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Some Guy writes a riveting blog which often includes extended anecdotes purportedly from his childhood and youth. Most of these mix horror, humor, pathos, and sentimentality into a compelling brew. One of his stories ends with his Dad telling him "I don’t fucking care if you’re a faggot or anything. You’re still my son and I still love you". Another is titled "My Micronesian Stepfather was a White Supremacist Amateur Elvis Impersonator". It seems unlikely that all the stories could possibly be true; if they are his is truly one of the more unlucky childhoods of anyone in the United States, and his ability to transcend it to become (what seems to be) an upstanding citizen is miraculous. But in another sense, it doesn't really matter if these stories are true: even as fiction they lose none of their power. Each of these stories could happen, and they contain a core of truth about large swaths of our society.
Some Guy seems to (cautiously and mildly) align with Jordan Peterson on the topic of Cultural Christianity: that is, the concept that even if you don't believe in God, or the Incarnation, or the Resurrection, you should still go to church and perform the outward rituals and ceremonies of the Christian religion. Christianity has, as a meme, proved itself to be pro-social, pro-growth, and pro-peace and we don't have a better replacement. Better to treat Christianity as a Chesterton Fence and embrace it even against your reason than to cast it aside and be left in a Nietzschean void.
Some Guy recently published an article in favor of Cultural Christianity. His main goal in the essay seems to be to convince sympathetic atheists to attend religious services. He calls the "obvious" objections distractions, and seems to think that many of these objections will be naturally addressed through interactions with the religious community. If he is holds orthodox Christian views (I believe he is Roman Catholic), then such questions could only be addressed truthfully in the Church; but he asks these atheists to attend synagogues and mosques as well. Perhaps he considers any religious exposure a positive step in an atheist's journey towards Christ.
In his next section of the essay on Dawkins, he reveals another glimpse into the way he thinks of Christianity. Given the question "Do you believe Jesus died for our sins?", he answers "Yes, but you have to begin from the position that Jesus wasn’t just some guy who arbitrarily claimed a particular title. It was as if morality itself became a person. I find the moral innovations of Jesus to be something close to the mechanical equivalent of finding a functioning F-35 jet plane in ancient Egypt. Do you know what people were like before that guy got nailed to a cross? Crack open a history book.". What an astonishing thing to say! "Jesus died for our sins" is "real" because after Jesus died, we literally sinned less! We went from barbaric and cruel to civilized and moral*.
I'm guessing that the following is a fair summary of Some Guy's theology: Some Guy believes in God. He believes God reveals himself in various ways. Humanity, in its own way, tries to comprehend the transcendent Truth, and does so imperfectly. Over time, humanity gains more and more knowledge of God. Judaism may have been the best human effort to understand God until Christianity came along; and still holds much wisdom and truth. But both Judaism and Christianity merely scratch the surface of what we can possibly understand about God and should not be treated as the final or only word on the matter. The Gospel narrative was humanity's closest interaction with the divine (even if there wasn't a literal incarnation) and the resulting Testament gives us an opaque glimpse into that divine, using the only means that imperfect and distinctly sub-divine humanity could use. "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."
I disagree with this argument, but I also find it difficult to counter. It is a much more compelling line (though superficially similar) to the "all religions contain truth" platitude that many Gen Xers felt was the best way to end uncomfortable conversations in the 90s and early 00s. I do hold that humanity can never know everything about God (mathematically, this is a certainty: He is infinite, we are finite). And much like I enjoy Some Guy's writing even if his stories are fiction, I accept that there is much wisdom and truth in parables and fiction. As Jordan Peterson might say, "there is more truth in Dostoyevsky than in a newspaper". People will fight and die for an idea much more readily than they will fight and die for a fact. Someone who "believes" in Christianity in such a way could even say the Nicene Creed with a clear conscience: while the words may not be literally true they come the closest that we can come today in capturing our understanding of God.
And yet, the Bible makes many assertions that do not countenance ambiguity. "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.". "Today you will be with me in paradise". And "For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! .... If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable." These are not the words of apostles that are struggling to describe the transcendent: these are definitive statements made by those who believed they were writing factual accounts. Without the literal Incarnation, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection, we truly do not have hope and are among all the most to be pitied.
*Empirically, I do not find this argument compelling...humanity even in "Christian" Europe remained quite "cruel" (at least by modern sensibilities). Yes, Christianity elevated the status of children, women, and the downtrodden; but wars and violence continued (and continue) to be the norm.
I think the way that Christianity works — and the only way it can work — is if Jesus is perceived as a person in your community and becomes the sole measure of social status within your community. Everything else is corollary to this, an innocent dramatic exaggeration, or mystical poetry. You can learn every theological argument about God and not have your behavior changed; you can be an atheist yet a Bible scholar; and you can be a literalist Bible-thumper who also thumps his family. There’s no shortage of Bible-expert Church-going villainy in the world. But if Jesus (as moral exemplar) is the sole measure of all social status — all social interest, all self-worth, all peer competition and ranking, all value — then this will necessarily change your behavior. You might have your behavior changed kicking and screaming, feeling like a “prisoner of Christ”, or “a servant doing his duty”, or a chained foreign soldier dragged behind Christ’s imperial victory procession, but your behavior will certainly be changed for the better if all socially-mediated reward is contingent upon the imitation of Christ.
Christianity as a spectacle-sport where you hear someone charismatic and then go about your week (unless your whim or nonexistent “self-discipline” tells you to do something) is not its original form. It is amply shown in the primary text document of the religion that participation is cult-like. The apostles give up everything to follow their teacher across the nation. They exist at times in complete poverty. It is required that the church become your new family (Mt 10:37, 12:49). Disagreements between members are mediated by the community and the unrepentant defector is thrown out. The Church Fathers write about banning Christians from ever going to the theater or attending sports. They share everything in common and wash each other’s feet. The religion is called “the Brotherhood” — women don’t speak in church, and they keep their hair covered.
Imagine you were transported into this world. You try to bring up the local gladiatorial games and an elder gently rebukes you. Someone else talks about being a Rome First voter — they are gently corrected. Someone tries to talk about all he knows about the Bible — he is immediately questioned on why he is claiming to know anything at all when the illiterate shepherd boy shows greater faith through his conduct. Now imagine that, because everyone believes they will be judged by every unproductive and idle word they speak, that the conversations are always centered on (1) encouragement of moral conduct, (2) support for one’s moral conduct, (3) genuine brotherly love, (4) that the only thing of value is whether moral conduct is pursued as shown through their social superior. You will not get any social reinforcement or friendship except if you do this, and the only thing being reinforced is if you do this. What an alien world: no distractions, no (false) status signaling, no “empty knowledge”, just pure… effective altruism? In a Christian sense that is. “Taking captive every thought for Christ”. Poetry and hymns and incense are piled onto this substantive kernel, as morale-boost, but are not the main thing.
I like Jordan Peterson as an “idea factory” — he has produced some great ideas and a lot of bad ones. But JP is more like a pastor than an exemplar: he gives a dramatic performance with little evidence to back up his way of life. He extols cleaning his room and his own room is a mess. He extols reason but he cold turkey’d his psychiatric medication, putting him in a coma in Russia. His daughter is a divorced single mom who once met up with Andrew Tate. He literally only eats steak. He yaps a lot and sells a lot of courses. He is very much not Christ-like, just to draw the comparison.
The world you write about has zero antibodies against a woke style purity spiral takeover where the infiltrators find their niche and then start gently rebuking everyone for everything because they don't adhere to the rituals in the 100% correct way, always ensuring that they are "holier than thou" for the people they are rebuking.
Then they can start the whole ostracizing process where they begin throwing out people permanently for more and more minor stuff, always ensuring that the group currently being thrown out is a relatively small minority to ensure you have the support of the "silent majority" with the implied threat that whoever speaks out against you are acting like the enemy of the day and you wouldn't want to be like them now would you? When they are eliminated you move on to the next slice and so on.
Extra care must be taken to swiftly eliminate anyone who might notice what you are doing but you are well placed here because your instrumental goal is takeover and you can dedicate all your time to it, only mimicking the true values of the group enough to keep up appearances while the people trying to stop you presumably actually believe in the values of the group and so they have to waste more of their time on that, meaning they have less time to fight you.
Eventually you'll end up in complete control of everything until the spiral gets smaller and smaller and the whole movement is effectively dead because most everyone who used to be in it now has a genuine grievance against it and now wants nothing to do with it, much like what's happening to woke right now. Plus because of your salami tactics people in different "layers" of being kicked out of the original movement now likely hate each other more too because you fed propaganda to the later layers about why the earlier layers were extremely bad people and should be shunned, so now they are less likely to come together and re coalesce into a new movement with similar goals as the initial one but without you.
Were I transported into such a world I'd try and do such a thing, not because I particularly dislike Christianity or anything, but for personal amusement (because like you said, no talking about the local gladiatorial games, so what else is there to do to keep myself busy other than try and take over the movement?) and just to prove to myself that I was capable of it. I'd give myself around 20% or so chance of being successful.
This world actually existed, and we can directly observe that it did not, in fact, play out this way. Based on my understanding of the historical record, your assessment appears to be straightforwardly wrong. Based on the closing paragraph, it seems to me that you're doing the thing where one assumes that humans become less complex, intelligent and willful the further they are from the seat of these properties, which is of course one's own self.
I replied elsewhere that I see Saul of Tarsus as being an example of things exactly playing out this way with how he subverted the religion of Jesus. Now he didn't use it to destroy Christianity entirely but instead inserted himself into an exalted place he had no business being in (and stays in to this day), but what was left after him wasn't anything like what Christianity was before him, so yes, in a way he did destroy Christianity.
...Based entirely on groundless supposition, since if you are correct then he did such a masterful job that he left no evidence behind. Or did he do just slightly bad enough a job that he fooled the subsequent two thousand years of Christians, and only you alone have penetrated the fog? Again, intellect centers on one's own brain, etc, etc.
Not just me, the idea that Saul usurped the religion of Jesus is not an uncommon one, see e.g. https://old.reddit.com/r/exchristian/comments/1666abi/has_anyone_considered_that_saul_of_tarsus_might/
If you want an academic discussion from people who don't have a bone to pick with Christianity: https://old.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/19dcox9/did_paul_hijack_christianity/
From the Christian subreddit talking about whether Paul was a false prophet: https://old.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/185zuqe/everything_paul_says_directly_contradicts/
There's a sizable contingent of people who feel that Paul hijacked the religion of Christianity and twisted it into being more permissive of different beliefs than it was before him (no need to circumcise etc.) so as to get more members in a way that a Christ who truly believed in the divine ordination of what he was teaching would not do (if God commands humanity to do XYZ, who are you as a mere human to say that not XYZ is still fine just because it makes the word of God more palatable to potential converts).
At the very least it's very hard to deny that Paul didn't really care about the life of Jesus very much, he cared more about the fact that he was crucified and resurrected an the implications of all that in his ministry.
Bud this is just weak as hell. 3 reddit posts? You know the bible is the most discussed book in existence right? You can find people talking about it from just about any angle. Saul didn't just usurp Jesus, he did it deliberately as one of the world's first secret agents, working on behalf of his Roman masters to quell the imminent Jewish uprising by introducing passive and peaceful elements. Or maybe he wasn't a secret agent, he was just a dumb loser who got tricked by the Romans into usurping James - Jesus's brother and the true head of the church.
But frankly the whole idea is just straight boring compared to some of the other bizarre ideas put forth by people over the years. Watch out for albino monks, because Saul didn't do shit, Jesus usurped the whole religion away from his wife, the holy prostitute Mary Magdalene, and stripped it of all that sex stuff because like most men he hated sex.
Just kidding, what actually happened was Jesus was actually basically days away from setting off a cascade that would quickly enslave humanity for all eternity to a collection of cosmic horrors, if only it wasn't for humanity's greatest hero ever - Judas. Nah actually Jesus secretly tricked Judas into betraying him, something Judas would never have done if not for Jesus's knowledge of neuro linguistic programming.
Because you see, Jesus was clearly an alien all along. No wait, he was a time traveller. Or whatever the equivalent of a stage magician was 2000 years ago, he faked his death entirely and spent his last days in some villa overlooking Lake Albany. Or maybe it was France. Or Ireland. Or Tennessee. Or Mexico.
I know, I know, still too fricking boring! Jesus was actually Horus the sun and his disciples were stars! That's why he's born on the summer solstice (descending to earth as the star of Bethlehem) and dies on the winter solstice (taking three days to simulate the way the sun appears to stand still during the equinox then reverse course).
Or maybe he was just a plaything of the stars and everyone's crazy cat lady aunt was right the whole time about horoscopes. After all, are we just supposed to believe it's a coincidence he has 12 disciples and there are 12 signs in the zodiac? And that it is just a crazy fluke that 2000 odd years ago marked the end of the age of Aries and the beginning of the age of Pisces and also Jesus is associated with fish (the ichthys, feeding the five thousand, James' occupation etc) while the Jews are associated with sheep (passover, Abraham etc)?
Yawn though, am I right? Horoscopes? Stars? Everyone knows Jesus was a motherfucking mushroom! Jesus Christ is actually Sumerian for amanita muscaria, if you ignore things like how words work and the fact you can't find that mushroom anywhere in the middle east! And you know the cross? Doesn't it kind of look like a mushroom if you only see it in your peripheral vision? How is that not proof the whole religion is secretly about tripping balls?
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Sure, it's trendy to go after Paul, and is frequently done by those who dislike Christianity, especially if they like the common idea of Jesus (which often does not correspond to Jesus as he actually was—he did not come to bring peace, but a sword). But yeah, secular academics, exchristians, and lefty christians all clearly have the direction of motivated reasoning going in that direction. This is especially the case for those who are precommitted to the position that Christianity couldn't possibly be, you know, true.
Anyway, Peter also sees a vision allowing the eating of unclean foods. And Paul confirms his beliefs with the apostles who were Jesus' direct followers—Galatians 2.
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