Eric Grant Claussen from Cultivate Virtue reviews Holy Nihilism: The Moral and Spiritual Case Against Christianity:
I’ve read most of the anti-Christian authors worth their salt.
Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and others.
This book fills a space that the aforementioned authors rarely touch.
Sure, Dawkins does a great job pointing out the ridiculousness of a literal creation myth or literal miracles.
But pointing out that miracles are not real and the world isn’t 4000 years old is hardly impressive.
Sure, these parts of Christianity seem silly but many Christians believe in Christianity for moral and spiritual reasons.
The universal brotherhood of man, equality under god, turning the other cheek and loving thy neighbor.
While these all sound great to anyone born in a western culture. Robertson points out how these same morals and spiritual guidelines are responsible for many of our modern troubles.
Mass immigration stems from Jesus’ anti-nationalist message and edict to love without condition.
“Christianity simultaneously creates the problem of mass-migration and theologically disarms its opponents from bringing up reasonable, “worldly” concerns about its possible ill-effects in the present world.”
Even if you promote modern mass immigration, Robertson illuminates how Christianity is the root source of this belief.
We are inclined to think that we live in a post-christian world but Robertson deftly points out that the western worldview is essentially Christian despite God and Jesus being suspiciously absent.
Other things he pins on a Christian worldview are feminism, apathy and dishonesty to name a few.
I should point out that Robertson varies from most critiques of Christianity as he is not an Atheist but a Pagan.
So his book is not an attempt to destroy any belief in superstitious Gods but rather to show that Christianity is not the only viable spiritual path especially for Europeans.
This is what really drew me into this book.
Often, the spiritual options for westerners seem to be Christianity or Atheism.
In my opinion, both miss the mark.
Robertson shows another way of viewing Gods, morality, and a spiritual path.
This should be essential reading for anyone considering Christianity or modern Atheism who feels both come up short in creating something truly worthy of commitment.
A minor correction: I do not claim that Christianity invented dishonesty, only that the language of Christianity naturally inclines believers to dishonesty of a unique variety. Dishonesty predates not only Christianity, but probably all religion. It is most likely as old as language.
What is really troubling is that this review was written back in March. I make an effort to periodically check to see if anyone is writing about my books, but I didn’t find this one until I searched ‘holy nihilism’ on DuckDuckGo.
Google seems less and less valuable these days in finding relevant search-results.
Eric Claussen
17 Feb 2021Thank you for the correction. It is indeed troubling how social media is scrubbing information, especially when it is essentially philosophical in nature. I very much appreciated your book. Thank you for the wonderful contribution to modern Pagan philosophy. We need 100 more of you!