OliveTapenade
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User ID: 1729
OliveTapenade
7hr ago
I do sympathise with our own ymeskhout on Trump and his supporters - okay, I grant that certain claims of malfeasance might be false or overstated, but the instinct to defend him, the requirement to defend everything no matter how corrupt or absurd, is profoundly humiliating.
In what way was the Roman empire a one world government? There existed plenty of peoples outside of the Roman empire, whom Christians went to and converted. St. Thomas famously went east, even (some say) as far as India. In the Bible itself, Philip converts the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8), who is on the way back to his home country. Ethiopia (or Kush, probably) was not in the Roman Empire. Or are we discounting Christians in Persia?
If we take Pentecost as our example, the list of peoples (in Acts 2:9-11) includes many from outside the Roman empire, including Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, and Arabs.
I think that much of the early church existed inside the Roman empire, and did not advocate the overthrow or destruction of the Roman empire, but firstly the Roman empire was not a world government, and secondly Christianity was never coterminous with the Roman empire.
If I were making a case for Christian one world government I might instead frame that in terms of Catholic claims about the papacy's universal jurisdiction. Fortunately I'm not Catholic and I consider those claims to be in error. I think that visible signs of church unity would be good and I'm broadly in favour of ecumenism, but I don't think that requires some sort of global secular government.
OliveTapenade
12hr ago
It can be both, of course. Babel is the divine frustration of a human-willed plan, which is therefore experienced as tragic, even if the scattering was intended all along.
One is tempted also to compare it to Pentecost, partly because the gathering of the nations is the obviously necessary corollary to the scattering of the nations, but also because Pentecost shows us the Holy Spirit speaking to all people in their own tongues. The gathering does not remove the diversity of languages, but includes and accommodates it.
OliveTapenade
12hr ago
If you let me get on my hobby-horse, I'll argue that the Catholic Church as we understand it today is fundamentally an early modern institution - it's an enlightened absolute monarchy, ruled by a philosopher-prince. Its understanding of itself is shaped much more by secular forces than it would like to admit.
All churches exist in history and are shaped by forces beyond themselves, but then, Protestant churches generally make 'lower' claims about themselves. We are the locally and historically contingent expression of the universal church in this particular place and time.
OliveTapenade
1d ago
I don't follow? What are my choices meant to be?
I think you can make a Christian argument for the existence of nations and national cultures being a positive good, and in fact I would make an argument like that. I'd say also that there is a universal moral law to which nations no less than individuals must conform, and that this implies particular moral obligations about how nations relate to each other. I think that means I can robustly support the existence of a community of nations. I am not obligated to endorse some sort of one world government, and I am certainly not obligated to endorse open borders.
What does Acts 17:27 have to do with that? That is indeed a justification for why God would set many nations and many peoples upon the Earth - that we would each seek him and reach out for him and perhaps find him. That is good and entirely compatible with the continued existence of nations.
OliveTapenade
1d ago
Again, sure. I don't agree with that understanding of Christianity, but I am very conscious of what I might term the 'neo-pagan right' or the 'post-Christian right', and the accompanying wish for a faith more robustly nationalist or even racialist than Christianity.
Christianity is fascinating for... well, a lot of reasons, and obviously the most important one is that it's literally true, but putting that aside and speaking more sociologically, Christianity is simultaneously individualist and universalist. God is the creator of all things and all people and the faith has a universal scope. Nothing is excluded; God is not parochial. At the same time, God is always encountered as an individual, and individual piety, and the unique relationship that God forms with every single person is likewise at the heart of the faith.
Where does that leave intermediate institutions? Elsewhere in the thread we have the start of a discussion about what this means for the church, and there's also a very rich well of Christian reflection on the concept of nations. What are 'the nations' as a theological category? Are they a problem, something merely temporary and to be abolished in the eschaton, and at worst occasions of idolatry? Or are they in some way intended features of God's design, or vectors of blessing?
I am more sympathetic to the latter view, and have talked about this before, but even granting, as I would, that the nations and their various searches for God are intentional features of his design (cf. Acts 17:26), the question of what their precise role in design is remains heavily contested, and that's where I'm going to end up in pretty fierce dispute with the new paganism, as it were.
OliveTapenade
1d ago
Sure? I'm not saying that those historically Catholic countries don't have amnesties or allow illegal migrants. I'm saying that they don't do that noticeably more often or more enthusiastically than similar non-Catholic countries.
OliveTapenade
1d ago
Wouldn't they still be considered members of their native nations? The question is not whether the Indian in question was literally born inside a reservation, but whether the Indian is subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.
My understanding is that as early as the 19th century the understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment was that, outside the exceptional case of natives, anybody born on United States soil was a citizen. There was some room to debate it but Wong Kim Ark settled that and has stood as precedent for well over a hundred and twenty years. My sense of most of the pre-WKA disputes is that they are transparently racially motivated, and generally casting about wildly for justification, via a Dred-Scott-like "well, it can't possibly have meant that group as well!" rather than anything plausibly rooted in the text itself.
OliveTapenade
1d ago
Cromwellian theocracy is one of the possible political arrangements compatible with Protestantism, I would say. But it is not required by Protestantism either.
OliveTapenade
1d ago
lol. lmao, even. It's a great ideal, but it's very clearly not the reality.
I am shocked, shocked to hear that the United States supreme court has acted lawlessly!
In case the sarcasm was not clear, I wholly agree that the history of the supreme court is full of politically-motivated or agenda-driven rulings that do not conform to the plain original meaning of the text. Barely two hours ago I complained about some of them.
I do not consider lawless past action to license lawless future action. The court has behaved badly in the past. That does not confer a right to behave badly now or in the future.
OliveTapenade
1d ago
"All people to whom United States law applies", basically. In practice it means "not the Reservations, not diplomats". I think the original meaning of the phrase is pretty clear, and interpretation of it to confer birthright citizenship goes back to the 19th century.
OliveTapenade
1d ago
Multiculturalism elegantly refutes the protestant notion that there can be authority without authorities.
This is not a Protestant notion.
Obviously Protestantism acknowledges authorities in some sense - the Bible is clearly authoritative, for instance. You must be taking the view that 'authorities' must mean some sort of human organisation.
But Protestantism clearly allows for the existence of human organisations and governance. Even leaving aside secular governments, which hold authority in their proper (and limited) spheres, every Protestant tradition that I'm aware of has governing authorities in the church. Protestant churches have synods and assemblies and all the tools of government. What Protestants assert is that these authorities, though valid, are necessarily subject to higher authorities, which includes the likes of scripture.
Authorities exist but they are bounded in a way that they are not in Roman Catholicism. The Protestant case would be that the Catholic investiture of absolute interpretive and governing authority in the institutional body of the church is a kind of idolatry.
OliveTapenade
1d ago
For what it's worth, and I realise this wasn't directed at me, I think Obergefell does join the long list of decisions based on the Fourteenth Amendment that are indefensible on their own merits. One of the reasons I think the Fourteenth was a mistake was that it is sufficiently open to be read so as to smuggle in any policy change along these lines.
I disagree with the policy outcome of Obergefell, but that is irrelevant to the legal reasoning. As regards the law, I think the material substance of Obergefell was a matter for congress, not the courts.
OliveTapenade
1d ago
I suppose I have a very simple take on this, which is:
The Fourteenth Amendment clearly says birthright citizenship. Therefore birthright citizenship.
That's the end of it, surely? We don't need to import anything else. The supreme court's only job is to say what the law is. I think that birthright citizenship is an incredibly bad policy. The US is a small and radical outlier for having it; almost every other country on Earth is more sane.
However, I do not see any other way to interpret:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
That's what it says, so that's what the law is. It's stupid, but it's the kind of stupid that requires a constitutional amendment to repeal. Get on that, America.
OliveTapenade
1d ago
Let's sanity-check this for a moment.
Let us consider comparable First World countries. If your theory holds, then the influence of the Catholic Church should positively correlate with mass migration. So, for instance, you might expect Ireland to be considerably more supportive of mass migration than England. Italy should be more supportive of it than Sweden. Spain should support it more than Denmark. Even in America, we should expect the US to be, though influenced by the Catholic Church, less supportive of mass migration than the entirety of Central America and South America.
Is this what we actually see?
I applaud the inventiveness of the top-level post - "the US is controlled by an elite conspiracy of Catholics" is a nice change from "the US is controlled by an elite conspiracy of Jews". But it doesn't survive more than a few minutes' consideration.
If nothing else, I think it requires a very specific and narrow level of Catholic ideology in power. The USCCB supports refugees and immigrants while still opposing abortion, euthanasia, LGBT, and so on - well, how are all those latter issues doing? We just saw the pope being quite critical of AI bots. I guess the Catholic conspiracy had better get on to that immediately, because man, it is doing a bad job of stopping those in the US.
OliveTapenade
6d ago
Well, I tend to think that 'rationalist' is a motte-and-bailey.
The motte of rationalism is thinking more clearly and making more accurate judgements. Who could possibly be opposed to that? It's entirely uncontroversial and a very easy sell.
The bailey of rationalism is therefore Yudkowsky, the Sequences, the communal Less Wrong project, and then adjacent authors like Scott Alexander, Scott Aaronson, I think of a whole kind of blog-space that includes people like Tyler Cowen or Bryan Caplan, and then also this California Bay Area subculture that includes things like polyamory, social ineptitude, singularitanism, and so on. Not all rationalists are into cryonics, but you'll understand what I mean when I say that "lol cryonics" is one of the criticisms of rationalists I run into.
Obviously I support the motte of rationalism, but everybody would. It's the vast bailey that I find extraordinarily questionable, and frequently both factually and morally wrong.
OliveTapenade
6d ago
Well, from my perspective, I conceded the nitpick immediately? I did not call it 'cringe', or imply that you shouldn't have done it. Insofar as precision is a good thing, correcting that example was a good thing to do.
(And for what it's worth I do similar things myself. There's always time for pedantry!)
I suppose I see two possible errors here.
The first is the error that you're pointing to - where one becomes indifferent to specific truth-claims as long as the larger argument that they're in is correct. I agree that this is bad behaviour and worthy of condemnation. A correct conclusion should not need to be supported by misrepresentations or lies.
The second error, and I do not accuse you of making this, though it's one that I sometimes worry about, is when a person successfully quibbles an ancillary point and therefore dismisses an entire argument and even an entire author as irredeemably stupid. To give an example, I once ran into someone who read Scott's article against public food, and noted that question about kosher food or halal food is unnecessary because all kosher food is also halal. If kosher is catered for, halal is covered also. On this basis the entire essay and its argument were dismissed. The point about kosher and halal is correct, but one mistake in a supporting example does not negate the whole piece.
So the position I want to take here, basically, is that you are correct about the calendar of remembrances being a bad argument, but also that this does not entitle us to dismiss FtttG's entire argument.
OliveTapenade
6d ago
Isn't 'rationalist', in this sense at least, practically defined as 'fan of Yudkowsky and the Sequences'?
Personally I agree that the Sequences are garbage, and that reading them is an immense waste of time, and I have always taken that to immediately rule me out of the rationalist crowd. Rationalist just means "people who buy into Yudkowsky's silliness".
Arguably it's expanded a bit beyond that, and now it also includes "people who are Scott Alexander fans", or perhaps in general, people who like or identify with the extremely weird subculture around people like Yudkowsky or Alexander. But I would still tend to think, just intuitively, that if you don't like the Sequences, you're not a rationalist. Rationalism is a movement with a guru.
(I would actually nuance it a bit more than that - liking Scott Alexander's writing is not enough. If that was how it worked then e.g. Ross Douthat would be a rationalist, and he's pretty clearly not. Treating Scott Alexander like a guru, perhaps?)
OliveTapenade
7d ago
By 'radical' I meant 'in the local minority'.
On the scale of the Motte, you are a minority. On the scale of the whole United States, most Motte consensus views are unpopular minority views. On the scale of the whole world, most American consensus views are unpopular minority views.
In a large essay, I do nitpick things, but in general I think a good essay-writer will try to provide multiple justifications for their important points, so if one or two of those justifications are a bit weaker, I try to be generous. The basic point "trans issues are not a confection of the right" is correct, and the supporting evidence "look at the way that left-wing organisations and actors have tried to push public awareness and discussion of trans issues" is correct, and "organised celebrations like Pride Month are an example of this" is also correct. I do think that FtttG and Wesley Yang overstep themselves a little by citing every claimed day or month, but that's not the kind of overstep that makes me dismiss them entirely. I don't think that's unreasonably gullible or charitable of me?
It's, I suppose, a type of gotcha. I think the gotcha is true, but I also think the claim can easily survive it. FtttG could very easily concede the point that not all those days are meaningfully celebrated without it harming his overall argument.
OliveTapenade
8d ago
I suppose it's easier to identify as an individualist, a heretic, a brave defier of social orthodoxies, etc., than it is to actually tolerate individualism or defiance when they arise. Just as the Motte is radical compared to wider society, you're radical compared to the Motte. You have a minority, unpopular position, sure, but I don't think your arguments for it are noticeably worse or more bad-faith than the modal Motte post on other subjects.
My point isn't "magicalkittycat is great". People can disagree on that, like you, dislike you, whatever. That's up to them. It's that I think you are not below the average level of discourse quality on this website, irrespective of one's position.
For what it's worth, on this particular issue, I think FtttG's Substack post is generally correct in its conclusion, and the comparison between Freddie's take on trans and Freddie's take on DID is damning. There clearly is room for good-faith hesitation, skepticism, or even opposition to various policies that trans advocates have, demonstrably, asked for. That said, I also agree that the Wesley Yang list of calendar days is a weak argument. There are specious days of awareness for pretty much everything, because there are no rules about who can declare them, and no governing authorities recognising them. The only month-long events I'd heard of in November are Movember, NaNoWriMo, and, er, the one about masturbation, but Wikipedia has a huge list of observances, most of which are obviously trivial. Consider the likes of No Music Day, which appears to just be one guy grinding an axe.
The point FtttG is making overall is, I think, correct, in that it's a bit rich to accuse conservatives of politicising the transgender issue or drawing attention to it. "You brought it up!" is the correct response for conservatives to make, perhaps with a side order of, "If it's so trivial and unimportant, why don't you just give in?" But the proliferation of completely vacuous days of remembrance or awareness days that nobody has ever heard of or cares about is indeed a phenomenon. The argument survives that - Pride Month, which is observed and recognised, is sufficient for FtttG's point - but I acknowledge your nitpick is valid.
OliveTapenade
8d ago
Heaven forfend!
Imagine somebody having an extreme viewpoint on the Motte.
Or someone being subtly wrong on the Motte.
Come on, people having extreme views and being wrong on the Motte is something restricted to days that end in Y. Being extreme and wrong describes almost all of the Motte. The Motte might productively be defined as a place where you can be extreme and wrong.
Sunday is the Lord's Day, because it is the day on which Christ returned from the dead. It is therefore the site of the primary Christian liturgical celebration. It seems as though it started to be honoured in this way very quickly - see Acts 20:7, for instance.
Whether that makes it 'the Sabbath' or not is... kind of semantic? I have seen both "Saturday is the Sabbath, but for us the Lord's Day is the day of rest" and "the Sabbath has been moved to Sunday" as positions held in the wild.
If you ask me, my guess is that the earliest Christians likely observed both the Saturday Sabbath and the Lord's Day, and that over time the Saturday observance fell away. I'd like to think that the modern custom of treating both days of the weekend as days of rest is a good way of returning to that tradition of honouring both, and that we can even nuance them a little, with Saturday for rest and silence and Sunday for gathering and celebration.
As I understand it, in Islam Friday is not called 'the Sabbath' or any similar word. Friday is, however, the day chosen for gathering, preaching, and communal prayer. It's the day for jumu'ah, the weekly sermon at 1 PM Friday, which is the closest Islamic equivalent to the Jewish Sabbath service at sundown Saturday, or the Christian mass or worship service on Sunday morning.
That said, it plays a different role in the life of the community. For instance, mass is considered obligatory for Catholics and they must attend every Sunday (barring reasonable exceptions), but the daily prayers of the hours are not. Praying the liturgy of the hours is commended, but not required (unless you are a monk or priest), and therefore how much of it to do, and when, belongs to the conscience and good judgement of the individual believer. In Islam, it's reversed. The regular daily prayers are obligatory, but attending the jumu'ah is optional, though recommended, and up to the conscience and judgement of the individual.
This tracks with what I experience on the ground. Devout Catholics tend to be conscientious about mass-going, and there are people who attend more frequently, all the way up to daily mass-goers, but the daily prayers are not that well-known, and if you do them you are unusually pious. By contrast, conscientious Muslims usually make all the daily prayers, sometimes add dua at unscheduled times, and then if you go to the sermon every Friday, you are definitely committed. If a Muslim has to drop one thing, they will usually drop the Friday gathering, not the daily prayers.
That said, in practice Muslims are just like Catholics in that it is extremely common for people to regularly miss daily prayer/Sunday mass/whatever while still internally thinking of themselves as 'good Muslims' or 'good Catholics' and feeling no guilt.
Sorry to use Catholics as the Christian example - they are just unusually legible and public in their requirements. I understand Orthodox to be similarly strict to Catholics, but I am less familiar with them, and I think they are in general less likely to write down a single list of obligations enforceable on all people. And of course Protestants are much more likely to reserve all of this to conscience, culture, and practice. Historically what devout Protestants have done de facto is treat Sunday worship and a daily prayer (usually in the evening, prior to going to sleep) as obligatory, but Protestantism in general is much more skeptical of the utility of legislating specific obligations. As a Protestant myself I do practice weekly worship and daily prayer, and I think the decline in these practices among Christians has been tragic, but I do share the tradition's skepticism of trying to establish a one-size-fits-all timetable of prayer and worship. That, it seems to me, should be a matter of Christian liberty. That said, Galatians 5:13 - liberty should not be a justification for laxity.
OliveTapenade
14d ago
Oh, not the Iran war specifically. That does not have and has never had popular support. I meant the American-Israel alliance in general.
OliveTapenade
14d ago
The question of sources of credibility is an interesting one - it hasn't stopped, for instance, Saudi Arabia from cooling its hostility to Israel. But then the Saudis have alternative sources of Islamic legitimacy, from their role as Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. Governing/protecting the Hejaz provides a kind of de facto legitimacy, whereas the Iranians have to fight a bit harder to establish their credentials, especially since, as Shia, it's harder to be accepted by the Sunni-majority Islamic world.
In the US, I don't like the phrase "entrenched Jewish capture", which I think sounds a bit too conspiratorial or pejorative, even though I think it is true that American support from Israel clearly has a lot to do with the facts that there are a lot of Jews in America, American Jews are a disproportionately successful and well-represented demographic, and Jews have extremely high levels of support for Israel. I don't think this is malevolent or in any way democratic bad faith, particularly because American support for Israel is substantially a result of American Jews successfully convincing other Americans to support Israel. (Notably as of these 2024 polls, Protestant support for Israel, at 66%, is very close to Jewish support for Israel at 73%.) It's not a case of Jews covertly manipulating America into doing something most Americans oppose. They convinced most Americans of something, and then America did it. That is democratic politics working as intended!
Fair enough. Just take me as making an unrelated comment, I guess.
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