, ethics, linguistics, truth, and any other area of academia.

Think about it:  without diversity, how could there be the harmony among notes required to make chords?  Music would consist of a single note, struck only one time, and would reverberate throughout all time (though, without diversity, we’d even have problems thinking of a succession of moments, since we’d need a diverse array of temporal events).

So, we can grant that diversity is “enriching”; it’s beautiful, and also necessary.

But Mr. Farms has something more nefarious in mind when he speaks of diversity.  He means it in a national context:  racial diversity within a nation, is “enriching” – and this, no Kinist will agree with, nor should any sane “conservative”.

Real conservatives, unlike the politically correct Reformed hipsters who only claim the title, realize this.  From Edmund Burke to T.S. Eliot, “classic” conservatives have realized that for nations to function (and function well), there needs to be a unifying sense of homogeneity; a sameness of culture and religion.  And yes, even a sameness of race, which should, when functioning properly as an identifying category, organically tie all the other elements together.

From Eliot’s “After Strange Gods”, page 19:

Where two or more cultures exist in the same place they are likely to be fiercely self-conscious or both to become adulterate. What is still more important is unity of religious background; and reasons of race and religion combine to make any large numbers of free-thinking Jews undesirable. There must be a proper balance between urban and rural, industrial and agricultural development. And a spirit of excessive tolerance is to be deprecated.

That’s how a real “classic conservative” speaks, Mr. Farms.

Orthodox Christianity holds that human nature mirrors the image of God – that an unavoidably social God (the one God of Christianity *is* the three persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) created unavoidably social beings in God’s own likeness.

Well, there are theological quibbles we could make with all this, (debates over a Christian theory of anthropology get very complicated), but it’s agreeable enough to grant for the sake of argument.  The overall theme of “humanity” as “unavoidably social being” is something Kinists agree with as well.  Even the late great John C. Calhoun wrote something like this into the foundations of his political theory.

“As, then, there never was such a state as the, so called, state of nature, and never can be, it follows, that men, instead of being born in it, are born in the social and political state; and of course, instead of being born free and equal, are born subject, not only to parental authority, but to the laws and institutions of the country where born and under whose protection they draw their first breath.” ~ Disquisition on Government.

And just as it is part of our glory that we were created with free will, we were also able to bring rebellion out of ourselves in some mysterious perversion of something God pronounced “good.”

Agreed.  Kinists believe man brought forth the ideals of egalitarianism, democracy, and statism from out of a deep, sick part of his fallen heart, and hipster pastors are pronouncing it all “good”.

And yet when God set out to accomplish the repair of his image bearers, he took to himself a true and complete human nature. Jesus had a certain color of hair. He had a certain “race” so to speak.

This wasn’t an arbitrary move on God’s part, by the way; there were legal *covenantal* reasons for it.  Also, it’s funny that “race” here is in quotes.  But moving on…

And yet Jesus formed the cornerstone of a church made of living stones (humans) that are united first to him by the power of the Spirit, and secondly to each other in him.

Neo-Babelists constantly make emotionally laden appeals to the “spirit” when they wish to make ambiguous points.  As a Presbyterian, I believe I’m united to Christ legally, by membership in His covenant.  And while the Holy Spirit certainly helped bring this relationship about, it’s disingenuous to pretend that all Christians are held together by some mystical, ambiguous, bond.

And also, while I do hold to the Westminster Confession of Faith’s statement on the Communion of the Saints, there are limits and boundaries to how we are to commune with each other (see chapter 26, III)  – something the good farmer Barlow hasn’t seemed to have noticed.

Now, imagine the Kinist apostle who seeks to lead others to separate themselves into various neighborhoods by ethnicity. That is a difficult thing to imagine (in fact, it essentially did happen with Peter and in Galatia, but we all know that was opposed by other apostles). Imagine not wanting to live in Jesus’s neighborhood because of his race!

Since people naturally self segregate for the most part anyway (unless they’re under the influence of neo-babelist pastors), the job of the “Kinist apostle” is fairly simple when it comes to segregated housing.  (See Jared Taylor’s discussion of self-segregation in his book “White Identity” – the stats don’t lie).

Further, Kinists believe God has created man with an in-born desire for his own kind – similar to the in-born psychological disposition a mother has to care for her child.  Unfortunately though, these natural and Godly impulses are often thwarted by sick sexual fetishes or other sorts of pastor-approved sins.

And, how about the Peter vs. Paul show down in Galatians 2?  Does this Biblical episode demonstrate that segregation is sinful?  A careful exegesis of the passage (which doesn’t rely on radically egalitarian, socially marxist hermeneutics), shows a reluctant Peter, unwilling to act as if Gentiles were now part of the new covenant.  Paul correctly chastises him for it.  Further:  first century churches were routinely segregated anyway, so – despite the good farmer Barlow’s implications, Paul must not have been too upset about it.

Consider Rushdoony:

As a matter of fact, the early Church was segregated. First of all, in New Testament times it was segregated between the Jewish believers and the Gentile believers. And there was a good reason for that. The Jewish believers were so far superior that to integrate the two would have meant more often confusion. And when you realize that in, say, the Corinthian church, they didn’t even know that fornication or adultery was a sin because in the Greek world there was nothing wrong with that. After all, the chambers of commerce in Greece and Corinth and elsewhere…maintained regularly around two thousand prostitutes for all visiting businessmen. It was a manufacturing town and so on…and no one thought there was anything immoral about that. Or about men having relations with prostitutes. This was all taken for granted. So in the Gentile churches the moral standard was pretty low. It was a lot of hard work for a couple of generations and more to bring them up to any kind of standard. Well, the Jewish congregations represented a far higher moral standard and Paul saw nothing wrong with that, nor did any other apostle. So the principle of segregation was present there from the beginning.

See more on this passage (and the argument in general) here.

As for the last line…Kinists not wanting to “live with Jesus because of his race”, a few things:

1.  The good farmer has once again naively presupposed a bit of pop-wisdom without providing argument.  Is it true that Jesus wouldn’t be of the same “race” as white people?

While I’m not expert on the racial makeup of the ancient near east, I have studied the matter enough to know that anyone who states dogmatically that Jesus was this race, or Jesus was that race, is probably lying to you.  The historical data is ambiguous and complex at best.  However, I do believe the data points to Christ being of a race that most people would today consider “white”.

2.  But what if the good farmer calls up some of his neo-babelist buddies and links me to their articles which prove Jesus was not a white man?  Well, so what?

Here we uncover yet another naive presupposition of the good Farmer’s.  He’s presupposing a neo-babelist eschatological model, without argument.  He’s assuming Christ will be king of a new race – a new nation.

To the contrary, Kinists believe Christ is the King of a new “international” world of nations, all gathered around His throne (we have the shadow of this in Numbers 2, with the different *diverse* tribes, all camped around the Ark of the Covenant).  Christ was the King of a single nation – now He’s the King of ALL nations.  And as the King of all nations, his race doesn’t matter in the scheme of things.

3.  Let’s reduce the good farmer’s reasoning to absurdity:

Jesus is a man – I am a man.  I want to fellowship and be around Jesus.  I do not want to marry Jesus or take Him as a wife.  We can easily see by this vulgar illustration, that just because one wants to love and fellowship with Jesus, doesn’t mean one also must give up adherence to Godly social order.

Kinists then, can love and want to associate with Christ (and serve under Him as our Lord), without giving up our adherence to a Godly, racially diverse / segregated world.

And this is where I have hope for the Kinists. Unlike the Christian Identity movement whose soteriology is basically a story about how white people are saved, the Kinists believe in a fairly orthodox soteriology, narrowly conceived.

The good farmer should focus less on our soteriology, which for most Kinists is purely orthodox Reformed, and more on our differences in eschatology, particularly the nature of the Kingdom and the finer particulars of the doctrine of the Communion of the Saints.

Oh, and we have hope for you and your neo-babelist friends, too, farmer Barlow.

If all salvation is about is “going to heaven when we die” then the Kinists have an orthodox soteriology – Jesus saves caucasians just as he saves those of other races. But salvation is about more than that – it looks forward to a new heavens and a new earth – a world, in the flesh, where the redeemed get their bodies back and pursue human industry as it was always intended to be. As the first possessor of a resurrection body, Jesus was recognizable to the disciples. He didn’t look the same, of course, but neither did he suddenly take on the appearance of the Dread Pirate Roberts – a blonde, swashbuckling version of himself.

I kind of like thinking of Jesus as a blonde pirate … better than seeing him as a limp-wristed, egalitarian hippy.

He still was the same race, could blend into the same kinds of crowds, etc. Right now as I type this post, Jesus’s human nature sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven and Jesus has a particular race. How comfortable can a Christian be with the idea that his beliefs about race would in effect rule out his being in proximity to at least one non-caucasian that he respects tremendously?

I answered this question above.  *Even if* Christ was a different race from us, it wouldn’t mean we would want to serve Him or fellowship with Him less, but nor would that require us to give up our views on segregation.

Imagine if the good farmer Barlow argued that we anti-homosexual advocates were going to be very disappointed in Heaven, since we’d be stuck having to love a masculine savior for all eternity?  That sort of argument is obviously ridiculous.

If Kinism is true *and* prescriptive, then either all resurrection bodies must be of the same race or heaven must be segregated. Surely we can reject the idea that heaven will be segregated. And surely we can reject the idea that all resurrection bodies will be of the same race. And if we can’t, then we have to at least recognize that they will all be one race that may or may not be selfsame with the race each of us currently is. Thus, we could potentially be adopting a worldview that risks our not wanting to live in our own neighborhood someday.

“Either all resurrection bodies must be of the same race, or Heaven must be segregated.”

I’m not sure how this follows from Kinism, but let’s grant that it does.

The good farmer naively rejects the idea that Heaven will be segregated.  Why?  How?  What reasoning does he give for this?  None is forthcoming.  As a matter of fact, I think it’s prima facie obvious that Heaven will be segregated.  I fully expect to see my grandfather and grandmother in Heaven some day.  They’ll still be my grandfather and grandmother.  For all eternity they will be the entities through which God brought me into the world.  They’ll always have that relation to me.  Further, their parents, and their parent’s parents will be there (presumably).  In fact, many of my relations, all the way back to Adam, will be in Heaven, and I’ll have an eternity to meet each one.

So, on the surface, it seems there will still be familial segregation, even if in no other way than our unique emotional affinities for our own ancestors.  We’ll be in genealogical groupings.

And in light of that, it really doesn’t matter if the resurrection bodies of all the saints are physically similar or not.

See more on race and segregation in Heaven here.

And so the only real question is whether Kinism is prescriptive, descriptive, or totally untrue. And here my answer may surprise you. I think Kinism is basically descriptive of the situation in which humans find themselves.

And you and your neo-babelist buddies are here to right that natural wrong!

And here is why Kinism can be properly descriptive and yet pernicious at the same time. It essentially teaches that humans should give up on salvation, separate from each other, and simply wait for God to make the races interact with trust and comfort.

This is a ridiculous caricature.

Giving up on “diversity” (meaning: diverse nation states), does not = giving up on salvation.

As a matter of fact, I could argue that a Kinist missionary would bear far more fruit than some pretentious neo-babelist, for the simple fact that the Kinist is able to sympathize with and see the beauty inherent in a particular people.  We can only love other cultures after having a serious love of our own.

This “let go and let God” approach is unbiblical.

It also has nothing at all to do with Kinism.

The Bible basically affirms that while God is the power of change in the world, he generally transforms things through his instruments – humans. We can no more sit on our duffs and wait for diversity to be easy than we can sit on our duffs and wait for God to teach our children about himself or for our lawnmowers to mow our yards.

Nor will any amount of preaching make your presupposition that “Diverse racial nations are good” come true.

This is not only a false presupposition, but it’s a terribly arrogant and destructive one.  Satan is the god of those who desire to blur all distinctions out of the nations, and bring everyone together under one, humanistic abstraction called “state”.

Far better to retain Godly, decentralized ethno-states – where God’s beauty through diversity can be maintained with dignity.

Another aspect of the Kinist case is an is / ought move from the God ordained existence of races to the goodness of perpetuating or preserving distinct races. This relates less to diversity than it does to the Kinist opposition to miscegenation.

Is it an “is / ought” fallacy to move from God ordained roles between the sexes, to the goodness of perpetuating traditional marriage and sexual roles?  Obviously it is not.  And if not, then neither is it fallacious to argue from God-ordained roles for families, to perpetuating tribal boundaries.

But, there’s more going on here than mere natural law.  The good farmer needs to know that most Kinists are not only Reformed (holding to a strong view of Covenant Theology) but also theonomic.  As theonomists, we believe that God’s law is a reflection of His own nature in the world.  Thus, if sin hadn’t corrupted our thinking process, we’d be able to look at the world and clearly see His ethical will for our lives.  But, in light of the noetic effect of sin, the good farmer is right to be wary of natural law arguments.

Nevertheless, to be consistent in our systematics, we must agree that creation reflects God’s moral will (even if we’re unable to fully realize it).  Furthermore, most traditional Reformed scholars refer to this initial act of creation as the “Covenant of Creation” (see O. Palmer Robertson’s classic work “Christ of the Covenants”).  Inherent in the creation, then, are certain creation ordinances – as Robertson mentions: dominion, marriage, and family.

Most importantly for our present topic, is the “family”.  The family structure is a natural part of God’s created realm and is, therefore, the ethically normative state of mankind (just as marriage is the ethically normative state of men and women).  And families grow – they branch out, and eventually fill entire portions of the world.

These creation ordinances are inherent not only in the Garden, but are reflected in God’s law as well.  Theonomists hold that the Levitical Case Law presents nothing new in history, rather, it’s simply a written exposition of Godly natural law, and as such, we see ethnic-nationalism and a set of regulations concerning immigration and foreigners, written in.

So, the “is / ought” distinction, in a Christian world, is a valid one.  If God created something, then it ought to be that way.  And we have the law to prove it to those who disagree.

We Christians of all races commune with each other, by the power of the Spirit of the glorified flesh of the incarnate Word, and yet we shouldn’t marry each other? Try a reductio ad absurdum approach in the form of a lesser to greater argument on for size – if it is terrible for people of different races to marry each other, how much worse would it be to do something so important together as communing together as the bride of Christ?

Let’s do a real reductio here – if all Christians are to commune with each other, by the power of the Spirit of the glorified flesh of the incarnate Word (if I get enough pious sounding language in there, no one can possibly doubt my conclusions!)…then shouldn’t male Christians be allowed to marry other males?  Shouldn’t 50-year-old Christian men be allowed to marry 12-year-old Christian girls?  Shouldn’t Christian sons marry their Christian mothers?

Um – no.  Sorry farmer Barlow – a Godly communion of the Saints doesn’t preclude legitimate social boundaries.

This argument hopefully leads the Christian reader to understand the monstrosity that opposition to miscegenation of the races is.

The only “monstrosity” here, is the fallacious reasoning of a neo-babelist.

In summary, I have hope for the Kinists – that a consistent thinking through of Christianity will result in their rejection of racial fatalism.

Not sure how Kinists are “racial fatalists” … but what does accuracy matter at this point?

Unlike with the Christian Identity movement, which is another religion effectively, Kinism is more like a soteriologically heterodox Christian sect.

To reiterate, I think Barlow should focus more on our eschatology rather than our soteriology, since we would, presumably, have much agreement over the latter.

There is common ground here for non-Kinist Christians to persuade the Kinists that they are on the wrong track.

That would require actually talking to, and trying to debate with, a Kinist.  Bad move for a neo-babelist.  But, please…we’re here where we’ve always been, growing in numbers and waiting for a serious challenge.

Matt Parrott vs. the World. Or: Why the white right needs poets

My friend Matthew Heimbach has launched a new culture-changing effort called “Traditionalist Youth Network”, and the great Matt Parrott is lending a hand.  Unfortunately though, Parrott has written an article titled “The Causes of Causes, a Subterranean Perspective” which has caused (ironically) something of an uproar in the Southern Nationalist community.  He makes (what are perceived to be) numerous anti-southern comments.

As a Southern nationalist myself (at least in spirit, if not in political ambition), and as a friend of Parrott, I’ve followed the controversy with some interest.

Two bloggers and pro-Southern thinkers whom I highly admire have taken issue with Parrott.  Hunter Wallace, author of the “Occidental Dissent” blog has published an article in response, and the Palmetto Patriot (author of the Southern Nationalist Network) has responded as well, in comments at Occidental Dissent, and also by inviting Wallace onto a podcast to discuss the points of contention.

The Context:

Before my commentary on all this will make sense, I have to put their debate into context.

Parrott’s goal is a noble one, I think.  He wants to look back through history and find the motivating factor behind the events that have lead to the downfall of the West.  This is the mark of an intelligent mind; the search for some interpretive matrix that will make sense of Western history has gone on for ages involving thinkers from Plato to Spengler.

Using an analogy of plate tectonics, Parrott argues that a rich, power-elite, for economic reasons perhaps fueled by greed, act as the “movers and shakers” of the ideological upheavals and rebellions we see in history.  Thus, about the Protestant Reformation, he says:

The Enlightenment and Protestant Reformation weren’t driven by ideas. The ideas of the time were driven by Europe’s nascent mercantile elite, engorged on wealth from global trade and colonial expansion, teaming up with the invasive Jews against the Ancien Regime. Their ascent brought with it an age of cancerous greed and the reduction of everything to a commodity, cramming everything into the merchant’s context, as an integral product of their very nature.

And his conclusion isn’t all that different from the great writer and Roman Catholic historian Hillaire Belloc’s.  Parrott and Belloc alike would see the Protestant rebellion in England as the attempt of a wealthy aristocracy to usurp the traditional monarchy – an exploitation of traditional customs and blue-collar peasant classes in favor of nefarious financial interests.  It was not fueled by religious fervor or ideological considerations, but rather, by economic ones.

Consider the following commentary from Belloc on the reign of Charles the I, which is a typical example of his biography’s main theme:

“We must remember throughout that the danger to history in all this affair is the exaggeration of the religious quarrel.  Not to give it  its full weight would be to write bad history indeed, for it played a very large part; but it was not the main driving force behind the whole movement.  The main driving force behind the whole movement was the desire, already in part deliberate but still largely instinctive, of the gentry to supplant the King.  What we are watching is the embryonic growth of aristocracy; which of all forms of government is the most anti-monarchical.  This main quarrel driving towards the destruction of monarchy took the religious quarrel for an ally; the religious feeling was so vivid that, when it came to fighting, we can only see it in terms of the Puritans and their opponents, and before the fighting was over this religious enthusiasm had almost monopolised the attention of men; yet it remained throughout secondary, and while it profoundly affected the history of England it did not affect it as profoundly as did the complete political change which was at work.” ~ pg. 132 “Charles I”

This would all be well and good as far as Southern Nationalists are concerned, except that Parrott extends this line of criticism to antebellum Dixie, claiming the rich land-holding elite in the South were of a similar nefarious (and greed-riddled) mind as the Northern industrialists, only they lost their war, devastating the lives of millions of blue-collar, working class whites in the process.

Hunter Wallace and the Palmetto Patriot chimed in at this point, objecting to Parrott’s narrative, supplanting it with a narrative of their own, which paints an ideological continuity from the Puritans, to the zealous Yankee abolitionists, to the left-wing mania we have today.  This sort of relationship has been well established in Southern literature; from Dabney, to Donald Davidson, to Richard Weaver and M.E. Bradford, (and even scholars like Tom Sunic and Kevin MacDonald have made similar connections – see MacDonald’s intro to Sunic’s “Against Democracy and Equality”).  See also Weaver’s essay “Puritanism and Determinism” in “Defense of Tradition”, and also, Palmetto Patriot suggests the book “Yankee Babylon” by Aston.

One further point needs to be made – Hunter Wallace denies that there can be one overarching explanatory mechanism for the downfall of the West, preferring instead to look at regional peculiarities.  He calls Parrott to task for being a monocausalist.

Shotgun’s Commentary:

The problem is that both sides have accepted an evolutionary, and rationalist worldview.

To begin my critique of it, I want to prove, by analogy, that an over-arching historical paradigm is not only useful, but necessary for any study of history:

Consider the night I first kissed a girl.

Our bellies were full from supper.  The crickets were chirping.  The moon was almost full.  There was a lite, but warm spring breeze.  We were rocking slowly back and forth in the porch swing, my arm around her, her head on my shoulder…

I remember these things vividly.  To recount them in a historical narrative, requires I relate certain facts to the reader.  However, suppose, in the next yard over, an entomologist was studying cricket behavior during particular lunar cycles?  In *his* narrative of the evening, the boy and girl in the front porch swing would not feature very prominently, if at all.  As a matter of fact, the evening could be recounted in any number of ways.

To be precise, there was an almost infinite number of facts taking place in that one existential moment and the historian (somewhat like an artist) must choose from the pool of data, make a decision about which is more important, and re-display it for the world.

You disagree?  You think historians ONLY report the data?  Do you know a historian who takes the time to relate to you that 1+1 did NOT equal 1, or 3, or 4, or 5, or 6, or 7, (so on ad infinitum) during whatever event is in question?  The same is true for even the more mundane things.  How many books have been written on George Washington’s diet or his fashion sense?  Not many I’d bet.  Those things are usually not included in biographies (or if they are, it’s only in passing) because his conduct during the Revolution is usually deemed far more worthy of discussion.

The historian must, necessarily, impose a viewpoint of what is or is not more important, on the data set he wishes to write about.

So, Parrott is right to seek out a controlling paradigm through which to view western history.  Everyone does it, and if anyone claims to be completely without bias, they’re either lying or ignorant of philosophy.

So, the question between the two parties of this debate is … which paradigm will rule when discussing Dixie?

I hope both parties forgive me for vulgar generalizations, but, Parrott says it’s the wealthy elite, who manipulate the masses for greed who collapsed the west, while Palmetto Patriot and Hunter Wallace say it was more a brush fire of that destructive, puritanical Yankee sentiment.

Parrott says money, the Southern Nationalists say ideals.

Neither are right, because as I’ve said, they’ve both accepted an evolutionary, rationalist worldview.

Kinists are well aware of why both are wrong.  We’ve read our Rushdoony.  In his “Biblical Philosophy of History” he points out how we all must, necessarily, hold to some historical paradigm else history is a sea of disjointed “facts” with no coherency.  But Rushdoony, building on Cornelius Van Til, notes that man, as finite, can never hope to get an objective view of a historical event.

Think about it.  If every historian is out there, capriciously writing history based on arbitrarily chosen paradigms, then we’d have anarchy (at best) and complete historical skepticism at worse.  No one would be able to know what really happened at all.

Therefore, we need to appeal to a person who knows *all* the facts of history – the Christian God.  We must look at all of history in terms of a self-conscious and consistently Christian paradigm, since this will be the only paradigm capable of delivering to us the facts in such a way that we might understand the objective truth of a matter.

When we view history in terms of the most important event to have ever taken place, the death of Christ on the cross, we begin looking, not through the lens of some rationalist, mathematical scheme, but rather through the heart.

And poets make it their business to see with their hearts – especially Christian poets.

Enter the Poet:

On this view, we can see that the South, far from being run into the ground by evil oligarchs, hell-bent on profits, was the last bastion of Christian honor and chivalry in the world.

On this view, we can see that there are no omniscient power-elites who see and plan events – wealthy men are just as humbled by the ravings and mysteries of nature as anyone else, probably more so.  Their wickedness comes from their desire to cling desperately to their possessions in the face of an angry God.  And while they can and do seek to take advantage of their physical and social environments, they’re slaves to God’s providence, just as much as the poor man on the street or an actual negro slave.

And on this view, we can see that the Holy Spirit gave way in Europe.  No mechanical, natural, or evolutionary force caused it … He giveth and He taketh away by His own good will.

And woe to us on whom His destruction cometh – thus speaks the poet.

Shotgun Answers Fan Mail

One of my many fans has crawled out from the dark net and launched a few salvos my way.  I’ll answer him in bold:

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So Scott, I know you probably hate me at this point…

I don’t think about you that much at all, really (especially given the number of anonymous hipsters out there taking pot-shots at me).  I do think you’re a coward who would never say in my presence the things you write on your blog.  Also, I find your headlines a little funny, almost like something the Onion would produce:  “Some white boy uses the word “nigger” in a dark corner of the internet!”  or “White man posts on Stormfront! GASP!”  lol really?  That’s what you spend your time writing about? 

I have done a limited amount of research into my origins (that means I asked my Mother, my Father and my one living Grandmother) and they all said that I am 1/4th English, 1/4th Irish, 1/4th German and 1/4th Native American (not sure which tribe). So it got me to thinking about if I was “White”.

For some reason, in the early 1900′s, it was trendy to claim some Indian ancestry.  In most cases, the claims turn out false.  Regardless though, “white” is a non-arbitrary, socially-recognizable term that is applied by custom, and usually accepted by the person being labeled.  Send me a picture of yourself, and I’d be happy to tell you if you really are white or not.  Make sure to attach a return address.

I’ve listened to some of the arguments you guys have put forward about how Jews might look White, but they aren’t White.

Most jews would resent being classed into the same group as whites, and even if they accepted the label, they’d still demand to be distinguished somehow (ie, “I’m a jewish white” or some such).  The two groups have different cultures and different histories.  Why violently merge them together under the same label?  That’s evil.  Just let whites be whites, and jews be jews.  No harm, no foul.

I’ve seen that you frown upon race mixing. I know that you say you want this patch of ground for “your people” and that patch of ground for “my people”. I’m just worried that once you reach the ultimate goal of securing a homeland for “your people”, you know, your “ethnostate”, where does that leave me?

I don’t care what race you are, I don’t want you living near me.  Have fun in the sprawling, diseased, and sin-ridden mutlicultural utopia outside the gates of our ethno-state.

Can I be part of the White ethnostate? What if I really want to be but I’m not technically White, where do I go?

See above.  But, supposing you give up your radically-egalitarian nonsense?  Would you be allowed in?  Well, if you’re white; sure.  If not, then you can go live with your own people.  You’d enjoy that more anyway.

What are the qualifications of being White (according to Matt Parrott) and isn’t it true that they sometimes differ from person to person?

Why are you asking me what Matt Parrot’s qualifications for being white are?  In any-case, see my explanation of “white” above.

I also wanted to know if you can tell me how all these different races came about. The reason I was wondering this is because the Bible says (correct me if I’m wrong), but basically all men and women are descendant from Adam and Eve, right? I mean even after the flood, the Earth was repopulated by Noah and his 3 sons and their wives, who were descendants of Adam and Eve. If Adam and Eve were the first humans on Earth and all “races” start from there, aren’t we all related and of one race?

It’s correct to say all humanity is one “race” (since we all descended from Adam and Eve).  The word is often used that way, sure.  But the word “race” is also used in many other ways; for instance, it’s used colloquially to distinguish between the “white race” and the “black race” and the “Asian race” etc. 

As for where the races came from, as a Christian, the Bible is my authority on all things, including history, so I look to it.  But, unfortunately, Scripture doesn’t tell us (explicitly) how the different races came into existence.  We must rely on bright, theologically-mindful anthropologists to construct a model of racial origins for us that is faithful to God’s word.

Oh and by the way, didn’t Adam and Eve only haves sons? Inbreeding? Where in the heck did their sons wives come from?

Inbreeding is the popular Young Earth model of the moment, yes.  But you hipsters are sexually-free, right?  Not bound by those stuffy old Christian social values?  An incestuous narrative shouldn’t bother you.

Is it even possible for a single human today to not be mixed in some sort of way given the amount of time that has elapsed since Creation? Is any segment of society “pure”? How is that even possible?

Depends on what you mean by “mixed”.  If you’re asking me to defend some viciously naive view of racial purity that you learned from Jerry Springer, then I’m sorry to disappoint.