God’s Good Creation

An article in The Spectator by Douglas Murray is a critique of the UK government’s Prevent program, which was set up to counter radicalization and extremism.

Murray argues that the program has expanded its scope beyond Islamist extremism to include right-wing extremism, which is defined very broadly and arbitrarily by left-wing activist groups.

Murray cites a report by Prevent’s own research unit, which claimed that people who follow pro-Brexit and centre-right commentators on social media are at risk of being radicalized. He mocks this claim and suggests that it is an attempt to stigmatize and silence opinions that are shared by many British people. (And beyond)

He mentions Lewis, Tolkien and Orwell as examples of authors whose works could be seen as potential sources of radicalization by Prevent. Because according to Prevent’s logic, radicalization could occur from reading C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, Huxley or Conrad. Murray adds that he is not kidding and that this is based on a document by Prevent’s education team that was leaked in 2019. The document listed these authors as examples of ‘challenging texts’ that could be used to ‘stimulate discussion’ with students who might be at risk of extremism.

This is absurd and shows how Prevent has lost its focus and credibility.

FULL STORY

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Please pay attention to DeTransitioner Estella Suarez-Hamilton:

“Oftentimes, people are looking for an escape. There’s a lot of escapism in my generation, and this is especially true with the trans ideology,” Estella Suarez-Hamilton, a young woman who “transitioned” as a teenager and presented herself as a man, told Breitbart News. “It was a distraction that I needed, to not look at the parts of my life and the relationships in my life that I was not succeeding in, and were falling apart.”

“I was looking for escape — and the political, kind of spiritual, aspects of trans ideology, when they’re combined with the online [community], that offers a type of escapism,” she continued. “A lot of times people will say that it’s a ‘cult,’ and in a way, that could be applied, but I think a more accurate term is a ‘cyber sect’.”

Estella called herself “Phillip” and took testosterone injections over a period of over seven years before realizing her emotional ills could not be healed by changing her hormonal composition and physical appearance. Estella was recommended for hormone therapy at the age of 18 by a counselor who identifies as “transgender.” Her mother was deployed with the U.S. Air Force at the time.

She is now in early menopause at the age of 27, despite having stopped taking testosterone a year ago.

Estella views the transgender movement as a pseudo-spiritual belief system she describes as “modern Gnosticism,” which includes initiation, rituals, and rules.

“If you are thinking about how to describe the sect, it is very much connected to, like, the modern Gnostic principles. This is a syncretic cyber sect of modern Gnosticism,” Estella said, “and I love how complicated it sounds, because the trans community loves language, and they love to complicate language to the nth degree. So, I think that this term is just very — from my experience — very accurate to explain what I went through, that’s what I think happened, and that’s how I can articulate it.”

“The trans community has this stupid line, ‘When you become trans you become your authentic self.’ It’s actually the complete opposite,” Pamela Garfield-Jaeger, licensed clinical social worker (LCSW), told Breitbart News. “You’re actually becoming somebody else, you’re actually, in a way, killing off, or getting out of touch with your authentic self, and you’re now becoming this almost fake identity.”

Full Story. Read the whole thing! [Standard link disclaimer¹]

GNOSTICISM: the Gnostics taught a bewildering variety of views. Fundamental to clearly gnostic systems was a dualism, which opposed the transcendent God and an ignorant demiurge (often a caricature of the OT Jehovah). In some systems the creation of the world resulted from the presumption of Sophia (Wisdom). In any event the material creation, including the body, was regarded as inherently evil. Sparks of divinity, however, had been encapsuled in the bodies of certain pneumatic or spiritual individuals, who were ignorant of their celestial origins. The transcendent God sent down a redeemer (Christ), who brought them salvation in the form of a secret gnōsis or “knowledge.” Most Gnostics were docetics, who held that Christ did not really suffer as he was not truly incarnate. Gnostics hoped to escape from the prison of their bodies at death and to traverse the planetary spheres of hostile demons to be reunited with God. There was for them, of course, no reason to believe in the resurrection of the body. – (Dictionary of Paul & His Letters, InterVarsity Press, 1993, pg 352,)

Companion Posts

The Immutable “Trans Soul” and Radical Dualism

Christocentric Understanding of Creation

Between Worlds, Double Arches

The Deepening Crisis in The West: Rebellion Against Reality

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God The Creator Will Not Be Mocked

Posts

UK Prevent: Radicalization Could Occur From Reading C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, Huxley or Conrad. I Kid You Not

“Looking For An Escape” With Gnosticism

Companion Posts

Affirmative House of Cards Continues to Collapse

From the British Medical Journal

Companion Post