War

From my current read:

The West and the Rest, by Roger Scruton (ret'd professor of philosophy)

p. 39:

To remove the violent core from human societies is no easy task, for the urge to violence is planted in us by evolution, and war is a fact of sociobiology.

[then talks about the Christian experience and its grounds for hope, but lovely slide over to this analysis a few pages on:]

p. 43:

[the Enlightenment had given us an abstract God and] had collectively remade the God of Christianity as a creature of the head rather than the heart. God retreated from the world to the far reaches of infinite space, where only vertiginous thoughts could capture him. Daily life is of little concern to such a God, who demands no form of obedience except to the universal precepts of morality. To worship him is to bow in private to the unknowable. Worship conceived in such a way offers no threat to the Enlightenment . . .As God retreated from the world, people reached out to a rival source of membership . . .

Along which way the Sydney Anglican Diocese is the unwitting, but very willing midwife. I remember the Lord Archbishop extolling the virtues of "Christian values" some years ago; when of course, we know the core Christian value: "all our righteousness is as filthy rags". I suggested this to Peter, but received no reply: I guess that's a predictable response from a neo-evangelical to the word of God.