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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   34426 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 15, 2025

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Returning to the “right-wing violence is more common than left-wing violence” topic, I’ve been paying attention to how it’s covered in mainstream tech-adjacent media. I’ve been reading Ars Technica for years — I loved John Siracusa’s old macOS deep dives — but the tone of their reporting has shifted. A lot of it feels like “heckin science!” coverage: snarky debunkings of RFK Jr., endless FCC drama framed as “look at the dumb Republicans.” Earlier this year, they had weeks of coverage about a Texas measles outbreak, written with the same undertone. I visit Ars because I love technology and will always have a bone to pick with vox-owned The Verge becoming yet another HuffPost 10 years ago (I remember when it was called This is My Next, a blog run by Engadget editors who left after a Verizon takeover).

What surprised me was their decision to wade into the Charlie Kirk assassination. While it’s syndicated from another publication, it is not a technology story. The study they cited was already making the rounds, but the comment section is so obnoxiously hard-left. According to media bias trackers, Ars is still rated “highly credible” and “nonpartisan.”

Yet the style itself has gotten more sneering. I’d really urge you to look at the comment section of this article. Very, very ingroupy, more so than Reddit even. https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/09/right-wing-political-violence-is-more-frequent-deadly-than-left-wing-violence/

With the Kirk shooting, the unwillingness to look inward is striking. No one on the left seems interested in the object-level reading of what happened. There’s some truth to the idea that some were more upset about Jimmy Kimmel being fired than about a historic political assassination.

Also the implication behind saying right wing violence is more frequent than left wing violence is that the right wing needs to get its house in order too. But I’m sure not seeing many on the left besides Gavin Newsom (cynically, probably) try to tell lefties that real fascism isn’t imminent (which, if it were true, would justify resistance, partisan violence). Joe Biden famously ramped up scrutiny of far right extremists based on the Charlottesville march. Would you not expect some authoritarianism if the shoe was on the other foot?

Trump’s been pretty tepid, especially considering he had an attempt on his life and less than a year later, a supporter of his is gunned down. If violence escalates (and based on the violence only over the last year, that is likely to happen), what do they expect him to do? What would a democrat president do? Would it be any less ‘fascistic’? We’re literally dealing with high profile, public murders and assassinations. Pretty scary and there are much more authoritarian ways Trump could have taken this.

We’ve had pretty authoritarian presidents before. Not a huge deal and not historic. Nobody is going to cross the rubicon. We’ve had presidents in living memory round up ethnicities and put them into camps for monitoring. Trump is, in reality, a lib that gets spooked and backs off on anything whenever the market looks bad. He probably does have some tyrant tendencies but he’s still an elected official who won his way into office. Ultimately the left needs to come to terms with their rhetoric blowing things out of proportion.

Do you remember the net neutrality war of the 2010s? Ajit Pai got bomb threats because people were so convinced it was the end of the world to deregulate isps or something stupid like that. Thats why suddenly jumping to free speech arguments and this right wing violence study feels more like an attempt to rile people up than earnest reporting on the context around the violence that just happened.

Psychologically, it feels like the left is struggling with wanting to be the side “on the right side of history,” and at the same time, knowing their rhetoric and zealotry may be feeding into radicalism.

Returning to the “right-wing violence is more common than left-wing violence” topic, I’ve been paying attention to how it’s covered in mainstream tech-adjacent media.

I think it is defined quite poorly. Most media cite this study from Cato institute. Just look at the entry for 2020: four deaths by rightwingers and 1 death by leftwinger. So if you did not know, the 2020 BLM summer of love year was actually more violent from the right by factor of 4.

I quit reading Ars Technica when they banned me for roasting them for keeping an open pedophile on staff until he was arrested by the FBI in their "Republicans Pounce" defensive review of Cuties. I think all I said was "What, was Peter Bright not available to review this?" I don't recall exactly and can't look it up because it's been deleted. The degree to which it's devolved into senseless resistance slop was evident during Trump's first term.

for me, it was when they published the Damore memo with all the citations removed and almost nobody in the comment section questioned why (fuck you Jango The Blue Fox)

I’ve been reading Ars Technica for years — I loved John Siracusa’s old macOS deep dives — but the tone of their reporting has shifted. A lot of it feels like “heckin science!” coverage

(snip)

Funny, it seems like a decade ago that I myself was Noticing that Ars was following the path of Slashdot and no longer worth a read. Shame, too, they were one of the good ones BITD; I learned a lot from Jon Stokes' articles there.

If violence escalates (and based on the violence only over the last year, that is likely to happen), what do they expect him to do? What would a democrat president do? Would it be any less ‘fascistic’?

I think if Trump did something like with colors reversed

“I knew Charlie, and I admired his passion and commitment to debate. His senseless murder is a reminder of how important it is for all of us, across the political spectrum, to foster genuine discourse on issues that deeply affect us all without resorting to political violence.”

“The best way to honor Charlie’s memory is to continue his work: engage with each other, across ideology, through spirited discourse. In a democracy, ideas are tested through words and good-faith debate — never through violence.”

Yeah, that would be great, even if cynical

that real fascism isn’t imminent (which, if it were true, would justify resistance, partisan violence)

That seems non-trivial. It's certainly the assumption of many on the left, but that needn't mean it actually logically follows. Very plausibly, you still shouldn't do assassinations even if American fascism is a very direct threat - for all sorts of reasons from the practical to the ethical.

The crux would be if the total utility with the intervention would be higher than without the intervention.

This depends on a lot of things. How bad the fascism would get, there is a difference between Franco and Hitler. How effective the murder would be in disrupting the fascist organization. (Part of coup-proofing your organization is that you do not have an obvious second-in-command who will just take over for you.) How the normalization of assassinations will affect politics long-term.

Of course, unless you are a time traveler going back to 1930 to kill Hitler, there is a lot of epistemic uncertainty about what your intervention will do, precisely, so it might be worth it to err on the side of caution.

For the US, I do not see MAGA approaching the point of no return. They might gerrymander a bit more to gain a few more seats in the mid-terms, but they will not effectively outlaw the Democratic party. As long as MAGA can be defeated at the ballot box, going for the cartridge box instead it total bonkers.

If real fascism is in the offing, you should oppose it effectively - which doesn't necessarily mean violently. The moral imperative to be effective is as strong as the moral imperative to oppose fascism in the first place. Empirically, disorganised political violence in a democracy is an ineffective tactic.

I 100% agree. Just thinking the connection is there for left wing extremists to cling onto in the same way some right wing lunatic might justify their actions through X belief system.

In popular movies, anticolonialist writing, and Hasan streams, progressives are told violence against an oppressor is de facto justified and moral. And it’s easier to think of someone like Charlie Kirk as an oppressor if you think he’s spreading ‘hate’.

That’s the key part of this I think. Crazy people on the left think they’re on the right side of history and that ends justify the means. I think it is a good basic explanation for why the Charlie Kirk shooting happened, most likely.

Even some of the posts on 'Charlie was essentially violent since he argued with an intent to win against left-wing ideals, which may reduce the likelihood of obvious true ethical things that I believe happening and therefore equates to violence'. Like the sense of 'I have a position but others are valid seems to have been washed out into a super black-white good v evil dichotomy'

A godless liberal goes to church

I knew in advance that my frustration with the godless progressive milieu that did everything but (ok, not but) cheer a horrifying political assassination, would be unlikely to be assuaged by attending my local Unitarian church's sunday service, but since I had read it described as the most intellectual church, and because of its sensibility towards Christ's (obvious lack of) resurrection, I felt like it would be the most likely out of the various sects to be a spiritual home for me.

I had no idea how bad it is in there.

The introductory speaker began the service reading very slowly and deliberately through various housekeeping items in a kind of "this is why boys in school have ADD" teacher voice. It was revealed that this was a special "all ages" day that they do every month. Could this be why she was reading to us in a voice like we were all babies, or is she always like this, I wondered. The last thing she did before passing the mic was asking us all to stand up and get the wiggles out.

The choir then got up and sang "Liberty and Justice for all" by Brandon Williams. Could this be an old Whiggish protestant church song, I wondered. But as it started "We are frightened... we are angry... we are rising..." which came across as a bit modern to me.

Then they sit down and they are followed by some ceremony to induct new people to serve as some kind of counselor role, which involves some vow reading that takes a while. Then they sit down and the choir gets up again, to sing "One Foot/Lead With Love" by Melanie DeMore which again contains words about being "scared," but it's a bit catchier than the first song.

Then they go sit down and now the two apparent church leaders say they are going to tell us a "story." Very slowly and deliberately they read out a baby story about two brothers trying to find God. They go up to the mountains, but they don't see God there...

I have to leave. The whole experience has felt like being Dracula confronted with a crucifix. Every cell in my brain screaming to get out of this holy place. Exiting the door I'm confronted with pouring down rain on a street with cars going by and I'm struck by the beauty and calm. THIS is where God is, is the thought that occurs to me.

So now my thought is, culturally, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!? How is THAT what church is? Jesus Christ! How fucking horrible was all that? I could not believe only 30 minutes had passed.

I looked up the two choir songs and they are both basically anti-Trump protest songs written in 2016/17. Why are we singing about how scared we are? Why don't we fucking man up?

Why in every aspect is this a church for babies? Where even the children are bored by their pandering to them?

I was raised as a godless liberal but I had an idea that if things felt really dire and miserable, or if I felt like I needed God for whatever reason, any one of these places would at least do a serviceable job of keeping me connected. Holy hell was I wrong, there are some fucking bad, miserable churches.

I'm from a traditionally AUA family. Always think about writing about it, never seem to find the time.

I left in the '90s, so I don't know if what @MayorofOysterville said is true about the UUs, but I can mostly agree with it about other old school liberal orgs:

Basically Boomer liberal organizations were actually liberal and boomer liberals did believe in principles such as free speech. However, they lacked the antibodies to deal with hardcore woke cadre because they could easily be manipulated by being called racist and out of touch with the youth.

My parents are Depression / war babies rather than Boomers. And I think I've said it before on here, but yeah I was raised that freedom of speech was our most important principle as liberals.

But UUs also had a previous problem that I grew up watching, where the uh "old believers" ;) were, basically, swamped by all the ex-other-denoms coming in in the '70s and '80s. It's hard to find the time to try to write about it though....

The strangest conclusion one can draw from these five crucial minutes of that shortest day--though it would have been perfectly clear, had one bothered to read the signs--is the fact that the refugee horde seemed so blithely unaware that this land it was about to make its own could possibly belong to others already....

all those determined to see it through to the end come pouring from the villas, and cottages, and gardens, down to the beach...to welcome the refugees and guide their first steps. They will. They must. For their own self- fulfillment. Life is good. Life is love, and all men are brothers....

Panama Ranger scans the surging mob, almost close enough to touch him, trying to find a smiling face, a glance to grasp the friendship in his eyes. But he looks and looks. No smile meets his. No one even seems to see him.... He's finally seen the light. "They don't need me," he murmurs. "They'll just take what they please. I can’t give them a thing ..."

As for his pals, they disappeared too, absorbed and digested in much the same way... Only a handful were adopted, as it were, yet lots of them did their damnedest to be helpful... But they soon got discouraged. Though the horde often listened and took their good advice...they no sooner gave it than they felt themselves rejected. The brightest among them were quick to understand: the more helpful they were, indispensable in fact, the more hateful they became.... No one wants to have to remember the masters and mentors from the opulent past. They're just in the way.

You could say: they didn't seem to join thinking they were you know joining a church. They seemed to join thinking "Here's what I can call myself while doing whatever the hell I want." From my biased perspective.

And then before that there was the AUA-Universalist merger. (Which arguably opened the door for the problems I saw growing up...but both--the merger and the problems--could just as easily be attributed to the times.)

And then there's the snide attitude most people here take to Unitarians. I would suggest that people apply the "write like everyone is reading (including Unitarians)" rule. And of course it's hard to write about people you don't know. But then that applies to me too these days wrt the UUs.

My parents haven't attended a church since the '90s. They don't like the one where I grew up, they don't like the one where they now live. They have a lot of Congregationalist friends, so they're thinking of joining their local Congregationalist church. (The AUA was formed by Congregationalists who were dissatisfied with Calvinism. Problem: So are my folks...)

The AUA was not "created to be a liberal denomination of [implied by the quotes: fake] 'Christianity.'"

To get a better understanding of what it was for, I suggest reading Harriet Beecher Stowe's roman a clef Oldtown Folks (Ellery Davenport is basically Aaron Burr, except that he dies instead of Hamilton). Guess I could summarize as: It was invented by and for a certain type of person, who (at least in a Christian context) needed it. It does not work well for anyone else.

So, I've been going to Catholic mass about 6 months now with my family. I guess I've spoken before about having belief fatigue, and being willing just go "fuck it" and believe whatever they tell me in Church for the first time at the ripe age of 40+. I've found most of the selected readings and hymns (which are standardized) fairly illustrative of the human condition and/or appropriately praiseworthy of a divine creator that can save your soul. One day the hymns even hit me in just the right way to bring me to tears. The homilies have been good, and entirely about being a better person, and doing works to make the world a better place. They don't point fingers or lay blame, except the exhort each and every one of us to be better. Kinder, more patient, more proactive to help others. I've gotten better at following along with the lord's prayer, the creed and the penitential act. I still can't follow along when they bust out Gloria or Holy Holy Holy.

It's been good for me, and for my family and I highly recommend it.

I know a woman well who's is in her 60s and very much a NYT liberal. She attends a Unitarian derived Church and even she invariably finds the speakers there to be some combination preachy, dry, up their own asses, or just plain cringe. I suspect that when the thing that unites you is politics more so than religion, that religion will inevitability appear fake, because it is.

You quite literally went to the worst denomination possible. Unitarians aren't even Christians under most traditional definitions, as they reject the Trinity.

The whole Unitarian movement has always been very liberal. They basically were created to be a liberal denomination of "Christianity".

As a Catholic, if you're interested in engaging intellectually with Christianity, look into a welcoming, conserative Catholic parish. Parishes associated with cathedrals are your best bet. No shade to our Protestant brothers, but Catholics have the longest and most robust intellectual tradition.

I do think those traditional definitions are a bit impractical though. Everyone refers to Arianism as Arian Christianity. And it seems really hard to define a protestant church which uses the the Biblical canon, the traditional hymns, a normal communion as non Christian. I get that Unitarian Universalists aren't that, but any outside observer who went to one of those Hungarian unitarian churches would likely call them Christian.

Are there even any churches that aren't progressivism lite and don't follow the Trinitarian thing? ( I have my own personal gripes with the whole trinitarian concept, I guess I'm not really a "christian" as I don't consider Christ to be God himeself.)

There is a Filipino Church called Iglesia ni Christo which denies the trinity. They are fairly large 2.5 million members and do have US churches so you could check them out. Their chief pastor met with Duterte and they are mostly based in the Philippines so I highly doubt they are woke.

Yes. Oneness Pentecostals deny the trinity and are rarely progressive. Jehovahs witnesses also.

Yeah, they're called Islam and Mormons the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

I'm only half joking. And Mormon theology is really wack. Interestingly when Islam first emerged, the original view of Christendom was it was a heresy, not a distinct religion.

Some Unitarians in eastern Europe (Hungary) might be more conservative, I don't know.

Other major contemporary (socially) conservative non-Trinitarians (if not specifically Unitarians) include Oneness Pentecostals, and Jehovah's Witnesses. There's a whole range of smaller denominations that are anti-Trinitarian in various ways that you may have heard of, generally they're pretty crazy and their theology is a joke.

As a general comment, I understand why people have problems with the Trinity, but at the same time it is the orthodox Christian position for a reason and does have intellectual weight behind it.

I don't think the Unitarians in Hungary have anything to do with American Unitarian Universalists, the universalist does a a lot of work. Though i'm not sure how vibrant a schismatic Hungarian sect is.

No shade to our Protestant brothers, but Catholics have the longest and most robust intellectual tradition.

Four out of five dentists Patriarchs disagree...

Au contraire, there is a Catholic patriarch for these sees.

As someone who really misses the community of church but really can't will myself to believe anymore. I really really like the idea of the Unitarian Church and think it would have been pretty neat 40 years ago but I've never attended because I suspected it would be exactly as you describe.

As for what is going on literally every old school liberal organization has had the same issue. From The Unitarians to the ACLU it's all the same thing. The intercept had an excellent article about this but it seems to be taken down. Basically Boomer liberal organizations were actually liberal and boomer liberals did believe in principles such as free speech. However, they lacked the antibodies to deal with hardcore woke cadre because they could easily be manipulated by being called racist and out of touch with the youth. During Trumps first term essentially every old school big L liberal organization fell to woke and abandoned it's early high minded principle and the unitarians are no exception. There's a whole blocked and reported episode about it.

Yeah this is more or less where I was coming from, and was hoping for some vestige of what it may have been in case it was possible to find a place that I could actually share beliefs with. And that explanation rings true to me, though it's just kind of tragic to think about the cultural loss there. I'll have to check out that episode.

If you do there was a breakaway faction that was purged from the main group. They might have more remnants of the old tradition.

I believe my grandmother grew up Unitarian, and that was where she got her quiet atheism and staunch belief in never discussing religion from. She was a good lady, including those attributes, and I'm not trying to make fun of her.

People say it as though they are being sarcastic, but Woke America is literally what agnostic Christians are. I tried going to my neighborhood Presbyterian church once, and the main song was about the singer's friend dying from Aids in 90s New York. Then I stayed for coffee, and the music director was trying to talk about his genderqueer daughter as delicately as possible -- he was clearly a bit distressed that she doesn't consider herself a daughter anymore and he's not supposed to use gendered language, but was struggling.

My father kept trying to go to an Episcopalian church that didn't particularly believe in Christ, because they had a nice choir, and nice architecture, and candles during the appropriate seasons. But the sermons were terrible, like the middle aged women getting up on their social media soapboxes, and he couldn't manage.

I don't get it on a visceral level, but it is what it is. There seems to be something important about actually believing in Christ, without which Christianity becomes horrifically cringe, more than even fake paganism which at least has nice bonfires and solstice celebrations and whatnot.

As others have said, there are churches that aren't like that. Usually they aren't that upset if someone shows up, and they don't necessarily believe in God, but are polite about it. If they're one of the livelier churches, they might try to convert you, but even if they're all Hellfire about it, it's still probably a richer cultural experience than the Unitarians.

If you don't believe there's a One True Religion, it might actually be worth thinking in terms of rich cultural experiences, rather than intellectualism or not believing weird things. I like visiting Sufis, for instance -- I once was in a screened off female balcony while some Sufi congregants chanted themselves into a trance and stuck skewers through their faces. It was super interesting! I was glad I went! If someone invites you to go sacrifice a cow of something, consider going. Humans don't seem capable of making religions that are deep and lively without also being kind of weird, and risking snake handlers or whirling dervishes or some such thing.

staunch belief in never discussing religion from.

You know, I have a couple of Gen X friends (women) who I'm quite sure voted for Harris express and then agree on the statement "so this is why our parents' generation had a rule against discussing politics or religion in polite company." I've always mostly abided by that myself, but it felt interesting to hear the sentiment voiced aloud.

There seems to be something important about actually believing in Christ, without which Christianity becomes horrifically cringe

Indeed, and this isn't a new observation either. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul writes:

if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.

The initial description reminds me of that episode of Metalocalypse where Murderface tries to find religion and attends a Church of Satan service.

The rest just sounds like its a church that is designed to be as politically influential as possible while still legally qualifying as a 'religious institution.' Really lays bare the "Wokeism is a secular liberal religion" factor.

As someone who grew up in a Southern Baptist Church, I genuinely cannot imagine attending a weekly service that WASN'T specifically about paying worship and adulation to an all-powerful deity you believe could intercede in the world. What is the real, actual point otherwise.

I would, no exaggeration, find it less cringey to worship C'thulhu without irony.

This reads more like a godless liberal visiting a godless liberal church and being horrified at the cultural appropriation.

If you want to go to a church, I'd suggest going to something which is the real thing, not something that's been watered down to appeal to some modern ideology. You might not like or agree with it but I suspect you would respect it more for it being what it is, rather than it pretending to be something else. The churches which most closely resemble the early church are Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. I recommend Eastern Orthodoxy. I am biased since it is my denomination and I think it is the original. It is also very beautiful. You will not find a shrill woman lecturing you like a baby.

Depending on where you live, the Eastern Orthodox might be far away, or might be in a foreign language like Russian or Greek. I recommend reading this article before you go.

If you go to a Catholic church, the Traditional Latin Mass ones are not watered down, though the services are in Latin. Some like or don't like that. I personally find them quite beautiful, and it might help you avoid ruminating on your intellectual objections to what is being said. But similarly, it might be a bit of a drive to find a Traditional Latin Mass. Try this map.

If you want to get an idea of a stereotypically American, protestant church experience, here is a list of traditional Protestant parishes from Redeemed Zoomer.

What you get out of it depends on your mindset going in. If you go in with a receptive, open mind, you'll probably have a better experience. If you go in with a mind towards intellectually testing/combating it, you'll probably have a worse experience. I don't know where you are at so I can't say. If you are in want of intellectual arguments for the truth of Christianity, or the easier claim that God exists, I can provide them. They are out there, but are not very well known.

With all honesty, I suggest next Sunday visiting your local Baptist megachurch. I get that it isn't your vibe and w/e, but think of it as engaging your curiosity, because I promise it'll be a different experience than what you're relating here. You can just go, satisfy your curiosity, and never go again.

Or just go to Catholic Mass (just make sure you stay seated for Communion, participating in Communion is a massive faux pas if you're not a member in good standing) but I (unfortunately) expect you'll just be bored.

idk anything but a church whose whole existence is to be political, vs a church whose whole existence is to be a church. (UU and UCOC and many others exist to be political)

Thanks for the suggestion, that sounds like that would make a good followup experience.

Heck, if you're trying to satisfy curiosity, I'd say branch out and check out more "exotic" things like Eastern Orthodox churches or Iskcon (Hare Krishna) temples in your city. If your city is anything like mine, they will be 50-90% immigrants following a deeply rooted tradition, and it is just fascinating seeing all the ways people do religion.

I visited the Bahá'í House of Worship near Chicago when they weren't having services, and it was beautiful and welcoming. Like the Unitarians, they aren't worried about practitioners of other faiths going to hell for being wrong, and they have nice aesthetics.

When I visited Harvard’s Unitarian church due to social obligation, they all snapped their fingers in agreement with the pastoress. The racial disparity of Harvard faculty was noted in the homily. It’s neat that American Christianity is totally modular and you can just attach whatever you want to it. It’s not a good thing, but it’s neat.

Woke progressivism wears many once venerable institutions like a skinsuit. It consumes all their social capital and then moves on to the next victim.

It's because Wokism is a Christian heresy.

That's an interesting claim, considering that it came significantly out of atheism. E.g.:

Most movement atheists weren’t in it for the religion. They were in it for the hamartiology [the study of sin, in particular, how sin enters the universe]. Once they got the message that the culture-at-large had settled on a different, better hamartiology, there was no psychological impediment to switching over. We woke up one morning and the atheist bloggers had all quietly became social justice bloggers. Nothing else had changed because nothing else had to; the underlying itch being scratched was the same. They just had to CTRL+F and replace a couple of keywords.

I'm pretty doubtful that if one examines the continental->critical philosophy pipeline that may have undergirded some of the trend, one would find a pool of Christian heretics, either. I guess if you say that all the atheism is just Christian heresy (would be quite a claim) and that Wokism is just atheist heresy, blink and imagine some form of transitive property, you might be able to think that Wokism is just Christian heresy.

I guess if you say that all the atheism is just Christian heresy (would be quite a claim)

Not that outlandish. In many cases, the God they didn't believe in was specifically the Christian God.

I mean that's just a vestige of the culture. By this logic Catholicism is a Greek Pagan heresy since the Catholic Church incorporated a lot of Greek philosophy in it's formation.

I guess if you say that all the atheism is just Christian heresy (would be quite a claim)

This has been a pretty popular take I've seen floating around over the last few years actually. Tom Holland pushes it and repeats it on pretty much every religiously adjacent podcast he goes on. His view (at least expressed in his book 'Dominion') is that a) necessarily European modes of thought are themselves Christian, so that liberalism, enlightenment thought, rationality, and so on, are themselves essentially Christian, and b) specifically the concept of the secular is unique to Christianity, which ties in with atheistic modes of thought via some extra steps. For context, Holland is a pretty milquetoast liberal, albeit a (cultural?) Christian.

I've also seen versions of the view popular in NRx circles. Nick Land has been on a liberalism = anglo-being kick for a while now, and I think would agree that Dawkins style New Atheism is itself essentially Anglo (and therefore Protestant). I can't remember who else off the top of my head has made similar claims but the narrower "atheism is just protestantism taken to it's logical conclusion" view is also one of I've seen pushed by online Catholics.

I can't really buy this we had Atheist Greeks and Philosophical schools before Christianity. The Enlightment is pretty non Christian. And China was ruled by a secular philosophical school as base value rather than religion. It seems way to much a just so story. The concept of the secular is definitely not unique to Christianity.

Dominion is a good read and makes the argument much better than I could. I don't think I agree with you about China though. By secularism I mean both the concept of separation of church and state, but also the general conceptual rendering that comes with "render unto Caesar", that there is a realm of life which isn't governed by the religious. Worth noting of course this has often been ignored by Christian states themselves, but was picked up with more seriousness later down the line. But Chinese emperors and dynasties had the Mandate of Heaven, oracle bones, and neo-Confucianism.

It sounds like an interesting book and I'll definitely take a look at it but is the Mandate of Heaven really that different from the divine right of kings?

I've also seen versions of the view popular in NRx circles.

I won't pretend to have read it all, but Moldbug wrote a whole book about this in 2007, https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/09/how-dawkins-got-pwned-part-1/

Could this be why she was reading to us in a voice like we were all babies, or is she always like this, I wondered.

Ah yes, the female leader "speaking to subordinates like they are particularly dim 6-year-olds" voice.

the most intellectual church

Dude what the heck are you smoking? Or I guess what was the guy smoking who told you that?

Unitarians are self deluded cultists and generally not considered Christians at all. Their 'church' has for the most part been completely taken over by woke politics.

Anyway I won't belabor that point, but can I recommend you try attending an actual church? I personally attend and would recommend a Calvary Chapel, but some of the more traditional ones like Eastern Orthodoxy are also quite intellectual and will have plenty of people willing to engage you in discussion.

The intellectual quote was from a book written in 1940 about the 1800s, A Generation of Materialism, which I checked out from a Brian Caplan rec. That might be kind of burying the lede there. It was coming from a Catholic author, so I don't know if I'm missing some in-joke or if that really was a fair characterization at the time.

Unitarianism was historically a kind of Eastern European heresy. The modern American version basically just took the name. They're more properly termed "Unitarian Universalists" if you want to avoid confusion over the whole "New Age" thing.

In the 1800s, this really was the case. Unitarianism was historically signified by its view that the Trinity was an irrational and nonsensical doctrine — hence “Unitarian” rather than “Trinitarian.” It applied that same rationalism to most elements of its doctrine, and believed in putting rational analysis above traditional or doctrinal fidelity. Hence, the reputation you referenced.

Unitarianism had that reputation about up until the point where public atheism became acceptable for intellectuals, at which point both it and deism collapsed in numbers and the Unitarians began to align themselves more with religious humanism to survive.

I’m just echoing other posters here, but any church more conservative than the Methodists is going to be very insistent on the literal resurrection of Christ. If that’s not something you’re comfortable with, well, I wonder seriously what would even compel you to find Christianity interesting.

If what you’re looking for is a vague sense of belief in a higher power that doesn’t ask you to sign on to any specific dogma, well, I agree that the Unitarians say that’s what they’re offering… but obviously they’ve found a different set of dogmas to promote. There’s no such thing as a church without dogma.

The reality is that most churchgoers are moral busybodies, and either you agree with the things they’re busybodying about (whatever they are) or you don’t. Churches with any sort of vitality, whatever side of the culture war they’re on, are anything but vague.

People often talk about church as a place to find “a sense of community”, but I couldn’t disagree more: if you want community qua community, you’d be much better off going for a walk, reconnecting with friends, talking to family members, or joining a hobby club. Depending on your local culture, you’ll still face some level of moral policing. But if religious convictions aren’t your thing, maybe you’re better off finding a place where the topic of conversation is your thing.

I like to think of church as a hobby club, where the hobby is “having particular moral and supernatural beliefs.” If you have strong convictions on those, it’s great. If not, it’s like joining a DnD group when you don’t like imaginative play.

I looked up the two choir songs and they are both basically anti-Trump protest songs written in 2016/17.

The progressive retort would be that the fact you interpret a song called "Liberty and Justice for All" and a song about leading with love to be anti-Trump protest songs says more about you and Trump supporters than it does about churches. It's not political; it's called being a decent person—something even Christians understand.

Indeed, searching the first song yields a black songwriter, references to #BlackHistoryMonth, and an explanation that the song is part of the Justice Choir Songbook, where "Justice Choir is a template for more community singing for social and environmental justice. It’s designed around the Justice Choir Songbook, a powerful new collection of 43 songs about equity, justice, love, peace, and other issues of our time."

There's a fair amount of horseshoeing between the progressive left and mainstream religious right when it comes to sociopolitical topics such as Black Lives Mattering More. See, for example, Christians kneeling for and washing the feet of black people during the height of BLM, or how immediately various Christian denominations bent the knee for gay marriage.

A more recent example can be seen with the Austin Metcalf stabbing death, where the white father (Jeff Metcalf) of the slain high schooler publicly forgave the black stabber while denouncing those who Noticed and pattern-matched the incident. This triggered debates over the nature of Christian forgiveness, with five non-mutually exclusive contingents:

  1. Non-Christians (and some Christians) who were appalled by the forgiveness.
  2. Christians who defended the father's forgiveness as the Christianly thing to do.
  3. Christians who tried some jiu-jitsu, face-saving, and sane-washing: "Um, actually, forgiveness doesn't necessarily mean absolution..."
  4. Christians and non-Christians saying something to do the tune of: "Leave Jeff alone, he's a father grieving in his own way." Yet, I somehow suspect there would be a different tune if instead Jeff had reacted to the incident by chudding out and 13/52'ing.
  5. Non-Christians insisting the father's forgiveness was the right and Christianly thing to do with the vibe of "No, I'm not a Christian and I have nothing but contempt for your backward religious beliefs so yeah, this argument wouldn't work on me but maybe if I use it on you, you'll do what I want."

One commenter in /r/KotakuInAction remarked, paraphrased from my recollection: "These debates over what flavor of cuck God wants you to be reminds me of why I'm not a Christian."

Here's Liberty and Justice For All: http://songs.justicechoir.org/LibertyForAll

The Justice Choir logo features a closed fist. The lyrics:

We are frightened; We are angry; We are rising; We are hopeful; We are peaceful; We are striving; Won't stop fighting; Won't stop marching; Won't stop dreaming; Wont stop loving and proclaiming and believing

Our voices are united louder than hate, We have gathered here, We've had all we can take The time has come, you will hear our call. We're fighting for liberty and justice for all.

It includes this note from the composer:

The recent demonstrations and marches taking place throughout the country led me to the phrase 'liberty and justice for all.' Many steadfastly recite this line in the Pledge of Allegiance, but those words ring hollow for many Americans who find their civil liberties under attack, and the scales of justice tipped in favor of the wealthy and powerful. Protests are a small portion of what we must do in order to work toward a nation that truly provides liberty and justice FOR ALL

This is clearly a protest song with no indication that the hate being protested against is authored by Satan. Copyright 2017, it's either about Trump or police, probably both.

The Justice Choir logo features a closed fist.

Ha yeah, I Noticed that too but forgot to mention it.

I didn't feel like torturing myself by listening to a recording of it, but what also sprang to mind when looking at the sheet music is the sheer melodic simplicity of it, like Jingle Bells or Mary and a Little Lamb territory.

This footnote, which further corroborates @somethingsomething's feeling of infantilization during the experience, also made me inwardly chuckle:

"Performance Suggestion:

• For a unison or solo version, sing only the BIG notes above"

The BIG notes for BIG boys and girls! You can do it!

This is clearly a protest song with no indication that the hate being protested against is authored by Satan. Copyright 2017, it's either about Trump or police, probably both.

In the eyes of many, including those who believe in God, Trump or the police are a greater source of hatred than Satan.

UU is about the most unreligious religion you could find, and since the turn of the century they have become unambiguously woke in the extreme. There used to be some vestiges of actual Christianity in some UU congregations, but nowadays most UU churches are averse to anything other than progressive secular humanism, even if they vaguely handwave at spirituality.

If you want "Christianity lite" try the United Methodists (sometimes called "UUs pretending to be Christian"). They're pretty woke nowadays too but they still have actual services where Jesus is mentioned.

I mean, it's a unitarian universalist church. Like what did you expect? It's philosophical progressivism as a religion, if you're looking for anything else other than progressivism you, uh, shouldn't have gone there. There's plenty of more normal churches out there.

In a sense I knew what I was getting into, in another sense I really am a godless liberal with almost total naivete regarding what each church is "really like". I thought I'd start with the one who at least is most aligned with my belief that Jesus was not resurrected. And I was legitimately surprised with just how miserably it all went.

my belief that Jesus was not resurrected.

Okay. Please explain.

AMA but I think I have a pretty typical materialist view on that, not that im a totally strict materialist as I think consciousness is still puzzling. But I think that if God intervened, it would've been more likely for him to just make Paul think Jesus came back via his transcendent experience than to actually make Jesus come back, which raises a lot of questions on how that mechanically actually happens.

which raises a lot of questions on how that mechanically actually happens.

We still have people who are pronounced dead, but weren't, despite modern medical knowledge and tools. So it probably happened a lot more often in the past.

The bible explains that the Roman soldiers didn't follow the correct crucifixion procedure, where the legs of the person were broken. So it makes sense that Jesus could have barely survived, recovered a bit after being placed in a cool tomb, then wandered around a little in a stupor, and then died.

Then add a bit of embellishment and you have a resurrection narrative, with him transcending to heaven (aka actually dying) shortly after a faux death.

Lots of people saw resurrected Jesus before Paul.

Heck, Paul was still killing Christians for a while after Jesus had already disappeared into heaven behind a cloud.

I'm in the camp that basically believe that the gospels were heavily influenced by Paul along with Jesus' teachings while he was alive, so I don't put a huge amount of credence in anything that happened after the crucifixion in regards to Jesus, because I feel like Paul sort of profoundly shaped the cosmology from there going from his interpretation of his vision.

OK, just a guide to American churches- 'Megachurch' is, technically, just any large church. In practice, these are large protestant churches(often with multiple campuses) which are loosely if at all affiliated with a broader denomination. Instead, they have a charismatic senior pastor who sets the general tone, makes major decisions, and gives the main sermon(there are often multiple) each Sunday. If there's multiple campuses, then his sermon gets livestreamed for at least part of the service. Worship music is usually rock-concert tier. Theology tends to be fairly similar to Baptists. Majority white megachurches are normiecon politically and not shy about it; black megachurches are moderate democrats politically and likewise not shy about it. They take the gospel literally, can sometimes but not always be a bit more figurative with the old testament. Formal doctrinal views on morality are generally conservative regardless of race, but with a wink and a nod. Neither set of teachings is particularly emphasized; its a red/black tribe normie social club first and foremost. There may or may not be formal female clergy, but senior clerics are men and pastor's wives are de facto clergy in their husband's right.

Baptists are similar to megachurch protestants theologically, but have much stricter moral rules. Southern baptists are the largest denomination, there's both more liberal and more conservative white denominations. Like with megachurches, there's also a black variant. Worship varies from something approximating a rock concert with a fire-and-brimstone sermon to something a bit more traditional with church hymns and the like, but without a set service. They take the bible completely literally, including the first eleven chapters of genesis. In general there's no female clergy, but pastor's wives have a special role in congregation. Politically, they range from normiecon to far-right.

'Lectionary protestants' are a set of moderate to liberal denominations with a set order of worship services and set, predetermined religious calendar. What they have in common is that their congregations are very old and very white. Most have female clergy. Most have a conservative mirror referred to as 'confessional' protestants, who have similar services, religious calendars, and formal theology while maintaining strict moral theology standards, a male only clergy, etc. Theoretically, all of these groups take the gospel literally, with a sliding scale for how literally to take the old testament. In practice, plenty of lectionary protestants take large parts of the gospel figuratively. Lectionary protestants are generally moderate politically- even crazy liberal denominations have membership that's just too old to keep up with the far left- and confessional protestants are mostly normiecon.

Catholics have a set order of worship and religious calendar, in addition to very set doctrine. Individual parishes range from moderate democrat to far right politically, and you can probably find both within driving distance. While politics varies, moral theology is uniformly strict, even if enforcement might have a wink and a nod. No female clergy, the musical settings for worship can be almost anything but usually isn't rock. What musical setting is a fraught political issue. We take the gospel completely literally and the old testament seriously, but not always literally. There's a reputation for supporting evolution but the bishops officially endorse intelligent design etc. Catholicism entails belief in a large number of miracles not accounted for in the bible because they occurred after the bible was written and Catholics will be very offended by disbelief in the holy tilma, miraculous healings, etc. Much of the right wing intelligentsia is Catholic of various degrees of observance. Probably the most ethnically diverse of the major denominations, and generally uninterested in white nationalism even in the far right incarnation.

Pentecostals have rock-concert services at which they seek to demonstrate a set number of 'signs of faith' listed in the bible. 'Speaking in tongues' is the most popular of these. Snake handling is a popular way to make fun of them, but is a fringe movement therein. Politically conservative, they might have women clergy, and moral theology varies a fair bit. They take the bible 100% literally and hold a variety of post-biblical supernatural beliefs, but usually less firmly than Catholics.

Orthodox are a very small group in America, so small that sociologists just lump them in with Catholics. They hold similar supernatural beliefs and cover a similar spectrum, but a bit more predictable by subgroup. Ask @Gaashk for further details, I know ROCOR is the most conservative and OCA the most liberal. Services follow the same structure and different adaptations of the same calendar, but do have some variation in melody and language.

Mormons are structured like an actual cult, but tempered by the need to fit into mainstream society due to their size. Very strict moral theology, political conservatism. Doesn't technically have clergy but religious authorities are pretty much all men. Theoretically takes the bible, and a few other books, completely literally, in practice lots of them disregard that requirement. Members are very heavily policed for compliance with the requirements of mormon practice, but the mormon church offers lots of services to its members so they are incentivized to comply.

How are Mormons structured like a cult? Their prophet has almost the exact same doctrinal powers as the Pope. He can speak Ex Cathedra but usually doesn't. The rest of their church structure is based fairly closely on the Acts of the Apostles.

Pentecostals have rock-concert services at which they seek to demonstrate a set number of 'signs of faith' listed in the bible. 'Speaking in tongues' is the most popular of these. Snake handling is a popular way to make fun of them, but is a fringe movement therein. Politically conservative, they might have women clergy, and moral theology varies a fair bit. They take the bible 100% literally and hold a variety of post-biblical supernatural beliefs, but usually less firmly than Catholics.

How black is Pentecostalism in the US? In London most of the Pentecostal churches are ethnic churches for some African or Caribbean country.

Less black than the general population, probably more Hispanic/asian than most Protestant churches. African Americans overwhelmingly belong to black baptist/lectionary denominations or black mega churches. African immigrants are as likely to be Catholic as Pentecostal- and normie baptist as either.

Mormons are structured like an actual cult

What strikes me is that from European point of view, most of the denominations you listed would be considered to be somewhere between "somewhat weird ultraconservative sect inside the mainstream church" to "They're weird ass cultists, be careful when dealing with them". And I don't mean by young liberals but by people like my friend's retired father who spent 40 years as a pastor with mainline church beliefs before retiring a decade ago.

Do Europeans actually believe in a recognizable Christianity, though?

I once attended a Sunday church service in St. Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh. It was...a light crowd. I went back hours later to see it as a museum exhibit, and it was much livelier.

Cool building I guess.

There are Europeans who believe in a recognizable Christianity, but a big cathedral of the historical state church in the center capital city of some country (or autonomous region, in this case) is probably going to be quite a bad bet for finding them.

quite a bad bet for finding them.

Why should this be? It may be intuitive to you, but it's not to me.

For the same reason why Venice is no longer Italian. Too many tourists driving out the natives.

Imagine that your hobby spot gets disrupted constantly by tourists who gawk at you like you are a zoo animal. I bet that you'd find a more obscure spot that they can't find.

Lectionary protestants

Does this include Lutherans and Episcopalians?

Yes, although I separated out LCMS and WELS as confessional.

I thought I'd start with the one who at least is most aligned with my belief that Jesus was not resurrected.

That's kind of like going to a Mosque that doesn't believe Muhammad was a prophet...

Yeah more or less, it is a bummer to me how insistent Paul was on that but I suppose it was probably necessary to keep the project together and convert the Pagans.

I can add the POV of an annoying agnostic (who's nevertheless been to various churches for various reasons) -- Unitarianism is a highly non-central example of a church.

Their services are weird and offputting even to non-Catholics. (IME)

Unitarians are so off-putting that even the Simpsons has regularly used them as the butt of jokes:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=pe6Ol5kO0Ks?si=LXikLwww792dapv-

I have a sibling who decided to leave our church (Mormon) and became a Unitarian because he wanted to still be ostensibly Christian to not completely alienate my parents (or at least that's my impression of why). Frankly I would have respected his decision more if he'd straight up come out as atheist or agnostic.

The Unitarian universalist church is basically "church for people who don't believe in God". It's also extremely liberal. As such, it's pretty much the exact opposite of what you mentioned looking for in your opening paragraph. Go to another church if you want to get away from "godless progressive" communities.

Is there a church for conservative people who don't believe in God?

Not quite sure how to parse "don't believe in God",

Prosperity gospel churches tend to be very light on the 'these sins are going to damn you to hell' stuff.

There is a Joel Osteen XM radio station if you're interested in checking it out, your milage may very, but I often find listening to it improves my mood considerably.

Parse it as "the whole God thing is a bunch of hogwash"

I'd still recommend Osteen, simply from a philosophical prospective.

There is a sarcastic line about such people becoming Theologists. It’s true to some degree - it allows people to spend lots of time thinking about what God would be like if He exists without ever having to seriously opine on whether He does.

There is a sarcastic line about such people becoming Theologists.

This unironically is basically the primary argument of Al-Ghazali's famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) Incoherence of the Philosophers. He basically argues that all of the debating and mental masturbation by a lot of philosophers and theologists are thinly veiled covers for their atheism. He was mostly talking about Islam, but many of the same arguments can easily be applied to many Christian thinkers.

Oh, cool. I have never read any Islamic work but I know there’s stuff I’m missing, like the famous work on sabbiyah (?), the holding together of culture.

No, but there's plenty of megachurches(here's a hint- look for ones with extremely generic sounding names) that are a bit... loose about the requirement. Warning: very normie red or black tribe- that is, likely to be rather disappointing to a motteizean who's willing to call themselves an atheist. College football, extremely moderate pro or anti Trump politics, thirty minute sermon about being a good person with a Christian rock song, polo shirt for a dress code, lakehouse 'for the grandkids', BBQ and pickup trucks, not a lot of thought about philosophy.

Not that I'm aware of.

Yet! Growth mindset!

Last night, I listened to Carl Benjamin and Sam Hyde(!) independently wax poetic about the importance of Christianity and urge their listeners to go to church. Benjamin was explicit that he doesn't believe in God or Jesus at all, but considers Christianity culturally necessary. I have no idea what's going on with Hyde; I don't really follow him on the regular, but was really, really not expecting twenty minutes of commentary about God and his Church from my gold-standard sample of post-ironic schizo internet brainrot victim.

I've suspected for some time that Christianity would be making a resurgence; being a serious Christian it's sort of a required bet, but also it's seemed to me that the cultural wind has been in our favor more or less since the Woke offensive in 2014; Woke took over the way it did because the comfortable, decadent agnostic soft-nihilism that had pushed us out had pretty clearly transitioned into the "finding out" phase. Still, from my perspective, right-wing "Christianity And..." is no better than the left-wing variant.

my local Unitarian church

Can I be annoying Catholic for a second? Here's the general timeline of Christianity.

  • Christ upon death, entrusts Saint Peter with the formation of a church.

  • This church exists for about 400 years, doing philosophical work, being murdered by romans, and assembling the gospels

  • 400 years into it, they start calling some councils so that they can assemble a book which encompasses and explains their theology.

  • They assemble the bible

  • One thousand years later, and one thousand and five hundred years after Christ establishes a Church on Earth, a retarded autist named Martin Luther decides that he doesn't like the Church that Christ founded, and wants to start his own, with his own [stupid] philosophical beliefs at the center. Marty creates a lie about bible translations so that he can insert his own idea by "translating" the bible into German.

  • This effects of this are...negative. 500 years after this, we have the things you experienced.

tl;dr - you didn't go to a Church. You went to a weird narcissism cult that is wearing Church as a costume.

If you want to go to a Church, then go to a Church.

While you are certainly welcome to be annoying Catholic, you’re still supposed to follow the rules. This comment is combative enough to fall in the “more heat than light” category.

This is a very Catholic reading of history. Plenty of secular and most Protestant scholars would dispute the first part. Most secular and a few Protestants would dispute the second. And virtually all Protestants would dispute the fifth. It's a very disputed Catholic timeline. If everyone agreed on this everyone would be Catholic. Which I get you are, but it's kind of like outlining a timeline of history and saying and then God revealed the Holy Quran to his prophet Muhammed. It's not at all agreed upon outside of your faith tradition.

Of course, from the Orthodox perspective, the whole process starts with the Patriarchs of Rome starting to get big false ideas about their status as primus inter pares a number of centuries after Christ, schisming away from the Orthodox church, and Protestantism being a logical conclusion of the various theological issues spawning from that affair. "The Pope was the first Protestant".

This is of course disputed, both excommunicated each other at the same time and both claim apostolic tradition. If anything, the Catholic church is more stable and has more logical standing when it comes to apostolic tradition, since as of now it is even hard to say who exactly "ortobros" are. There are at least four permanent schisms within orthodoxy including two parallel patriarchates in both Antioch and Alexandria - which are not in communion with each other and thus their adherents are banned to receive sacraments between the churches. In fact it is quite messy to follow when which branch of orthodoxy separated itself from the others and for what reasons, it is almost like minoprotestantism in that sense.

The successive loss of the second and third Romes defaulted leadership back to Rome.

Saint Peter, the Protestant!

I obviously like my orthobros, but this is a major cope. Why did none of the bishops oppose the gospel of Mathew during the councils assembling the Bible? Why did they ask the pope for his blessing (in the colloquial sense) over their work?

By the 4th century, it was already established that the Pope had a leadership role different than the other bishops. It makes sense that at some point (1000 years after the church was founded and after it had become a major global power) that there would be people who would claim leadership of it, but for geopolitical reasons.

Again, I like the orthodox bros. They are cool, and I pray almost daily for reunification, but this claim is pretty ridiculous on its face. Was Jesus a Protestant too?

As a Protestant - obviously St. Peter was not a Protestant, but he was not Roman Catholic or Orthodox in any meaningful way either. Those distinctions did not exist in his day. He was a follower of Christ.

Now as it happens I think it's ahistorical nonsense to say that he was a pope or a bishop either, offices that did not exist in his day and which have been applied to him retroactively, but at any rate, St. Peter certainly did not think of himself in confessional terms that far postdate him. I would say that St. Peter was, in the proper sense, small-letter catholic, orthodox, and yes, protestant (that is, witnessing to the gospel), and that these denominational slapfights only embarrass those determined to engage in them.

You're assuming that the Bishop of Rome is actually Peter's successor is an established fact. Even though Linus and Clement are both mentioned in the Bible, they are never explicitly mentioned as Peter's successors, and no one identifies them as such until ~180 AD, 81 years after Clement's death.

a retarded autist named Martin Luther decides that he doesn't like the Church that Christ founded

That's not how it happened though. Luther didn't have a plan to destroy the Church or even leave it. He just had some issues with some stuff that representatives of the Church were doing (come on, selling indulgences? wtf is that?). And he voiced his objections. The Church refused to consider them and demanded he immediately declare himself complete idiot and prostrate himself before the Church, or be kicked out. Luther did not, and had been kicked out. Unlike many other people who crawled back on their knees or somehow dealt with it (or, if they could, installed their own Pope who overruled the last one, that happened once or twice) he did not just take it, but founded his own movement instead. Of course, the fact that there were a lot of powerful people around which weren't that happy with existing Church and its powers also helped a lot. Definitely however not what he planned from the start.

Many such cases btw - a person wants to improve the system from within, the system reacts harshly against him and pushes him out, he founds an alternative system which supplants the old one.

Stellula is, I would say, clearly not attempting any sort of good-faith or accurate account of history. It's just a generic boo light.

Frankly, as someone raised Protestant who has come right to the brink of becoming Catholic multiple times, it is the kind of graceless, vicious rhetoric that repels me from that tradition. The church is a community of grace, which should be marked by charity, gentleness, and peace. The best Catholics I have known model that, including every man or woman in holy orders I have met. I think Stellula does the Catholic Church a tremendous disservice, and ought to repent - for the Catholic Church's own sake!

My goodness even on the Motte Catholics are insufferable. I don't mean that mainly as a personal attack, that's my observation of every Catholic I encounter - an absolute arrogance and a tendency to twist things to support the required dogmas of the Roman church. I don't entirely blame you, since the church requires you to believe these things it's only natural to reason backwards from the dogmas to the evidence, but it's so frustrating to see here. Anyway:

  • Christ, after he returned from the grave, entrusted all of the apostles with spreading the gospel to all the nations. Peter had no unique status, indeed he was overruled by Paul, and in Acts James (the bishop of Jerusalem) clearly had the final word on disagreements. The raising up of Peter comes from much later in history when the bishop of Rome (the capital of the world at the time) sought to justify taking greater authority to himself.
  • The writings of the church fathers make it abundantly clear that the books that would be assembled into the new testament were generally accepted by the mid second century. Framing the council of Nicea as assembling the Bible is a false framing designed to push back against the authority of scripture, by pretending that its authority comes from the council rather than from scripture's nature as the word of God.
  • As to the reformation, I don't know if your nonsense even deserves the dignity of a response, but... The purpose of the reformation was to fix the errors that has risen in the church, primarily indulgences, only providing the eucharist once a year, and refusing to translate the bible so people could read it. Following from this, a whole mess of theologians identified areas of theology where the church had arguably erred. And so, the Roman church, being even then truly arrogant, decided to kick anyone out of the church who questioned them. Funny enough, in the 'counter reformation' the Catholics did in fact fix indulgences, start giving regular eucharist, and eventually supported bible translations too! Weird huh? Rome refuses to budge on the other theological issues because (and this is not a charicature) they think the church is perfect and can never have made a mistake. Of course the Orthodox (who also left because of the arrogance of the Pope) say the same about their church. It's only Protestants who believe that all these different churches can have true Christians within them - Catholics at the time of the reformation thought the Orthodox were all damned for not following the Pope.

Of the three main Christian branches, in my opinion Roman Catholicism is by far the least convincing, and its apologists by far the most annoying. Still love you guys though! I earnestly hope you will find comfort knowing that Christ's sacrifice has already justified you, and you don't need to do anything to earn his grace.

My goodness even on the Motte Catholics are insufferable. I don't mean that mainly as a personal attack, that's my observation of every Catholic I encounter - an absolute arrogance and a tendency to twist things to support the required dogmas of the Roman church.

For what it's worth, this is... not wholly consistently, but I would say overwhelmingly my experience of extremely-online-Catholics.

It is, blessed be God, not even remotely my experience of Catholics in the flesh and blood.

Same. If /r/catholicism was representative of what the average person in the Catholic Church was like, I would have walked away a long time ago. Thankfully, that is not the case and people I interact with in person in the church are kind, gracious people who are a pleasure to know.

Of the three main Christian branches, in my opinion Roman Catholicism is by far the least convincing, and its apologists by far the most annoying.

Interesting to note that miracles which can withstand scientific scrutiny are exclusively associated with Roman Catholicism.

This is backwards reasoning though. The only miracles that are investigated with scientific scrutiny are ones associated with the Catholic church, because a full investigation is required if a miracle is to be used as grounds for beatification. This is because Catholicism has a deep history of scholasticism and the supremacy of reason, where the other traditions tend to lean more towards mysticism. Not exclusively, but that's my understanding of the general trend.

Protestants don't scientifically investigate miracles to that level, period, although there are plenty reported. I would instinctively consider it almost sacrilegious to do so. Likewise with the Orthodox, and some of theirs have a similar level of attestation (look up e.g. Our Lady of Zeitoun). Could it be that... all Christians who pray to God can receive miracles?

It may be that poor orthodox organization leads to their miracles going uninvestigated, but there are also some high profile orthodox miracles which are confirmed fakes(eg thé Easter fire. Now thé odd pious fraud is not proof against, but there is AFAIK no counterbalancing from well-investigated phenomena.

Protestant miracles seem like a general mish mash, and in fact using the term ‘Protestant’ in such a way seems like a sin against proper argumentation. Y’all are a varied bunch- is there a branch/denomination/movement within Protestantism that has repeated verifiable miracles? Any equivalent to the blood of st Januarius or thé spring at Lourdes or the series of Eucharistic miracles?

Mormonism’s supernatural claims have been investigated and falsified. The golden tablets are, per their own internal investigation, gobbledygook.

I can only speak to my experience. I grew up Catholic and was part of the RCC until I was about 33, at which point I left for essentially non-denominational Protestantism. Not for a specific doctrinal reason, but because it's where God was drawing me. That's where I met my wife. Now we attend a Calvary Chapel, which is nominally non-denom but with its own specific distinctives.

In my entire time in the RCC, I never encountered anyone who had experienced a miracle (as far as I know, they may have just kept quiet about it). In contrast, in the evangelical world I hear quite often about miracles taking place in people's lives, healings, financial provision, frankly I consider my marriage a miracle but I won't go into the details that convince me of this. But if I were to suggest to someone at my church that we should bring in some scientists to prove these were miracles, they would (I think rightly) consider that ridiculous and sacrilegious. In the same way that doing a double-blind study to determine if prayer works at improving health outcomes is both ridiculous and sacrilegious. To quote Jesus quoting the OT: you shall not test the Lord your God.

Catholics just have a different mindset about these things. They want to understand everything. That's what leads to thinks like trans-substantiation (we have to know exactly how the Eucharist works, it can't be a mystery).

What you're referring to is what Catholics would probably call 'guardian angel stories', which nobody's going to investigate. 'My guardian angel got me this job interview or stopped a car accident or whatever'. Do evangelicals point out miracles that didn't happen to them, more than on the level of FOAF tales, like Catholics or Orthodox do?

That 'didn't happen to them'? Of course. I'm not sure what level of attestation you're looking for specifically.

Here's an interesting question. Do you consider gifts of the spirit to be miracles? Most Evangelicals believe that gifts like prophecy and speaking in tongues are still extant among the church, and I've heard pretty credible anecdotes of these gifts - for instance, a pastor at a conference spoke in tongues, but there was no interpreter so they all moved on, only for the Iranian bartender to come up afterwards and reveal the man had been praising God in Farsi (he ended up converting). That's the kind of miracles I hear about, multiply attested but still personal, and oriented towards people's salvation and faith. Maybe Catholic miracles are the same? I'm not entirely sure. Seeing a ghost, to me, wouldn't be something that reinforced my faith or built my relationship with God. I wonder if Hispanic populations are more likely to be moved by things like apparitions which is why they all seem to happen in Hispanic countries?

What miracles can withstand scientific scrutiny?

An incomplete list would start with the tilma of Juan Diego, thé healings associated with Lourdes, and the consistently similar Eucharistic miracles. There are lots and lots of others, these are just unusually well studied(and in some cases repeated) miracles.

The existence of the universe?

Exclusively associated with Catholicism?

Serves me right for replying from the raw comment feed.

Creation myths have a pretty terrible track record for scientific scrutiny.

If you’re suggesting that being unverifiable counts as “withstanding scrutiny,” then I have a bridge to sell you.

I'm saying the exietence of the universe will never be answerable by science. You can't get an answers for "why is there something rather than nothing" by looking at it from within the something.

It's not even a particularly controversial observation from what I understand.

Okay, sure. I still can’t see what that’s got to do with @2rafa’s request.

If I try to sell you a bridge, and I don’t allow you to see it, if I insist that it cannot be seen at all, I’m not withstanding your scrutiny. I’m avoiding it.

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To my layman understanding of miracles there has to be an established understanding of a secular mechanism which is then defied by the alleged miracle. The existence of the universe does not match this because we have no established understanding of a secular mechanism according to which the universe couldn't (or could) exist.

Can that which encompasses all ever be extraordinary?

I don't think that this is the definition of "miracle" used by the Bible, or any other religious text, written before the scientific method was established.

Can that which encompasses all ever be extraordinary?

Isn't that literally what secular humanism was trying to sell as an alternative to religion?

Isn't that literally what secular humanism was trying to sell as an alternative to religion?

I do not think "you can't explain what is literally beyond known existence" is a criticism that destroys secular humanism.

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And God said, "Let there be a Big Bang."

"Let there be several Big Bang."

according with recent Webb observations

James (the bishop of Jerusalem) clearly had the final word on disagreements

I earnestly hope you will find comfort knowing that Christ's sacrifice has already justified you, and you don't need to do anything to earn his grace

Catholics don't believe that grace is earned (and neither do Mormons), but that doesn't negate the need for works. James would heartily disagree with you as well, but I'm already quite familiar with the tortured exegesis Protestants use to disregard the blatantly explicit condemnation of sola fide provided by James:

14 What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, 16 And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? 17 Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. 18 Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. 19 Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble. 20 But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? 22 Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect? 23 And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God. 24 Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only. 25 Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way? 26 For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

If good works are a natural result of having faith, then why don't the devils, whom James explicitly states believe, perform good works as a result?

Bonus question on an unrelated topic, the "priesthood of all believers" that many Protestants believe in: If Simon the magician in the book of Acts believed (as it explicitly said he did) then why didn't he automatically have the same power and authority as Peter and the rest of the apostles? Ditto for women who believe (I assume you're part of a denomination that does not have female clergy).

The devils don't have 'faith' my man. Faith is not 'belief in the mere fact of God's existence'. Which is James' whole point! His letter was to a specific congregation warning them against claiming to have faith but not actually following Jesus' commands. Your comment about the devils is actually pretty revealing, it indicates that you're working under or at least influenced by this false conception of faith == propositional belief.

I'm actually pretty well convinced that the Protestant 'sola fide' and the Catholic 'works + faith' are actually the same when properly understood - Catholics will be quick to clarify that although you 'need works' you also don't strictly need works for grace/salvation (as you yourself admitted), and Protestants obviously don't deny the letter of James. If James actually clearly refuted a proper understanding of sola fide I'm pretty sure someone would have noticed. Rather, I think the two conceptions are two sides of the same coin, which just have biases that cause them to fail in opposite directions. A Protestant could take sola fide to the extreme by saying 'I'm saved so I don't need to worry about my actions' which I guess you sort of see from certain casual Christian types (although I think it's pretty rare for a Protestant to think they don't need to do good deeds). Meanwhile many Catholics take works to the extreme by saying 'I'm a good person and I go to church so I'm going to heaven' while completely missing having any relationship with God. Protestants arrived at sola fide as a reaction to ritualism and legalism in the medieval church, i.e. the failure mode of the Catholic conception, but nowadays sola fide also has some pretty blatant failure modes. The gate is narrow that leads to eternal life.

On your last question I have no idea what you're asking. The apostles have more authority because Jesus gave them more authority. Not sure what that has to do with the priesthood of all believers, whatever you meant by that.

Anyway, God Bless and I hope you find this explanation useful!

This seems to misunderstand the concept of faith. Having faith in the Protestant conception isn’t merely believing that Jesus is lord but accepting and recognizing his lordship. The devils may understand that Jesus is lord but what makes them devils is that they reject his lordship. Indeed, the story of man’s fall is about lordship. God told man do not eat from the tree of good and evil. The tree stands for the ability to determine what is in fact good and what is evil. God keeps that for himself. The devil tempts eve to instead determine for herself what is good or evil (ie a rejection of god’s lordship).

Works is a natural outcome of following the kingship of Christ.

You do know that the average protestant megachurch might be bad, but it isn't this bad, right? Both white and black megachurches might de-emphasize literal belief in Christianity but they theoretically hold to it.

I feel im missing something with your links, could you help me understand the lie, and what his own idea was in your view?

Not OP but a common story told in Protestant circles is that the Catholic Church did not want the Bible translated into the common languages of the people so that they couldn't decide for themselves what to believe (or something along those lines). Reality is a bit more complicated (as per usual) and the simplified version of this story told by Protestants these days isn't accurate, and the existence of translations of the Bible into common languages long before Luther is clear evidence of this. Even the name of Saint Jerome's 4th century translation of the Bible into Latin, the Vulgate, is evidence of this (same etymology as vulgar, i.e. in the language of the commoners). Also widespread illiteracy and the high cost of books would have kept most people from reading the Bible even if there were translations available in their language.

That said, there is a certain kernel of truth to the story that Protestants tell. Certain translators (most notably William Tyndale and his English translation) were persecuted by the church because their choices in translation undermined certain doctrines of the church, etc. So the church definitely wanted to exert control over who was allowed to translate the Bible and how they were allowed to translate it.

Martin Luther claimed that the church was intentionally making the bible difficult for local people to read in their own language. The purpose of this lie was so that he could create his own "interpretation".

Luther did not believe in free will. One "fix" he added to the bible was in Romans 3:28.

“So we hold that a man is justified without the works of the law, by faith alone.”

The previously accepted translation was:

“For we hold that a man is justified by faith without the works of the law.”

Oh boy I love a good debate about bible translations.

Even taking what you said as true, could you point to a place where luthers translation was actually meaningfully wrong? Preferably in the direction you claim he wanted to push.

Here's a bunch of nerds discussing it in depth:

https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/5593/is-it-true-that-luther-intentionally-mistranslated-romans-328

The one caveat I'll give is that most of the answers seem to be from Protestants who seem to mostly agree with Luther's decision. That said, one of the answers directly quotes Luther himself talking about the controversy over his translation, so that was quite interesting to read.

Edit: For what it's worth, members of my faith (Mormon) largely agree with the Catholic interpretation of the verse, and with Catholics about the need for works in addition to faith.

So would Bonhoeffer who famously was not Catholic.

I'm sure anybody with time can run circles around me going toe to toe about Bible translations.

But this is kindof the difference between Catholics and Protestants. We don't worship a book, we're trying to live good, Christian lives. While Protestants will get obsessive about bible translations, Catholics get more obsessive about the meaning implied.

That all said, I think the broad strokes of the reformation and the early church are pretty obvious. Ironically, it's access to information (the internet) which will likely end Luther's work.

But this is kindof the difference between Catholics and Protestants. We don't worship a book, we're trying to live good, Christian lives. While Protestants will get obsessive about bible translations, Catholics get more obsessive about the meaning implied.

This is pretty much what Protestants say about Catholics in reverse, though the charge is not that Catholics "worship a book" but rather they "worship a Church/the Pope" while Protestants worship Christ.

Fwiw I don't think either criticism is particularly made in good faith, but seeing Catholics and Protestants going at each other about who's really Christian is always bemusing to us nonbelievers.

Well yes Catholics would say that we have access to more, we have the Bible, but also we have the Church which was founded by Christ himself.

The claim that Protestants worship the Bible is based on the idea that they seem to hold the words in the book at a higher relevance than what they actually say, or what Jesus actually did or said.

(Snark snark)

I'm starting to develop some sympathy for this view of the Reformation. But what do you make of the Schism?

The schism maintained the concept of a Church.

The reformation basically threw out 1500 years of philosophy in favor of "vibes" and "sola scriptura" (which is the idea that all of Christian philosophy can be derived from The Bible itself and idea which is on it's face stupid due to the fact that it was only assembled 400 years after the Church was founded).

EOs and Catholics are bros. There's a reason why you see the Ecumenical Patriarch and The Pope together so frequently.

...have you read any of the Reformers? I have no idea how you read Luther or Calvin and conclude that they "basically threw out 1500 years of philosophy" when they so enthusiastically read and cited the Church Fathers.

How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord
is laid for your faith in his excellent word
what more can he say than to you he hath said
you whom unto Jesus for refuge have fled?

Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed
I, I am thy God and will still give thee aid
I'll strengthen thee, help thee and cause thee to stand
All sheltered by mine own omnipotent hand.

I find myself looking back on the history of YouTube anti-woke politics in light of the whole Charlie Kirk thing. Because I never really knew or cared who Charlie Kirk was, and my first exposure to him led to a reaction of "oh this is just Stephen Crowder but as a smug Christian."

This led me to reflect on the declining quality of human being in the...words fail me. Alt media? Internet political influencers?

I have a lot of nostalgia for The SkepticsTM and that entire era of YouTube talking head. (Often not even a head, just an avatar pic.) Now whenever I fish around for that level of quality, it simply isn't to be found. We are all infected. We are all dumber than we used to be.

Some of this is downstream of the YouTube algorithm in the sense that it incentivized shorter more quickly-produced low-effort content. Back in the day people used to make video essays, or cringe compilations. If they did something live, it was a Hangout, an informal podcast involving people who sure look like genuine friends having genuine discussions. Often with no live video feed. These days it appears to be some guy pontificating off the top of his head, repeating himself often, talking in circles. Kyle Kulinski now does the same thing that Tim pool was doing a few years ago. Hassan Piker appears to just be an LA nepo-baby himbo socialite, and he's very much a step down from whatever Vaush is/was, who was in turn a step down from Chapo Trap House (these are all things I dislike, but I note the decline in quality).

I've also noticed the trad motive decay. Originally, "based" was a punchline and no one pretended to actually be socially conservative, in the same way that Marilyn Manson isn't actually a Satanist, all the upside-down crosses are just there to trigger the normies. I suppose this shouldn't be surprising; the original anti-woke thesis was "look I'm liberal/democrat just like you, but you're so smug and obnoxious and factually wrong I find myself becoming conservative just to spite you."

(That was the original troll op: trying to make the point that the other party is so thin-skinned, fragile and unreasonable that they'll very predictably flip their shit over "it's okay to be white.")

In particular, Twitch seems to be full of fucking townies. No one talks philosophy or has a dignified intellectual persona. The era of Sargon, Dr Layman, Dev, Kraut, and Vee shooting the shit as genuine friends is long over, it's just influencers chasing clout all the way down now.

TL;DR: Asmongold is a shittier Sargon, and current-year Carl is also a shitty caricature of himself.

This is a rambling drunken phonepost, so forgive me. I mourn for the lost Internet of yesteryear. The only place on YouTube I see anything like that old level of genuine quality is EFAP.

Jordan Peterson is another example of steep decline in quality.

Even people who comment in writing have seen decline. For example, Scott himself. I don't mean to say he's bad now, or that his stepping back from the spotlight wasn't justified or even wise. But nonetheless, AstralCodexTen is no SlateStarCodex.

But further, I think there's a reason for the decline in good commentary: there is a deep crisis of faith in western institutions. I don't want to say "We all just need to clap our hands for Tinkerbell and believe!" because I believe this loss of faith is, at least to some extent, justified. Take the Epstein files. Half of Trump's cabinet made numerous public statements about releasing these files and clearing everything up for the public, only to backpeddle in the most pants-on-head, clown-world fashion once they came into office. And let me not mince words about what popular perception is about the Epstein affair: people believe this is Israel blackmailing US politicians, quite likely including Trump himself (who is almost daily seen with Epstein's next-door neighbor, Howard Lutnick).

And it's not just the Epstein files. Everything is suffering this same crisis of faith. Take the HHS with RFK Jr.. Or the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Or even the Federal Reserve itself. Across all these institutions, we see accusations of at best policy motivated by partisan politics, if not outright criminal fraud.

Even areas that should be free of this sort of thing are not. For example, Larry Summers says inflation was crazy high in the early 2020s, we just changed the metric, while CATO says this is uninformed madness and you should definitely not pay attention to Larry Summers. Let me remind you, Summers is not a WoW streamer blabbering about a topic he knows nothing about; this is the former president of Harvard, with a PhD in economics, who has been a top-level advisor to multiple administrations on this very matter.

Finally, take the gorilla in the room: immigration. Third-world immigration is no longer perceived as a matter of "oh, there's some people who just wanted a better life, and some people think we should let more in, and some people think fewer." That's... soooo 2010s. No, today at best the contention is "you are importing people with the intent that they will influence elections by one day voting for you", and even that's the nice right-wing position; the bad-boy position is "there are people who are outright trying to replace the native demographics." These are no longer fringe positions confined to obscure image boards. This is now mainstream. And the tacit question making the air so thick one can scarcely inhale is: "and what is going to be done about it?"

So I ask you, how exactly is someone supposed to give measured, insightful commentary about this? Go ahead, read Steven Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature. Sound like fitting commentary today, with Ukraine and Gaza all over your feed? Well, that's why we don't have commentary like that anymore.

only to backpeddle in the most pants-on-head, clown-world fashion once they came into office

It fascinated me to see some here start backpedaling before I heard the admin do so.

The weirdest thing is the administration brought this on themselves. It's not like Epstein was a grassroots thing that they were forced to confront. It is specifically their making noise about it during the campaign that revived interest in the affair in the first place. Keep in mind Epstein died during Trump's first term, and yet somehow the fanfare then was minimal compared to what we see now. Why would they drum up attention about it, only to backpeddle? I mean, they did the same thing with auditing the Federal Reserve and Fort Knox. And annexing Canada. And Greenland.

Like what is sincere analysis of this stuff even supposed to look like? Because the most charitable interpretation I can give is "Ah, don't worry about it, they just say dumb shit for attention," which should already be a sharp indictment of officials entrusted with enacting national policy, and even that's not what I really believe.

I think you end up with MASSIVE selection effects over the medium term.

I want you to think, REALLY think of any 'popular' political streamer who is known to have a healthy home life, wife/husband, kids, no social drama bubbling up.

Probably hard to come up with more than, say, 3, right?

I'll give you Joe Rogan right up front but he's not primarily political, really, and he's now so untouchable that he isn't subject to 'normal' pressures by any means. Also Jesus Christ Joe Rogan is almost 60.

ShoeOnHead is maybe the only one I know who managed to escape the pits and make a fulfilling life for herself relatively unscathed... and she had some close calls.

Charlie Kirk was arguably one of the few who had his life together from the start and maintained his popularity while still being a solid family man. And see where that got him.

The fact is that people who have the time and inclination to do this as a 'career' are less likely to have their life together in other ways, and won't really be able to devote efforts to keeping their domestic life on track if they are serious about staying relevant. And if they are not already in a stable relationship when they get popular, think about the types of people they're now likely to attract by having their face out there next to extreme, controversial opinions. You're arguably selecting AGAINST good partners, maybe even permanently killing your chances of having one.

In short, the ones who will actually stick around (before crashing and burning spectacularly) are already likely to be the most unhinged/unbalanced, and the general pressure is towards more extremism to maintain relevance. The ones who are stable and manage to get a family going will probably fade out naturally when other things just become more important to them.

And you see what that leaves us with.

Consider that one of the secrets to maintaining relevance in the attention economy is to constantly be embroiled in drama and controversy, and thus people who have stable home lives are not only at a disadvantage is how much effort they can commit to the bit, but also having less 'natural' controversy disadvantages them.

And the filters for who gets popular in the first place are arguably worse too. Rather than a celebrity working their way up to prominence doing movies, TV shows, and having to get through a lot of gatekeepers, it is essentially some 'random' ordinary person getting elevated to stardom, and they probably have a lot of personal issues already, which won't get better with fame. Give these people tons of attention, adoring fans, sexual access to women, and the feeling of having power, and expect their worst traits to eventually manifest in full, and there is NO real limiting factor on them, nobody who can tell them 'rein it in bud' and actually enforce that edict.

It would be a much more worthwhile post to delve into why these YouTube 'philosophers' of yesteryear stopped doing what they were doing.

One thing to note would be that almost half of these creators stopped doing what they were doing because of altercations with voices that were further to the right.

Such as Kraut organizing a secret discord server to finally lift the veil on scientific racism once and for all, and in the process torching every single 'liberal' ethos one can think of. Down to meticulously deleting every single negative comment on the videos he made on the topic. Videos that were full of errors, both factual and conceptual, that left one wondering how on earth this man ever captured anyone's ear.

Or Sargon, who championed the freedom of speech of rape jokes all the way to national television in the name of an already established political party. At a time where most right of center minds were fixed firmly on the mass rape of young British girls at the hands of immigrants. Becoming publicly known as 'UKIP rape joke man'. A mass rape that Sargon claimed was always going to happen regardless of immigration. As if there was some invisible hand in the sky that doled out rape to meet a quota. I think it's fair to say Carl Benjamin has moved on to much greener pastures with traditionalism rather than holding on to his half baked 'Liberalist' philosophy.

To that extent it's hard to understand how most of these guys ever got anywhere outside of just being loud voices that spoke against feminism in an appealing accent (or not, Vee and Layman sound terrible). But considering how obviously out of depth they were when it came to anything that wasn't a howling feminist, I think we are better for them being gone. Hell, maybe they didn't even do anti-feminism all that well either. How would one know?

Regardless, Asmongold does the slop better, and there are plenty of right wing voices that do genuine political content better. I don't miss the awful political commentary at all, which was only designed to tactfully place somewhere safe from the 'extreme right' and the 'lunatic left'. Without ever saying or believing anything relevant or real.

I have a lot of nostalgia for The SkepticsTM and that entire era of YouTube talking head. (Often not even a head, just an avatar pic.) Now whenever I fish around for that level of quality, it simply isn't to be found.

I'm old enough to remember the time TheAmazingAtheist got in trouble for a leaked video of him sticking a banana up his ass. There are a lot of words one can use to describe that era of YouTube influencer. "Dignified" is not one of them.

What the fuck?

I’ll always remember the hilarious Encyclopedia Dramatica write-up on him and their dredging up of now deleted videos they recovered, of him making legal threats against them and other parties for criticizing his content.

Can I just say I think you're just factually wrong about all of this.

First, I'm not sure if this 'Charlie Kirk was apparently just a shock jockey' shtick is genuine ignorance or some kind of bit, but for instance here's the Vice President of the United States taking over his long-form podcast. I honestly can't understand people who comment 'who is this guy' or 'he doesn't seem important' without doing any basic research. He was probably the most important political operative on the right, supposedly one of maybe three people who had the President's ear, and likely also won the election for Trump by being the most significant organizer of Republican's ground game. But instead you watch a couple of TikToks and conclude he's "just Stephen Crowder but as a smug Christian". Don't you have any curiosity at all?

On the idea that there's no long-form content on Youtube anymore, I have to imagine you're just not looking. That's basically all I watch! In fairness, the main topics I follow are religion, various political channels, and some misc nerdy topics (All videos I've watched in the last week). So you may be correct that in the topics you're specifically interested in there's no long-form content anymore, but I kind of severely doubt it.

Yeah I’m literally watching a high quality two hour documentary on the conquest of Greece by Rome while working out, right now. On YouTube. For free.

I think the lament says more about the OP than reality; long form and high quality content is broadly available it’s just increasingly not produced by the typical blue tribe producers.

If you’re deeply embedded in that cultural narrative, yeah sure it might feel like we are declining culturally. Lots of cultural institutions output have been horrific for the last 10-15 years.

But my access to high quality information and educational entertainment has never been better.

it’s just increasingly not produced by the typical blue tribe producers pushed out by enshittified recommendation algorithms trying to force feed everyone with the worst clickbait the mankind has ever seen.

I have to be extremely meticulous about deleting any watched video that even slightly deviates from my regular feed of photography and musicianship related videos as well as hit "hide" on any recommendation that deviates from those or my feed will inevitably be invaded by shit tier clickbait crap. Just the other day simply watching one astrophotography video was enough to make a bunch of "nobel winner warns about new voyager discovery" crap videos enter my feed.

The same way if I try to find anything with search, I have to add "before:2026" or within a page or two the results are polluted by clickbait shit.

The same way if I try to find anything with search, I have to add "before:2026" or within a page or two the results are polluted by clickbait shit.

Wait wtf why does this have any effect? Not doubting that it does, I just struggle to think of a mechanism.

Wild ass guess: It switches to a different internal search engine that's more classic style instead of "recommendation" based.

Maybe it's piggybacking on the cluster of people who use before:2022 or before:2021 to exclude AI SEO slop? Perhaps you have found a way to make yourself look like a sophisticated search user without actually invoking any sophisticated search functions.

If you’re deeply embedded in that cultural narrative, yeah sure it might feel like we are declining culturally. Lots of cultural institutions output have been horrific for the last 10-15 years.

Is that something people really dispute these days? 2025 surely doesn’t seem like the high tide of high cultural achievement to me. I’d encourage people to give me their best vanity pitch for the western world today and among those who’ve answered me thus far, the results haven’t been very encouraging.

The new generation has nowhere left to discuss politics or philosophy in a way that actually encourages discursive skills. Forum culture is dead; Reddit’s new UI prevents longterm discussion by hiding all replies automatically and showing few comments + algorithm promotes short form content + mod culture promotes consensus with severity. Facebook / YT have comment UIs that discourage long discourse by making it impossible to keep track. Discord is either too localized or too populous for long arguments. Three more things work against the youth: (1) the popularity of Hip Hop culture with its proud disdain of any kind of thinking, making middle class Whites more likely to respond with an emoji or a SYBAU when confronted with an argument. (2) The increase in economic and academic competition, meaning kids have less time discuss freely and for fun. (3) The increase in addicting content online, sapping attention.

I could live with YouTube comments if they didn't randomly get deleted by the algorithm.

No one talks philosophy or has a dignified intellectual persona.

The number of living humans who are actually interested in "talking philosophy" is minuscule. Even among people who are otherwise highly intelligent and capable. Even TheMotte these days is more interested in the concrete play-by-play of current events than anything theoretical. (Although frankly, this is probably not too different from the historical norm on TheMotte. Current events have always dominated the discussion. We went through an anomalously philosophical period around 2022-2023 due to the advent of AI, and since then have regressed to the mean.)

The number of living humans who are actually interested in "talking philosophy" is minuscule. Even among people who are otherwise highly intelligent and capable.

And that's for a good reason. Philosophy is by and large pointless intellectual wankery with anything real world applicable either few and far between or already invented centuries or millennia ago.

It's a bit like the number of living humans interesting in talking math except even higher mathematics has plenty of useful or even revolutionary real world applications.

The best things in life are pointless.

Masturbation is pointless too, but damn if it doesn't feel good.

Much like masturbation, I'd be much happier if philosophers kept it to themselves.

Have you ever been in any "philosophy" circle? It quickly becomes unreadable because every single person will come up with their own definition for already defined words to match one of their theories, and then will use them in concert to try to make their thesis a mathematical proof. You end up with sentences that look like plain English, but are completely unintelligible. This is the antithesis of good communication and discussion.

I'd be much happier if philosophers kept it to themselves.

There are plenty of other types of academics (in both STEM and the humanities) who are also doing work that has roughly the same level of impact on you and your life (~zero). Philosophers don't seem to be much different from those guys. Why single philosophy out for such ire?

Have you ever been in any "philosophy" circle?

Several (both online and irl).

It quickly becomes unreadable because every single person will come up with their own definition for already defined words to match one of their theories, and then will use them in concert to try to make their thesis a mathematical proof.

I don't believe I've ever seen anyone actually do this. I can imagine what it would look like, but I've never actually encountered it. The greatest and most common danger is that you run into people who are just kind of dumb and don't have anything interesting to say. But that happens in everything, not just philosophy.

There are a number of papers in the analytic philosophy literature that try to present themselves as having achieved a "mathematical" level of rigor. Maybe this is what you're talking about. But you're incorrect to say that those papers are "unintelligible". Usually it's just a matter of understanding how the key terms are defined; hopefully the author will define terms that they're using in an unusual or idiosyncratic way, and if they don't, it's probably because they assume that you already know the definition of the term based on prior experience with other relevant literature (physicists do not use the word "work" in the way that people do in ordinary conversation, but that doesn't mean they're obligated to define it for you every time they use "work" in the physics-sense).

Don’t express the virtues of collectivism.

That's a natural bias in any community of free-thinkers.

Don’t say anything critical of Zelensky.

The Motte on average is much more critical of Ukraine in general and Zelensky in particular than your average subreddit.

buried

I didn't think the motte hide comments with lots of downvotes the way reddit does. Does this mean something else?

Don’t say anything critical of Zelensky.

All those but are bullshit but I'll pick this one out to prove you wrong cause whenever am I gonna get a chance to talk about this again?

I think zelensky is a fucking moron prosecuting the war entirely wrong for political reasons. He dismissed his best commander because he was getting too popular and might defeat him in the next election. He replaced him with an unpopular commander that wouldn't threaten his political career, problem being the reason this new commander isn't a political threat is because he's incompetent. He keeps pointlessly throwing his best troops into meatgrinders in order to achieve a "win" which he believes ukraine desperately needs but he never explains what good any of these "wins" would do even if they ever materialized. Zelensky has put his own political career ahead of the life of his own country. I think ukraine would be much better off if zaluzhnyi was president rather than zelensky.

I'm not sure if any of the pro-Ukraine posters are particularly committed to Zelensky the Man, unless he's meant to symbolize the entire Ukrainian cause here.

...plenty of us have, indeed, "stepped outside of the pro-US-centric narrative", ie. considered the arguments of the pro-Russian side and their interpretations of the various events, and found them, to put it mildly, wanting.

Don’t express the virtues of collectivism. Don’t criticize the preference for libertarianism or small government. Don’t say anything critical of Zelensky. Don’t doubt the inherent virtue of unnamed people.

What? I don't know what you mean by the last one, but I disagree with all the other ones, and I'm pretty sure I could write something doing all thr things you're telling people not to, and get lots of updoots.

I'm not questioning a bias existing, but you're getting in comically wrong.

Your most downvoted comment ever was this one, which as far as I can tell is trying to say that intelligence is a bad trait because being intelligent increases your ability to do things and some of those things are bad? Not really sure, some of the context is deleted comments.

Your second most downvoted comment ever is the comment I'm replying to right now, complaining that people downvote you for bad reasons.

It does seem like your takes on Ukraine in particular don't land with this audience. Aside from that it seems like you mostly get downvoted when you make low-effort dunks. And you just genuinely don't have that many downvoted comments.

All that said it seems like you genuinely do have different perspectives. I don't know that we have very many people who are fully immersed in Russian culture on here. I bet a lot of your stuff would land better if you expanded a bit on the things that seem obvious to you but which the rest of the people here seem not to be taking into account, particularly the things where mottizens are pushing for policies where there's common-knowledge russian history of how that went horribly wrong.

I would love to talk about theory, but I'm not sure interesting discussions of theory are available. The overwhelming amount of theory has always been apologetics - start with a desired bottom line, derived from vibes which were absorbed from or imposed by the environment, and reason backwards until a good theory that just so happens to prove the bottom line (or, "surprisingly", more of the bottom line than anyone dared to ask for before) is formed. I don't see how this could be avoided structurally - unlike scientific theories, philosophical theories have no ground truth to answer to, so there is no competitive advantage forward reasoning conveys. Even so, this could be fine for a discussion environment, as even if no individual theory-builder ever changed their mind due to theoretising, a number of theory-builders with diverse bottom lines could compete over theory-consumers on the elegance of their apologetics, and even on the aesthetic appeal of the bottom line that they already were living. However, this requires an actually diverse set of people willing to theoretise; and neither society at large, nor this forum in particular, has done anything to rein in the forces that compel people to just assimilate to one or another existing bottom line rather than hold onto their idiosyncrasies alone and weather hostility from all. As a result, the only innovation in theory we would be getting is different contortions reaching either a conclusion that we need between 1 and 50 Comrade Trumps, or 1 and 50 Comrade Hitlers, or maybe very rarely between 1 and 50 Comrade Mills.

The overwhelming amount of theory has always been apologetics - start with a desired bottom line, derived from vibes which were absorbed from or imposed by the environment, and reason backwards until a good theory that just so happens to prove the bottom line

Sure. But, what else is there to do but press onward anyway?

In order to get an actual understanding of the Culture War, which is this forum's raison d'être, you have to theorize about the psychological and material motivations of different factions and individuals, you have to produce a unified narrative of historical causes, you have to take an accounting of the ethics and implied metaphysics of different positions, you have to have some notion of the aims of political activity in general... in short, you have to do philosophy.

Without a theoretical account of the Culture War and its constitutive elements, the forum is reduced to simply giving a factual account of current events, along with perhaps some strategizing and some sentimental commiserating with people who are on the same "side" as you. In other words, you'd just be fumbling about in the dark without any understanding of what's going on. A mere subject of historical forces rather than someone who might hope to know them.

unlike scientific theories

Science is not exempt from politics and emotion. Otherwise, empirical research into race and sex differences, or even just IQ, wouldn't be as touchy as it is. Researchers get invested in their own theories all the time even when there's no overt political content, "science advances one funeral at a time", etc.

philosophical theories have no ground truth to answer to

We just went over this. It certainly seems to be the case that philosophical claims are either true or false, just like most of the other ordinary types of claims that we're familiar with. MTF transsexuals are either women, or they aren't. There are either mind-independent ethical facts, or there aren't. There is either at least one conscious entity, or there isn't. The ground truth that these claims answer to is the same ground truth that everything else answers to: the facts of reality.

Of course, there have been many attempts throughout the history of philosophy to show that individual philosophical questions or classes of questions are in fact meaningless (in the neither-true-nor-false sense), contrary to initial appearances. But these types of arguments too depend on their own non-trivial assertions about reality.

However, this requires an actually diverse set of people willing to theoretise; and neither society at large, nor this forum in particular, has done anything to rein in the forces that compel people to just assimilate to one or another existing bottom line rather than hold onto their idiosyncrasies alone and weather hostility from all.

It's true, our present lack of intellectual diversity isn't really conducive to good discussion. But we still have substantial disagreements on this forum regarding AI, race and immigration, the ethics of sexuality, etc.

Science is not exempt from politics and emotion. Otherwise, empirical research into race and sex differences, or even just IQ, wouldn't be as touchy as it is.

They're not "touchy", there's just an effort to censor one (or more) side. Maybe because there is in fact a fact of the matter one can appeal to.

The claim was not that the process of science cannot be corrupted. The claim was that there's at least some theoretical yardstick some evidence that could be offered on many issues or some prediction that could be validated. The people who do things like try to stop genetic data being available for intelligence research or studies being done on smoking or gun deaths aren't evidence for the other side, they are proof for the claim: both sides seem to have some sense of where the confirming or disconfirming evidence is, one side has simply decided to defect.

And nothing can really eliminate the risk of defection so it's hardly damning for science that some do.

Maybe because there is in fact a fact of the matter one can appeal to.

There is (seemingly) no (obvious) empirical fact that will settle the debate over whether MTF transsexuals are women, and yet the claim "Caitlin Jenner is still a man" would be censured very aggressively in lefty spaces.

The same goes for religious claims, ethical claims, all sorts of claims for which no empirical verification is possible.

The claim was that there's at least some theoretical yardstick some evidence that could be offered on many issues or some prediction that could be validated.

I previously argued that a sentence need not be empirically verifiable in order to be meaningful or truth-apt in general. So, if you're trying to assert that "being able to answer to a ground truth" just is the same as "being empirically verifiable", I would reject that.

The same goes for religious claims, ethical claims, all sorts of claims for which no empirical verification is possible.

I think there's a difference between censoring speech made for claims that we cannot really settle beyond raw power or tolerance and censoring research that theoretically can settle those claims. It leads to a strange agreement between the censor and their victim on the stakes in a way that doesn't have to be true in other case.

Maybe Frankfurt's distinction between lying and bullshit - lying at least acknowledges the concept of truth even as you point people away from it, bullshit denies that the truth is meaningful in the first place.

Yes, statements can be truth-apt without being empirically verifiable in practice. OrAnd there are cases where the stakes or what would settle the issue are themselves in doubt. In which case there's nothing for it but philosophy I suppose , since that's the role it can maintain in a world where science is ascendant.

I think a lot of the actual culture war debates do not escape empiricism in practice though, even if people try to insist that it's just a matter of differing definitions floating in the ether.

MTF transsexuals are either women, or they aren't.

This seems like the worst possible example - “Are transwomen women?” seems to be a question where 90% or the disagreement about the meaning of the word “woman” and only 10% about ground truth.

If you exclude people who believe in intrinsically gendered souls (for whom the question, “Can female souls be incarnated in male bodies?” is meaningful even if the correct answer is unknowable with mortal technology) I don’t think you would get any disagreement on questions like “Does Caitlin Jenner have testicles?” or “Does Caitlin Jenner have a considered, sincere belief that she is supposed to be a woman?”

This seems like the worst possible example - “Are transwomen women?” seems to be a question where 90% or the disagreement about the meaning of the word “woman” and only 10% about ground truth.

Its not really a disagreement about the meaning of the word "woman" because if it was, the trans movement would have a consistent and coherent answer to the WIAW question.

And you just refuted the transactivist point of view by making an obviously correct argument about the meaning of words.

I don’t think you would get any disagreement on questions like “Does Caitlin Jenner have testicles?” or “Does Caitlin Jenner have a considered, sincere belief that she is supposed to be a woman?”

Oh but you would!

Mereological nihilists deny the existence of testicles because they deny the existence of compound physical objects in general (often because of the same Sorites-style arguments that people use to attack conservative ontologies of gender in the first place).

Eliminative materialists deny the existence of beliefs, so they would deny that anyone believes that they are a man or a woman.

So, it turns out to be rather difficult to cleanly divide sentences into two groups of "these are the nice empirical truths that we can be certain of" and "these are the nonsensical philosophical claims that just come down to verbal disputes", because it turns out that almost every sentence you can think of is ultimately the subject of philosophical disagreement.

If you think there is a ground truth of the matter over whether testicles and beliefs exist, in spite of the philosophical disagreement concerning their existence, then it's not clear why you wouldn't think that there is a ground truth of the matter over whether women exist too (along with, presumably, some sort of criteria for determining whether an entity counts as a woman or not).

Mereological nihilists... deny the existence of compound physical objects

Eliminative materialists deny the existence of beliefs,

Both of which are extreme minority views held by a tiny number of people that even other philosophers mostly think are wankers.

Mereological nihilists deny the existence of testicles because they deny the existence of compound physical objects in general... Eliminative materialists deny the existence of beliefs, so they would deny that anyone believes that they are a man or a woman....

... and mereological nihilists and eliminative materialists have negligible relevance to any actually existing argument about this subject. Certainly below the lizardman constant.

"I don't think you would get any disagreement on" doesn't mean "literally 0.0000 percent disagreement".

This seems like the worst possible example - “Are transwomen women?” seems to be a question where 90% or the disagreement about the meaning of the word “woman” and only 10% about ground truth.

How is the meaning of the word "woman" separate from the ground truth? The argument of the gender critical side is that the trans definition of woman is simply incoherent and anything close to the traditional definition simply returns false for the TWAW claim.

If anything, the idea that these things can be split has been mercifully killed by trans activists themselves: they claim some sort of sharp distinction but in practice what's happened is that anyone claiming the right to the term "woman" has at least a claim on all female privileges and rights no matter how self-evidently absurd it is.

So either the definition of trans is self-evidently incoherent or it's making a claim about the underlying facts (e.g. trans-identifying males are closer to females in their offending patterns in prison).

The trans-inclusive definition of "woman" is self-evidently incoherent. But pointing that out is an argument about the meaning of words, not about what Caitlyn Jenner is.

I would love to talk about theory, but I'm not sure interesting discussions of theory are available.

I do find myself thinking about abstract political questions (usually steeped down from current issues, but abstracted from the immediate contextual details) from time to time. Maybe I need to start a list and write a couple of paragraphs to make a top-level post occasionally.

Dewit.

I for my part would certainly appreciate such a post.

Now that you see that it is only shadows on the wall, get out of the cave! Sorry the tragedy is entertainment and you just found out that it isn't entertaining. None of these talking heads are there to inform you or improve your life, they are there to entertain you, to distract you and to passivize you while the future is being stolen by subscriptions.

Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?

Maybe Mark Klein?

I'm not sure what would have been an equivalent excess to blow the whistle about before the Bush administration, just from a technical perspective.

Kraut

this guy? https://youtube.com/@Kraut_the_Parrot/videos

I ran across him some time ago, he seemed like a smug liberal idiot making slickly wrong videos. Seeing as he's left twitter and moved to bsky? He was ever.. friends with e.g. Sargon?

Bizarre.

who was in turn a step down from Chapo Trap House

Can you point to something showing how these people were ever quality?

Grading on the curve of being a leftist podcaster/streamer I think Vaush is quality. He is legitimately funny and doesn't give off the kind of feminine energy that typically drives men away from the left.

It was fun watching him tee-off on the snowflakes in his chat about trying to get Jesse Singal banned from Bluesky for... something I guess?

He is legitimately funny but in part because he comes up with whole new levels of reddit: argumentum ad Marvel Movie for instance.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=kVuqXQYwD30

So strange that Chapo Trap House is popular. I tried listening to a couple episodes and it is egregiously bad in every aspect.

I could honestly never get into it either and I was very sympathetic towards that side of the Left. I think I did hear one full episode on Robin DiAngelo.

Going off that and my general sense of that side of the left: it all seems to be about feeding a demographic left behind by to the longhousing/PMCing of the Democratic party after the Hillary/Bernie fight, combined with a deeper resentment about the state of the economy from the downwardly mobile middle class types who read enough theory to be able to make it a socialist issue.

So as long as the internet was a niche thing you could be comfortably detached and ironic. I miss it too.

But the normie masses came and took everything seriously. It basically became a even lamer and gayer form of the real world.

Nowadays, there's no distinction between real life and the internet, and that hasn't been to the benefit of either.

The old soul of the internet is dead, or if it is still alive, it is only in little isolate pockets in communities too small to be relevant. Alas.

As a thought experiment, the Internet in some ways looks like large-scale direct democracy (literally upvotes). Beyond the tractability questions of direct democracy a few centuries ago, the form of government is also generally acknowledged to suffer from known issues like tyranny of the majority, or even by particularly motivated minorities. Which seems a lot like what we see going wrong in online culture, in my opinion.


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