Shrike
6d ago
The other groups in Afghanistan were not nominally Islamic, they were all practicing Muslims.
I suppose this depends on who you ask but the Taliban seem to think that practicing pederasty is incompatible with correct Islamic practice.
There’s no clear evidence that an afterlife is instrumental here.
There's very clear evidence that an afterlife is instrumental. You're shifting the standard to claiming that the belief in an afterlife will always and everywhere prevail. But remember, you said
Do you think their constant obsession with the rewards of the next life have aided their cooperation and virtue?
And I would say – yes, clearly.
I think “under certain circumstances Christianity actually condemns selling everything to the poor” is an enormous cop-out.
Why? Why shouldn't Christians be judged according to their own teachings? I don't even disagree with you that Christians often fall short of their own teachings – and it's fine to criticize that – but it's important to understand those teachings first. If Christianity specifically teaches that one's first duty is to one's family and dependents it is silly to criticize Christians with family and dependents for not impoverishing them to give to charity (see perhaps most notably 1 Timothy 5:8, which compares failing to provide for one's own house with apostasy!)
Now – I don't disagree with you that Christians often act as if they do not believe what they say that they do. I do this, to my shame. But – to your point about faith – the people in the first century whom you suggest had such an easy time believing in Christ ALSO did this! If your idea that belief is harder now is correct and that is why Christians today act as if they do not believe was right, we would expect the first century church not to have that issue. One need only read the writings of first century Christians to be disabused of that notion.
And today people do this in other areas quite frequently (for instance lots of people know that drinking is bad for them...), unfortunately. The fact that people today, or in the first century, act contrary to their own professed belief and knowledge has little bearing on the belief itself (alcohol IS bad for you even if you act as if it isn't!)
I know one particularly prominent Catholic family and they have enormous mansions and nice cars...It can only be that they don’t genuinely believe in the rewards of heaven, which if believed would necessarily result in maximal charitable activity (certainly not mansions and luxury cars). At the very least, the threat of hell for being rich should be enough to get them to abstain from these sorts of purchases.
Well perhaps they are familiar enough with Catholic doctrine (as I think I am, although I am not Catholic) to know that that's not how salvation works in Catholic teaching.
The verse you are probably thinking of is as follows:
Then Jesus said to His disciples, “Assuredly, I say to you that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” When His disciples heard it, they were greatly astonished, saying, “Who then can be saved?” But Jesus looked at them and said to them, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” - Matthew 19:23 - 28.
Not stated in the text here (even as a riddle or hyperbole): "rich people go to hell." Nor is that a teaching of Catholic doctrine as I understand it.
Now, it IS true that there's a certain tension in Christianity, especially early Christianity, with wealth (see for instance James 2, but note that James does not advocate for kicking the wealthy out of the church!) But on the flip side, I certainly can't think of any sort of general command in Christianity for people to sell all they have and give it to the poor (the instruction in Matthew 19 was to a specific individual – although quite arguably it applies more broadly! – and you can see in Acts 5:1 - 4 that even in the early church described in Acts 4 liquidation of wealth to give to those in need was entirely voluntary.)
It’s famously unusual.
I don't disagree that the very specific thing you said never happens is unusual. :)
Shrike
6d ago
Good point with Iran. I actually think Ireland is also an interesting example. And unlike Iran, the revolution in Ireland was bottom-up, but Ireland was then quickly hollowed out by secularism just the same as England (despite the role religious tensions played in their departure!)
Shrike
6d ago
Right, you can debate all day long whether or not it's morally justified to RETVRN by force of arms but it's sort of pointless to discuss the theory when the practice does poorly.
Shrike
6d ago
Sure, but the phoenix and the pelican in question are pretty crazy creatures to believe in.
The Phoenix is a little weird. The Pelican's not really weird at all; matriphagy is a real thing, it just happens that actual pelicans don't seem to practice it. The sexual parasitism practiced by the anglerfish is weirder than matriphagy in my mind, should I not believe in that?
I don’t think smart people really believe in ghosts outside of tricks of the mind.
This is absolutely not true, just in my personal experience. (Incidentally, did you know that increased education in the United States is correlated with increased levels of religious attendance?) But you don't have to believe in my experience: the educated class in the States takes stuff like poltergeists seriously enough that outlets like the New York Times write serious stories about exorcists. (To be fair, I am collapsing ghosts and demons into one category here, I suppose.)
Do you think their constant obsession with the rewards of the next life have aided their cooperation and virtue? I imagine not.
Yes, absolutely. You can see this, for instance, in how the Taliban (religious zealots) outcompeted the nominally Islamic tribal grounds in Afghanistan and started cracking down on pederasty, which was traditionally practiced and accepted. Cooperation led to victory, and victory led to virtue.
If you believe that this life is not even 0.01% of your whole existence, and you can ensure the 99.99% of your life will be even better by selling everything to the poor, then what reasonable person wouldn’t do it?
Well, under certain circumstances Christianity actually condemns selling everything to the poor, so presumably that's at least part of the reason Christians don't do it. I cannot really speak to the Hindus.
But it’s a frankly unbelievable proposition, which is why no Christian sells all he has to go preach somewhere he knows he will be killed.
This famously does happen, though! The last guy killed by the Sentinelese was a Christian missionary.
Shrike
6d ago
Also, I think it's very much the case that even with apologetics one still has to take a leap of faith.
Yes, I absolutely think this is correct. Even think about the New Testament – it's very clear that the very Apostles who had Christ appear to them had to have faith that God's promises to them would be fulfilled.
Shrike
7d ago
You’re underestimating how easy it was to do apologetics before the Age of Enlightenment. There was a time when you could say, “consider the phoenix of Arabia, the bird which resurrects itself every 500 years, as proof of resurrection”, and people were like “oh yeah, I mean that’s a good argument, everyone knows about the phoenix”.
Did most people know about the phoenix or was Clement – an educated philosopher – writing to other educated men about something that they would be familiar with through reading the elite texts of the day, such as Herodotus? I imagine it's difficult to know for certain, since illiterate people don't leave records of what they are and aren't familiar with, but an educated philosopher referencing a creature that was described by the elite educated classes of the era seems...well, similar to modern apologists who reference modern scientific or historical consensus when attempting to reach their audience.
So it is with the rest of your examples (although I would say that Paul predates Justin Martyr) – it's educated people writing to convince educated people, at least in part. (I would say that the actual track record of Christianity as regards philosophy is much more mixed than one of outright rejection, but I'm not sure if you want to go down that rabbit hole).
The early Christians were blessed that they could point to 500 years of writings predicting Christ; this would have constituted excellent evidence for men who believed in phoenixes and spiritual stars. And the secrecy of the faith made it even more compelling. But who would be convinced by this today?
As I have pointed out before, modern Americans believe in stuff like poltergeists, so when you say "who would be convinced by this today" the answer as regards very specific cultural idioms like the phoenix is "not very many people" but substitute in something from our modern mythology (say – an argument for the resurrection of the dead based on the reality of ghosts) and a lot of people would probably nod along like "oh yeah, I mean that's a good argument, everybody knows ghosts are real."
We are 2000 years removed. We need something else.
And a number of other interesting arguments have been advanced in the intervening period – apologetics has hardly stood still. (I'll take this moment to note that a few weeks ago here on the Motte our peers were expressing a high degree of confidence that Jeffrey Epstein was assassinated based on, essentially, a single correct prediction by "the conspiracy theory crowd" that he would die in custody. If some Mottizens can find a single-point correct prediction so convincing – and I generally assume people on here are pretty smart by the standards of our day – then I find it hardly surprising that what you describe as 500 years of predictions of Christ suffice to convince people, whether today or in the 1st century.)
20th century social movements are evidence against that.
If you think the 20th century social movements were bad then I think it's not unreasonable to take it as evidence that doing social movements without eternal life in mind is a bad idea. (I think it's merely suggestive, not a necessary conclusion.)
And I wonder how important eternal life really is for establishing moral behavior. Where are the people selling all they have to be perfect, for an even greater reward in the life to come? They are so rare as to be essentially nonexistent. I don’t mean the ones who get free room and board at a beautiful monastery, that’s different. If a religion like Catholicism with all the bells and smells cannot actually induce the rich to depart from their wealth when this would confer perfection, extra rewards, and possibly even sainthood, then eternal life is probably useless for motivating righteous conduct.
Well it's interesting you say this, because while I understand the sentiment, it's directionally wrong. Perhaps it's true that visible displays of people giving all that they have to the poor are rare (but note that doing this is specifically condemned by Christianity, so it's not surprising that this is the case) but religious people are more generous than nonreligious people.
Shrike
7d ago
I don't think the tension between living in a liberal society and holding liberal values (classically defined) while living conservative lives is quite as large a gap as is often suggested. Most religious denominations are quite comfortable with liberal values – for example today the Catholic Church's official position is that religious freedom is good, and I think most religious people (in the USA) are quite comfortable with liberalism as classically defined.
Liberalism, it seems to me, is a problem for a small subset of intellectuals who say "if the rule that you followed led to this, of what use was the rule?" I wouldn't necessarily say this is a bad question to ask, but I think a lot of times it results (or stems from) a sort of terminal thinking, the idea that because a democracy led to bad things, it will lead to more bad things in the future. But of course it's quite possible that (classical) liberalism will snap back – the Americans of the 1760s were liberals, it's entirely possible for classical liberalism to accommodate extremely conservative sentiments.
My point here isn't that I think RETVRN TO THE 1790s is going to happen at the voter box, exactly. But societies evolve in unpredictable ways. And because we know that classical liberalism worked quite effectively (arguably much more effectively) with conservative social mores in the past, if liberal social mores are unsustainable – as they now in many ways seem to be – it's quite reasonable to be optimistic about conservative social mores within the framework of classical liberalism in the future. That's not a RETVRN in my mind – the only way out is through. Likely we will not see a return to 1790. We shouldn't want to! What we should want is a 2040 that is better than a 2024, better even than a 1790. And if conservative social mores are good, then although they might be to some degree different in the age of AI and automobiles, building a better future means building one with conservative social mores.
Perhaps I'm missing your point here – feel free to correct me if so!
Shrike
7d ago
Believing in God just because, assenting to a teaching just because — that’s gone. Intelligent people need to be persuaded.
I think this has pretty much always been the case. Apologetics is a very old discipline for this reason.
So if people are willing to die for a cause that has no supernatural aspects, why shouldn’t they be willing to live selflessly for a Christ that has no supernatural aspects?
This is underdiscussed (in part because of what those people did) but people absolutely are and this explains a lot of the last century and a half or so. Progressivism took some moral cues and language from Christianity but in practice was often essentially materialistic. I think this was truer in Europe than in the United States but as I understand it lot of mainline Protestantism was retreating from the supernatural and fiddling with cool new social causes to usher in a utopia as you say. Embarrassingly, those causes turned out to be things like "eugenics" and "banning alcohol" and a lot of the "progress" that was made was unwound and then memory-holed, but people are absolutely willing to live selflessly for a Christ with no supernatural aspects.
Part of the problem is that when you strip the supernatural aspects from Christ, there's not much left that isn't subject to radical reinterpretation (if you read the Gospels Christ arguably tends to rain on utopian parades in favor of, well, the supernatural gift of everlasting life). Hence the modern progressives are basically radically opposed to their forebears from 100 years ago even despite the much-remarked-upon resemblance of "woke progressivism" to a "secular" "religion" – the through-line is essentially the same. What's missing is consistency – progressivism has flitted from cause to cause and emphasis to emphasis from decade to decade. I don't think religions are free of this at all, but grounding the authority of a religion in a transcendent supernatural does provide a focal point for a religion to return to. Progressives of today can't return to the writings of their forebears from the 1880s or 1920s because those guys were all incredibly racist by today's standards and nobody – not even the authors – are claiming to be inspired.
Marxism comes the closest to this – and perhaps this explains its enduring power – because it claims to be a MATERIALISTIC SCIENCE and thus inevitable, which is a sneaky way of claiming to be infallible WITHOUT invoking the Divine.
Shrike
13d ago
Then I think I misunderstood you - I agree that Choke Point was political, but I took you to be saying that it had to do with what party was winning at musical chairs this time, when it's actually a consistent feature across administrations - my mistake!
Shrike
13d ago
That these bans follow political winds is, I think, sufficient to demonstrate that the chargeback argument is just an excuse/soldier.
Do they follow political winds? I don't think so.
In 2014, Chase Bank went after the personal accounts of "adult entertainers." This was part of Operation Choke Point, done under the Obama DOJ.
In 2021, OnlyFans banned adult content (I...guess this just didn't stick?) again due to banking issues. OnlyFans is based in the UK, but it seems it had issues with JPMorgan Chase as well.
This is just on a quick Google, I'm sure there's more examples out there.
Shrike
19d ago
The one thing I will say is that it's quite possible in Texas that if the weapons were being used to prevent a more serious crime (which seems to be in dispute in this case), the potential illegal weapons charges would be allowed to slide.
Shrike
20d ago
A quick Google suggests that about 60% of Americans are "unsure" what they think of Nick Fuentes (...probably because they have no idea of who he is!) and another third of Americans dislike him. His favorability rating is barely above the lizardman constant, (and ironically is highest among blacks and Hispanics).
It might be correct that "you may not care about the online but the online cares about YOU" but that doesn't mean that just because Richard Hanania writes an article about a minor far-right streamer whose unfavorability is only dwarfed by his unfamiliarity that he is "the second most important person to watch on the Republican side."
Now, Hanania might be correct that Vance needs to worry about being flanked from the "populist right" but I don't think Fuentes is likely to be an effective threat.
Shrike
27d ago
Interestingly, legally the definition of a UAP includes "transmedium objects or devices" and "submerged objects or devices that are not immediately identifiable and that display behavior or performance characteristics suggesting that the objects or devices may be related to the objects or devices" that are unidentified aerial or transmedium objects.
The DoD's definition (same source) is that UAPs are "sources of anomalous detections in one or more domain (i.e., airborne, seaborne, spaceborne, and/or transmedium) that are not yet attributable to known actors and that demonstrate behaviors that are not readily understood by sensors or observers."
I'm sure a nonzero percentage of them are clouds and/or equipment errors anyway.
Shrike
28d ago
Often for the kinds of physics described for UAP phenomena the things that would have to be wrong are not, like, the nuances of quantum field theory. It is shit like "conservation of energy was wrong."
Obviously it would depend on the very specific incident in question but a lot of times the claims "requiring" extreme energy fluctuations come from data like radar returns that don't give any insight into the mass of the object being observed or even if it is a material object. A lot of claims about UAP are assumptions stacked on assumptions stacked on assumptions in a trench coat. These trench coats are often based on a core observation that, while very interesting, doesn't prove much if anything about "the laws of physics" and our understanding or lack thereof even if the observation itself is 100% accurate as reported.
(This is without getting into the fact that a lot of weird stuff like warp drives and propellantless space travel are theoretically good physics.)
Shrike
1mo ago
This is admittedly speculative due to a lack of contact with the former class but my general assumptions are that they aren't exactly hardcore voters to begin with.
I also suspect that if they do vote for the GOP, they probably aren't thinking "I'm going to get thrown off of Medicaid but it will make the blue-haired freaks unhappy so it's a net win for me," they are voting GOP under the theory that entitlement reform never happens but maybe their neighbor with the string of misdemeanor assaults and restraining orders will finally be locked up for good, or that it will help the economy, or things like that. My general assumption is that people who are "on the fringes of society" in the sense of being on welfare and not being particularly poor are more likely to be sensitive to the economy and crime, not less.
Shrike
1mo ago
How is your semi AR15 with a ten rounds mag going to fare against a predator drone or a tank? In the very best case, you would be fighting a protracted war against the federal government. If you win, it looks like Mao winning his civil war, if you lose, it looks like Hamas in Gaza.
First off, as a technical point, the ARs will have a lot more than ten rounds (30 round is the standard magazine, lots of people run drums with 50 or 100 rounds).
Secondly, gestures to Afghanistan the US army is capable of losing a war to an opponent with small arms and IEDs! I've never understood the "the US military would crush an armed populace" line of arguing because it had a chance to do that in the last two decades and failed. (And of course laying the blame on Iran or Pakistan or whoever is cope – do you think China or Russia would fail to arm insurgents in the US if there was a civil war?) What I find much more questionable an assumption is that the US armed populace would act like the populace in Afghanistan (or Northern Ireland) but if they did, it seems likely from history that the US armed forces would in fact lose. Wars are political endeavors and technology does not change that.
Thirdly, in most civil wars, the military and national security apparatus is not actually monolithic. Let's say that it's true for the sake of argument that the "armed populace" is not capable of "beating the US military" (I actually agree this is a fantasy because even if the "armed populace" could beat the US military on a giant featureless plain that's...not how real wars work.) In many, perhaps most civil wars, the military fragments alongside the rest of the populace. In which circumstance, it can be really helpful to have an armed populace even if there is no irregular warfare because they are likely to be better marksmen, more likely to be able to contribute to arms stockpiles, etc. In a prolonged civil war situation, the side with the support of the armed populace will be favored to win all else being equal. Which means there's a certain incentive for ideologies to promote firearm ownership (on their own team) and to attempt to convince the other side to disarm.
(As an aside, for this reason widespread firearms ownership is actually extremely beneficial to the US state. The US military recruits disproportionately from certain areas for reasons that are not but are correlated to firearms ownership.)
For example, I imagine that hand grenades are much fun. Or landmines. Watch the stupid coyotes explode when they trespass on your property. Contact poisons are fun. Radioactive substances are fun. So is building your own nuclear reactor.
All of these are, at least in the right circumstances, legal in the US, but the hand grenades and nuclear reactors at a minimum require paperwork.
Shrike
1mo ago
Man, don't shoot the messenger here.
Ha! No, like I said, that's definitely not my ethos. But I hear ya.
Either way, the thing is that the rule against killing is, again to a first approximation, fairly absolute; and to someone who actually believes in an absolute rule, asserting that you actually want to break it in a fairly broad special case is not persuasive.
Sure, this makes sense. And of course Americans often don't believe in this at all (even when it comes to executions and the like).
Can you muster the theory of mind to understand that some people actually believe that there are no "bad guys" who it is a good thing to kill?
Yes. And I think you're right, there's an incommensurability problem that plausibly is only worked out on civilizational timescales.
I'm not so convinced that they are strongly correlated at all - East Asia has ubiquitous AC but no guns and an atrocious free-speech situation compared to Europe as well, Russia flip-flops but at least intermittently had quite liberal gun laws with no relation to its AC or speech situation.
I am also not convinced on the correlation, but I will note that I think civilizations are very different and a causal chain that exists in some cultures may not exist in other cultures at all. Sometimes just the idea that something is true makes it so.
I also suspect Europe's free-speech situation is, at least in some respects and specifically in some places, about as bad or perhaps even worse than Russia's – it looks like England might be in some ways worse than Russia, arresting 12,000 people in 2023 while Russia detained about 20,000 people since 2022 as per this 2024 article as part of crackdowns on anti-war speech (note that these don't measure convictions, and of course note also that Russia has nearly three times the population, but also that the article I pulled was focused on the Russian anti-war crackdown and might not measure people taken in for other views.)
Either way, the heat death figures you refer to always seemed fairly cooked to me - Eurocrats have an incentive to inflate them to support the climate change narrative, while the US figure seems pretty inappropriately small for its burgeoning homeless population.
I think it's pretty rare for ~healthy adults to die from heat stroke (some of these numbers might be due to aging European demographics) and a lot of the American homeless are in pretty temperate places like California. I believe US cities generally have lots of places for homeless people to get out of the cold, or ways for them to travel to more temperate regions. If I had to guess, most exposure deaths among the homeless involve drugs of some kind. But that's a guess.
Shrike
1mo ago
What makes it superior for sporting over either something like a hunting rifle, or something like a fairground gun that shoots tiny bullets of a few millimetres calibre?
All of those guns are for different purposes. The .223 is a cheaper, lower-performing round compared to say a .308. It's also more fun to shoot (less recoil, semi-automatic), and it is a tiny bullet (same diameter as a .22, so not dissimilar to a fairground gun most likely). But people do sporting events using all sorts of different calibers.
Personally I think the .223 is a very good varmint round, and that's how I've used it.
a legal way to kill people
To be clear, when I say this, I mean "it should be legal to own deadly things" and that's about how I took your phrasing. Most pro-gun-people (including me) don't support it being legal to execute people randomly, but perhaps my phrasing was...unclear. But, to your point, at least in the US, they think that the Second Amendment is an important backstop to liberty. It's hard to tease out the correctness of this, but the US of A is doing much better than Europe in this regard. (For instance, just as a wacky example, in A/C unfriendly Europe, heat deaths kill more people than firearms in the US of A. It arguably wouldn't actually be a good swap for the US to get European gun violence levels if it also meant getting European attitudes and regulations towards air conditioning! And that's without getting into values-based stuff like free-speech rights.)
there still were large and massively funded organisations deliberately binge-drinking to the point of getting it
I'm not sure what the organization has to do with it. Alcoholism is much more dangerous problem in the US than firearms, but alcohol is much easier to procure (and is also glamorized in the media, much as guns are!) If all of the gun-rights orgs shifted their focus to sporting, I doubt that gun control groups would be assuaged, because at the end of the day their goals are things like "stopping school shootings" not "stop optics we don't like."
the most popular fictional depictions of alcoholic drinks all involved flashy celebrations of how they induce cirrhosis
I mean - most popular fictional depictions of guns are of people, often those who are legally permitted and encouraged to have them (cops, spies, soldiers, etc.) using them to stop bad people. I don't really see why that's bad - presumably even Europeans want their military, soldiers, spies etc. to do their jobs.
"fantasizing about killing"
The specific fantasy you seem to be upset at is "killing a bad person who is trying to do a bad thing." Most gun owners who are interested in self-defense are interested in self-defense. Movies and gun manufacturing ads and the NRA website and all of those things you're discussing aren't promoting the idea of unlawful violence or mass shootings. (It's actually imho the liberal-leaning press and gun control groups that do the worst to spread mass shooting memes, because they amplify the contagious meme of mass shootings to advance, in the case of the latter, their policy agenda). They are promoting the idea of stopping a bad guy. You can go read the NRA magazine, they (at least used to. maybe they stopped) pull accounts of robbers, rapists, mass shooters etc. getting stopped by "the good guy with a gun" which happens pretty often, honestly. If there's a fantasy here, it's specifically the same fantasy that people who join the military or police often have. I think it's fine to criticize certain aspects of this but fundamentally wanting to stop bad people from doing bad stuff is an honorable impulse.
It seems to me that you are making the vibes-based argument that "Hollywood thinks gun violence is good therefore guns are bad" but my argument here, on the whole, is that if you look at actual use cases and not vibes vast majority of use even of guns that are e.g. derived from military designs is for peaceful purposes. The same way that most drinking isn't to die of liver failure even though that's a not infrequent outcome.
Shrike
1mo ago
I specifically support the two being linked in some way. Dispossessing someone of firearms is a statement by society that someone is untrustworthy and unable to govern themselves, and there's no need to pretend otherwise by giving them the right to vote under the pretense that such a person can govern others.
Shrike
1mo ago
The principle purpose (as measured by actual use) of all civilian firearms, no matter how outlandish, is sporting.
I of course find the idea that there shouldn't be a legal way to kill people wrong, and it's against the ethos and traditions of my country's heritage (and indeed most of Europe's, arguably) but to say the primary purpose of e.g. an AR-15 is to kill people is a lot like saying that the primary purpose of alcoholic drinks is to get cirrhosis of the liver.
Shrike
1mo ago
Also, a situation where guards are bribed for a few bucks to have access to a prisoner is actually a pretty good way to carry out a hit on someone, since the guards are incentivized the cover it up rather than cop to "yeah I totally let my prisoner get murdered but in my defense I thought they were just going to have a conversation! I would have asked for a lot more than $500 if I had known it was a MURDER!" (I haven't viewed the film, so maybe this scenario is implausible for various reasons.)
I think there's a common misunderstanding of conspiracies that supposes that everyone involved in the conspiracy knows everything. Which I think is dumb. One of the big problems with petty corruption is precisely that it opens the door to things like murder and espionage, even if the corrupt officials would never intentionally get wrapped up in murder and espionage and merely thought they were turning a blind eye to smuggling or petty tax evasion.
Anyway, the very funniest possibility is that Epstein was murdered Hollywood style by a guy with a "certain set of skills" turned vigilante seeking justice under the belief that Epstein was going to be let off with a slap on the wrist again and now the "Deep State" is left holding the bag.
Shrike
1mo ago
I am under the impression that most posters here who care about American politics would 99% endorse this statement, even though it's pretty strongly violating meritocracy and individualism---judging people based on what their ancestors were regardless of their own qualities and competencies.
I don't really think this is the correct way to look at this question. If you are selecting for proficiency at being an American you are overwhelmingly going to be choosing Americans. Being good at e.g. surgery doesn't really tell you if someone will be good at being an American.
I think this is true even if you're holding to a creedal understanding of Americanness (e.g. a random American is MUCH more likely to register vehement and enthusiastic agreement with widespread firearms ownership or an expansive definition of free speech than someone from almost anywhere else on Earth.)
Shrike
1mo ago
This is a made up number. It includes veteran care. In the future. Separate budget entirely.
All US revenue either comes from taxes or from debt. Neither are unlimited (well - taxes aren't unlimited, the jury might be out on the debt!) At the end of the day, it's all one budget.
The USAF and USN. Their core assets were not affected very much by counterinsurgency operations.
This is not true for the Navy or the Air Force, although perhaps your MOS didn't encounter them much.
Guess who is the least useful branch in a probable conflict with China? That's right, the US Army.
Yes, I do agree with this.
This is a hilarious take since drone bros like Elon take exactly the opposite line you do on drones vs. manned platforms like the B-21.
IMHO, the problem isn't with unmanned aircraft necessarily (although I am skeptical that 100% unmanned replacements for fighters and bombers are viable for other reasons, but from a certain POV any missile is just an unmanned aircraft, and missiles are definitely useful!) but rather that drones like the Predator and Global Hawk aren't very survivable on the modern battlefield (hence why the Houthis keep shooting them down). I'm not saying we shouldn't have some, particularly in the semi-attritable ISR role, or in the stealthy role. But I'm not sure the 300 MQ-9s we have will be super helpful if the balloon goes up against China. (Maybe in the far blockade scenario as ISR assets.)
The USN and USAF have a lot of rot and incompetence built up.
Sure, I believe this. But I think (particularly during the Obama era) that the GWOT, admittedly combined with the Ukraine situation, slowed the "pivot to Asia" that Obama announced.
What I am suggesting is that without the belief in the afterlife, that Taliban would never have done what they did, which makes it instrumental. The fact that other people believed in the afterlife is immaterial to the question of whether or not belief in the afterlife was instrumental for the Taliban.
But if you like, we can take another angle: we've already discussed (and agreed) that religious people give more to charity. Surely belief in an afterlife is at play in at least some individual cases?
"Give all superfluous possessions to the poor" as such isn't really a clear Christian teaching (which the exception of some sects, I think) so, again, if we are judging Christians by their own standards I don't really see the issue here. (Might be different for the specific sects).
I think criticizing Christians who do no charitable works at all (and I am sure such Christians do exist) is fair. But also they are (arguably) not supposed to be ostentatious about donating, so it can be tricky.
Sure, but setting aside the fact that the Church Fathers said a lot of things, many of which many Christians do not hold to today (unless they are in Scripture, they are not considered canonical, although they are often considered helpful) criticizing displays of wealth is not the same thing as saying wealthy people will go to hell (as you seem to suggest above).
Well, first off, this does happen. There are nuns and monks and religious orders and missionaries. Those all exist. There are still people being persecuted and even executed for their faith. That actually happens. But secondly you seem to think that Scripture says "be poor and you get into heaven" which isn't the case. Really, your soteriology isn't in line with what most major Christian congregations teach.
In all of these cases I think you are stripping out some context. Your gloss of Acts 5 is misleading; it's very clear from the text that Ananias died after Paul's rebuke because of dishonesty – here's Acts 5, versus 1 - 10:
There's probably a good argument that Luke 12:33 ("Sell what you have and give alms; provide yourselves money bags which do not grow old, a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches nor moth destroys.") applies to Christians broadly, particularly viewed in light of 12:15 (" Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.") and it's often viewed this way. But we should also consider the context of Luke 12 is that Christ is preparing the apostles for persecution (see e.g. Luke 12:11 "And when they bring you unto the synagogues, and unto magistrates, and powers, take ye no thought how or what thing ye shall answer, or what ye shall say: For the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say.")
In my experience Protestants do take Luke 12:33 seriously, but not literally – that is, they do believe (and act as if they believe) that giving alms is good, and giving possessions to charity is good, and stores up rewards in heaven, but they also don't try to liquidate everything that they have immediately to give alms – perhaps because they often have or aspire to have families, perhaps for the same reason they don't expect to be taken into the synagogues and questioned, perhaps in some cases as you suggest because they don't really believe, perhaps because they have reasoned their way out of the application of the verse through various means. (The standard line in Protestant denominations, I think, is that "you should tithe.") And certainly it's quite arguable that while the principle of giving alms is good, the context of the passage suggests the specific instruction was meant to be acted on by the Apostles. Now, maybe you don't find this persuasive! And maybe Christians who would argue that are wrong and you are correct! But contextualizing it like that is not crazy.
As for the story of Lazarus, I think the closest suggestion to rich = hell is this line:
A full reading of the parable might lead one to wonder if his sin was being insanely wealthy, or not doing alms to the beggars outside of his gate. Considering that the moral of the parable seems to be as follows – "And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." – it seems likely that the actual thrust of the parable was aimed at the Pharisees (see Luke 16:14 - 18) who would not hear Christ's message even after His resurrection. That doesn't mean that there's no theological information about wealth here, of course, but again the context needs to be kept in mind.
To step back for a moment, I think what's happening here writ large is that you're taking a (not necessarily incoherent) reading of Scripture – which I do think some Christians share – and then insisting that all Christians are hypocrites for not sharing it. (Notably absent from your collection of verses: the many verses in Scripture that celebrate accumulating wealth and offer concrete advice on how to do so.) Setting aside the fact that your methodology here is unmistakably Protestant (and thus your root assumptions are not shared by many Christians!) it's just true that Christians' reading of Scripture and what it means varies considerably and that it might be more parsimonious to assume that most Christians simply do not share your interpretation of Scripture, rather than insisting that most Christians are hypocrites. Certainly (although a great many Christians are hypocrites) it's a bit more charitable, I think.
I want to circle up on this entire thing by saying, firstly, apologies for the late reply (I've been busy, but I found our conversation thought-provoking and I appreciate that!)
Secondly, to circle back on the broader point – you've been arguing that nobody is convinced by Scripture in the Year of Our Lord 2025. But the reasoning you offer suggests at best that few people believe this. (Which some Christians would agree with emphatically, citing Matthew 7:14!) Moreover, your original point was that it's harder today to believe than it was in the past. But all of your arguments (that Christians don't truly believe in the teachings of their religion because they engage in conspicuous displays of wealth) were true throughout most of the history of the Church. The problem of hypocrites and pretend believers was real even in the 1st century, and the accumulation of wealth and power by the Church over the course of history – which you seem to suggest is downstream of a lack of conviction on the part of Christians due to modernity – happened long before modernity and the scientific method as we currently would identify them posed an ideological threat to Christianity as such.
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