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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25155 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 27, 2025

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What else should the atheist quote when arguing that some Christian is a hypocrite?

"Of course this argument wouldn't work on me. But just maybe it will make you do what I want."

Accusations of hypocrisy tend to be failures in recognizing nuance, different factions or different situations and context. I would put very little stock in accusations of hypocrisy from someone hostile to my views.

"Of course this argument wouldn't work on me. But just maybe it will make you do what I want."

There is nothing in the Christian faith, to my knowledge, stating that you are allowed to not follow it just because your atheist interlocutor isn't. It is all good and well to be a conflict theorist and to refuse to submit to your enemies, but doing that and still claiming to follow a faith that might require you to submit to your enemies sometimes will be rightfully called hypocrisy.

The religion claims it's true. If I make an argument from what is, from your perspective, truth, then either my argument is faulty, you agree with me despite me not accepting your axioms, or your axioms aren't as axiomatic as you claim and are closer to "never do what my enemies want".

If we were competing mathematicians, where you believed 1+1=2, and I believed something else, then suppose I ask you to make some sort of a tangible bet based on your belief that 1+1=2. Will you go "but you don't even believe that 1+1=2"?

I've always taken the point of that pithy line in that comic to be making the point that someone who lacks the faith in the religion and uses the belief as a tool to manipulate others into doing what they want is someone who likely doesn't understand the thinking of someone of the faith, to such an extent that their arguments based on the religion are faulty. In a Dunning-Krueger way, someone who believes he knows enough about a religion he has no faith in to manipulate believers into doing things based on their faith in the religion is someone who doesn't understand what he doesn't understand.

"You simply don't understand how it works until you actually start believing it yourself" is also the go-to line of many obviously malicious cult leaders. (Some cynically assume the major church leadership counts, too.)

Indeed, it is. And by many people's lights, including mine, basically every major religion is isomorphic to a malicious cult. That's a completely irrelevant point to the one that's being made in that comic, though.

What is the actual comic you're talking about, by the way?

Link

*insert leftist talking point here* because Jesus said to be compassionate in the Bible somewhere

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.

I have to note that the fact that the Christian has nothing but contempt for my backward godless beliefs doesn't stop him from proselytizing to me and thinking he's being genuine by hating the religion sin and loving the misguided believer sinner.

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