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Unsaying

Lord, have mercy.

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joined 2023 February 15 19:59:17 UTC

				

User ID: 2188

Unsaying

Lord, have mercy.

2 followers   follows 3 users   joined 2023 February 15 19:59:17 UTC

					

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User ID: 2188

Instead, they suggest that without the fear of god and the set of rules there's simply no other way to create internal drivers for morality.

No -- instead I'll suggest that without the fear of God "morality" is an unintelligible term.

If you think it's somehow 'wrong' to put your unwanted infant on a dung heap to die of starvation or be sold into prostitution; if you think it's 'wrong' to sail down the coast to where the people talk funny and kill the men, rape the women, and enslave the children; if you think that all humans are of equal (and infinite) moral worth; you just might be descended from a Christian culture.

Baseline human 'morality' looks like Genghis Khan, and I don't recognize it as such. It's just game theory.

Is there protocol for that? Is he even eligible at that point? Does he reign from prison? Is he released? Can he release himself? Seems like I should know these things.

IMO what brings order in society is not any particular ideology but the enforcement, through violence, of the rule of law.

Yes. We're not talking about order. We're talking about morality.

Right, my point here is that without reference to God 'morality' is an unintelligible term. We can talk about order, or smooth social functioning, or game theory -- all kinds of things! But those are not what we mean when we talk about morality. Morality is what is right above all those other concerns by dint of our relationship to our creator.

We might more generally define "morality" as "actions in accordance with one's telos", which moves the problem back a step.

But it does leave us in more or less the same position, because now we need a telos, and that is not something we can give ourselves! Maybe 'survival' but that's a losing game at both the micro and macro scales, and we all know it. Also moloch, etc.

For most of Western history "morality" has meant precisely "actions in accordance with the will of our Creator," and a "good person" is one who acts accordingly.

In the pre-Christian West, a "good man" looked a lot more like Genghis Khan. He was the one who brought benefit to his people, typically at the horrific expense of others. Mercy, compassion, and so on were considered weaknesses, even to the point that the Roman goddess of such wasn't really. Clementia -- clemency -- is not the same thing. It's more like, the ability to overlook another's shortcomings to work together more effectively, as is beneficial for bringing temporal benefit to the people. A man who organized others to sail down the coast and rape, kill, loot, etc. was among the best of men.

Christianity changed a lot. All of a sudden it was considered wrong to, idk, kill inconvenient children, slaves, etc. All of a sudden there was this notion that the powerful had an obligation to the weak. And much, much more.

Now, an atheist can say something like, "Of course I can be moral! I can also perform common-sense game theoretical calculations with the aim of maximizing utilons!" But this is really not the same thing at all, and also I call BS on consequentialism because we are at best capable of tracking consequences to a few degrees out, after which we have no idea what the effects of our actions really are, and also I'm highly skeptical of the idea that "everyone matters" follows naturally.

Societies oriented toward a higher divine will (generally Abrahamic afaict) generated higher moralities. Within this moral ecosystem, defectors (atheists) were able to say, "But I don't need to believe in that telos to act the same as everyone else!" And to a point this is true, but it does suggest a frame within which atheism is a moral parasite. Able to crib, that is, but not to generate. And as a society takes its eyes off the telos, it naturally starts to backslide toward baseline human """morality""", which is not, imo, a good thing. But I can only make such normative statements because I'm still fixed on the telos.

Well, yeah, if you define "morality" specifically to mean "doing the will of the Christian God", then it's definitely true that without the Christian God there can be no morality. But then this isn't a very useful statement.

Sure it is. Just not for you.

On the other hand, actual discrimination has taken a steep nosedive even if most people still harbor some racial prejudices and attitudes, so clearly something changed.

I take issue with the notion that actual discrimination has taken a steep nosedive.

I've lost contracts, both public and private, due to my race and my sex ("sorry, you've been fantastic, but we have a big push to switch to all woman-owned vendors"). And while I didn't choose to go to university, my children may as well not even apply to many elite institutions for the penalties held against them due to their skin color, their academic merit notwithstanding.

My town was hit hard by its own self-imposed lockdown, so they decided to subsidize new businesses in the downtown area by paying for much of the first year's rent, renovation costs, etc. Except, whoops, only for women and 'minorities' (which incidentally whites are in my state of California, but I guess that doesn't count). I've seen scarce medical care withheld from whites in favor of prioritizing members of 'marginalized communities'.

I've seen white men lie about being Chinese women to get their writing published. I've seen others agree that persons of their race should stop making creative content because "we've had our time and it's their turn now." I've seen major media producers explicitly announce that it is now against policy to make shows and movies about white families and communities for not being 'representative' enough.

I've seen white women express that it would be wrong for them to reproduce, and instead wax lyrical about adopting 'brown babies'. I've seen judges decide that Christians shouldn't be allowed to adopt children for their failure to conform to modern gender ideology.

I've seen schoolchildren emotionally destroyed over the guilt and hatred heaped upon them due to what 'their' ancestors purportedly did. I've seen gifted kids lose access to advanced education because the demographics of those who qualified weren't equitable enough and this might disadvantage the children who really matter. I've seen teachers penalized or forced into resignation for disciplining too many of the wrong type of children. I've seen whole fields of study at every level of education, some quite venerable and august; some, I would say, absolutely vital to our society; neutered or destroyed because they are too thoroughly associated with the wrong kind of ethnicity.

I've seen the media lynch white (and, actually, Asian) people for self-defense because the presumption of guilt can only run one way. I've seen police officers crucified for defending themselves and others against armed, dangerous, and aggressive blacks who sometimes were in the literal act of attempting to murder others. I've seen whites refuse to report crimes, even those which did them great damage, because they've been so brainwashed into thinking that it is somehow morally correct for them to do so by the education system, the media, and the state. I've seen communities burned, laid to waste, and seen this called justice because it was done in the name of the 'oppressed'.

I've seen governments refuse to hamper heinous criminal activity, from property crime to mass organized rape of children, because the perpetrators have what our old friend Autistic Thinker might have called 'Tropical privilege'.

I could keep going on, for quite some time, and we all know it.

Discrimination is pervasive, overt, systemic, and often explicitly codified.

I'm with AOC on it making fascism look benign

This part really threw me when she said it, and since you seem to agree I'd like to ask: What? How? Is Christianity fascism now?

Yes: That's what's necessary for God to be with us, and He loves us enough to do it.

What OS do you run on your daily driver system?

To do the thing, He set up the rules to require Him to do?

Not following, here.

You don't get to be the omnipotent, omniscient creator God, then also want kudos for solving some problem you created. The sacrifice of Jesus is only required because God wanted it to be so.

Yes, that's what I just said. He wanted to be with us that badly. If He hadn't, He'd presumably have just not bothered with us or gone through that.

Still not sure what else you're implying. If God wants to marry us, which is rather what this whole thing is about, He wants a bride capable of choosing Him. That also means that we're capable of choosing to reject Him, hence everything else that happens.

Maybe you're suggesting that God could simply have created us capable of choosing Him and also incapable? If so I think your notion of 'omnipotence' is broken.

You're the only one here talking about 'religion' like it's a useful or applicable category.

That is a fantastic question. I'm actually writing a book somewhat along those lines. It's a really good challenge to try to figure out how to compress the answer.

The problem I'm running up against is that any angle I want to take would lean heavily on concepts that I don't think we have in common.

First I think I'd have to explain why pagan polytheism is real and true, which would take a lot of time. In the book I'm doing this by going back to the first cell in the ancient ocean and tracking evolution forward to establish how our minds work and what the gods are, and how they interrelate, and then establish that Christ is a real, observable force in the world (even from a ~secular perspective), and then get into what the Christian message actually is, which is unfortunately mostly unintelligible to people who don't first grasp the validity and veracity of both brutal selection processes (especially genetic) and (poly)theism.

Put another way: In the classical world people understood a lot of basic truths that have mostly been lost now, and the Christian message is mostly unintelligible outside of those. (Oh, and this is not an accident, but enemy action.)

I'm leaning pretty hard toward "I can't answer that for you right now and I'm sorry."

Let me float: There are gods, and then there is God, and these are... supremely different categories that play out in very different ways. The attempts I'm making to get more specific keep running me up against walls that I can't see how to overcome within the scope of this conversation. And I could nitpick and complain and get traction on any number of tangents here but they're ultimately nowhere close to central to the question.

Maybe I just need to suggest that Christianity is so much weirder than you know.

So, my apologies, and feel free to take this as an admission of at least momentary forfeit.

Have a good one man.

EDIT: Oh, but do feel free to ask more questions if you want.

If I had to choose one group to occupy the streets I’d certainly prefer the migrants than the aggressive “native” homeless in progressing states of mental decay. The migrants are clean, accompanied by well behaved children, and don’t bother you when walking down the street (in this way I also prefer them also to the third inhabitant of Chicago streets, lanyarded young workers of some nonprofit that will accost you with any question they judge will trick you into attention). The regular homeless population of Chicago smells terrible, yells, and makes the city feel dangerous enough that no women I know will take the train at night. In contrast, a relatively dignified family looking for work at least has motives that are comprehensible to me, even if I think they’ve made the wrong choice.

It's funny how much this feels like an argument that "the migrants aren't so bad really if you think about whether you'd choose them over what we already have," as though that were a plausible scenario and we won't just have both now. This is interesting rhetoric.

Well that I can talk about! It's a basic misunderstanding because Plato correctly perceived the gods but did not know about God, so his ability to reason about this was limited. I.e. The Euthyphro dilemma is only coherent in the context of paganism.

But I should take the question in the spirit in which it was intended and apply it to God rather than the gods (again, entirely different categories). So it's like this:

Is something good because God says it is good? Or does God say a thing is good because there is some higher standard to which God must conform?

Answer: No.

Goodness is rooted in the intrinsic and unchanging nature of God. It is neither arbitrary (God does not choose what is good) nor is it imposed externally (there is no higher authority to which God submits).

In other words, false dilemma, and always has been, and this has been addressed probably thousands if not millions of times in the last two thousand years, so it's confusing to me that people keep bringing it up. It's not like they weren't talking about this in AD 300 and giving the same answer that I am now.

N.b. I definitely phrased that poorly and I know it seems to imply that you're dumb or something, which is definitely not how I feel. I was an atheist for something like seven years and found it convincing too. Just, it turns out that, like almost any group, most Christians are not so bright and aren't very capable of understanding let alone defending their position, and especially in the West they've also lost touch with huge portions of their tradition that would shed light on the rest, so they're not even playing with a full deck as it were. This is a reflection on that sad situation, not any commentary on your competence. Thanks for the conversation.

Can You Guess Why The Little Mermaid Is a Huge Hit But Not In China?

The backlash is due to Halle Bailey being chosen to portray main character Ariel.

...

According to Box Office Mojo, Disney’s live-action remake of The Little Mermaid has only grossed $3.6 million in mainland China since it opened there on May 26. The Chinese box office tracker Endata confirmed that the film made 19.5 million yuan ($2.7 million) in its first five days. In comparison, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse made 142 million yuan (nearly $20 million) in the first five days after its release.

Now I may be a simple country hyperchicken, but it seems to me that Spider-Verse also featured a black main character. Seems like an odd comparison to make, given their narrative.

Don't confuse discussions of the costs of wokeness' and affirmative action with the idea that total segregation is somehow more productive.

This seems to presuppose that segregation is always a net negative, which doesn't seem warranted to me.

Contingent on some hypothetical populations themselves being a net negative, doesn't it seem likely that integration could itself carry enormous costs?

Sure, it's better to be alive now in the first world than at any previous point in time. Our material well-being is historically pretty maximal, though we may have peaked just about now.

This is a popular talking point and even Jordan Peterson capitulated on this when he was murdering those Swedes, but I have my doubts. The worthiness of human existence is not defined by material comfort, and I suspect that many a man exists in these benighted latter days who would have been much happier in an era of shitty rights, worse food, and a faithful and stalwart wife who would bear him many children. Your mileage may vary but I know which I would choose, were I not blesséd enough to have both.

Re: Germanity, what can I say but F. I doubt very much if that race can be reconstituted but if I have the opportunity and no greater obligation I surely will accomplish this thing.

If Christians typically went out and executed people for mocking Christ, that would indicate that Christianity is dead.

Well it's simple:

Is there a higher power to which God is beholden? No. So it's not that.

Is something made good by God arbitrarily saying so? No. So it can't be that either.

Indeed, in Christian thought God cannot even be arbitrary, but is always, by nature, perfect. So anything He says must be in alignment with His perfect nature. So if He calls something good, He's doing so not arbitrarily, but because it is in alignment with His nature.

Therefore, 'goodness' is something like equivalent to 'in alignment with [God's] nature'. And God's nature is not arbitrary, but necessary. It simply is what it is, and could not be anything else.

if you went to Japan and started preaching about how you should sail down the coast and rape and enslave, people would think you're insane

Boy of all the examples to pick. Japan was precisely that way within living memory. What changed?

As to Israel, modern Judaism is younger than (and a reaction to) Christianity, and also Israel is heavily populated by Western (somewhat Christianized) Jews, and if you go ask the Jews who are still fairly un-Christianized they'll gladly tell you that non-Jews are only there to serve Jews.

You don't seem to be taking nutrition into account. Meat is very good for you. Pea protein blended into a seed oil slurry isn't.

Can't find it but there was a SSC or LessWrong piece about how the optimal number of motoring deaths is not zero unless we decide it's worth banning motoring altogether.

I've seen several accounts of men in this position who didn't receive any interest until they got their MD at which point it was fish in a barrel.

They'd be a deductible expense for me, so I chuckled and smugly looked them up to-

Yeah, no, not a chance.

I like my rpgs to be as Tolkienesque and possible and have collected about all of the relevant systems, but I find that it's difficult to get a group together which shares that aesthetic taste. By and large, people really do seem to prefer pop-fantasy. Damn millennials. They ruined the millennium!