samiam
2mo ago
I assure you, the women I am dating in those communities don’t have a strong opinion either way about the age of the Earth. These churches are not the kinds of churches to have lectures on things like “20 proofs the Earth is under 10,000 years old”.
If you’re making an argument that people still seriously believe the sun rotates around the earth, that kind of nonsense only exists on YouTube, and I’m pretty sure flat earth advocates are actually trolling us.
the truth claims of the LDS and Nicene Christianity are cosmic, we can't use the same kind of empiricism on them, and so people who believe these things are important rely on their own epistemological standards for what's cosmically true: sacred texts, ancient creeds, community consensus, personal testimony -- all of which are vitally important both for Nicene Christians and the LDS.
That’s very key: There’s no way to empirically prove the theological assertions of either group. And, indeed, when the empirical evidence made it clear certain creeds of classic Christianity are false (e.g. the Earth is around 4 billion years old, not 6,000 years old, and the Earth rotates around the sun, not the sun around the Earth) the initial reaction was to threaten anyone who made those scientific claims with torture.
If we don’t consider the Bible reliable, the claims that Jesus even existed are very flimsy, resting on a passage in Antiquities of the Jews that may not even be authentic, and may not be true even if authentic; I myself find the claim that Decius Mundus (to use another story in the Antiquities) was so lovesick for one Paulina that he would pay what would amount to over a million dollars in today’s money to be with her questionable, especially with how he supposedly got into bed with her.
If someone comes up to me and says “You’re going to Hell because you don’t have my particular form of Christianity”, my reaction is “yeah, that’s a pretty strong claim, what’s your evidence?”, at which point they open up their Bible so I retort with “that’s nice, but what’s your empirical evidence.” For centuries we were in the dark ages, with people slaughtering each other over what interpretation of the Bible is correct. Those religious wars only quieted down and life only improved for mankind when we started looking at actual real world empirical evidence and engaged in the scientific process.
I’m a big fan of Christianity. I’m opposed to any type of fundamentalism, whether it’s fundamentalist Christianity or narrow-minded illiberal “left-wing” thinking — for example, the notion supported by empirical evidence that someone with a high sex partner count is more likely to divorce someone than a virgin will is considered heresy by the illiberal left, and they will use shame and other non-empirical tactics to refute the notion because it goes against their creeds.
samiam
2mo ago
More like I think people who drink excessively (i.e. drink to get drunk), use drugs, and engage in promiscuous sex are engaging in a lifestyle which leaves them feeling very empty and lifeless. My issue with the illiberal radical Left is that they not only enable but encourage [1] that kind of behavior.
[1] In the linked article, the writer full on enables if not encourages promiscuous sex for women, then blames men for the bad feelings that result from that kind of behavior, one of which is being paranoid about the guys they’re having sex with.
As a matter of fact, I do go to different churches and jump between churches, to maximize my social circle and friendship groups. [1]
For me, being “Christian” is, yes, letting people know I love God, [2] and it’s also a simple way of expressing to women I may date that I have strong values about when a relationship should become sexual. Mormons, Catholics, and Protestants all agree that sex is reserved for a lifetime commitment. [3]
[1] It’s not really possible to do that with Mormon churches, because they assign which ward one goes to.
[2] Talking to Mormons, my general impression is that the exact nature of God is more open to debate than it is with other sects. Day to day Mormons don’t preclude God being a singular (or triune) being but it’s a philosophical conversation without absolute answers. They tend to not universally believe anyone can become a God the way, say, Catholics universally believe Jesus is God.
[3] A lot of people ignore those moral standards even if they regularly go to church, yeah, but at least the moral standard is there in a way it isn’t with progressive groups.
samiam
2mo ago
As a classic liberal, any kind of intolerance with an outgroup is very offensive to me. The entire “are Mormons Christians” sub-thread here is an example of that: It’s trying to make an entire group of people an outgroup, just as the illiberal left is trying to demonize Charlie Kirk because he was a Christian.
It’s human nature to separate people into outgroups and ingroups, but it’s a very unhealthy kind of tribalism which separates us when we should be together. Countless people have died in religious wars because of that kind of outgroup-vs-ingroup thinking, and I for one do not want to see us go back to the intolerance of the middle ages. And, yes, when the illiberal Left has real power, their intolerance can be just as deadly, as seen in how they cheered on Kirk’s death, and how they enabled and maybe even supported open riots during the George Floyd protests.
Where was I “blaming that for a rash of violence dating back to July, if not last year”? Please re-read what I wrote.
The wording was sloppy, because I had two clauses, but the entire American Eagle “Good Jeans” incident showed the left that cancel culture techniques just weren’t working any more, and it was around that time the left started to become really violent.
Another example of right wing cancel culture from earlier this year is how 4chan hacked that Tea app then mocked the pictures of women using that app.
samiam
3mo ago
A lot of people were cancelled for celebrating Kirk’s death.
samiam
3mo ago
While linked article is blatantly right-wing, yes even the left admits left-wing violence now is more common than right wing violence.
The left tried cancel culture and that stopped working after a while and now are up in arms that the right can cancel better than the left, so now they are resorting to out and out violence. Hopefully we won’t hit the point where the right demonstrates they can do violence better than the left.
Things are getting ugly in the US. I, for one, am glad I left.
samiam
3mo ago
The right-wing website Townhall has a long list of people on the left who advocated cancelling getting cancelled themselves now that the pendulum has swung the other way.
I do not believe any of the people who signed Harper’s Letter back in 2020 during peak left-wing cancel culture have been cancelled for saying inappropriate things about Charlie Kirk, but if anyone has examples, let us know.
samiam
3mo ago
As much as progressives bewail Trump, Trump did something fundamentally progressive here.
To use the language of progressives, the CEO class took away jobs from hard working and skilled Americans by giving them to H1B hires instead, lowering wages and worsening working conditions. By effectively stopping H1B Visas, he is redistributing wealth so that more middle class working Americans can have a living wage.
I find it supremely ironic how progressives decry this move when they have been wanting less money in the CEO class and more money with “hard working Americans” for so many years.
samiam
3mo ago
The disconnect with that thinking is that it’s far too optimistic about the inherent goodness of people. If police aren’t going to stop riots, how did these people think the riots were going to not happen? Larry Niven touches on this in his classic story Cloak of Anarchy.
samiam
3mo ago
I had a history teacher who voted for the other guy and remembered the day JFK was assassinated. His response was this “Yeah, I voted for Nixon (i.e. the other guy), but when I heard a president of the United State was murdered, it was shocking. It was in no way, shape, or form OK to kill someone over politics.”
The way the left has been straight up dancing on Charlie Kirk’s grave would had been unthinkable back in 1963.
samiam
3mo ago
If the blue tribe only wanted protests and no riots, why did they cancel David Shor for tweeting “Post-MLK-assasination race riots reduced Democratic vote share in surrounding counties by 2%, which was enough to tip the 1968 election to Nixon. Non-violent protests increase Dem vote”?
samiam
3mo ago
Not really evidence, but as the public started to learn who Robinson was (before finding out he was gay with a biological male partner) Reddit claimed he was right wing because his family is right wing.
Now that we know Robinson killed Kirk because Robinson saw Kirk as homophobic, causing this to be a left-wing motivated killing, that theory no longer holds water. Not that Reddit posters care about the truth, but that’s another story for another day.
samiam
3mo ago
In your view, was the right-wing reaction then comparable to the left-wing reaction we saw with Kirk, in terms of scale or significance or whatever axes seemed relevant to you?
I was not there, but here’s some examples of the reaction on the right to Ryan Carson: The Voice of Thy Brother’s Blood - REVEALED: Murdered leftist activist Ryan Carson has history of celebrating death, violence towards conservatives
I will leave it up to the reader whether this is comparable to the reaction on the left to Charlie Kirk’s death, such as this article: The World Is a Better Place Without Charlie Kirk In It
samiam
3mo ago
This is a version of the Prisoner’s dilemma where if one side allows free speech, but the other doesn’t, the side that opposes free speech will win. So, if one side starts opposing free speech, that forces the other side to also oppose free speech, or they will lose.
I think the question here is this: Is the cancellation of people on the left who celebrated Charlie Kirk’s death (or, likewise, bad mouthed him just after he died) any more justified than the cancellations of people during the 2020 George Floyd protests?
Sure, the red tribe will think the cancellations of people in the blue tribe is completely justified, while the cancellations of anyone in the red tribe are immoral. And the blue tribe will only think people in the red tribe should be cancelled. But is that what is going on here?
This series of cancellations post-Charlie Kirk come off as different than the cancel culture we had in 2020. Back then, David Shor was cancelled for wanting to reduce violence. This time around, people are being cancelled (losing their jobs, being placed on administrative leave, etc.) for encouraging violence, as per https://archive.ph/1VUK1
Actually, I believe in two levels of standards of evidence:
I believe in a low bar of evidence when giving people emotional support and guidance. The Bible is reliable in so much as it gives me comfort or allows me to make a point which emotionally comforts someone.
I believe in a very high bar of evidence when the Bible is used as a hammer to make one feel superior to another person. If someone is going to use the Bible to say something like, for example, that Mormons are all going to Hell, I’m going to bring out the point that the Bible is so unreliable, we can’t even be sure Jesus existed. [1]
The Catholics believe the Bible is inspired and not inerrant, and it makes a lot more sense to see it as an inspired book. When we make the Bible inerrant, not only do we have to embrace things like young earth creationism, we also have to believe things like Jesus cleared the temple twice (John 2:15 vs. Matthew 21:12-13/Mark 11:15-17/Luke 19:45-48).
[1] I do believe in Jesus’s existence, and that he was God, but I don’t let those beliefs get in the way of the connection I have with my very close friends who are Muslim. Indeed, I do Muslim prayers with them and give them spiritual comfort.
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