coffee_enjoyer
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User ID: 541
I agree that some things are never coming back. Believing in God just because, assenting to a teaching just because — that’s gone. Intelligent people need to be persuaded. They can be persuaded on rational, phenomenological, social, or utilitarian grounds. But the era of “here’s some Thomism”, “just trust the Bible”, “just trust me bro” — this is totally dead. Not a lot of serious people can take every teaching literally just because they have been told to do so.
conservatives don’t want to give up their liberal freedom and personal autonomy
If conservatives can be persuaded to join the army to help a Godless empire plant poppies to flood their rivals with heroin, then they can be persuaded to sacrifice some pleasure for the only Empire that has ever mattered, the Kingdom of God. What made them join the army? The unthinking intuition that they can find glory there, some benefits, some camaraderie, and someone told them that their enemy is satanic. Christianity can do all of this but better, in the right form. Not only can it induce stronger allegiance to a perceived Good, but the Good is actually Good.
I go back and forth in my mind debating how much the supernatural is required to promote ideal behavior. It’s worth noting that Marxism and Nazism were both able to promote ostensibly selfless collective behavior despite having no interest in the supernatural. As were the French revolutionaries, or even the soldiers under Napoleon, or the Kamikaze pilots of Japan. But why would someone give their life for communism? Because it was seen as utopian and just and a fight against evil, and men bonded fraternally over these conclusions. This made it morally obligatory and a great way to die. You had Japanese soldiers still fighting into the 60s after WWII ended, only for their emperor! 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? It’s worthwhile to ponder this. If obedience to God can usher in utopia, God understood in a certain way which precludes the supernatural, then it can promote ideal selfless behaviors without veering into unevidenced supernatural assertions.
coffee_enjoyer
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4mo ago
Maybe a few more elements:
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the transgender craze made the virtue signaling instrumental to progressivism unpalatable to normal people
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COVID hysteria also made virtue signaling unpalatable
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the shift to short form video content made people assess physiognomy more than before, and the silly trends eat up more cognitive space than before (which was open to news)
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Red Scare and Kill Tony became very popular, and both were anti-progressive; the subreddit of the former constantly goes viral indirectly via screenshots
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the war in Gaza shifted the moral concern toward Palestinians and anti-Israel rhetoric
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Tik Tok’s popularity made other platforms compete by decreasing censorship; the things you now see on Instagram reels would have been a front page news story about racism in 2015
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there may literally be a shadowy cabal influencing algorithms; for instance, Trump influencing Zuckerberg means that his platforms are less censored
Personally I think the CIA made the septum piercing a shibboleth within SJW circles specifically to reduce memetic potential because it’s so fucking ugly and has a 90% chance of coinciding with SJW viewpoints
lynchings
Lynchings were a response to violent crime. Something like a third of those lynched were White. Africans were lynched more because they commit more violent crime, and also because their crimes were seen an attack on the community from a foreign community. Generally, it worked as follows: if you were to rape a girl, the community would strangulate you to death, and they would make a whole spectacle about this so as to deter future crime and to reaffirm that the community is protected. Lynchings are bad because justice is better, as a small percent of the lynching victims were innocent, though jury trials also pose their own problems. But we see in recent events eg Rotherham that lynching can produce better justice than subverted judicial processes even into the 21st century. Had the men of Rotherham lynched the rapists immediately, they would have prevented many thousands of rapes, which is clearly better than no justice at all over decades. Following from this, one problem in the south was that Blacks were allowed to be on juries, and we now know from studies that Blacks on average cannot judge defendants impartially. Blacks, but not Whites, are more likely to let someone of their own race go free yet convict someone of another race. Possibly because Blacks, but not Whites, have a high in-group preference.
You write
[cults] were handed a public issue, in which the mainstream was quite obviously morally wrong by its own standards and factually wrong in its claims
This depends on your values, really. If you believe that all groups should share in each others’ resources, despite having different behavioral tendencies, levels of intelligence, cultures, and histories, then the mainstream was wrong. But if you believe that White people are genetically and historically different, and consequently deserve to be raped less, and murdered less, and deserve to enjoy the justice system they created which requires honor and trust, in accordance to their ability, then the mainstream was obviously correct.
When the reality was, racists of the past were genuinely racist, they really did believe that the blacks and Jews etc. were inferior
Yes, you are supposed to make generalizations based on observable evidence and trusted testimony when you lack superior evidence. This is the intelligent thing to do. This is the moral thing to do. It was their best option because they didn’t have an entire science of intelligence, and even if this did exist in some obscure intelligence journal, the average man did not have easy access it. So they say, “wow, this golden retriever is gentle and kind”, or “wow, this pitbull is aggressive and dangerous”, based on a collection of experiences. When Americans were debating the Chinese exclusion act, the argument was not that the Chinese were stupid or lazy. Even proponents of exclusion knew that the Han were industrious and intelligent. Is it really racism if human intuition is just that good at generalizing?
White racists often believed that every black was inferior in every way to essentially every white American
I don’t think there’s evidence for this.
Only in recent years have we seen black QBs break out of the running QB mold (and arguably seen teams overrate black QBs perceived as Athletic over white QBs perceived as statuesque pocket passers).
These QBs are usually more than half-white, with light eyes (this has its own interesting genetic reasons), and there’s also been political pressure to introduce more black QBs. A lot of what you’ve written is just “some Whites underestimated Black athleticism”. We’re not talking about chess or strategy games here, we’re talking about a very base form of human leisure activity. Your opinion seems to be that we should shame Uncle Roy because, well, while his intuition may have been correct about the most important things in the world, it was wrong about…. sports. Something that doesn’t matter. Something done for leisure. Something that is more fun to do the worse you are at it. You didn’t attempt to prove an equality between the races for anything that actually matters (development, virtue, productivity, etc). Surely the best hominid heavyweight lifter is actually a gorilla, but does this matter? Has anyone checked if Terence Tao can dunk?
Cults
I don’t find the overriding argument compelling. NXIVM didn’t draw on the mainstream being wrong, and neither did Osho’s cult or the nascent Mormon cult. ISIS is probably the worst cult of the modern era, and they are wrong on virtually every issue. To understand cults it’s easier just to understand that humans have certain vulnerabilities which evil people can take advantage of. One of these vulnerabilities is our innate desire for equality and fraternity, which evolved to aid the tribe, which is why racism has been a powerful rallying cry since the 60s.
coffee_enjoyer
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4mo ago
That both of the recent transgender terrorists targeted their own childhood school could mean something. Does their mental illness spring from a form of arrested development occurring at the puberty age? Could it have to do with a failure on behalf of those around them to reinforcement and affirm the biological changes that happened at this age? Could transgenderism — for the ones not seeking sexual gratification — be caused by the mind being “stuck” in the age where one learns about their body, due to some obscure early life trauma or a lack of social affirmation, and their mind tries to rekindle the feelings of that age through the artificial rediscovery of their body via “coming out” and hormones? This is something to dwell on, because there does seem to be a sub-expression of transgenderism which is obsessed with nostalgic things but which is not sexualized, and this is a distinct from the other subexpression which craves its own sexual humiliation (eg that Canadian teacher with the enormous boobs who sent her one sextape to her HR lady; the Matrix-dominatrix brothers…)
coffee_enjoyer
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4mo ago
It is a trope in fiction to meet an attractive man while traveling, and women appear to enjoy narrative-driven sexual fantasies while men enjoy visual-driven fantasies. But as for why women enjoy narrative-driven fantasies, I don’t know.
coffee_enjoyer
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4mo ago
Fuentes is definitely becoming popular. Asmongold, at one point the most watched streamer in the world, reacted to his anti-Tucker video with 1.7 million views. The Tucker thing itself, Tucker being the most influential conservative, having to insult Fuentes while conceding his oratory gifts, is telling. That Fuentes ratios whoever he wants on Twitter.
Remember that his audience isn’t normies (who have a 30% chance of turning out to elections or whatever and doesn’t talk about politics). His audience has a 99% chance of turning out, and each one acts as an influence generator, influencing those around them with their views. So it’s not just number of viewers or number of supporters, because his viewers and supporters are all mini propagandists. Fuentes has captured the 2015 4chan Trump energy youth.
coffee_enjoyer
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4mo ago
What is the most addicting game you’ve played recently, what mechanic made it most addicting, and how do you feel in the midst of that mechanic?
coffee_enjoyer
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4mo ago
What are the human-animal hybrids in the western imagination besides werewolves and centaurs and minotaurs? Not too many. Werewolves were all over vanilla WoW.
why not 20th century Disney style animal people
Cut-off should be whether it is an organic development of the Western imagination, or whether someone looked at trends and spreadsheets and determined that “catboy” looks adorable and will bring in players. Remember that “gothic” is itself a conversation with the Middle Ages and folk legends. Cat boys are unserious.
coffee_enjoyer
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4mo ago
Something nice about Vanilla WoW is that each location was drawn from one specific European fantasy source. It’s not just some random person concocting his own fantasy. Stranglethorn Vale has the vibe of a colonial expedition into South America or perhaps Africa, Tirisfal Glades pulls from gothic horror, etc. So they are renditions based on real preexistent motifs, and the game takes you through a survey of European fantasy and history. It’s not all just “fantasy medieval area”. There is no catboy character because that doesn’t exist in the Western imagination.
Greg quotes 1 Corinthians 15:
”we have attained to incorruptibility and immortality […] the corruptible might be swallowed up by incorruptibility, and the mortal by immortality, that we might receive the adoption of sons”
But in the very line of thought in 1Cor15, Paul emphasizes that Jesus has to be a man for salvation to occur, because Adam was a man. There is no argument that Jesus has to be more than man for salvation to occur; that thought isn’t found. We read here:
[21] For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
By a man has come resurrection! Why would Paul not add that the man had to be divine? We see something of the opposite. The mere man Adam made us mortal; the mere man Christ made us immortal. (Adam is an interesting case when you think about it: a man given immortality while still being a man.)
We also find the notion that Jesus resurrecting is an auspicious indication for the general class of mortal men dying, such that because Jesus resurrected we are consequently sure that we all will be resurrected. This would be a bewildering argument to make unless both the author and audience were certain that Jesus is no more than a mortal man:
[12] Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised
Now, if the author and the audience believed that Christ were more than mortal, then it would be perfectly reasonable to hold that there is resurrection of the dead while still Christ resurrected. Because Christ, being divine, can be resurrected, as he belongs to a category of being beyond mere mortals. A being who is both God and Man being resurrected would not indicate anything for the whole class of mortal men. Yet Paul says that his resurrection indicates that all men are resurrected, and Paul considers it impossible for anyone to hold that (1) Christ can be resurrected, while (2) other mortals can’t be resurrected. In effect Paul says here: you must believe that mortal men are resurrected, because if you don’t, then there is no possible way for Christ to be resurrected. And he reaffirms this twice, which is pretty remarkable; it may be the only case of Paul ever repeating the same argument nearly verbatim.
We also find the notion, again in this chapter, that the original state of Jesus in heaven was as a man:
The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
So for Paul, even when talking about the heavenly origin of Jesus, there is no mention of anything except his being a man. This actually poses a problem for Trinitarianism which separates the two natures of Jesus as mortal and immortal, because afaik they believe that the mortal Jesus did not have his origin in heaven, only the Word. If the heavenly origin of Jesus is purely Word/God, then why is Paul speaking of a man from heaven? Even if this is technically logical(?), it’s a highly unusual way for someone to present the idea.
coffee_enjoyer
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4mo ago
The ones who will increase their hatred are the ones who need to be punished more. The ones who recognize the danger of DEI will be satisfied knowing that they’ve made a noble sacrifice for the holistic health of civilization and its progress. The thing about deterrence is that it’s better to do it quickly and harshly, as then you never have to inflict it again out of fear.
TT doesn’t have to be personally interested or personally engaged in the politics. He simply needs to voice his opinion on new department heads in an email, or apply to a school without DEI, or ask about it in the interview, or ask a grad student to keep an eye out for DEI words. This is enough pressure to curb DEI.
The reason DEI was able to spiral is because the spiral did not affect the academics’ social status, but actually increased it. One way to lower the status of DEI is to make it associated with defunded and destroyed institutions. If it weren’t for the threat of China, I would say the deterrence should have been much stronger.
coffee_enjoyer
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4mo ago
Much to consider here. IMO (1) you need to implement serious deterrence to prevent something like the social justice craze of 2020 from ever happening again. Punishing legitimate and important academic work is the best way to go about deterrence, as it motivates normal academics to police their extremist colleagues, rather than acquiescing again. “Conservatives will harm valuable research” is an argument that will persuade an elite and effete academic, where arguments based on logic and statistics obviously failed during the last mania. (2) Now is not the time, because of the threat of China, to be alienating STEM academics. We should want America to be the most reliable and rewarding place in the world for top tier foreign STEM research. The best mathematician in the world criticizing the academic environment is a big deal.
coffee_enjoyer
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4mo ago
Do you have any strong flashbulb memories from a fictional media experience? A video game, a book, a movie?
Flashbulb memories are memories for the circumstances in which one first learned of a surprising and consequential (or emotionally arousing) event. Hearing the news that President Kennedy had been shot is used as the prototype case. Almost everyone can remember, with almost perceptual clarity, where he was when he heard, what he was doing, who told him, what was the immediate aftermath, how he felt about it, and one or more idiosyncratic and often trivial concomitants
coffee_enjoyer
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4mo ago
Yet would [3] really be the motive with the highest good in a consequentialist sense? It may not be, insofar as the motive and conduct of Christ is for our imitation. Because if we believe that Christ’s guiding motivation was pure love for others, then we would likewise believe that our own guiding and primary motivation ought to be love for others. But here we may be wrong. Because Christ never says that love for others should be paramount, only that love for neighbor should be equivalent to the love we have for ourselves. The love for God is the paramount love, significantly greater than our love for neighbor, uniquely requiring “all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength”.
If Christ’s overarching moral motivation was to obey God for God’s glory, knowing that he will share in that glory and receive honor from God, then his motivation makes a lot more sense. Glory has been the motivation for all kinds of self-sacrificial acts throughout human history, whereas “love for humanity” is rare, if not nonexistent. (The man does not rush in to a burning home to save strangers because he loves humanity, but because he knows (from media) that this is glorious, and a glorious way to die). Additionally, the Epistles say that when we suffer morally, we should do so with glory in mind:
rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.
We do not suffer because “it’s right”, or love our enemy (though we ought to do so), but because we will feel glory. And to be Christians means to be —
heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ—if indeed we suffer with Him, so that we may also be glorified with Him. I consider that our present sufferings are not comparable to the glory that will be revealed in us.
The “social rewards” from God are intrinsically linked to moral conduct by Christ:
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. / Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets before you.
If Christ’s motivation was glory, both for his Father and for his divine family and for himself, then we would likewise imitate this, and this would lead to glorious moral acts. But if Christ’s motivation was pure and uncorrupted “love for humanity”, then we will only feel a gnawing discomfort at the impossibility of our ever replicating this motivation in any legitimate sense.
coffee_enjoyer
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5mo ago
I don’t find this compelling.
there's no lack of New Testament passages that identify Jesus as God, using theos (no definite article) as a predicate to describe the nature of Jesus — that is to say, Jesus is God, or divine, or of the same nature as The God, his Father. See, for example, John 1:1, 20:28, Romans 9:5, Titus 2:13, Philippians 2:5-8, Hebrews 1:8, 2 Peter 1:1, or John 1:18.
Even this is too much. John 1 doesn’t tell us what happened to the Word upon becoming flesh, or in what sense the word became flesh, or even to what extent it became flesh. The exclamation of Thomas is just as likely to be the exclamation of someone having witnessed the power of God in Christ, of referring to God generally due to the shocking experience (as we say “my God” today). Romans 9:5 is just as easily read as a doxology to God the Father https://biblehub.com/commentaries/romans/9-5.htm
There are similar interpretative issues with the other mentioned passages. Hebrews 1:8 is the most compelling, but it quotes a psalm which itself speaks about David. Jesus himself teaches us how to understand this, when the Pharisees falsely accuse him of labeling himself a god despite being mortal:
“Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken— do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?
Thus, the appellation of “god” applied to a mortal as used in the psalms should normally be intepreted as an exaggerated title of honor. This cannot refer to anything more, because “scripture cannot be broken”. The passage is telling: Jesus rebukes the idea that he is divine, and instead comes calling himself “son of God”. This was a title used to refer to those of supreme righteousness in the Book of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, which were important works circulating at the time. This is crucially important: no one at the time would have interpreted “son of God” as indicating a being as equally God as the Father is God.
Or in Mark 10
a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” And Jesus, looking at him, loved him
Note that the man revises the title of Christ according to Christ’s teaching. Christ is Good because God is good, not because he is God/god/ sharing in the divine nature or anything else. This passage makes virtually no sense in a Trinitarian understanding, because if Jesus is equally God he is equally omnibenevolent, inherently good. Well, that’s obviously not what Jesus is saying. All mortals are good only insofar as we radiate the glory of God, allowing ourselves to be sealed by His imprint (Hebrews 1:3).
What you do not find — and would never find, in either biblical literature or in the writings of the Greek-speaking Church fathers, who were abundantly clear about the divinity of Jesus
The way in which Jesus is seen as divine (I would choose “heavenly”) is not as clear as you would expect. In the Shepherd of Hermas you find:
he is Lord of the people, having received all power from his Father. But hear why the Lord took his Son and the glorious angels as counselors concerning the inheritance of the slave. The preexistent holy spirit, which created the whole creation, God caused to live in the flesh that he wished. This flesh, therefore, in which the holy spirit lived, served the spirit well, living in holiness and purity, without defiling the spirit in any way. So, because it had lived honorably and chastely, and had worked with the spirit and had cooperated with it in everything, conducting itself with strength and bravery, he chose it as a partner with the holy spirit, for the conduct of this flesh pleased the Lord, because while possessing the holy spirit it was not defiled upon the earth. So he took the Son and the glorious angels as counselors, in order that this flesh also, having served the spirit blamelessly, might have some place to live, and not appear to have lost the reward of its service. For all flesh in which the holy spirit has lived will, if it proves to be undefiled and spotless, receive a reward. & Now you have the explanation of this parable."
This is divine in an adoptionist sense, though the passage isn’t clear about when this adoption takes place (some verses in epistles seem to indicate after death).
the Creed goes on to confess belief in the Son, who is of the same nature as the Father: That is to say, Jesus is divine in the same way the Father, who begat him, is divine — just as I am human in the same way that my father, who begat me, is human
This is not a good argument, because Jesus is clear that we are all born again from God, that we all become a son of God with the same oneness as Jesus is the son of God (John 17:22-23). Of course we are not turned into sons of God in the sense that we are suddenly turned into a divine being. Neither are we the preeminent Son of God, the firstfruits. But it’s totally anachronistic to make this into an argument for his being God, and it just reads as someone trying to trick those unfamiliar with how words were actually used at the time period.
Ultimately, the importance of adoptionism and “low Christology” is not because it’s the oldest and original, but because it’s essential for the religion to actually have an effect. The Christian must imagine Christ the Man tortured and slain. Truly dying. Truly identifying with him. Complicating this by turning the man into something unimaginable makes identification impossible, destroying the power of the cross. We cannot imagine a divine being with two natures dying on the cross and having this mean anything to us. That’s like telling us the Terminstor died for us. What do you expect the congregant to feel here? Does the mortal Christ have “locked in” syndrome as the divine nature impassibly does whatever is perfect without suffering? This does not inspire any feelings. It’s no longer a drama or tragedy, it’s just worthless philosophical syllogism.
coffee_enjoyer
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5mo ago
That theory could work re: pleading, but there are some problems. The passage seems to indicate that the object of the plea (or entreaty) was salvation from death (or the realm of the dead), not from the psychological torment associated with the event. This is reaffirmed in the content of the prayer: let this cup pass from me. And the only case of such a prayer occurring is during the Agony in the Garden; he is only around the disciples, who pay such little attention to him that they fall asleep. There is a sense of authenticity to this in Luke: “being in agony, he prayed more earnestly, his sweat as large drops of blood”.
The whole passage in Hebrews surrounding this is interesting too. It continues:
Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. […] About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain
which is insightful and funny. He needed to learn obedience, and evidently the relationship between his humanity and divine purpose was difficult even for an apostle to articulate. Really, I think the mystery and variety is actually the point. The more mysterious Christ is, in a human way, the more you are drawn into the story, and drawn into imbuing your own situation onto the story. The greatest stories don’t often provide one concrete answer. But the story shouldn’t be mysterious in a logical or philosophical way. There’s nothing to gain from drawing people into thousands of hours of philosophical speculation that have no bearing on behavior, but there’s a lot to be gained when a community is drawn into the same story, identifying with and loving the same figure.
Is your contention that Jesus, in mortal life, understood he was special but not that he was, in a way, God?
Yes, essentially. The Epistles clarify that Jesus is maximally Godly (“the fullness of deity dwells in him”, “the radiance of God’s glory”), but stops short of ever actually declaring that he is God. (Unless we want to abuse the Greek, which they do.) He is described in such a way that “in everything he might be preeminent”, and he has cosmic import and existed before the creation of the world (an existence which I do not think he fully understood while on earth). But the omission of any indisputable assertion or dogma that Jesus is God is really glaring. This would have been the thing that every early follower would be confused about, if it was taught, because of how strictly monotheistic Judaism was, and how there’s no Old Testament evidence of the Messiah being God. It would have been in the oldest Roman creed, but it’s not; in the Didache, but it’s not; and if would preached by Peter in Acts, but instead he calls Jesus a man. So yeah, I think this dogma was added a couple hundred years later, and for the worse.
coffee_enjoyer
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5mo ago
My own thoughts on this question are far from the mainstream, exactly because of the things you mention, which I don’t believe were the original intention. Mainstream theology makes Jesus out as inhuman, and no amount of saying “he is 100% human as well as 100% God” can change that visceral feeling. So in my view, his theory of mind was just that of the most realistically perfect righteous person, and in some mysterious way he learned over time that he was the destined messiah. Per Luke 2:52, as a child “Jesus increased in wisdom and in favor with God”, which precludes the possibility that he always knew his destiny. There is a manuscript variant of the baptism in Luke where God’s voice says, “you are my son, today I have begotten you”, and as this is the oldest variant quoted by the Church Fathers, it could indicate that the full understanding of his divine role occurred at the moment of baptism (occurring sometime in adulthood).
How did his purely human theory of mind sense with certainty that he was the Messiah? I think a combination of things: the testimony of John, whom everyone believed was sent by God; the voice of God heard aloud at the baptism; his ability to heal various impossible physical conditions, and to restore life to Lazarus (this would kind of be a dead giveaway); his biographical details fitting the Messish. Lastly I believe there were events of anamnesis which occurred during his periods of solitary prayer. This would have occurred like your typical fantasy “recollecting past memories after amnesia” plotline, which sounds so contrived, but it’s actually the best way to make sense of Christ’s certainty and doubt coexisting, and his mortality coexisting with “God dwelling in Him” (as an understanding and a love in his bosom only). Because a real human often changes from a sense of perfect certainty to a sense of doubt, and this would occur even in the most realistically perfect person. This isn’t because we have “two natures” or any other spurious theological mindfuck that theologians love to apply.
All of this is to say that his theory of mind was exactly like ours, if we were perfect and given intimations of a cosmic destiny. This means he is infinitely relatable, infinitely human, infinitely engaging. Rather than being more God than us, he is more human than us, and that’s actually more important for the religion to have an effect. He was human because
”he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
And as a consequence of this full humanity,
”God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name”
That Jesus was fully divine while on earth and had a perfectly divine prediction of what will happen is disproven by a careful study of Hebrews 5:7
In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.
Reverence = fear; and the word supplications here is ἱκετηρία, which is only used in contexts where a person pleas with utter submission (eg a surrendering enemy). Jesus would not have loudly cried and pleaded for salvation from death while on earth if he was certain he would be saved; and the passage indicates that he saved because of this plea.
coffee_enjoyer
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5mo ago
A theological inquiry: what do you believe were all of Christ’s personal motivations to be crucified, and what was the overriding motivation? We have, of course, brotherly love (John 15:13). But there’s also the motivation to live so as to exemplify the glory of God (17:4); to receive glory for himself from God (17:5) (5:44); consequently, there is the interest to always do God’s will (5:30) and work (4:34). There is also the intriguing verse that His motivation was for his own heavenly joy (Heb 12:2), as “for the joy that was set before him he endured the cross”, which I think is the only verse which directly links personal motivation to the cross. This joy is not necessarily mutually exclusive to God’s glory, because glory itself is a supreme joy.
Regarding the overriding motivation, I am partial to Heb 12:2, that Christ was motivated by the glorious “joy set before him”, because the whole passage reads almost like a doxological summation of the faith (“let us look to the founder and perfecter of our faith”). It ties in neatly with a different underrated verse: “Those who, through patience in well-doing, seek for glory and honor and immortality, God will give eternal life” (Romans 2:7), while the “self-seeking” face wrath (2:8). This is somewhat tricky because we no longer talk about glory as an emotion today. But if you understand that glory is a feeling that always emanates from a person’s assessment, then seeking God’s glory is not self-seeking, because all of the “social valuation” exists within another person. Seeking one’s own glory would mean something like “wanting to believe oneself to be glorious”, which is different and to be condemned. “Seeking that God give us glory” is equivalent to just “wanting to do our best so that God gives a ‘well done’”.
coffee_enjoyer
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5mo ago
I’m familiar with the social ecosystem of the Haredim. It’s super interesting. The women are not involved in religious learning, they are raised to support their husband. Because the Rabbi credential is socially important, the women work to support their husband pursue it. But just as important to this is that the women have children. This is going to be the first question asked to married Haredi women. This is why they have a lot of children. What the men learn in their Yeshiva is that having children is a mitzvah, and so they fulfill their nocturnal obligations. This is an easy ask because all childcare duties fall on the women. The Rabbi credential system is not as competitive as, like, getting into a PhD program, because the big Rabbi positions are handed down via nepotism; my understanding is that it’s often a factor of showing up.
The desire to be mothers comes from exposure to babies and small children
Lol no
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10680-019-09525-0
”The difference between a firstborn and fourth-born woman (0.09 fewer children) is equivalent to a change in 0.04 standard deviations in fertility for our outcome variable. (For birth order 6, the effect is 0.13 fewer children.) Thus, the results suggest that birth order shows a negative relationship for women, with more children amongst early-born sisters than later-born sisters, though the effects are not very large in substantive terms.”
Firstborn women with one additional sibling show an increase in own fertility by 0.12 children, two additional siblings increases their own fertility by 0.22 children, and three younger siblings increases their own fertility by 0.30 children
Do you really think that a Haredi woman who happens (due to some cosmic accident) to be an only child herself, will not go on to have many children? My intuition tells me she will have a lot; perhaps not as many as her many-sibling peers, but still way more than an American with four siblings
For tradcaths grandmotherhood is higher status than having single adult children, but not as high status as having nun/priest children
I would consider this a perversion of the religion. The Epistle to Timothy is clear that women “will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness with self-control.” These are bad Christians if they are giving a woman status for raising a priest instead of a dozen kids. I actually find Catholicism horrifically anti-natal because the most devout are pressured into producing impotent clerical heirs. It made sense in Malthusian times for the youngest male without property to join the church. It doesn’t make sense now. In more traditional, medieval Catholicism, even these priests had concubines
coffee_enjoyer
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5mo ago
The reason I call it “trivial” is because it is easy to change behaviors and values when you have complete control over education and media. As I mention, China can do this while America will be unable to do it. Education and media are antecedent to social values which are antecedent to behaviors. You can train a woman to crave settling down to have children young through exposing them exclusively to media where women receive respect and esteem and attention for doing so, where the women doing this are shown as beautiful and alluring, where it is depicted as a satisfying and an all-moral purpose, where “maternal moments” are artfully selected in media to only show its positives, and where everything which opposes this is shown as psychologically disastrous / ugly / low-status / shameful / selfish. At a more sophisticated level, you apply all of this to prenatal behaviors beginning at the doll-carrying age, eg the traditionally feminine qualities of being meek, caring, loving, and docile, which makes a woman more likely to have children later on for a variety of reasons. A girl who grows up attached to the idea of loving and caring for a doll becomes a woman who wants to do this to a child; a girl who grows up with a modest sense of worth is a woman who does not fantasize about marrying a werewolf pirate billionaire. This is all easy, it is trivial. Two weeks of cognitive labor by a CCP-appointed team of 140iq social psychologists will be able to fix their fertility eternally.
coffee_enjoyer
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5mo ago
As if you can snap your fingers and just do it
You can if you’re China or some other centralized totalizing social environment. China can snap their fingers and mandate films, books, adverts, lessons, and class trips. These can successfully change norms so that women are socially judged by their motherhood + pre-motherhood behaviors.
How many instances throughout world history can you find where social status was not tied to material wealth?
In any with strong religious norms, a childless woman was seen as beneath a woman who had many kids. Religious communities do a good job at redirecting social status, but so can any totalizing social environment. In America you have the enormous problem of capitalism / consumerism which will need to be fixed for any national solution to occur, because you have some of the smartest people continually telling women that their social value is determined by buying and experiences things, with universities (effectively all of them behaving as businesses) telling them they need to be educated. And so lots of smart people actually think it’s higher status to be a poor academic (or even a struggling artist) than having a lot of money. If you’re at a party and there’s a poor artist, a prestigious academic, and then a plumbing company owner who makes $400k yearly, the status is not dictated by the one who makes more money. Heck, someone owning a cute coffee shop that barely turns a profit is going to have more social status in many circles than someone who does slant drilling and turns $500k a year. This is because our culture’s media / stories signal that these things are high status.
Or is it that they are a welfare class engaged in a holy war?
Their leaders are engaged in a holy war but the average member is just a normal person doing what their culture says to do, and in this culture the number of children is prized over everything. Both men and women are judged harshly or celebrated strongly based on their fertility. It’s seen as both a commandment and a blessing. The average member isn’t having kids for a nefarious reason, they are just taught through custom that it’s prized.
Or is it that gypsy children are an economic resource to gypsies?
Unlikely now that Gypsies are forced into schools in Europe. And look at historical figures: Ben Franklin’s father made candles, was his 17 children necessary for the candle business in an era with slaves and indentured servants? Of course not. Albrecht Dürer‘s parents were goldsmiths, did they need to have 18 children? Of course not. “Economic resource theory” never made any sense because you can look at rich non-farmers in history and see high fertility.
coffee_enjoyer
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5mo ago
There are many ways to promote pronatal attitudes & behaviors that do not rely on exposure to childcare. It is easy to imitate this with imitation like the “infant simulator programme” study I linked, and with media.
coffee_enjoyer
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5mo ago
Because humans are not motivated to fundamentally change their life for a trivial amount of extra money. In fact, insofar as this is an extrinsic reward, it will decrease the intrinsic desire to be a parent, as it signals to the would-be parent that the reason to do things is to spend money, reinforcing the salience of being an independent capitalist-consumer slopenjoyer. The very offer of the extrinsic reward is demotivating to its intrinsic pursuit. (In the same way, it is terrible to give students candy for doing math correctly, as it teaches them not to intrinsically value learning and success, but only candy). If humans fundamentally changed their life for a small increase in funds, all retail workers would be flocking to the oil rig, and everyone in Appalachia would have left. Becoming a parent is the oil rig of human activity. It needs to be promoted through social influence.
Totalitarian societies are fantastic at increasing pronatality when they understand how to do it, which Romanians and Hungarians do not. The best to do this through essentially non-theistic measures were the Nazis (as you mention). They increased the birth rate by 40% in 7 years, even though their understanding was also pretty mediocre.
Child-bearing is considered holy and a pregnant woman is shown the utmost consideration as one unselfishly doing her part for the good of the state. Children are extolled as worth far more than material comforts. In the schools the youth are being inculcated with these beliefs.
Nazis say that under the individualistic point of view a pregnant woman was treated with a certain amount of derision and scorn; she was foolish to undergo pregnancy; she and her husband would be more sensible to buy an auto or spend money on themselves in other ways
[Integral was the] “reviving of self-respect among the German people, and of their faith in the future of Germany. They claim that both feelings were dying out under the previous régime, and people were increasingly unwilling to raise children in such an atmosphere”
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/217103
(Unlocked link) https://sci.bban.top/pdf/10.1086/217103.pdf?download=true
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”. This is an argument that Clement makes, one of our first apologists, repeated by Origen and others. (It also happens to be an interesting topic of debate regarding the right meaning of monogenes). Augustine makes a similar argument in regards to the Pelican, which everyone knows feeds its young from its own flesh. When Paul argued about the resurrection of the dead, he pointed out that the stars are spiritual bodies with their own glory, and as you know these were once especially righteous mortals —
The first apologist we have is Justin Martyr, a former philosopher who studied Platonism, and while he begins his Dialogue of Trypho entertaining the notion of philosophy, he quickly discards it as being worthless entirely, with only the Prophets having knowledge of the divine.
And this is the whole beginning of apology: a disinterest in philosophy in favor of prophecy. 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? We are 2000 years removed. We need something else.
There are many changes that a Christian is supposed to effect in the world, however, from reducing sin to increasing love and brotherhood to sharing in wealth. This is the Kingdom on Earth, the Kingdom within us, the God who is love and so forth. Why should these need to be done with eternal life in mind? 20th century social movements are evidence against that. 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. It may be very useful as palliative care for those whose lives are utter torment, but then so can thankful and gratitude and some other practices.
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