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None of the reasons she gives for why she now considers herself a Christian are anything even close to "I have come to believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God and literally rose from the dead". In other words, by my outsider's understanding of Christianity, she is not a Christian.
I don't see why I would have to be a Christian in order to enjoy the various good ways in which Christianity changed Western Civilization. There is no contradiction when a man enjoys the fruits of democracy without also adopting an ancient Athenian's entire political worldview. It is fine to take the good things from Christianity but ignore the rest. Indeed, just as modern democracy is much more actually democratic than Athenian democracy, it is possible that we can figure out how to extend and improve on the benefits that Christianity brought to the West, but in a secular way. Indeed, I would say that this is already happening. In some ways modern secular societies are politically much more to my taste than the much more heavily Christian societies of, say, 100 years ago.
I guess she is saying that Western society needs some real spiritual belief to unite it against its enemies, but I don't see how one could manufacture such a belief on a mass scale and I don't think that it would be desirable even if one could. Part of what makes Western modernity good is the respect for truth as opposed to belief, and I think that adopting Christianity is in contradiction to this.
Yeah, I'm not a Christian either but reading her article makes me go "Nicene Creed or GTFO..."
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The Athenians took the word "democracy" to mean one thing, and modern Western politicians take it to mean [almost anything they want]. It's small-minded to claim one particular state of affairs is more "democratic" than another - very many political system can fairly lay claim to the term.
It's a defensible position to describe as "democratic" any that involves a reasonable number of people voting on what's to be done/whom to rule them.
Beyond those bare bones, it's like arguing which of Louisiana and Utah is the more American, or Pentecostalism and Anglicanism is the more Christian. Ie, a futile endeavour to rile up true believers
I am using the common notion of "more democratic" in which the larger a fraction of the population has the franchise, the more democratic the system is.
My understanding is that about 10-20% of ancient Athenians could vote, so by the common notion it was much less democratic than the modern US system, for example, in which maybe about 70-75% or so of the entire population can vote. I say about 70-75% based on some quick rough research about how many of the humans who live in the US are citizens older than 18, but I could be off a bit.
Would the USA be "more democratic" if toddlers could vote?
Obviously yes.
It wouldn’t be better, but it would be more democratic.
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She doesn't think you can, which is why she abandoned secular humanism and New Atheism (which was very optimistic about how easy it is to do so). The point is to try to regenerate the old one. I think it's likely impossible too but it's a better bet.
There're plenty of illusions in modern "rational" Western society too. Maybe it's pick your poison, because "a spectacularly unsuccessful Jewish agitator is looking out for you in heaven" as a belief system - at least the liberal version - is less worrisome than some of the secular nonsense I've seen.
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