A fairly recent trend has been growing in popularity – that of content creators who built their platforms on anti-SJW material, now turning into conservative Christians.

Speculations as to the reasons abound – such as the success of Canadian psychology professor Jordan Peterson, regarded by millions as a self-help guru and to a degree, even a spiritual leader. When Peterson found a way to make the 50s popular again, in terms of mores and religiosity, the typical anti-SJW content of the aforementioned appeared deflated, overused and bland by comparison. A new infusion of “hope” had to be added into the mixture. Skilled surfers of the day’s most profitable trends, such as Molyneux, could surely appreciate the value of tagging along, to perhaps catch a few crumbs off Peterson’s table cloth.

A few months ago, self-professed fighter for free thought and free speech, Dave Cullen, uploaded this video, heartily describing how a return to Christianity was imperiously needed in order to save western societies from their (cough-chough, capitalist) decadence.

The entire video, more laden with empty buzzwords than a boyband song, reveals an astounding level of cognitive dissonance and infantile romanticisation of the days his country was more religious.

Mr Cullen is Irish and seems to forget that the number of children starved to death, trafficked or sexually abused by the Catholic Church in his own country is still unknown, though the numbers keep growing and growing, as more victims come forward. Just a couple of years ago there was the horrific discovery of the mass grave in Tuam, of children neglected to death by nuns in a mother and baby home, which is beyond words. Mother and baby homes, which used to forcibly remove children from unwed mothers and often traffic them, are also an immense stain on the Catholic Church and have ruined so many lives.

Is that what he wants to return to, perhaps? Magdalene Laundries? Blasphemy laws?

Yes, people change – but how does someone suddenly forego their dearly held principles, such as free thought and free speech, in favour of blindly accepting the authority of religious institutions, and in the same breath say “the left just wants control over people’s lives”?

Part of the left, yes, does want control over people’s worldview and speech, and even personal choices such as having children or not. But so does Dave Cullen.

Since the video encompasses so many cliches used by the religious right to deplore the state of affairs nowadays, rebutting it is sufficient to dismantle most of what is being circulated by that lot.

Are there concepts derived from Christianity worth keeping?

Of course. The value of human life would be one of them. And it’s true that it’s mostly religious people nowadays who speak against enforcing population control, the abortion industry and the grotesque cadaver side shows using the plastinated bodies of executed Chinese prisoners. Once human life is considered worthless, atrocities are bound to follow.

But are they true to their word and also stand against war, and mostly, do they value all lives equally, especially when agitating against ethnic minorities? I’m not saying all Christians do that, but the vast majority of conservatives nowadays, who tend to be religious, sing along to the autotune of Baked Alaska. When did Jesus preach that hating immigrants was a virtue?

And are they true to their word when they wage war on contraception, which results in the spread of STDs, and therefore is an act against life?

Back to the video and its reactionary drivel. These are some of the main ideas:

It doesn’t matter if you really believe in God as long as religion can save your country from communism

A few things to point out here:

1. He appears to not be a sincere believer and he’s trying to use religion for social engineering, not giving a jot whether others would genuinely internalise toxic BS for that purpose, with an adverse effect on their mental health (such as guilt over being gay).

2. He mistakes communism for state-imposed atehism as a default. Cuba is 60% Roman Catholic and only 24% of Cubans identify as non-religious. A country can be communist and largely religious at the same time, go figure. These things depend on the particular country involved.

3. He also mistakes communism for the excesses of the modern left, or thinks that’s what liberalism will evolve towards. Which is likely BS as many on the left support social democracy or some kind of merger between capitalism and socialism – I don’t suppose champagne socialists would want to give up their privileges anytime soon.

4. Religious zealots very often organise themselves in communes/cults, living a communist lifestyle at a micro-level, which seems to indicate that the more religious one is, the more predisposed they are towards sharing their possessions and living in austerity if necessary. The day worshipping Jesus became conflated with loving capitalism eludes me.

Christianity can save a country from foreign invaders

By that he means immigrants, as he deplores the ethnic changes in his country and western countries in general. Spartacus here seems to forget the simple notion of “love thy neighbour”.

The left is responsible for decadence, hedonism and consumerism; the left wants communism at the same time

Somebody shoot me. The cognitive dissonance is baffling as he takes minutes to jump from one perspective to the other.

A lot of the decadence he deplores evolved out of capitalism in the first place. Hedonism is fed by a plethora of industries which offer some sort of quick gratification. And it’s an apanage of the relatively privileged, who managed to thrive in capitalism. You won’t find many broke people arranging sex parties on swingers’ sites.

Yes, financially disadvantaged people often turn to quick gratification as a coping mechanism, but that’s not because they’re hedonistic – it’s because they’re trying to get through another day. You can find the same issues in impoverished villages across Eastern Europe, where people drink methanol. The western left didn’t drive them to do it.

Individualism is terrible and communism will evolve out of it

The guy fires buzzwords quicker than a pellet gun, without noticing how he contradicts himself as he speaks, from one sentence to another. Communism places an emphasis on the whole of society as opposed to the individual; how would promoters of individualism be responsible for ushering it in?

Isn’t the mere wish that most people, if not everyone in a country, share one religion, a collectivist idea in and of itself? Who’s the actual collectivist here?

And yet the guy is an avid fan of capitalism at the same time, which indeed promotes putting the individual before the collective. This burns my synapses.

While his utopia entails a whole country sharing a religion and ideology (of his own making, as it’s so muddled), he dares call other people collectivists, for promoting the rights of the individual no less. If the state indoctrinates the population into communism, that’s terrible, but if it indoctrinates them into Christianity instead, it’s a rose garden.

The left is responsible for people not settling down and starting families

How does the right help, exactly? If I’m not mistaken, and I’m not, people often put off starting families because they’re too fucking poor. Financial instability, debt and the ever-increasing material needs children have nowadays are a huge part of the issue. Economies are unstable, jobs are outsourced or become obsolete etc. All this, in a wonderful capitalist system he wishes to preserve. How do conservatives look upon people who have children “they can’t afford”? Enough said.

We should just go with Pascal’s wager

He clearly says he doesn’t necessarily believe in his chosen deity, but cannot ignore the possibility of its existence.

He does, however, ignore the possibility that he’s being an actual bigot when wanting to use religion as a weapon against people he dislikes. To draw inspiration from Orwell, some possibilities are more equal than others.

A number of direct quotes from the video:

“Red pill philosophy” and “discerning truth from illusion”

This Matrix reference revolves around deconstructing a false reality and seeing things as they actually are, for the first time. Fair enough, there is a substantial effort nowadays by some advocacy groups, supported by politicians, to re-engineer the way people see basic realities, such as sex and gender.

Nonetheless, how in the world does the “red pill” (leaving aside its current MGTOW associations) lead you back to organised religion, which entails taking every single issue on faith and never questioning it? Should our reality be created by religious institutions instead of politicians, or should we think for ourselves? If God exists and has equipped us with a brain, capable of deconstructing bullshit, shouldn’t we use it at all times?

If the narrative the left pushes nowadays has no basis in reality, neither does his own. What he attempts to do here is swap one set of social constructs for another.

“The black pill”  (despondency and hopelessness) and “the white pill” (restored hope through religion)

In fact, they are one and the same. Let’s call it “the polka dot pill”.

The grim worldview religion imposes on a person can’t help but make them miserable quite often, as they see evil lurking everywhere; if they are bigoted enough they even see it in other people’s joy (gay weddings for instance).

How can someone caught up in the paranoia of the Satanic panic have peace of mind when they feel demons will enter them for listening to a song, watching a film or playing a video game? How can they enjoy the slightest worldly thing when it comes with a spoonful of guilt and fear of being corrupted?

My red pill was letting go of all that shit, to instantly feel the boulder of Sisyphus fall off my shoulders. And boy, did that feel good.

“The soul requires nourishment”

Yes, it does. And the more open you are to your fellow humans, without hypocritically deploring, from your small dark corner, that they don’t fit the exact specifications of your utopia, the more nourished your soul is.

“You begin to desire action, order, purpose and assemblance of values in your life”

That is perfectly fine, as well as believing in any diety of your choice or none at all. The problem arises when you start desiring your chosen order in the lives of others.

They may, unlike you, not require a new purpose and may have already found their own, which is different from yours. They might have their own values; how about that? Just because your life is in chaos doesn’t mean everyone else’s is.

“The values that have been stripped by the left from western nations for the last fifty years”

My bad; he wants to return to the 70s, not the 50s. Though the 70s weren’t exactly the breeding gorund for religious ideas. They did still have corporal punishment in schools, so maybe that’s good enough for him.

“The teachings of Christ were a set of rules and instructions”

…Which he clearly doesn’t follow. Things like “love thy neighbour” (regardless of ethnic origin), or “help the poor” (as opposed to praising capitalism constantly). At the very least, don’t hate them and don’t incite others against them.

“Essential in building and maintaining our western civilisation”

Actually, what set the west apart and allowed it to develop was the Enlightenment, which ironically, broke away from the rigours of zealotry; otherwise we might still be burning witches at the stake.

“The promotion of alternative lifestyles”

Alternative to what? The one and only way, as you see it?

Of course, I can’t relate to situations such as three-way relationships or polyamory either; it seems extremely complicated and, just to make a crass joke, a conundrum to figure out who got chlamydia first. But these are in no way new phenomena. Just look at polygamist cults; there are plenty of them.

By travelling around the world one may come across many “alternative lifestyles” which have nothing to do with the sexual revolution in the west.

“Marriage was redefined”

Now that’s a good one, coming from an individual claiming to think logically; I honestly didn’t think he would go that far. But there you have it.

“States should be beholden to the moral values of the population”

Of course there’s truth to that – however, higher principles may be at stake here when it becomes clear that human rights are being breached. How many people actually wanted slavery to end when it did, in their respective countries? Sould states have waited until every last person was in agreement?

I’m by no means saying states should impose abominations on their people, as I despise that idea. I’m saying the matter can be tricky at times.

“When you remove God from the equation, man tries to become God; communism believes that the state is God”

So atheism makes people think they have supernatural powers? Quite the opposite. It makes no sense to first claim man tries to become god, and the state does so simultaneously. When the state does so, which has often happened, man is but a roach and is told to fall in line. They don’t both happen at the same time.

“There is an authority beyond the state”

Craving an authority of any kind looming over you, to tell you how to think and live your life, really isn’t healthy. Not to mention it would not be God himself dictating to people, but religious institutions. Like it or not, organised religion is man-made, therefore he wishes to replace the presumed moral authority of the state with that of the church.

“I’m not truly sold on the idea of an afterlife”

So he doesn’t actually believe in an eternal soul, but he’s nominally a Christian. OK. That’s what one calls a “cultural Christian”.

“We pray our enemies can be saved from the evil they have succombed to”

The sheer use of the words “enemies”, “saved” and “evil” to describe people of a different political persuasion shows just how delicate this guy’s state of mind is, if he’s not simply using them for effect. For his sake, I hope that he is.

I’m done as I can’t stand this guy’s incoherent ramblings any more.

To summarise, according to his own words, his main draw to Christianity is based not on love, hope and exultation – it’s based on hatred and fear of other people.