“The Paradox of Heterodox Orthodoxy”

"The big new development this year is the rise of 'Cultural Christianity' or the 'Culture War Christian'—the intellectual who doesn’t necessarily believe in God, but who thinks that Christianity is still somehow necessary for the cultural defense of Western Civilization....

    "Early this year, I linked to a good article in 'Persuasion' by Matt Johnson describing how these Culture War Christians are bringing religious dogma back to the 'heterodox community.' Then Cathy Young leapfrogged us all with the magnificent phrase, “the paradox of heterodox orthodoxy.” Basically, this is what happens when 'anti-woke' intellectuals rebel against the dogmas of the far left—but don’t have the independence of mind to come up with an alternative worldview based on their own observation.

"I added to Johnson’s critique of this phenomenon.

"'Johnson focuses too much on grounding Western liberalism in 'Enlightenment rationalism and skepticism.' That’s true (depending on the meaning of 'skepticism'), but there’s a deeper and more convincing answer.
    "'Conservatives try to ground Western Civilisation on the 'Judeo-Christian tradition'—you know, the one that crashed Western Civilisation the first time it became widely accepted. But they write out of history the true source of unique Western culture: the Greco-Roman tradition. The distinctive culture of the West was created—and even the idea of “'he West' as culturally distinct from 'the East,' originated by Herodotus in response to Persian invasions—by Greek scientists and philosophers centuries before the birth of Christ, and at about the same time the books of the Old Testament were first being written down.

"I can’t emphasise this enough. 'Western Civilisation' cannot be based on Christianity, because it predates the birth of Christ by at least five centuries. I have an article coming out soon that is very specifically about the pre-Judeao-Christian origins of our civilisation, though it probably won’t be published until January.
    "But I’ve spent much of this year attempting to convince people of the viable cultural and intellectual alternatives to Christianity—alternatives that are not merely theoretical, but already here."

~ Robert Tracinski from his post 'Is There Something in the Nothing?'