Part II: The dangers of being "non-biased," or Don't be so open headed that your brain falls out

A prisoner of the War in the Vendée

Part II: The dangers of being "non-biased," or Don't be so open headed that your brain falls out

Even if it were possible to achieve a truly “non-biased point of view,” would it truly be desirable? The very fabric of humanity is tied up in this "messy knot" of cultural, social, spiritual factors. The demand to neutralize these human factors when make decisions in the public square is in fact a demand for every citizen to deny his own humanity. The resulting decisions will not reflect the solutions that a human society requires to function. The world that results from these "non-biased" decisions is slowly becoming less and less friendly to the human person. We see this being played out in art, which is at this point utterly void of any meaning. It is also played out in the extreme environmental and animal right movements, which demand an end to so called "anthropologic-centricism." It is played out legally, which is especially vivid in Spain and her recent debate on the legal status of high primates (and I am not talking about bishops and cardinals, but rather apes and gorillas).

The Enlightenment strove to be the great “Age of Reason.” It was the first modern attempt of Western society to divorce itself from God. It has been a messy divorce so far. In the late 1700’s the European and American intellectuals looked back on the previous two century and so much blood, much violence, much suffering, and much evil. There were wars of religion from one end of Europe to the other. There were dynastic disputes that pulled whole constellations of countries in war. The feudal system of society was rapidly falling apart. This led to much social and political turmoil. In their reflection on these events the thinkers of the Enlightenment, called the “philosophes,” proposed a diagnosis of what went wrong. They placed the cause of all this suffering in what they thought was an irrational belief in god and an unreasonable oppression of human reason from organized religion. There basic program was neutralize the religious and cultural bias by organizing society around the dictates of human reason. They were very much impressed with the achievements of the natural sciences in their use of reason, and wanted to extend this to politics and morals.

We are the heirs of the Enlightenment project – does it seem like we are living in the age of reason? Are all rights truly protected? Both history and current events show that this is not the case. At the very beginning of the secular experiment -- the French revolution there is already a strong counter-example in the Vendée genocide. Vendée wished to remain faithful to the Church, and rebelled against the revolutionary regime. They were poor, untrained, and underequipped farmers. The response of the revolutionary regime was not a tolerant respect of the rights of the people of the Vendée -- but a resposne of violence. The armies of the revolution marched up and down the Vendée gathering the priest, religious brothers and sister, nuns, and all those who aided them. They stripped them of their clothes, tied them together on a boat, and would sink the boat. This was the first modern genocide. In a particular twist of cruelty they would tie a naked priest and a naked nun together before drowning them, calling this a "Marriage of the Vendee."

Here is a historic quote in regards to this genocide: There is no more Vendée, Republican citizens. It died beneath our free sword, with its women and its children. I have just buried it in the swamps and the woods of Savenay. Following the orders that you gave to me, I crushed the children beneath the horses' hooves, massacred the women who, those at least, will bear no more brigands. I do not have a single prisoner to reproach myself with. I have exterminated them all... Francis Joseph Westerman, the slaughter of the Vendée

The revolution that put atheistic humanism into practice was born in violence, and became a regime of violence. This continued through the 19th century, as colonialism was a direct result of the Enligtenment, into the 20th century with the two world wars and the Holocaust. The previous two and a half centuries have been exceedily bloody. They have also been the most god-less epochs of human history.

As the War in the Vendée progressed the killing became even more arbitrary. Eventually just wearing a Sacred Heart Badge like the one pictured here would be enough of a reason for a person -- man, woman, or child -- to be killed. There was no trial, and there was not mercy.

If religion is the cause of violence as many hold now, it would stand to reason that the abolition of religion and the exhile of God from the public sphere would result in a great dimishment of violence. This abolition and exhile has been attempted for the last two centuries, and interesting enough the last to centuries have not been less violent than what went before it, but more violent. It is not religion that causes violence, but men. When these men are formed by religion history demonstrates that they are less violent. Yes there was violence before the Enligtenment, but these were men that dis regared Christian principles, as we can see in how they burned Churches and raped nuns. The sum total though was that there was much less violence, and it effected a much smaller portion of the civilian population, especially in comparison to the total war carnage of the London Blitz or the Dresden Bombing. What is particularly true of Christianity, is that it holds that all human life is sacred and hence must be honored as such. This always held back the violence to an extent. When religion was abolished in the European mindset in the French revolution, this safe-guard disappreared, and total carnage resulted.