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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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You think Christianity is based? That it promotes good morals and is necessary to save Western Civilization? Too bad, you can't be a Christian if you don't believe in the literal truth of it.

This isn't how anyone but weirdos like us think about things though. The majority of good christians are just followers. For them, believing in the "literal truth" of it is not challenging, but it also isn't a profound intellectual thing. Most people don't analyze the truth claims of their religion like that. They just believe and repeat and thats it. No bigger implications.

Or you can just pretend, and sit in the pews with a Religious experience that is totally discordant with everyone else sitting around you.

In my experience, you can participate without believing in the miracles, and not have a Religious experience that is totally discordant with everyone else sitting around you. The collective effervescence is there for you whether you intellectually accept the physical reality of miracles or not. Why can't you accept it symbolically like the pagans you refer to?

The biggest flaw of Christianity ... is that Christianity requires a superstitious belief in the literal truth of claimed miracles. Is such a religion sustainable?

There are clear "game theory" advantages for social groups espousing wild shit. It represents a signal with a cost. A core selective challenge for social groups is to sort people who are actual team players from parasites. There is a minor cost associated with saying something crazy like "Jesus rose from the dead". It harms your credibility with every other group that doesn't claim that crazy thing. That cost acts as a clarifying pressure for people to either be all in on being truly members of christianity (who will cooperate with christians) as opposed to fakers who want to play both sides.

The biggest flaw of Christianity, which sets it apart from many other religions- including the pagan traditions of the fathers of their father, is that Christianity requires a superstitious belief in the literal truth of claimed miracles. Is such a religion sustainable?

I'm not at all convinced by this. Any social group with good mechanics to maintain cohesion over multiple generations is going to have systems to make signaling group identity somewhat costly. I think many groups require their members to claim that actively believe weird shit, that's not just christianity. There are plenty of miracles professed by other religions. There are other methods to make signaling group membership costly, like wearing stupid looking clothes, or ritual scarification, etc. But publicly espousing weird nonsense is a really common trait. And it looks adaptive to me.

I do feel you on it being uncomfortable because I am also a weirdo that cares about things like that. Thats part of what is so grating about modern american progressivism - that it requests me to say so much weird stuff, so I don't. But if I thought it was "based" and would lead to healthy outcomes for me and mine - I might not be as bothered.