coffee_enjoyer
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We can try to imagine a reversal of the scenario. If a pro-immigrant pundit were slain by an illegal immigrant, would conservatives make callous remarks on social media? I think so, yes. I don’t think they would “celebrate” it, but they would definitely make brusque political comments online. I recall reading comments like that after the Mollie Tibbetts story (illegal immigrant killed progressive American girl). We can’t say that it’s different because one side is objectively wrong about things, because polite politics requires that we pretend / believe that this isn’t the case.
But Charlie Kirk’s death is also unusually significant. He was a household name for anyone tuned in to youth politics. He was being groomed for leadership in the conservative movement, so it’s the equivalent of killing a political candidate (you can’t replace someone like Charlie Kirk). His death was unusually public in our uncensored social media environment, and also wildly gruesome. And his show was a symbol of open political discussion, even if only at the surface level. So there’s a sense in which Charlie Kirk’s death is more of an apolitical public tragedy. There’s the political dimension to it, but there’s also the apolitical tragedy dimension. As both parties would be happy to fire anyone who made light of the Boston Marathon Bombing after it happened, it comes down to how Kirk’s assassination ranks up against other objectively sacrosanct public tragedies. I actually don’t like him but I would say it’s something of a sacrosanct public tragedy because of the aforementioned incidental memetic properties of the event.
coffee_enjoyer
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1d ago
But if we have evidence that secular organizations in history have been as violent, dogmatic, and successful as the Taliban, then I’m not sure how you are reasoning that the Taliban’s afterlife belief has been instrumental to some particular “benefit” of their movement. Even in regards to their suicide attacks, we have plenty of cases of suicidal acts from secular organizations, like the Japanese in WWII or among the Romans. It is not sufficient to claim that the Taliban benefits from their afterlife belief just because (1) they have such a belief & (2) their movement is highly motivated, because there’s also a dozen other things that the Taliban are doing.
Surely belief in an afterlife is at play in at least some individual cases [of charity]
In some cases, sure. But I think it’s complicated by a lot. Jews give proportionately more to charity than Catholics and usually do not possess an afterlife belief. Bekkers’ “The Pursuit of Differences in Prosociality Among Identical Twins” finds that charitable donations are mediated by frequency of church attendance, with each additional visit resulting in $20 more to charity. Something noteworthy about Jewish charity is that its mediated by perceived victimhood, such that Jews who have “experienced antisemitism” donate 10x more on average to Jewish charities. This little factoid is very insightful in explaining how prosociality functions within group dynamics generally: the perceptions of injustice as a class and a common enemy propel in-group benefitting. Not only does this make sense in light of evolutionary biology, but it also makes sense in light of early Christian history, as they emphasized their victimhood, their enemy, and their common “class”. And of course this propelled Marxism too.
Give all superfluous possessions to the poor" as such isn't really a clear Christian teaching
You will not be able to find any early Christian Father who said that one can be spiritually perfect while being wealthy. Catholicism venerates those like St Francis in part because he gave all of his wealth to the poor — and his family was quite wealthy.
first off, this does happen. There are nuns and monks and religious orders and missionaries. Those all exist.
In many cases these are career decisions decided a young age. How many rich Catholics ever decide to do this? 0.1%?
you seem to think that Scripture says "be poor and you get into heaven" which isn't the case
If giving your surplus wealth to the poor instead of buying a mansion earns you a greater reward, which every Christian thinker of the first 500 years would have told you, then we should expect reasonable self-interested afterlife-believer to do this given the cost / benefit analysis. Do you disagree that giving to the poor and abstaining from worldly pleasures provides a greater reward? Do you disagree that it makes salvation more secure?
Acts 5
This narrative line begins at the end of Act 4 (as you know, chapter divisions are not original to the text). At the end of Acts 4 we read:
Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas (which means son of encouragement), a Levite, a native of Cyprus,sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet.
We learn that the true believers were of one heart and soul, did not believe their surplus was their own, and distributed to the needy from all of their profits. This same narrative continues —
But a man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property, and with his wife’s knowledge he kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only a part of it and laid it at the apostles’ feet.
The problem of Ananias is brought up as an exception to the Godly conduct which Luke had just relayed (think I accidentally wrote Paul in my last comment). Luke highlights the problem of Ananias and why he is being mentioned at all: “for himself”, “only a part”. It follows:
But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to man but to God.”When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and breathed his last.
The word “keep back” is important because it has the connotation of a moral crime in itself. This is not neutral terminology: this is the sin being called out.
ἐνοσφίσατο: may merely mean from its derivation, to set apart νόσφι. But both in LXX and N.T. it is used in a bad sense of appropriating for one’s own benefit, purloining
Now Ananias lied in doing this, but the narrative is not written in such a way that the lie is the weighty crime of Ananias. The narrative is about sharing surplus, and the emphasis is on the lack of sharing by Ananias. This section of Acts had just mentioned that none of the Christians believed that their surplus was their own. The section did not previously mention lying, neither did it mention anything about a promise or oath that the Christians made with respect to charity, neither did it mention that Ananias would have obtained some social benefit from the completed charity. You will find no saying among the early Christians that lying about how much you make deserves death. But we do find such sayings against greed among the early Christians. We can look at the Didache, one of the oldest Christian texts:
The way of death is this: […] greed […] loving worthless things […] not having mercy on the poor […] turning away from the needy […] advocates of the rich
If you have gained something through your work, give it away as a ransom for your sins. Do not hesitate to give, nor complain when you give, for you know the good paymaster of your reward. Do not turn away from anyone who is in need, but share everything with your your brother, and do not say that anything is your own. For if you all share in the heavenly things, how much more in earthly things?
Now certainly, people can believe whatever they want about God and religion. But But I think that believers of new age thought, those who believe in “the righteous rich”, should have the honor to not lie about what they believe. Why corrupt the name of Christ? Because the religion of Jesus and his first followers is very beautiful and pristine, and it’s all in plain language. If someone wants to take some aspects of Christ’s teachings and conform them to fit their own base instincts, that’s in their right, but I wish they wouldn’t claim to actually follow Christ, because that’s not accepted in the actual religion. It’s some other thing. We have the primary documents! We know what was taught and what was practiced.
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
Jesus completed our understanding of things and we now know not to store out treasure on earth.
coffee_enjoyer
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2d ago
What does “clearly devoted Christian” mean here? Did he advocate for everyone to give their surplus to the poor? Did he sell his guns and pledge non-violence? Did he apply pressure to safeguard civilian casualties in the wars we fund? With his 12 million net worth and four homes, including a 6 million dollar mansion, I can find no evidence that he ever made a personal donation of any kind. I just searched his 70k tweet account and he never once made any comment about the suffering of civilians or children in Gaza, though just recently he had a rabbi come on his show to claim there is definitely no one starving.
coffee_enjoyer
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2d ago
Doing a quick 4plebs search, the “notices bulge” phrase is heavily overrepresented in the Ukrainian war threads but seldom appears elsewhere (where “bulges” appear on the frontlines map). I haven’t seen this copypasta in the wild in a very long time, so I found it extremely odd that he would put it on his gun. It’s not exactly a pro-trans message, and nothing else indicates that transgenderism had a role here, and he doesn’t appear to have dysphoria. The spooks who engage in the Ukraine/Russia threads often don’t have a tasteful grasp of how to use copypastas or which have fallen out of fashion, so I wonder if he picked this up in his online participation in pro-Ukrainian / anti-Russian spaces. This would make sense given his other interests: an antifascist song, Helldivers, an anti-fascist message. I’m not implying that he was groomed by the Feds, but I would bet my money that he was in some online ecosystem where fascism was demonized and which Feds participated in.
Does anyone here recall seeing a “notices bulge” meme in the wild lately? Do modern trans people use it?
coffee_enjoyer
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2d ago
There are a few reasons why the conflict isn’t a black and white issue: that it began decades ago with clearly illegal acts like the theft of sovereign land in the West Bank and the killing of civilians and the detainment of Palestinians without due process; the question of proportionality, eg that 9/11 did not morally permit America to destroy every dwelling in the regions of the ME with Islamist leanings; and finally that the evidence suggests Hamas intended to take most of the civilians hostage, but Israel blew up their own civilians being transported back in cars by Hamas in accordance with their military doctrine known as the Hannibal Directive.
Regarding the aforementioned doctrine, I don’t know why it is never brought up, but wikipedia has a decent section on it. If 70 cars were destroyed returning to Gaza, then if each car was maximally filled with hostages, that’s at least 420 civilians. But it’s also mentioned that hundreds of burned out cars were buried, so this may involve 1000 civilians. Some unspecified number of Israeli civilians were killed by Israeli helicopters at the festival; some unspecified number of civilians in cars were shot by tanks, and then by an unmanned assault drone; and then some unspecified number of homes filled with civilians were fired upon by Israelis, eg in Kibbutz Be'eri by a tank crew.
Australia's ABC News covers the use of the Hannibal Directive.[390] The report quotes former Israeli officer, Air Force Colonel Nof Erez as saying: "This was a mass Hannibal. It was tons and tons of openings in the fence, and thousands of people in every type of vehicle, some with hostages and some without." The report also notes Tank officers confirming their interpretation of the Directive, firing on vehicles returning to Gaza, potentially with Israelis on board
As a thought experiment, we can paint the conflict as black and white in the other direction: a people under oppression and persecution for decades attempted to gather hostages to free themselves through negotiation, but the oppressive country slew their own civilians to prevent this from happening, and then proceeded to launch a genocidal war. But this would similarly lack the complexity with which adults should approach difficult issues.
coffee_enjoyer
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3d ago
Yes, I require independent corroboration for the allegations of the Israeli government, because they have a history of manipulating and lying to my country, like when they planned to bomb Americans and blame it on Arabs during the Lavon Affair, or when they posed as CIA agents to pay terrorists to kill Iranian civilians in the Bush era, or when they tried to convince us that their geopolitical foe was building nuclear weapons every year since Reagan. Or when the head of Mossad threatened the family of the ICC prosecutor. “Let a respected American journalist interview the family” is the tiniest of asks when we’re talking about a story of this magnitude.
Aguilar's original claim that, of the 2,000+ Palestinian civilians shot dead by the IDF at aid centres, not a single one of them was caught on video
Aguilar provided a video of the soldiers shooting into the crowd, then cheering and saying “I think you hit one”. Did you watch it? Or do you mean why he didn’t record corpses? Do you think it could be because, when your friend or even a stranger is shot in front of you, you don’t bring the guy over to the one who shot you, but to the nearest hospital? This is why the hospitals have reported on the dead they receive from the aid distribution site. But the statements of doctors have always been ignored since the start of the conflict, even when they’re the most respected in their specialty and crying in a sworn testimony to the House of Parliament.
coffee_enjoyer
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3d ago
The “Left” is not a centralized entity, it is a memetic ecosystem, so violence would not be effective. You can put your anger toward creating a cultural ecosystem with robust social reinforcement and allegiance rituals toward the right ideology, and then organize sophisticated propaganda operations to persuade the mainstream public. That would be more effective and more fun. But that’s less dramatic than SamHydePosting.
The left seems to believe the situation is sufficiently dire as to justify violence
The 50 million or whatever Leftists in America don’t feel that way. Like two people do. There’s this guy and then Luigi Mangione. Maybe someone I’m missing but too lazy to google. It’s 0.0001% of people. Then there are people who post online as catharsis but will never do anything ever. By the way, killing Charlie Kirk harms Leftism more than it harms conservatives. Kirk was aging out of his role as youth debate bro and now he’s an incredible martyr for the exact ideology he promoted (the virtue of free speech). The killer made hundreds of thousands of liberal chicks pity Charlie Kirk and his family.
coffee_enjoyer
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4d ago
I think you meant to post this in the main thread.
I’m not yet convinced that Israel is being truthful here. No journalist has met this boy in person and it’s been a week since the story was published. Fox News is using weasel words when they report how they obtained the video, saying things like “answered questions provided by Fox News Digital through a GHF translator” and “according to a translation verified by Fox News Digital”. In other words, no one from Fox News got to meet the boy and his family, which begs the question of why Israel wouldn’t even let their most stalwart defender interview the boy. The only other outlet that has received a video of the boy is Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire.
I would like to see a reliable journalist interview the boy and his family, first to see if it’s real (faking a video is a fun Saturday afternoon project for Mossad) and second to ask them about their experiences at the aid distribution site. It’s bewildering that they wouldn’t let a single journalist see this kid, given that the story of Abdul has been published on every major news channel and newspaper.
coffee_enjoyer
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4d ago
What is the clear evidence that an afterlife belief is instrumental? Afghanistan of the 90s and before was possibly the most theistic country in the world, and all Muslims believe in an afterlife. Bacha Bazi is an Afghan costume that coexisted alongside Islamic belief for a millennia until the Taliban banned it.
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!)
This argument falls short because the Christians who do not have dependents also don’t give all superfluous possessions to the poor, neither do the wealthy Christians with dependents usually live austerely after providing for their relatives.
One need only read the writings of first century Christians
I grant this point to a degree, but I don’t think we really know how many Christians sincerely gave all their surplus to the poor, as we lack records here. But if you believe Acts then the Apostles shared everything in common, and we see condemnation in the Church Fathers about nearly every conspicuous expression of wealth, even rings.
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!)
Alcohol is a physiological addiction. If students can live in poverty for four years with the hope that they will later receive a great reward, then it should follow that those who believe in the greatest reward imaginable for all of eternity should be able to put up with a few decades of poverty. I’m at a loss for why this wouldn’t happen unless the belief is not quite fully believed. If this life is a light and momentary affliction, a simple trial for the real important joy of heaven, why is almost no one pursuing the full reward? Or, if a greater reward for saints is no longer believed, why aren’t they at least super-securing their salvation with fear and trembling? As again, if we really had the Mr Beast contract offering 10 billion dollars for a year in poverty, I think most people would do it. The natural explanation here is that this isn’t really believed, not that in the sense that a belief is normally believed; it hasn’t actually convinced us, and we required something more to cajole us morally. I think we can feel that we hold beliefs without truly holding them, especially if the belief is as socially reinforced as the dogmas of a religion.
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.
We also see this warning in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus and Luke 12:33.
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.)
Well, in Acts 4-5 we find: “the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common […] there was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need”. Then we read the story of Ananias, who didn’t give the church all of his profit, and he died after Paul’s rebuke. Then the wife died after Paul’s rebuke.
coffee_enjoyer
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4d ago
The other groups in Afghanistan were not nominally Islamic, they were all practicing Muslims. The Taliban succeeded not because of a belief in the afterlife, which is shared by all Afghans, but because they are an extremist brotherhood oriented around a moral ideal that they are constantly reinforcing to the exclusion of everything else literally all the time. The Bolsheviks had no belief in an afterlife, yet they completely defeated the Orthodox Christians who had such a belief. Same re the French revolutionaries. Did the Greeks and Romans lack courage in battle? Or the North Vietnamese, or the North Koreans? Or the Japanese — who fought more courageously than the Japanese? There’s no clear evidence that an afterlife is instrumental here.
I think “under certain circumstances Christianity actually condemns selling everything to the poor” is an enormous cop-out. But instead of getting into the weeds with whether poverty is literally a mark of perfection, I’ll say that I know a lot of Christians and they all enjoy your typical American consumer activity and wasteful purchases. I know one particularly prominent Catholic family and they have enormous mansions and nice cars. How is it that Warren Buffet lives more frugally than a major Catholic figure who sits in the front row at Papal visits? 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.
This famously does happen, though
As a 1 in 200 million chance? It’s famously unusual.
coffee_enjoyer
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5d ago
For at least half of these, a scientist could point to real data, but they misinterpreted or fudged the data. That’s different than believing the claims of supernatural religion, which do not require a scientific intermediary for interpretation. Why would it be gullible to believe in “growth mindset” if there are studies on it, but then later studies disproved it? The issue here is that the common person is led to believe in the findings of popular science, because schools teach that.
If I make a claim like “prayer works” or “God does miracles”, even someone with a very low IQ can tell that prayer does not work as claimed, and that miracles appear to have stopped around the same time that scientific instruments and recording came along. The issue of superstition is an enormous stumbling block that prevents tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of people, from ever considering religious activity. Because they don’t like to be tricked. And trust in science similarly suffers when people realize they are tricked by science. But trust in reasoning doesn’t normally suffer.
coffee_enjoyer
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5d ago
That’s not quite it. He asked what he should do to receive eternal life and be perfect. When he was unable to do this, Jesus replied
Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God
and
everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life
Who would refuse this offer? A hundredfold of everything you give up, for eternal life?
Perhaps the most literal example was st Francis of Assisi, who founded a religious order.
St Francis began to live in poverty five years before his religious order was authorized. St Francis actually took Jesus at his word and believed in the promises, which was as rare then as it is now.
coffee_enjoyer
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5d ago
Sure, but the phoenix and the pelican in question are pretty crazy creatures to believe in. If they believed these creatures existed based on testimony, and believed it for centuries, then they had a default level of gullibility that has been lost since the advent of science. You can no longer say “this prophet says so” or “this magical creature shows that resurrection is possible” or “the Greek Oracles prophecied the coming of Christ” or “500 people say they saw resurrected Jesus” and expect smart people to believe it. Especially when they now have different competing faiths making claims of the exact same quality. If these intellectuals were so gullible, we can only imagine how gullible the common folk were.
modern Americans believe in stuff like poltergeists
If I were asked on a poll if I believe in ghosts there’s a fair chance I’d say yes for the hell of it. I don’t think smart people really believe in ghosts outside of tricks of the mind. I think if a smart American were consistently haunted by a ghost, he would book a visit with a psychiatrist. He probably wouldn’t be telling his coworkers about the ghost he hangs out with every night. Although maybe it would help on dating apps for picking up goth chicks.
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
No religion emphasizes eternal life more than Islam. Do you think their constant obsession with the rewards of the next life have aided their cooperation and virtue? I imagine not. I think the reason that the 20th century social movements failed is that the clung to the wrong moral focus. They missed the mark by a lot. They needed to focus on something which induces epistemic humility, local sphere of concern, and selflessness.
charity
That’s tangential to my main point. I know religious people give more to charity. This is one of the reasons religion should never go away. (Although I find collection baskets extremely evil, subtly shaming the poor). 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? This is like Mr Beast giving you a contract saying, “sell everything, spend a week begging for alms, and I’ll give you 100 million dollars”. Everyone would do this, surely. So why aren’t any Christians doing the eternal cosmic 100% assured Mr Beast challenge? I know I would if I really believed it. And there are Hindus who do this with their gods and traditions! Do the Hindus have more faith in their demons than the Christian has faith in the True God? I would like to think that there’s something else at play here, a deeper psychology.
there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life
If I believed this, I would sell everything to go preach Christianity to Muslims in the most remote corners of the Middle East. If they kill me, it only expedites my paradise. 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. It’s not because they’re cowards or anything, it’s just that the more reasonable part of them prevents their “put on social identity” from really believing in the claims. IMO.
coffee_enjoyer
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5d ago
My point was that conservatives eagerly give up all personal autonomy in the service of their nation (plus benefits), and given that they are gullible, you hardly need sophisticated argumentation to inform them the truth: America is a passing vanity that all will forget, their true citizenship is in God’s Kingdom, they are currently part of the greatest war in history, and they must suffer alongside their Commander Christ, equipping holy armor every morning and brandishing a spiritual weapon. They are compelled to believe this if they claim to follow Christ as all this is found in the Epistles.
Also, I just don’t understand the autonomy meme. In what world is autonomy a thing? We all have to spend our daylight working for someone: even being a business owner simply means you are more indebted to others. If anyone wants more autonomy, ie more free time and freedom from pressing physical and social needs, then they should earnestly pursue a utopian social ecosystem in which everyone works less and can expediently satisfy their basic needs. There is no other substantive meaning behind “autonomy”.
He can retain all titles, just understood in a different sense than the literal. The power of his love and wisdom makes him king of kings; his obedience and piety made him the son of God; his all-importance makes him Lord; and so forth. You do not have to read the gospel in a literal lense, in fact the earliest interpretations find non-literal meanings in every literal detail (eg the Samaritan woman’s five husbands refer to the five books of the Torah; the paralytic refers to spiritual paralysis).
If the gospel is a narrative of stories which indicate something deeper than the literal, then this makes it all the more the Word of God. It doesn’t make it untrue. Is it untrue that Christ cured the blind? But his wisdom has formed in mankind a vision of our ultimate altruistic priorities, billions of people have been cured of emotional or spiritual blindness from his life, and even the very Body of Christ today heals thousands of blind people yearly through charitable organizations. Is this less miraculous than a magical power? Seems pretty miraculous to me.
Judged purely by his personality characteristics and by the very limited record of his non-supernatural deeds, he does not come off as some great hero
Teaching the essence of moral wisdom while being hunted down by the leaders of your own nation is pretty heroic to me. Even just defeating the temptation to be pseudo intellectual and verbose is an act of heroism for intellectuals. So for a person who spent his life gaining wisdom to simplify his learning in digestible parables with incredible metaphorical import while living in poverty and genuinely seeking to improve the world? That’s more miraculous than rising from the dead. And doing all of this faced with the world’s worst torture, with devotion and obedience and love? I can’t think of a better hero.
nor even a stellar lifestyle role model
I don’t think Christ is supposed to be a role model for a lifestyle in that sense, but instead his inner life (spirit) is supposed to be imitated, and in regards to moral and wellbeing concerns. The ability to “carry one’s cross daily” is about inner life. Seeking the Kingdom of God is about inner life, perhaps. The inner life of Christ, namely the love and obedience and goodwill, is universally important. You can be a Christian and all the while imitate the fitness mindset of David Goggins. But the Christian part of you should drive your conscience and you should remember that you don’t want to be like Goggins in any area outside the gym.
that he was an example, among others, of a life path worth emulating
I think there’s cause to believe that, even devoid of the supernatural, a Christ-focused community is going to be greater than a community focused on any other figure. This is because civilization is driven by cooperation, and everything about Christ promotes cooperation, from the actual wisdom to the empathy of the cross to the fear of being a Judas or Pilate or Pharisee. This is a selfless hero who didn’t seek glory (or rather, he sought it only from God)* and simply desired the substantive good of Mankind. By absorbing the meaning of his story you can be a better unit of human, to put it in the driest way possible.
coffee_enjoyer
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5d 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”. 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 stars overhead were thought to be divine or angelic intelligences (as we see reflected in James 1:17 and 2 Peter 2:10-11). And it was a conviction common to a good many pagans and Jews alike that the ultimate destiny of great or especially righteous souls was to be elevated into the heavens to shine as stars (as we see in Daniel 12:3 and Wisdom 3:7, and as may be hinted at in 1 Corinthians 15:30-41)
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.
There existed, long before this time, certain men more ancient than all those who are esteemed philosophers, both righteous and beloved by God, who spoke by the Divine Spirit, and foretold events which would take place, and which are now taking place. They are called prophets. These alone both saw and announced the truth to men [...] For they did not use demonstration in their treatises, seeing that they were witnesses to the truth above all demonstration, and worthy of belief; and those events which have happened, and those which are happening, compel you to assent to the utterances made by them […] for these things cannot be perceived or understood by all, but only by the man to whom God and His Christ have imparted wisdom.
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.
Christ arguably tends to rain on utopian parades in favor of, well, the supernatural gift of everlasting life
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.
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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8d 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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17d 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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17d 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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17d 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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20d 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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22d 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.
…Of course. Charlie Kirk would still be alive today if America had strict gun control. There’s only a tiny chance that this terminally online dude would be able to acquire an illegal firearm in Utah, and still only a tiny chance that he would successfully assassinate him through some other means. The gun is a causal factor in his death, in the same way open borders is a causal factor in the illegal immigrant example. In both cases, the victim reasonably believes that policy decision effects a greater good which supersedes the risks and harms.
I of course totally disagree that we should care about illegal immigrants and pretty much agree that we should have guns, but that’s opinion.
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