BANNED USER: last straw
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
Interesting that you clicked on this...I hope your day is going well and you're at least finding our conversation stimulating, if you're not finding it pleasant. Looking to reinforce your beliefs about about me? Dig up some dirt? Have at it! Only cowards and scam artists make their profile private.
User ID: 2897
Banned by: @Amadan
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
1yr ago
Lol now TheMotte is getting into trump assassination territory....Should I stop coming here and start watching fox news?
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
1yr ago
For me, a lot of the 'red tribe' vibes come from the openly religious postings and occasionally really in depth wholly religious debates on the finer points of the eucharist. The tales of having religious "awakenings" and the benefits of Mormonism, the just so stories, and the backronyming of reason and logical arguments to fit fantastical superstitious beliefs, the 3 page apologetics diatribes and the constant C. S. Lewis quotes. It boggles my rational mind that people that otherwise seem like coherent thinkers and smart capable motte posters have this glaring blindspot and aren't afraid to wear it as a badge of honor. Atheism is so boring and passe after all. Trad Cath living is the New Hotness.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
1yr ago
Good points. There are many religious blue tribers, not many here though. Being openly religious or making it a large part of your identity is a very good marker for figuring out if someone is 'red tribe' but again that all depends on how we identify red tribe. Do we judge them by what they say they believe, or by how they say it? Semantics and what the definition of is is, I suppose.
I think that even if you are more erudite and sophisticated than your fellow red tribers, you still fall into that catagory if you're conservative and religious. You agree on the big stuff. You just have nothing in common beyond that. That personally would make me question some things.
Maybe you like the structure, meditative nature, history, traditions, and pomp of the church, but I still can't reconcile smart people actually believing in magic. I always personally feel that learned church muckety mucks such as any archbishop don't really go in for all of that and it is just a way of life that affords them respect, some amount of power, and for thousands of years one of the best lives that you could have. Vatican city has had the most whores per square mile in the world since its inception.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
1yr ago
We are bogging down in semantics about what constitutes a 'tribe'. I think on a fundamental level of how you feel the world operates (by divine plan) you're in the same group as those rural baptists. If you also agree with their stances on wedge issues and are socially conservative then you're absolutely in their wheelhouse. It is like a family, you may not like your relatives, but they are still your relatives, not mine.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
1yr ago
That divergence in beliefs and culture doesn't cause some cognitive dissonance? Even if it does I suppose it is manageable if the benefits to you are there.
Ah, maybe I am looking at this the wrong way. It could be a huge benefit to the ego! When one is with PMC folks you get to feel morally and culturally (wedge issues) superior and when one is with your religious followers you get to feel cognitively and culturally (art, science, tech, literature) superior. I might have to try this on for size.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
1yr ago
Perhaps, I wasn't trying for that tone. Just seems like you want it both ways. The urbane sophisticate with the strengthened faith of a revivalist preacher. I just don't see how you square that circle. A cursory examination of reality should show a person with the introspection and intelligence you clearly do posses that there is no "God" with a capital G out there, let alone the one you're lucky enough to believe in, I will say the sheer audacity to believe or claim to believe is commendable.
At one point there was no real explanation for many phenomena, plus life can be hard and unfair in the here and now, humans like to see patterns and meaning in things, they also fear death and promising peasants their reward is in the afterlife not in this one was such a great idea! Religion really ticked all the boxes!
It is only natural that past humans created religious stories wherever they lived when events took place beyond their understanding. That smart people believed in gods or pretended to is no mystery, there was no real alternative. We have that alternative now. Most smart religious people are indoctrinated well before any critical thinking sets in, it becomes a part of who they are and they feel "off" without it, even if they leave the the church the brain pathways for religious belief are set and they tend to wander back later in life or find a similar thinking system to fill the hole.
If you taught no religion to a smart kid and when they turn 18 ask them to believe in all kinds of crazy magic and make pretend it is true, they would look at you like you're nuts. Imagine aliens come to live here from Sigma Tau and are asked if they have heard about their lord and savior Jesus Christ? They would laugh you out of the galaxy, and be right to do so.
Smart religious people post all these convoluted diatribes that miss the forest for the trees and put forth esoteric metaphysical apologetics to backfill their already "felt" conclusion that god is real. The truth is rather more simple, none of the thousands of religions that have cropped up over human history are even a little bit True with a capital T, yours isn't any different. The universe is a physical system that can be entirely explained by natural laws that we can discover.
Religious apologists love to stack up the false complexity and try to lose you in the weeds. What it boils down to is that you and FC believe in magic, and non-reproducible phenomenon, all with no evidence.
There zero hard proof that any God or gods influence has ever come into this world in any form. If there is no impact from there existence (which there isn't) then the point is moot anyway; it isn't on me to disprove fantastical claims, they are prima facie nonsense, like claiming the sun is made of milk. Meanwhile, there are trillions of testable events proving my world view correct every second that passes.
Religion, with all of its contradictions and nonsense leads you to some pretty weird places if you actually believe, even modern internet christianity https://www.themotte.org/post/1032/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/220208?context=8#context
"what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence" Religious people will gish gallop you to death with convoluted stories till the end of time if you let them.
You can't ever respond satisfactorily to religious believers, if logic and material science, zero proof of anything resembling a god, and pointing out all the inconsistencies of their particular fantasy, thousands of different religions all claiming to be the true one, hasn't already persuaded them, nothing you can say will sway them. Even actual reality and events won't sway them, when the JWs world failed to end in 1975 they doubled down and became even more fervent when proven completely wrong by reality.
No indoctrinated Muslim is going to say "Good point Mr. French, I guess I'll stop believing!". There is nowhere to start logically with someone that believes in magic except to point out that magic isn't real and that everything has a logical and knowable explantation. I think a lot of religious people know it is all fake in their heart of hearts, otherwise they would welcome death instead of fear it, and they would certainly act differently day to day if they really thought their ETERNAL life was at risk. I've said it before in this conversation, watch what people do, not what they say, revealed preferences adjacent.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
1yr ago
I say that because most religious people act in a way that lets me know they do not truly believe what they claim. Their actions would be different if they truly believed what they said.
More and more of the "mysteries" of the universe are revealed to us through the discovery of natural laws, and knowledge of how everything works is sussed out daily by dedicated scientists and researchers, clear proof that millions of scientific revelations are occurring all around you. Prayer has yet to demonstrate even one success. There is proof of my world view every second of every day, even on this keyboard I am using right now. There are mountains of evidence! We're bending the fundamental forces of our world to our whims, we are the god you're looking for.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
1yr ago
"Keyboards therefore atheism" is just as wrong, and for just the same reason, as "tides therefore theism".
I mean it really is the opposite of what Ol' Billy said, we CAN explain that!
You have not brought up prayer but it is an integral part of many christian sects and religions worldwide, most people who pray expect it does something, they have all been proven wrong time and time again. I think this is certainly a strike against any gods existing, just like every other testable religious based claim of the supernatural, all false, 100% of them, worldwide, for all time.
It is too bad you consider mastery over this universe a "paltry prize" because that is the most we can hope for. Believing in any creation myth or religious dogma is no different than establishing a cult around any fictional story with metaphysical magic sprinkled in. Just imagine the followers of Harry Potterism speaking to you as you speak to me. That is the situation from the outside of religious belief and dogma and culture.
It is much better to say, we don't know yet (but it isn't ghosts, it is never ghosts)...rather than just invent things and then stick to them well after their expiration date.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
1yr ago
Well how about prayer then? Religious folks seem to think it works. It doesn't. Don't give me religious screeds about how it is good for the person doing the praying anyway. I want some hard cases where it did something in a controlled setting.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
1yr ago
I literally asked that you not fall back on the cope that praying is good for the person doing it just in the act itself.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
1yr ago
No I just asked that you don't use a common religious fallback, that it is good to do religious things even if they don't actually do anything in the real world because they are good for the believer regardless.
You immediately used the "argument" I precisely proscribed against.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
1yr ago
Is there another ridiculous religious claim you would care to debate? Having easily dispatched prayer.
Well prayer is so obviously useless that you've ceded it without a fight. What is next in the litany of make pretend stuff you would like proven false? You know all religions are just made up stories. You know that as well as I do.
Backseat modding. I've tried it, not as rewarding as you might think. You really think we can't debate religion now? Too tired? I like to push back against this backwards magical superstitious crap as hard as I can. I don't care if it is well trod or boring. Maybe I should stop and let the whole motte be all tradcath larpers? Is that a good debate space?
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
1yr ago
In the Culture Series by the sadly departed Iain M. Banks (not to be confused with his more mundane doppelganger Iain Banks) humans can decide to change sex entirely and actually become the opposite sex in a very real sense, they are exactly like someone born that sex including womb or sperm etc... Often couples that want 2 kids will take turns doing the gestating.
If humans go on long enough a perfect sex change will indeed be possible at a genetic level. Would anyone living hard in the trans debate still have a problem with it then? How could they?
I say this as someone that thinks it is ridiculous that a man can DECLARE FEMALE Michael Scott BANKRUPTCY style and crush swimming records and smackdown college girls in basketball.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
1yr ago
Does it matter? All religions are made up. None of it is true, regardless of which harry potter novel is cannon for a particular sect. No one rose from the dead. No one ever has, and if they ever do it will be hard nosed scientific research that gets us there, not some fantasy novel.
I get that it is annoying and "played out" etc...etc...I think if people are going to openly declare their religious beliefs and often really dig into them as if they are reality, the right way to live, a path to save us from degeneracy and population decline. Then it is ok for me to point out that at least to me, it is very much not reality and shouldn't be treated with any more decorum than someone claiming any fiction as fact.
Well that is a pretty uncharitable way to put things. I'm to the right of most of my social circle but I'm to the left of whatever this place is turning into. People just get sick of getting downvoted and unable to post in real time, eventually they say something rude and get banned or they say "fuck it" and leave.
When the conversation turns to being worried about trump picking his VP based on possible assassination, putting guns in holes as a generational family gun stash in your back yard, "powers that be" conspiring to eliminate people like you, heavily downvoting someone pointing out having sex with blackout drunk people is probably wrong, being afraid to leave your red state for fear of being locked up for defending yourself, practicing religion harder being the only answer to societal ills, women only being truly happy barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen....I mean the parody starts to write itself at some point.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
1yr ago
I don't think telling someone they are going to be tortured for all eternity or denied eternal life because they don't believe the same fiction as you do is very decorious. To be fair the last guy damning unbelievers to hell was modhatted, but not for saying that in particular.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
1yr ago
What do you think happens to people who don't believe in our lord and savior jesus christ?
I'll probably be censured for this, because for some reason--- religion, despite ZERO proof, needs to be respected on this forum. This is pure fantasy and shouldn't even be brought up as a serious topic. It is like watching Harry Potter fans argue over what fanfic should be cannon. It is made up out of whole cloth and shouldn't be in a rational adjacent forum.
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