SSCReader
24d ago
No I think my experiences are part of my world view for sure, so no need to feel bad for bringing that up.
We had a thread about Christian nationalism in the US a few weeks back and as i mentioned there, I think the differences between Christian sects are currently mostly moot in the US right now. But I think that is more fragile than people think. An explicitly Protestant Nationalism or some other fracture point can split that apart. Possibly a liberalizing Catholic church coming up against more conservative Evangelicals.
I agree church attendance is higher in the US but my point is that zeal hasn't really halted the decline in religiosity at a population level. That is roughly steady between say France, Northern Ireland and the US. Germany is even worse. Even Italy is just behind at about 25%.
And for the younger age groups its even worse still.
SSCReader
25d ago
Hmm interracial marriage rates are twice as high for black men as black women and have been pretty steadily for decades. Whereas for asians it is the other way round. I don't think that can be attributed to lies from black men particularly.
"Among blacks, intermarriage is twice as prevalent for male newlyweds as it is for their female counterparts. While about one-fourth of recently married black men (24%) have a spouse of a different race or ethnicity, this share is 12% among recently married black women."
SSCReader
25d ago
But the split happened in Europe. If that made Christianity stronger why would the effect be more pronounced in the US?
Hell my own country had so much zeal we are still murdering each other even now (though much less frequently thankfully). And the percentage of non-religious is almost identical between the US and Northern Ireland (27 or 28%) which is also similar to the EU (25-26%).
So it doesn't seem to be much better at keeping adherents anywhere. Just in the US selection effects means it is more geographically concentrated.
A Christianity that did not have ruinous wars and splits I would argue would be stronger. Because it showed to adherents that whatever lofty claims were made Christians were willing to kill Christians over doctrinal differences. A united Christianity that stretches from Moscow to Constantinople to Jerusalem to Rome to London to Rio de Janeiro to Washington would be a much stronger world force than it is now.
A schism that is resolved quickly might increase strength and fervor, one that rumbles on for centuries and then schisms again and again over smaller and smaller differences is hard to portray as a stronger, I would say.
To be clear though I am not saying either Christianity or Islam will fall entirely tomorrow, we are talking decades to centuries. To paraphrase the old saying. There is a great deal of ruin in an organized religion.
SSCReader
25d ago
And is Christianity as strong now as it was 400 years ago? Would it have been stronger or weaker without schisming?
Schisming that is not quickly and decisively dealt with is an ongoing fracture point.
SSCReader
25d ago
Sure, if they don't change their mind then that makes sense. But this is predicated on them doing so.
That said I understand now I think. I'd suggest the elites wouldn't be changing their minds BECAUSE you decided you won't fight the Muslims. In fact, given I have worked with what might be called the elite in the UK, I can almost guarantee they aren't thinking about you (and your peers) at all, or that they are trying to take you for a ride at all, because they don't think about people like you or me much at all. (Which to be clear is a big problem, hence why I quit politics, its just not the same problem you think there is).
As for me, I don't think it will come to a fight at all. At least due to internal Muslims. I have extensive experience with Pakistani communities in the UK and they are being "corrupted" by western secular values quite substantially.
To be clear Islam is in my opinion a terrible religion and globally a much bigger problem than Christianity. But I expect it to lose power as its main countries advance and modernize. Reducing birth rates even in Islamic countries show it is not immune. To me the West is clearly the strong horse here. You can bribe native Pakistani and Afghani muslims with Man Utd strips. We've won so hard a tiny Westernised nation can essentially hold off the whole of the Middle East on its own.
Islam is dying. Just as Christianity is. Sunnis and Shi'ites in fight, Pakistan has problems with the Taliban. They are not united.
SSCReader
25d ago
Isn't that cutting your own nose off to spite your face? Your opponents finally come around to your position, to the extent they are now willing to violently oppose the Islamic people/world you also dislike and wanted to keep out, which was one of the key disputes you had with them...
And you switch sides to side with the people you were against in the first place?
Why would you expect to be taken seriously? I hate that you won't go along with my position so much, that I would side with the people that we had opposing views on? That seems like simple spite. At which point despite being correct you can't be taken seriously in any kind of political coalition. If you don't get your own way, you side with the people you were against?
Setting aside any moral issues, pragmatically there is no reason for your opponents to ever consider your ideas. If you hate them when they disagree, and hate them when they agree, then you aren't leaving much space for change, even when you are actually right.
SSCReader
25d ago
This is correct, I think. I've never been a soldier, i've never had a personal near death experience, but in my lifetime I have lost a son to a childhood disease and a wife to cancer. I've been closer to elite power than I ever thought I would, and then I abandoned that as it was making me a worse person. I uprooted my life and moved to a different continent.
The person I am today is a product of all my experiences, good, bad or awful. A product of how I reacted to those experiences.
I hope things get better for you. Probably they will, but that doesn't stop them being painful in the now. If life is pain, then pain is life. The fact these things hurt shows you are alive, that you can move past the pain and emerge out the other side. Maybe not better, but perhaps at least wiser.
Good luck!
SSCReader
28d ago
Ahh. An optimist! I think the problem is I am not confident the Catholic Church was initially wrong (or has actually made real change, but that is a different post).
As you point out the predictions were true, admitting the issue was indeed used as ammunition against the Church.
We evolved these social defense mechanisms for a reason. That many people are not good with base rates, that it really did damage the Church significantly. A better solution (from the point of view of protecting the Churchs mission) might have been to close ranks while internally trying to reduce the problem.
As long as you have a Catholic church some priests (and people pretending!) are going to do bad things. The only thing you can control is what level of bad things are worth its continuing mission. And the same applies to trans people. Some number of either real or fake trans people will do bad things. What people say, or have said is mostly irrelevant to the current situation.
If the pope said that no priests would ever abuse a child, the fact 0.000001% do, may not be a good argument for dissolving the clergy even given the pope was strictly wrong.
SSCReader
28d ago
Why would you expect trans activists to do better than an organization dedicated to serving the highest moral agent?
Like you say, its the normal tribal reaction to your own side doing something wrong.
Which means it doesn't really tell you anything about the merits of the group using it. Presumably you think the Catholic church is more right than the trans movement, but if they both fell into the same trap (and I agree it is a bad look!) then using it as a weapon just looks like you are holding the side you don't like to standards your own side could not live up to.
SSCReader
28d ago
The whole Catholic priest issue is a great example of this, actually, in how the whole structure of the way Catholic churches and communities were run gave greater opportunities for pervert men to do that while escaping justice. As such, people did and do argue that Catholic churches must be restructured to better prevent this.
Sure, but Catholic churches don't really appear to have changed that much. My sister in laws kids still end up in one on one meetings with their priest and so on. And I would agree that there should be some kind of check on what prisoners go where, that is sensible.
As you say there are identity issues, and rape issues on each side. A trans woman going into a men's prison may be at risk and a trans woman going into a women's prison may put others at risk. Perfectly happy to stipulate that is entirely reasonable to take some kind of precautions there.
I'm just pointing out the argument I was told this would NEVER happen is just not a very good one. Pretty sure the Catholic church wasn't saying, and yes there is a chance your kids will be abused by one of our priests (which is the absolute truth) so please take that into account before you go to church. The rhetoric used is separate from what is actually reasonable. Holding either trans-people or the Catholic Church to a zero incidence framework is simply unreasonable.
SSCReader
28d ago
Well y'know, if there weren't cases of pervert men doing precisely that,
This on it's own doesn't tell us anything though. Building a world view in which Catholic priests are just perverted child abusers intentionally trying to prey on children is also supported under this criteria. After all there are cases of Catholic priests doing precisely that.
That it NEVER happens is far too broad a criteria, because it will condemn almost every group where any single member is guilty of some vile behaviour. Police, clergy, trans people, women, men, lollipop ladies, politicians, scout leaders, teachers, French people, Irish people, Catholics, Protestants, German people, Muslims, Christians, Atheists, Humans.
SSCReader
28d ago
I definitely am not, and thats after going to take a look. The whole place looks deeply unappealing to me
I am sure lots of people enjoy it, but the overlap with here seems to much less than 100%
SSCReader
29d ago
In a world where you only had 3 BLM activists and wanted to hear their opinions then it becomes a bit more nuanced I think.
If we want this to be a place with multiple viewpoints represented then justice is not the only consideration.
Which isn't to say I agree with the proposal, just that i think justice is not a good argument on its own. Being just isn't one of the founding principles of theMotte.
I would argue against it from more of a broken window perspective, bad behaviour breeds bad behaviour and damages the level of discourse.
SSCReader
29d ago
A report is a report. It was speech (or text technically i guess) punished by a fairly long jail sentence.
SSCReader
29d ago
8 months for a t shirt?
And note Rowlings comments are bring said not to contravene the law, so it may be narrower than you think.
SSCReader
29d ago
This is counter-signalling. He knows defending them makes him look like he is on the other side (and so his arguments will be reflexively ignored), so he must counter that signal by also making sure to point how how much he doesn't like them.
SSCReader
29d ago
Jailed doesn't happen often for speech, fined and community service is more normal. In 94 LGBT protestors (including Peter Tatchell, protesting an Islamist group) were arrested for having placards, and took 2 years to be acquiited. In 98 Tatchell was found guilty under a law from 1860 outlawing protest in a church for mounting the pulpit to give a speech opposite the Archbishop of Canterbury. In 2012 Azir Ahmed was fined and sentenced to community service for speech about soldiers who should go to hell. In 2012 Barry Thew was jailed for 8 months for wearing a T-Shirt that approved of cops being murdered.
Whether you would call them leftists I don't know but, being pro LGBT, anti colonial (or neo-colonial) use of soldiers and being ACAB, seem pretty left coded.
SSCReader
29d ago
The left didn't invent this super weapon though. Assuming you are talking about governments creating laws regulating speech. It's been around for about as long as governments. Same with what we call cancel culture today, its entirely recognisable as the same behaviours in early societies around shunning, shaming and sub-judicial social sanctions.
From a leftist point of view they are repurposing an already existent super-weapon for their own purposes. I don't think they should be, but I think they are correct in the view that they are picking up a weapon that has already been used many times in the past in many different places. Including within the UK, from the Ministry of Information, to blasphemy to prior restraint to political censorship to the Profumo affair, super injunctions, saying British soldiers should go to hell getting you fined, or saying murdered police officers deserved it getting you jailed and so on.
Like it or not the UK has a long history of being much more authoritarian on what can be said than the US. Most often historically used against anti-establishment voices in general.
This isn't a new weapon. So creating it can't have been a defection. Though using it might still be of course depending on your pov.
I don't see how placing a hairdryer in your car violates Primum non nocere.
Doctor's will cut you open and remove a perfectly healthy kidney from you. You can live with one kidney, but it can give you health complications and issues for life.
Now the justification is to save someone elses life through organ transplantation. But the donor is harmed. So as long as there is a relevant greater justification we do remove healthy parts of the body even aside from Trans or BIID issues.
Which isn't to say we should do that, just that First, do no harm does already have exceptions, even outside of culture war flashpoints.
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