NelsonRushton
Doctorate in mathematics, specializing in probability theory, from the University of Georgia. Masters in AI from the University of Georgia. 15 years as a computer science professor at Texas Tech. Now I work as a logician for an AI startup. Married with one son. He's an awesome little dude.
I identify as an Evangelical Christian, but many Evangelicals would say that I am a deist mystic, and that I am going to Hell. Spiritually, the difference between me and Jordan Peterson is that I believe in miracles. The difference between me and Thomas Paine (an actual deist mystic) is that I believe the Bible is a message to us from the Holy Spirit, and the difference between me and Billy Graham is that I think there is noise in the signal.
User ID: 2940
NelsonRushton
28d ago
Yeah, fair. People are too eager to inflict harm on their opponents.
I don't think this admits enough. I do not believe that Gays, especially gays who are not gay/trans activists, are "opponents" of Christians; they are people who many conservative Christians view as wrongdoers (for example, I think it would be very strange to call, say, Douglas Murray, an "opponent of Christians"). More importantly, "People" at large do not profess a sacred precept of loving their enemies, so it is not egregiously hypocritical of "people" to be eager to inflict harm on wrongdoers.
I'd have to double check for each of those that stoning was what was enjoined
Here you go:
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homosexual sodomy: If there is a man who sleeps with a male as those who sleep with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they must be put to death. They have brought their own deaths upon themselves. [Leviticus 20:13, NASB]
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idol worship: If there is found in your midst, in any of your towns which the Lord your God is giving you, a man or a woman who does what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, by violating His covenant, 3 and that person has gone and served other gods and worshiped them, or the sun, the moon, or any of the heavenly lights, which I have commanded not to do, and if it is reported to you and you have heard about it, then you shall investigate thoroughly. And if it is true and the report is trustworthy that this detestable thing has been done in Israel, then you are to bring out to your gates that man or woman who has done this evil deed, that is, the man or the woman, and you shall stone them to death. [Deuteronomy 17: 2-5, NASB]
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sabbath breaking: “For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a holy day, a sabbath of complete rest to the LORD; whoever does any work on it shall be put to death." [Exodus 35:2, NASB]
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adultery: If a man is found sleeping with a married woman, then both of them shall die, the man who slept with the woman, and the woman. [Deuteronomy 22: 22, NASB]
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premarital sex (in the case of women): “But if this charge [of premarital sex] is true, and they did not find the girl to have evidence of virginity [on her wedding night], then they shall bring the girl out to the doorway of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death, because she has committed a disgraceful sin in Israel by playing the prostitute in her father’s house; so you shall eliminate the evil from among you. [Deuteronomy 22:20-21, NASB]
NelsonRushton
29d ago
The current battle lines of elite and counter elite in the west are once again drawn on a precise difference between two modes of dealing with modernity. And that difference is quite exactly the one we are talking about here, between an individual desire of transcendence, escape and a collective desire of management, control.
...To no end. This is whence the conflict comes.
Then I have no idea what you are trying to say. Which side of the struggle corresponds to (A) individual desire of transcendence, escape, and which corresponds to (B) collective desire of management, control ?
NelsonRushton
29d ago
I take it you would argue that the law against homosexual sex is a ceremonial law, and now longer applies, whereas I would argue that it is a moral law.
Not so much. I don't emphasize the distinction. I think the need to emphasize the distinction arises from a position that the Bible is infallible and that its stated precepts are invariably eternal, which I do not believe. Do you?
@NelsonRushton: But of all ways to square with it, to arbitrarily pick one of those alleged sins and lift it up as an abomination on Biblical grounds, while discounting or ignoring the rest, and then to use that capricious choice to justify hating another person,... Yet, as a group characteristic, that is what Evangelicals [my people] have historically done, and to some degree continue to do, in large numbers by comparison with the general population @Felagund: Is this really a depiction of what is going on typically?
Note that I didn't say "is" and I didn't say "typically"; I said historically in disproportionate numbers. Indeed, I don't see it as much as I used to -- but, then again, I don't hang out with as many old rednecks as I used to. Here is one anecdote. In 1997 a gay nightclub (the "Otherside Lounge") was bombed in Atlanta, Georgia; 5 people were injured, one critically, though no one died. A nominally Christian group calling itself the "Army of God" claimed responsibility. That much is not indicative; there are whackos who identify as everything and their existence in small numbers doesn't necessarily reflect on anything. What is more notable is that I heard someone who was not (viewed as) a whacko, on his regular radio show, minimize and nearly excuse the bombing on the grounds that it targeted gays. Before you read the next paragraph, I invite you to guess whether the speaker was (a) a leftist pundit, or (b) a Christian pastor.
Of course he was a Christian pastor. His words as I remember were, "You may have heard that a gay bar was bombed in Atlanta recently. Well, I wouldn't worry about that too much. God bombed Sodom and Gomorrah." This was 1997 in Athens, Georgia (1 hour from Atlanta). It was not a hot mic moment; it was apparently his planned public remark on the event, which he expected to be assented to en masse by likeminded brethren. Now that was a tail event (that is, strange and unlikely); it surprised me to hear it, and even a person my age (56) from the deep South could have gone their whole life without hearing anything that bad from someone in a position of public authority. But what is more important is that, given that somebody did say it, I think any reasonable person who has been around that block would guess (b) rather than (a) -- because we know which group is more likely to have that kind of tail event, and the tail is indicative of milder tendencies of the same sort in larger numbers, of which I saw many.
So it's at least plausible to me that some of the commands in Acts 15 are intended to be for the sake of peace and people's consciences, but I'm not entirely certain.
It's plausible, but I don't think the Christian rednecks who despise gays in the name of God have thought it out far enough to get off the hook; I don't think any Biblical argument justifies the actual level of focus they put on sexual deviance as a sin relative to others that would be rationally subject to the same argument, and I don't think their animus is targeted wholly at the acts rather than the actors. (Nonetheless, those people would be voting with me on almost every living political issue of today -- and if there is ever another civil war in America we will be on the same side. In fact, if it comes to a shooting war, I wouldn't be surprised if they are about the only ones on that side that actually fight.)
Laws are conventionally divided into three sorts: moral laws, which apply universally (e.g. Thou shalt not murder); ceremonial laws, which were for Israel as a church, roughly, and so no longer apply post-Christ (e.g. food laws); and civil laws, which were for Israel as a government (e.g. cities of refuge).
I think the word "Conventionally" here appeals to a vague and precarious authority. I know that there are Hebrew words for the three sorts of laws, and that the idea of giving them different levels of force in modern times goes back at least to Aquinas -- but his scriptural basis for it [Summa Theologica, Question 99] seems pretty thin to me, and most discussions of the distinction that I see give no scriptural basis at all. Anyway, whether it is Aquinas's argument or not, I would be curious to know if you (@Felagund) know of a Biblical argument for the distinction in force, for us today, between the three kinds of laws.
I'll note that I don't think that the prescription of putting them to death is necessary, as we are no longer living under the civil law of ancient Israel.
This suggests that you believe it was necessary and proper, in ancient Israel, to judicially stone people to death for homosexual sodomy, idol worship, sabbath breaking, adultery, premarital sex (in the case of women), etc. To be clear, is that your view?
So that you know where I am coming from, this is my view of scripture (now in my Motte bio): I identify as an Evangelical Christian, but many Evangelicals would say that I am a deist mystic, and that I am going to Hell. Spiritually, the difference between me and Jordan Peterson is that I believe in miracles. The difference between me and Thomas Paine (an actual deist mystic) is that I believe the Bible is a message to us from the Holy Spirit, and the difference between me and Billy Graham is that I believe there is noise in the signal.
The current battle lines of elite and counter elite in the west are once again drawn on a precise difference between two modes of dealing with modernity. And that difference is quite exactly the one we are talking about here, between an individual desire of transcendence, escape and a collective desire of management, control.
Management and control by what agency and to what end?
Does it not give you any pause that you've now likened these real and existing Canadian doctors to five fictional characters and zero real people? In fact contrasting this fictional archetype with two actual people.
Interesting question. Answer: no. Can you elucidate why you presume it ought to?
Good question. The theft of fire from the gods is the most common, indeed the default archetypal original sin in world religions [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_of_fire]. I don't believe there is any natural moral law forbidding people from making or using fire, or that we ought to give it back. The cultures that held (or hold) the stories sacred, including the classical Greeks, also didn't think they needed to relinquish fire or give it back. At the same time, I do believe there is a lot of wisdom in those stories. If that perplexes you, it might be because you are approaching religious mythology with the wrong hemisphere of your brain.
While it is true that Dr. Frankenstein wanted to know something, I think to state that as his motive, and leave it at that, leaves out what is most essential. I submit that Victor Frankenstein has more in common with Faust, or Elric of Melniboné than he does with, say, Paul Erdos, or Thomas Edison (doesn't it feel so?). Like Faust and Elric, but unlike Erdos or Edison, Dr. Frankenstein commits copious moral transgressions in the service of his compulsive quest (e.g., desecrating dead bodies, theft, vivisection). In his effort to cross certain boundaries as a far term objective, he crosses boundaries that he knows, or ought now, should not be crossed in the here and now. He could have violated those boundaries in a quest for knowledge, or, like Elric or Gilgamesh, in a quest for something else. So, I think Frankenstein's quest for knowledge is relatively incidental while his quest by forbidden means, for what he ought to know is within the exclusive dominion of the gods is essential. Like Prometheus.
If this analogy [I presume you mean the analogy between the trans-mania and Frankenstein] has any legs, it has to be about the desire to see if man can be turned into woman and vice versa, about transhumanism and the escape from the binding of natural laws without regard for prevailing morality... Not the petty bureaucratic impulse of classification and normalization that moves Canada as a nation and its managerial ilk today, which itself is justified by conforming to a morality, not disregard for it.
From this I suspect one difference between you and me is that I believe Dr. Frankenstein -- along with Faust, and Elric, and the trans-mutilators -- are recklessly crosswise of morality plain and simple, not merely "prevailing" morality. They all lie to themselves to justify the intoxicating ecstasy of crossing boundaries, and seeming, for the time being, to get away with it. Like Prometheus.
NelsonRushton
30d ago
The definitive portrayal of Dr. Frankenstein, of course, is Mary Shelly's novel. Before I respond to this, I am curious whether you (@IGI-111) have read the book, and, in case you have, whether, upon reflection, you think it is accurate to describe Dr. Frankenstein's driving motive as "lust for knowledge".
NelsonRushton
30d ago
I spent about half an hour on this post. The longest draft was a paragraph, but my eventual opinion was that the connection, for those who had read Frankenstein, would be more dramatic if I left it at that. If the post is deficient, it is not from lack of effort but lack of ability.
NelsonRushton
1mo ago
*Other than why the fuck are Canadian doctors so keen to help their fellow citizens maim or destroy their bodies??!!
Whatever it is, I think it is the same thing that motivated Dr. Frankenstein.
NelsonRushton
1mo ago
What rule makes this necessary?
NelsonRushton
1mo ago
By "inflammatory" do you mean (a) inflammatory in the eyes of a reasonable person, or (b) something that will, if widely seen, get a lot of people riled up, reasonably or unreasonably?
NelsonRushton
1mo ago
Your statements of "duty" were very declarative,
I cannot tell which "statements of 'duty'" this refers to.
NelsonRushton
1mo ago
People also tend to upvote a nice, spicy polemic
Incidentally, I don't care for the term "spicy" as a euphemism for things that are uncomfortable, or potentially expensive, or potentially dangerous to say. If someone declines to make an objectively reasonable post because it is spicy", then maybe they just don't like spicy stuff; different strokes! On the other hand, if someone declines to make a post because it is uncomfortable (or expensive or dangerous), they are keeping their head down, or perhaps cowering, instead of speaking the truth. There are times to keep your head down, but there is never a time to deceive yourself about the fact that you are keeping your head down.
NelsonRushton
1mo ago
the net upvotes tell the story of which way TheMotte leans ideologically.
It is a little sad, for The Motte, that it can be assumed people upvote arguments whose conclusions they agree with (as opposed to meritorious arguments on all sides).
Not to derail, and it's possible that you're still right, since I don't know what exactly constitutes hatred for you, but I do think the scriptures are pretty clear that homosexual sex is bad.
Important enough question for a derail, IMO. What constitutes hatred, for me, is taking carnal delight in the pain and loss (or prospective pain and loss) of another person. This is as opposed to indignation, by which I mean making a judgment that someone's conduct is immoral and, if it rises to a certain level, calls for punishment. In that light, my case is twofold. First (as I think @Felagund anticipated),
For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. [Matthew 25: 42-45 KJV]
Jesus doesn't say "I was in prison for something I did not do and ye visited me not", or "I was in prison for a minor offense, and you visited me not". The people who count as the least of our brothers include people who have actually committed a major offense. So I think it is consistent, and indeed only right, to judge an action as a sin without hating the person who committed it. If my brother drove home drunk from a night on the town, or even murdered someone, I could acknowledge that as wrong, or gravely wrong in the latter case, without hating him.
Second, the Bible does condemn homosexual sodomy. Just as strongly, it condemns witchcraft, idol worship, working on Saturday, cursing your parents, eating meat of an animal that been strangled, consuming animal blood (e.g., blood sausage), premarital sex, and many other things which call for the death penalty under Mosaic law. Some of these prohibitions, including idol worship, consuming animal blood, and eating the meat of a strangled animal, carry over explicitly into New Testament law [cf. Acts 15]. Bible believing Christians, as a rule, do not take all of those seriously as sins, let alone call for death by stoning for all of them -- so they have to square with that one way or another.
But of all ways to square with it, to arbitrarily pick one of those alleged sins and lift it up as an abomination on Biblical grounds, while discounting or ignoring the rest, and then to use that capricious choice to justify hating another person, is not only hypocritical but blasphemous -- insofar as it also recklessly puts your bigoted words in God's mouth. Yet, as a group characteristic, that is what Evangelicals [my people] have historically done, and to some degree continue to do, in large numbers by comparison with the general population. I'm not saying we all do it or ever did; I am saying that (1) we did/do it significantly more than our outgroups in the Western world (e.g., white collar Democrats), (2) those of us who do not vocally acknowledge that are part of the problem.
This is kind of the opposite of my statement.
These are the statements I am comparing:
- @AhhhTheFrench: So you really must "call out" every moment of evil you see in the world or you're guilty too?
- The serpent: Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?
They are both phrased as questions; notably both use some version of "actually"/"really", and both suggest a narrative that, in order to do right, you have to go to onerous extremes -- which makes a great excuse to do as you please. Generally, I think it is a common pattern when someone is confronted with a duty, that they respond by saying, "What am I supposed to do, Give away all of my stuff? go around jumping in every time someone is getting bullied? Starve myself so kids in Uganda can eat? Never have any fun? Fall on my sword over every little thing? etc. etc. etc.
So you really must "call out" every moment of evil you see in the world or you're guilty too?
Of course not. This all-or-nothing, fall-on-your-sword straw man was first thing the Devil ever said: "Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”"
Most people are just humans trying to get by, and that is alright.
It might be "alright", whatever that means, but it makes them lesser men. We (Americans) live in a relatively free, safe, and prosperous society because the founding fathers and continental soldiers answered the call of duty to a higher purpose than minding their own business. We owe them a monumental debt that we can never pay back. We can only pay it forward by living up to their legacy of duty and sacrifice.
"We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all." [Pericles]
The easy solution is to simply reject the idea of "our community".
This may be an ideal solution, but I do not believe it is an easy solution. A community collectively and instinctively puts people in categories, assigns default characteristics to people in these categories, views the categories as part of the identity of its members, and views the categories as competing factions. If you think you can easily (or totally) escape buying into that factionalism, I think you are under an illusion. The trick is not to eliminate identity groups as functional units of society, but to make the competition between them honest, healthy, and based on furthering interests that are shared among the identity groups.
I feel the OP's pain. But the closer you are to God, the less it will matter to you whether you are a member of a group that happens to suffer from an epidemic of foolishness (whether it is biological or cultural). Moreover, if your people are acting like fools, you dissociate yourself from the foolishness precisely to the extent that you call it out. For example, as a white Christian Republican, my people have a history of irrational and immoral hatred for gays. As a Southerner from Alabama, my people have a history of hypocritically identifying as Christian while also having racist contempt for blacks. If I call those sins out, I am not stained by them. I can actually feel my conscience being freed when I acknowledge them. But, to the extent that I remain silent about those corporate sins of my own people, and at the same time identify as members of those groups, I am truly guilty by association (whether I am individually an offender or not).
The same thing goes for other groups. If you are a Muslim and that is part of your identity, that does not make you part of the problems of Islamic fascism, genocidal antisemitism, and terrorism -- but, if you aren't talking about those problems in the Muslim world and calling them out, then you are part of the problems -- even if you don't advocate for Sharia law, or hate jews, or fly airplanes into buildings. Similarly, if you are black, and you aren't talking about the problems of black supremacy, anti-intellectualism, deadbeat dads, serially pregnant welfare moms, gang violence, or whatever you honestly see as the problems in your community, then you are part of those problems. On the other hand, if you are vocally calling them out and trying to address those issues, then you are not part of the problem -- and also, you are fundamentally part of a bigger identity group called "Honest, caring people".
NelsonRushton
1mo ago
Do you honestly believe that we can't say, by study of the motion of say, the planets of our solar system, be justified in believing a theory about the motion of the planets (and only the planets).I am not talking about everything in the universe.
Yes, that is what I believe. I invite you to make the opposite case by sharing with me whatever rule of evidence you think can establish otherwise.
NelsonRushton
1mo ago
If you are an EA buff, I'd be happy if you'd share with me the case for one of their better, or best projects.
NelsonRushton
1mo ago
Republicans should not concede illegal results If this is uniquely democracy-destroying, and unacceptable, then: Republicans need to cheat harder. Since in many ways (2) is worse than (1), I'm skeptical of any argument that supposes that conceding a rigged election is the healthy and adult decision.
The nuance here is that (1) we don't know if the election was rigged, and (2) that, by itself, is the problem. Every week I hear people say there is no evidence that the election was rigged. That is the wrong place to put the burden of proof. There is no evidence that the 1946 Russian elections were rigged either, but as Stalin said, "It's not who votes that matters, but who counts." The question is not whether there is evidence the election was rigged, but whether the election was conducted in such a way that there would be evidence if the election were rigged. I think the answer to that question is no -- because if it were yes, Democrats would say that and back it up instead of gaming the burden of proof a la Stalin.
NelsonRushton
1mo ago
To be a really fine point on this, what happens in the real world when there is an armed resistance against a government that lacks maximal willingness and ability to kill 'em all and let God (or Allah, as it were) sort 'em out? The most salient example in a first-world nation seems like the Irish Republican Army and their experience is not at all consistent with the idea that armed resistance doesn't do anything
Amen.
Also, I would look at the low (single digit percent) compliance rate with the "assault weapons" bans in Connecticut and New York. They knew (from sales records) who had the guns, so why didn't they go door to door and confiscate them? Because their owners had already demonstrated that they were willing to become felons on a matter of principle, so some of them just might be willing to shoot it out with the cops. And if even one, let alone three or five, of those incidents happened, where the gun owner was killed by the police in the raid along with possibly one or more cops, it would spark a backlash that would be very bad for the politicians who ordered the raid. Hence, those laws are not being enforced.
Also, if you are from NY or CT and are one of the patriots who didn't register your "assault weapon", then you are a friend of mine -- and if we ever meet dinner is on me.
It depends on exactly what you want to say. What I think is true about Christians and gays is that (1) they tend to be on opposite sides of the salient ideological fence more often than would be accounted for by chance, and that (2) conservative Christians often believe homosexual conduct is immoral. Whether that means anyone opposes anyone as a person or as a group depends on the particulars. In principle, people can be on opposite sides of an ideological fence where they disagree about how to achieve common objectives without being "opposed to each other". For example, my wife and I disagree about how to achieve our common objectives literally every day, sometimes spiritedly, and yet I would not say we are "opposed to each other". One can also firmly believe that another person has done wrong without opposing them personally: if believing someone has done wrong meant that you had to be opposed to them as a person, then I guess Jesus would be opposed to all of us, because he knows we have all done wrong.
As to the particulars, I think the unfortunate fact is that the culture war is a war, and people on it opposite sides are enemies. That is to say, we do not have common objectives after all, and are engaged in a zero-sum conflict with high stakes. But realize that politics can make strange bedfellows (for example, not long ago in my hometown there was a referendum to legalize the sale of liquor within the city limits, where opposition to the referendum was driven by a coalition of of bible thumping teetotalers and out-of-town liquor store owners). In this case, honest progressives -- say, the likes of Alan Dershowitz or Bret Weinstein -- often find themselves voting for the same candidates as woke zombies. So I do not think the Democrat/Republican split exactly reflects the deeper war that is going on -- which is between the fear of God on one hand, and idolatry on the other. It is the idol worshipers on both sides of the left/right political aisle (some of whom are gay activists, and some of whom, unfortunately, are professing Christians) who hate their political adversaries. The same was true in Weimar Germany.
It bears repeating that when I say "hate", I mean taking carnal pleasure in the pain and loss of another person, which I believe is always immoral (though I am not claiming that I never succumb to the temptation). When New York Times editor Sarah Jeong tweeted, "Oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men," that was explicitly hateful. (It also goes to show that you can say something about white people, and be an editor at the New York Times, while if you said the same thing about black people, you couldn't edit your own twitter account). On the other hand, when Jesus forgave his murderers on the cross, that was loving your enemies. There is a story of a US sniper in Vietnam who, after he found a target, saw through his scope that the NVA soldier was heating up his lunch. The sniper waited until the enemy soldier finished his last meal, and then shot him through the head. That also is loving your enemies.
By the way, if someone objects that shooting an enemy soldier is un-Christian because you should love your enemies, they should remember the scriptural biography of Jesus consists of five books, not four -- and He will not be walking the Earth as a mild-mannered rabbi next time.
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