The burning of the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris this week ignited sympathy around the globe. Bill Whittle sees more in this catastrophe than devastation to a house of worship. The men of Right Angle talk about what it represents.
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Notre Dame Burns: A Picture of the Fate of Western Civilization?
The burning of the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris this week ignited sympathy around the globe. Bill Whittle sees more in this catastrophe than devastation to a house of worship. The men of Right Angle talk about what it represents.
31 replies on “Notre Dame Burns: A Picture of the Fate of Western Civilization?”
Hi fellas. The cathedral took something like 183 years to build and then has had numerous repairs and additions…such as the wooden spire…and repairs since that time.
Now, as far as the faith goes, the usual bad things the Catholic Church has done seeps in. Many things said are not true or historically accurate yet this is not my reason for mentioning it. The one thing we always must remember when speaking of faith issues is not the Church that is “bad” it is people within the church.
Oh, the French own the cathedral, as they do all churches in France. They were taken over after the revolution. I do not know the complete explanation of what the Catholic Church pays, but something along the line of being a caretaker and allowing them to offer Mass, but that is the extent of my knowledge. I am assuming…just assuming …that they would have to pay for all of the items needed for the Mass and other activities as well as repairs to the organ etc. Perhaps even pay a tax. Governments love to tax.
Thanks, .guys for keeping us informed, on many levels during these times that “try men’s soul”. (that “men’s” was written during the time when logical people knew it meant ALL people). Hoping these ” two cents worth” will not damage our “friendship”. (smiley face)
I don’t see anyone mentioning that the Hunchback is now homeless.
That’s low.
Wow. So now you’re making fun of the fact that his hunchback makes his head low to the ground?
Good topic, and I would have rather you run with the Matt Yglesias line instead.
And Scott, before you tell me to write my own post on it, I’ve written about the press quite a bit over at Flopping Aces. I’d like t hear the RA’s take on it
I don’t read Matt Yglesias. What’s your topic suggestion, Brother Bob?
Heh – I don’t read him either! It’s the topic Bill mentioned he had as a Plan B for this week in your pre-production meeting. Here’s a link to one of the sites that wrote about MY praising the media for lying about the Trump tax cuts
https://yellowhammernews.com/the-liberal-media-is-still-lying-about-the-trump-tax-cut-and-they-know-it-works/
The allegorical link to Holy Week, Jesus’ cleansing the Temple, suffering, death and ultimate resurrection on Easter (the following Sunday), as Notre Dame burns, bringing down the Spire and tearing open the Nave to shine the light of the heavens on the Piéta is profound.
Well said and it certainly is profound.
Wow. Did not even think of that. That’s deep, that the fire occurred on Monday of Passion Week, when Jesus cleansed the temple. Notice how as everything around it lay charred and broken, the shining cross, the crux of Christianity, remained standing tall in the cathedral.
https://www.google.com/search?q=notre+dame+fire&safe=active&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS730US730&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiHnuXblNjhAhUwHzQIHZt7DOsQ_AUIECgD&biw=1920&bih=937#imgrc=4vcW-3TioUcgqM:
If someone suggests building a Mosque in its place, I’m loading nukes.
I doubt the Church of Rome will allow that, but don’t be surprised if the new Notre Dame has a certain multi-faith element to it.
Just an FYI, folks. France owns all the churches. They were taken over after the revolution. The Church just gets to use them and take care of things in them.
Ann Barnhardt has said the following, and I’m afraid I believe her.
“Notre Dame Will Be Repaired at Taxpayer Expense, but as a “Shared Cultural Space”. And That Is How It Will Become a Mosque.”
Oh, that it would be a wake up call! 911 was a wake up call – or should have been a wake up call. But look what has happened instead. nearly two decades later, and we are allowing Islam, the very perpetrators of the event, to make inroads into our culture. The worst, most brutally violent “religion” on earth was declared, within days of the outrage, to be a religion of peace, and it has only gotten worse. Excuses are constantly made for Islam. “The extremists have hijacked Islam!” “You can’t blame a whole religion for actions of a few!” Oh, yes I can! Islam is the problem. Not individual Muslims – there are many peaceful Muslims, and Muslims in name only, who are Muslims because the born into Islam (and to leave brings an automatic death sentence.) But the closer one embraces the whole teachings of the (false) prophet, the worse he becomes.
We’ve entered a period of dhimmitude. Just the other day I heard that a school system (Was it Chicago? I can’t remember.) banned gummy bears, because pork fat is used in the recipe. Thankfully not here yet, but certainly in Europe, any speech against Islam, even if it fact bad truth, is considered “hate speech,” and people have been criminally proscecuted for doing so.
What is wrong with us? I’ll tell you what is wrong. The west was built on Christianity and Christianity is being abandoned. You can’t undermine a foundation and expect the building to continue standing. The only thing that will save us is a massive, Nineveh magnitude revival!
Sorry if this rant seems off topic. It may be tangential, but I think it is all related.
The west was built on the antithesis of Christianity. Christianity was built on Faith: a pretense of knowing what is not known. Faith builds NOTHING, contributes NOTHING, has NOTHING to offer the real world. Only reason applied to reality builds.
Wishing, fantasy, and lets pretend doesn’t build. It only consumes.
On the contrary, reason is a subset of faith.
Then you don’t know what reason is. Faith and reason are polar opposites.
Wrong, Christianity is the foundation of Western Civilization, and has offered so much to so many people, including me and hundreds of people I know. If you cared about truth, though, you would not say such things, so I don’t expect my word to convince you.
All I can do is share the Gospel (translation: good news), and pray that God changes your heart. All of us are broken and evil at heart, and we have all sinned against God, for which we deserve Hell, which is eternity separated from God attempting to atone for our sins. None of us can ever do anything to be good enough for spending eternity with God, which is why God sent Jesus, fully man and fully God, to take that bullet for us and pay the price for our sins. We did nothing to deserve this sacrifice, but if we accept this gift (for gifts must be accepted to be received), we can share eternity in Heaven with our creator. Place you trust and faith fully in him, not in your own goodness, and you will be saved. That is the Gospel.
God let it burn. That is if God exists. Evidence? None! Faith? Believing in things that have no evidence of existence. Fantasy, wish, hope without bases, whim….
Well, you have faith that it is not true, right? It seems hard to figure out where the people, the world, the universe came from if not from a higher being. But that’s just me.
One thing is obvious: the universe exists. It is not clear that it “came from” anywhere. It simply is! That it more than enough for me. I take it as my life’s work to understand and make use of what is. I don’t care about what isn’t. I can’t do anything with nothing.
Since you can’t think of anything else, you blame the existence of the universe on an imaginary magical bronze age god-king in the sky beyond the sky. He/She/It is the God of the gaps created and sustained by ignorance. As the realm of the known/demonstrable/provable grows, the realm of your God shrinks. The end is *poof* for your God of the gaps.
Christianity has abundant evidence to back it up, if it didn’t, scholars like C.S. Lewis would not have returned to their faith. Lewis was an atheist from age 15-32, but, a young professor at Oxford, he decided that the evidence supported God far more than his own depressing, bitter, angry worldview. I pray that you will do the same. You do not seem to be happy, or why do you harbor such bitter resentment towards the idea of God?
To say there is no evidence for God, one must first disqualify the evidence pointing to the divine… rational thought being one of them.
You say God exists. It is your responsibility to PROVE it. Since the beginning of religion, said proof has not been presented.
I don’t have to prove God doesn’t exist. To prove means to provide the properties, attributes, and the experiments that demonstrates the existence of God WITHOUT contradiction or logical fallacy. This cannot and has not been done since the time of the first religion. All such so called proofs are circular reasoning. They depend upon the truth of the proposition to be its proof. At their root is God exists because you are ignorant of the facts of the matter.
Hence the only honest and moral position is Atheism.
Hold on a minute, friend. Galileo’s experiments and hypothesis weren’t confirmed by solid math until the 19th century. The CURRENT model of big bang theory cannot be proven today, but somehow is the prevalent view for origin of life and the universe. I don’t think you are fairly representing either side here. Please look into the gaps of evolutionary Darwinism too, and see that we have zero evidence of cross species mutation.
A majority of the faith people have is due to the evidence of what was left behind in creation, which undeniably speaks and bears witness to an intelligent creator by its design, by the awesome fact that it’s comprehensible, and because of its statistical odds of ever happening by random chance that it should favor and cultivate intelligent life. Please review the facts, and the lack of intimation that is avowed to even to this day by real scientists and not armchair scientists like Dawkins, who have zero degrees in science, but has somehow convinced you with a degree in language.
I pointless to argue with faith. It is belief without evidence or in spite of the evidence. Because of that, there is nothing to discuss and nothing to argue about.
What you propose as evidence of God is nothing but evidence that the thing you point to exists and nothing else. That you are aware enough to point to it is proof that you exist and are capable of being aware of that which exists. The determination of what the thing is that you point to and what you can do to it or with it is a matter of further rational processes and careful experimentation (ie science and engineering).
That God did it is not the result of a rational process. I is nothing but an admission of ignorance, lack of willingness to question or investigate. It is more particularly, an attempt to stop further questioning and investigation on the part of others.
Why is the sky blue? God did it. Why is grass green? God did it. Why is water wet? God did it. Why are rocks hard? God did it. Why is fire hot? God did it. Nothing follows but more God did it. We could not have achieved our technological civilization if we had stopped at God did it. In fact, we likely would not have moved into caves for shelter. Bad weather? God did it. We must not deny God. Why? Because!
You are welcome to stand out in the rain, cold, and snow because you believe God did it. I, for one, do not stop thinking, questioning, or investigating simply because someone says God did it.
That’s a pretty fancy, and lazy, way of saying a lot without saying anything. You completely ignore the fact that the people on your side, who look at science as a belief system, make up lies that have nothing to do with the present reality and ruthlessly attack any opposition to status quo. There is your bias, when you refuse to acknowledge that kind of stubbornness is the true barrier to advancement. How many baby parts and how many tumors until they stop supporting and funding embryonic stem research? We could sit here for a while to compare the evil and I promise you, it won’t be atheism that will come out on top as more virtuous.
Makes you wonder if this was God saying “You don’t deserve this anymore. It’s time for you to learn a lesson.” You read in the Old Testament of how God destroyed certain peoples due to their sins, and I always wonder what’s going on behind the scenes of history today…. If the Bible was written tomorrow, what would it have to say about the role modern civilizations’ sins have played in their destruction? Food for thought.
I think God would have been more thorough, making an unmistakable point.
Maybe. But Notre Dame burning? Dang, that’s a powerful message, especially with the current state of France and the rest of Europe.