As for your closing questions, I think I tried to address them here. I strongly doubt you have a better answer. And religion clearly does not have a better answer, whatever Mohler may think.

Incidentally, if you think scientific thought can provide no resistance to the rulers, you may want to remind yourself how rulers think back in the real world. They tend to insist on unscientific claims, because otherwise their instincts would tell them not to kill so many people.

I understand less about fundamentalist Christianity, because it is almost underground as a force in this secular country (England). But I know that Islam has shifted over the centuries from one of the most liberal, tolerant and inclusive religions, in which learning and the arts flourished, into something which in parts has now sharpened to an agressive point. I ask myself what has changed and find two things: (1) poverty & oppression - I’m counting them as one thing - and (2) revulsion at the ugly power of “the West” - the dominance, the usury, the female-flesh-flaunting, the alcohol & drugs, the lack of respect for others’ culture etc etc.

The process towards activism parallels closely the animal rights activists.

Things which are repellent to the devout Muslim are generally things to which the Western citizen has become inured through constant bombardment of propaganda. If the devout young Muslim were not tempted by these things he would not be so motivated to destroy them.

This can be seen in the development of Creationism (utterly modern) as a reaction to evolutionism. If one wonders what sort of paradigm could be an alternative to these two conflicting narratives, this just shows how deeply the disconnect runs. But, for instance, one could take very seriously the “intelligent falling” idea, that G-D intervenes in every single thing that has ever happened; this is actually much closer to the traditional conception of Creation than creationist lies.

When the alchemists talk about Nature with a big ‘N’, they are referring to the action of the one thing. Nature is G-D’s mode of action. Nature moves ALL things, including our own brains which formulate these theories.

Situational ethics (also known as Situationism) refers to a particular view of ethics that states: the morality of an act is a function of the state of the system at the time it is performed. [...] Moral relativism is an entirely different theory in which there is no universal moral truth, that there are only beliefs, perspectives, ethno-centric values, none more valid than another. Situational ethics finds the foundation of moral truth in agape, it is thus not moral relativism.

Not sure what I think about this exactly… but it’s something I have been considering without knowing specifically what to call it, I think.

Do you distinguish moral relativism from situational ethics?

Not sure what you mean by that… Do you?

The ironic thing is that those Christian fundamentalists who you agree with on this probably believe that moral relativism comes from rebellion against Empire. This seems to be at the root of a lot of conservative thought — rebelling against the Empire throws you into a moral-relativist pit

I’ve never really seen that point made anywhere… But I do think that how Fundamentalists see themselves and the world has been cleverly hijacked and modified out of its true ideological core.

Isn’t it funny how people so often think of the status quo as being ideologically the opposite of whatever they themselves believe ideologically? So many of us believe in the “evil Empire”, but liberal think it is conservative and conservatives think it is liberal. Weird, huh? Of course, the people whom all the rebels need to watch out for are those who believe the status quo does agree with them ideologically.

Of course, this just brings up the distinction between a static, conservative “status quo” and an expansionary, modernist Empire (some commentators have claimed capitalism is so successful as a status quo because it actually can change to keep from dying).

Also, I have a question: Do you distinguish moral relativism from situational ethics?

Technology Without Ends: A Critique of Technocracy as a Threat to Being

This is also a really good quote from Ran Prieur on the subject of moral relativism from a while back:

http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005/07/22/moral-relativism/

See also this which touches on some similar themes

http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2006/07/28/the-freedom-of-materialism/