This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
You are making a pretty weird claim here, and one that doesn't seem necessary to the rest of your point at all (the validity of which I don't intend to get into at this time). Are you really saying that ancient Jews did not believe in the literal existence of God — that the average Hebrew didn't have an earnest belief in the existence of an almighty supernatural being manifest within the Holiest of Holies — that only Christians got into the bad habit of taking the Bible literally even at this very basic "is the character of God meant to be, like, real" level? Why? What does that have to do with anything? Surely your argument would work much the same if we simply posit that the Torah was written to be taken literally, with all its assertions that Yahweh is a very real guy and he really does like the Hebrews best.
I don't even dispute your anthropological characterization of Yahweh as a "tribal god", exactly. But that's ethnography, not theology. It doesn't follow that the writers of the Old Testament themselves understood God as a mere metaphor. The Ancient Greeks also largely believed in the supernatural, even if they understood that the word-for-word details of Homer were fictional and the "real" gods might not be such anthropomorphic characters as the epics portrayed. There's nothing odd about that — most Christians today believe that the Devil really exists but is probably not a big red man with horns who makes pacts signed in blood. There is every reason to think that ancient Jews understood their own mythology in much the same way.
Ethnography and theology are two sides of the same coin, as are myth and ethnogenesis. They are tokens that influence the genetic evolution of the tribe.
Yes the vast majority of them did believe the stories, but the ones creating the stories had political motives. There is a distinction to be made between believing the myths and believing the myths. Does Netanyahu literally believe them? Or does he believe in them insofar as he identifies with them and uses them to organize a people to attain geopolitical objectives? It doesn't really matter what Netanyahu believes, he is a product of those myths and he is using them to change the world, and those same myths are indispensable in ensuring the loyalty of foreigners like Huckabee and Ted Cruz: people who are supposed to represent me by the way, but they do not- the bible tells them to be loyal to Israel it doesn't tell them to be loyal to me and mine.
It is necessary for my point, because people just dismiss Huckabee as being some outlier that provides an incidental justification for a "straw man", rather than Huckabee's loyalty to Israel being a feature, not a bug of Christianity. And Carlson's opposition, also rooted in Christianity, is forced to accept the same fictional truths Huckabee uses to justify his perspective. How can Christians debate this if they agree God promised them the land?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link