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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   26600 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

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And things keep habbening, Christian husband and father Pete Hegseth now threatens (or promises) to retrvn back to the Stone Age. Whether he means Paleolithic, Mesolithic or Neolithic is left unspecified, and so is whether he means Iran, US or the whole world. "Stone Age" trending worldwide on Xitter right now.

Very very problematic thing to say for a member of church belonging to Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches!

From CREC Book of Memorials:

The doctrine of creation lies at the heart of Christian living, deeply embedded within our assumptions about worship, knowledge, faith, celebration, beauty, and redemption. In recent decades, many conservative evangelicals have been moved by the science of the day to oppose the historic view of creation in six sequential days of common length, several millennia in the past. Instead, they hold that the bare ideas of creation presented in Genesis have little to do with the actualities of creation. Falsely pitting poetry and symbolism against history, they distort the text of Scripture and divorce ideas from the created order in ancient Gnostic fashion.

Right now, we can be sure Mr Hegseth's pastor gives him very stern talking and calls him to repent and renounce satanic Darwinist lies unbecoming for true Biblical Christian.

And we all can continue monitoring the situation.

Bad look for CREC if they have to count people like him from within their number. The devil can quote scripture to his own purpose too.

I don't suppose Adam and Eve left the Garden with a steel foundry or bronze weapons. There must have been some stone age. We're merely discussing particularly when it occurred.

Prior to Tubal-Cain.

And probably again after the flood, depending on the knowledge of Noah's sons

Technically, the tale that Tubal-Cain was the first smith comes from tradition, the Biblical text does not say it.

I don't suppose Adam and Eve left the Garden with a steel foundry or bronze weapons.

Another famous traditional tale is that God created the first tongs for the first blacksmith, because you need tongs to make another tongs.

IRL, shipwrecked sailors on desert islands of old and modern bootstrapping hobbyists solved this by making the first tongs of hard wood soaked in water (large supply of them to replace as they burn off) and used them to fashion the first passable metal tongs.

Technically, the tale that Tubal-Cain was the first smith comes from tradition, the Biblical text does not say it.

Yes it does. Genesis 4 lists the descendants of Adam, and then 4:22 states

Zillah also had a son, Tubal-Cain, who forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron.

Yes, and the text does not say he was the first man ever who was doing the forging. Just that he was good enough at it to be notable.

The text also doesn't literally ever call Adam the "first" man. It has to be inferred from context that there were no men mentioned before him. To call it merely "tradition" that Adam was the first man and not something the Bible says, however, would be absolutely ridiculous. It is similarly ridiculous to say the Bible does not call Tubal-Cain the first metal worker.

The Stone Age is an idiom. I can’t say what Doug Wilson’s personal beliefs on the progression of human history in light of creation are, but it’s entirely possible to hold to the belief in a (short tbh) Stone Age while taking the first 11 chapters of genesis 100% literally- this is just sneering.

but it’s entirely possible to hold to the belief in a (short tbh) Stone Age while taking the first 11 chapters of genesis 100% literally- this is just sneering.

Genuinely asking, how?

If you accept the stone age happened, you accept all the stone tools and such that have been found as evidence of the stone age right?

But then given we find the stone age tools with lots of evidence that they're XX,XXX years old and we find other tools that are XX,XXX - 3000 years old, etc. the same evidence showing there was a stone age also pretty clearly shows it was quite long.

How does one accept part of the evidence and not the other?

Also I assume that this rests on a bedrock of "carbon dating is fake/wrong"?

Also I assume that this rests on a bedrock of "carbon dating is fake/wrong"?

Yes, young-earth creationists are skeptical of carbon dating as applied. Carbon dating relies on the ratio of Carbon-14 to Carbon-12 in the atmosphere being more or less constant, and YEC tends to doubt this. Among other things, assuming the level of cosmic radiation has remained consistent, an earth less than 10,000 years old should still be gaining more Carbon-14 than it loses to nuclear decay.

I am afraid I don’t know enough to critique or defend the objection intelligently. But since you asked, I summarize.

Thank you very much for answering, I appreciate it

By rejecting the same evidence for long time frames that they already reject?

I don't know what evidence they reject, hence the question

I haven't felt this negative about America since Bush Jr. Along with exposure to Paula White I feel myself being dragged back to my New Atheist days.

This stuff sure cycles fast.

Although I predicted Trump taking us to war with Iran during his 2024 campaign, during his first term I predicted here that the US couldn't be drawn into war with Iran because the failure of the Iraq war derailed those strategic plans. Sad to be wrong.

Good Friday- markets closed. Suspected ground operation incoming.

Once the ground operation starts he won’t need to worry about the markets anymore. The market manipulation was to buy time to either get a capitulation(lol) or finish preparations for the invasion.

One wonders what they have on Trump at this point, this isn't his usual modus operandi. The other half of the Epstein files?

Maybe they just got rid of all the moderating influences in the general staff and elsewhere. I was reading just today that they tried this exact routine on Bush in 2007 but the CENTCOM commander said 'over my dead body' and blocked it: https://x.com/ClimateAudit/status/2039752164894015529

I have to wonder why the Trump administration's foreign policy leadership thinks they can compel a regime that just killed 20-30k of their own citizens by hitting civilian infrastructure.

The same way a police officer might compel a violent schizophrenic to drop his weapon via high-velocity lead injection.

You aren't going to be running an aluminum plant or uranium enrichment facility on portable diesel generators and rooftop solar.

Well. If you destroy the electricity generating equipment, the capacity of the country to wage war is reduced to roughly throwing rocks and if the regime aligned engineers are surprisingly capable - a trebuchet.

Iran is insane, not retarded. Do you really think they haven’t planned for their equipment not having access to external power.

Their attack on the gulf states showed that they are both. And I am sure that they have not planned for campaign that has the explicit goal of dismantling their state as a state. They planned for regime change. Blown petrol wells take a long time to be extinguished, powerplants to be rebuilt. Russia has low capacity - that is why it goes after the chokepoints - the substations. With the total air superiority that US enjoys - they could do a lot more fun stuff. Like blowing up the petroleum wells and power plants themselves.

It's very hard to keep the lights off to that degree. Also unclear how bombing a public health institute is going to help.

These types of campaigns have been ineffective against governments less willing to inflict hardship on their own citizens, and yet there remains an irrepressible constituency for the idea that the core issue with American foreign policy is not lack of public trust or coherent strategy, but that we're too squeamish.

Especially not these days with the solar revolution, which has taken Iran by storm just like many other countries in that area. Battery usage is still lagging behind but in a pinch even the old lead acid batteries will do. Together they effectively mean grid connectivity becomes optional for ordinary households.

Iran will end up demanding that every last cent of what it costs to rebuild their infrastructures will be collected from Hormuz tolls (with interest) that Europe et. al. will have to pay. The question is whether Europe has the balls to come out and state that every last cent they have to pay Iran for this will be collected from US tech firms via extraordinary taxes imposed on them. Alas we all know they don't...

And the promise seems to be not entirely rhetorical. Pasteur Institute of Iran had been hit and so was, according to Trump, largest bridge in Iran.

The bridge hit is confirmed. Is Commander in Chief now picking bombing targets personally?

Liberation mode off, Genghis Khan mode on.

edit: links

Apparently the bridge in question wasn't quite finished.

so was, according to Trump, largest bridge in Iran.

The bridge hit is confirmed. Is Commander in Chief now picking bombing targets personally?

Liberation mode off, Genghis Khan mode on.

You say that like the Allies didn’t hit plenty of bridges during the Liberation of France, to prevent the Germans from moving troops and supplies around.

I think you can come up with better commentary than this.

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.

This is like at best eighth on the list of weird ejaculations from Trumpworld in the last 72 hours.

weird ejaculations

Fun word choice given what's going on with Noem's husband.

Apparently we're not doing phrasing anymore...?

I don't want to know more.

What do Pam bondis husband's tits look like?

At the rate this timeline is moving, we'll know in 24-72 hours.

Maybe he was plowing the Army Chief of Staff

Your joke falls flat because the stone age is fully compatible with young earth creationism. The standard timeframe for the end of the stone age is 2000-4000BC depending on location/definition, and the "youngest" of YECs date the world at ~6500 years old, before the end of the stone age.

I just reread the opening of Genesis, and the first metal tools in the Bible actually appear much earlier than I had thought at only Gen 4:22 with the birth of Tubal-Cain: "Zillah also had a son, Tubal-Cain, who forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron." There's 8 generations of stone-age then in genesis: Adam→ Cain → Enoch → Irad→ Mehujael→ Methushael→ Lamech→ Tubal-Cain.

It takes ‘nothing’ to reject YEC dude. All you have to do is calculate how far away the stars are from each other. If that’s your barometer for what’s compatible then you can harmonize absolutely anything in the world without issue. It’s an absurd and incredulous, fideistic offshoot in Protestantism that should be thrown straight into the trash bin.

The point is not to reject YEC. The point is to show that @Eetan's joke falls flat because he is not actually pointing our an inconsistency with YEC (even though as you note many exist). If Hegseth had made a joke about star distances, and @Eetan made a joke about star distances violating YEC, then the joke might have landed.

Ah. Well, YEC is a joke in itself. If it was a joke within a joke then I clearly missed it.

Don’t forget the Bible also says that man was wiped out and had to start over.

back to the Stone Age

Don’t threaten me with a good time.

Is your contention that Adam and Eve came out of the Garden of Eden knowing how to smelt copper?

Come on, man. I know that creationists are one of the traditionally iconic outgroups in rationalist-adjacent spaces. And I find Hegseth pretty frustrating myself. But if you asked Pastor Doug Wilson (de facto leader of CREC) whether there have ever been any peoples without metallurgy, what do you think he'd say? Do you really think it would bother him at all?

I always thought it was awesome when Wilson stunned Hitchens when he was asked about the commandment to exterminate the Amalekites and he replied “that commandment is still valid.” He’s not wrong.

My curiosity is piqued. I couldn't find it, but if you have a link it'd be fun to watch.

Come on, man. I know that creationists are one of the traditionally iconic outgroups in rationalist-adjacent spaces

Used to be, during the golden age of Dubya. If we are retvrning to these times, why not bring back creation-evolution wars? This was the pinnacle of internet.

It's such a crazy relic of the past that there used to be young earth creationists and evangelicals all over the internet even in left wing spaces.

It's such a crazy relic of the post that there used to be young earth creationists and evangelicals all over the internet even in left wing spaces.

Yes, and they were happy to debate, eager to demolish the godless evilutionists by reason, facts and logic and prove Biblical truth once and for all.

They lost and were demolished themselves, but had proven themselves to be worthy enemy. The atheist movement then committed ritual suicide later when there was nothing left to do, but this is another story.

This is all over and is not coming back.

Current conversion pitch is "Just go to church, bro. There is cool art and music, bro, and it is good place to pick up girls" and the hope for victory is no more "we will convert the infidels" but "we will outbreed them".

The country is still about 40% YEC.

The Atheist movement committed suicide because the alternative was confronting their real religion of leftism. When it came time to promote the truth of evolution against the left, most of them decided that it actually wasn't important as more than a stick to bash Christians with after all.

"Bomb them back to the stone age" is, like threatening to turn somepace in to a parking lot or unleash hell, a common phrase that is meant to be taken seriously but not literally (nobody will be replacing an entire city/nation with asphalt and parking lines, nor opening a portal to Dante's circles, after all). I'd assume that's the context here, unless I'm missing something.

The US though, is in the fairly rare position of actually being able to literally bomb the world into the stone age through nuclear arms. Furthermore, they are currently an active part of a war. Thus, the threat carries a lot more weight. It is the difference between your mom saying she's going to kill you for destroying her favorite plates, and a thug pointing a gun at you saying the same thing.

Last time the US used nukes in anger, we bombed the target into the First World.

Stealing valor again, how predictable. Japan built itself into a first world country, with mostly efforts from the Japanese people. How are Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and all those other third world countries doing after your carpet bombing? The world doesn’t revolve around you and you’re going to keep finding that out. You don’t get to claim credit here and there.

Vietnam doing pretty fantastic. Long-term success has more to do with the people than the speedbumps

I agree, that’s one more reason why they shouldn’t claim to nuke Japan into the first world. They’re almost there already before ww2.

Enough Communism can hold any people down, though. Fortunately Vietnam (unlike North Korea) had insufficient communism.

Not to mention if there were any logic to that statement beyond a quip, then the US should’ve “bombed Afghanistan” into the first world at the outset of the war, along with every other military adventure they were involved in.

It’s a fantasy that Americans love to indulge in. Like how they “allowed” China to grow. Highest prevalence of main character syndrome, happens to both libs and magas.

Oh I’m definitely aware of that. Americans do have this national “we’re the center of the world” outlook in contrast with everyone else. When it comes to how much the average citizen here knows about what’s going on in other areas of the world, they’re shockingly ignorant.

Like how they “allowed” China to grow.

America had the strongest industrial base in the world. We made deliberate decisions to dismantle than industrial base, and to trade on generous terms with China in a way intended to help them build up their own industry and trade. We did this on the belief that Chinese economic prosperity would converge them toward a liberal, democratic "end of history". This was all public policy, debated in the open, and the effect on China's economic and industrial growth is obvious. Maybe (even likely!) they would have made good some other way, but absent specific actions we took, their ascent would have been considerably harder.

How are Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and all those other third world countries doing after your carpet bombing?

To my knowledge, none of those countries actually experienced "carpet bombing" in anything even approximating the way Japan and Germany did in WWII. We dropped a lot more bombs on Vietnam, but almost all those bombs were dropped on the countryside rather than being used to obliterate major urban centers. Subsequent wars, we haven't even dropped that many on the countryside.

The history of US military operations post-WWII is a long succession of attempts to achieve political ends without engaging in total war. Notably, the last total war we fought is popularly understood to be an overwhelming victory, and all subsequent, "limited" wars are popularly understood as stalemates or defeats, often humiliating defeats.

"Proportionality should be a guideline of war" appears, empirically, to be an excellent way to generate longer, bloodier, messier wars that we then go on to lose. And of course, the fact is that the firebombings didn't end the war, but the nukes, generally held to be even more horrifying, did.

The above is not an argument for securing all political desires through maximum brutality. It is an argument against "limited" and thus cheaper and more frequent war. Nor is it an argument that war should be all or nothing, that there is no place for limited strikes, raids or punitive actions. But if you are going to fight an actual, for-serious war, "proportionality" is very clearly a miserable way to do it.

We did this on the belief that Chinese economic prosperity would converge them toward a liberal, democratic "end of history". This was all public policy, debated in the open, and the effect on China's economic and industrial growth is obvious.

I want to remind people once again that neither your government nor mine is a single entity with coherent, unified beliefs. I do miss the era when Americans with a positive vision wanted to bring peace and prosperity everywhere, even if sometimes wrongheaded or naive. I think that’s noble and admirable, and I wish my government could be as outward-facing as yours to bring more positive vision to the world, and I thank Americans deeply for that vision. But the main driver behind those policies was that Americans benefited dramatically from "helping" Western Europe through the Marshall Plan, "helping" Japan rebuild with loans and subsidies, and "helping" China reform its command economy. It was a fair trade, and you agreed to the terms. You have bigger guns too and I’m not sure if those countries were able to resist.

Reneging 50 years later and saying "we’ve been fooled/ripped off!!!" - you’ve got yourselves to blame, sorry. How about you give back those benefits you reaped all those years too? Same with the NATO situation these days.

To my knowledge, none of those countries actually experienced "carpet bombing" in anything even approximating the way Japan and Germany did in WWII.

You most certainly did carpet bomb North Vietnam, if the term carpet bombing means anything. The Korean War too, I’m not counting them here because it’s a human tragedy caused by China, not because of the initial war, but you did carpet bomb them nonetheless. Not even going to provide source here because it’s easily google-able.

First of all, Japan rebuilt under American occupation, which included a lot of cultural changes forced upon them notably demilitarization (in fact any weapon longer than 6 inches were banned, and a lot of Japanese culture that was too martial was banned. It wasn’t like Japan got nuked and just suddenly changed.

I didn't say Americans did nothing either, and there's no need to lecture me on the existence of GHQ and such. I said Americans, especially Americans today, should stop claiming other countries' hard earned achievements as their own. If anything the fraction of positive externalities America brought to those countries should be attributed to those apt politicians of yesteryear, and your country sure have changed a lot.

  • -10

How are Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and all those other third world countries doing after your carpet bombing?

We never nuked any of them, carpet bombing doesn't work as well. Vietnam's doing pretty well. Iraq... well, better than under Saddam Hussein. Syria's on Putin's plate, and Libya on Europe's.

One would easily conclude that those countries do well with you out of the picture. Most glaring example being Saddam, Ghaddafi and Assad’s sand kingdoms. Diem’s Vietnam is worse than Vietcong’s Vietnam too. Plus whatever strong influence hbd has on these countries. Point being they have agency and you didn’t do much, and it would require some self-awareness for Americans to stop we wuzing others’ success.

I don’t know how saying Iraq is better than Saddam is somehow is a score for the US side of the ledger when the US backed Saddam and put him into power in the first place.

I don’t even know if Iraq now is better than Saddam. You can’t do control experiments with reality and who know what Baathism will become today.

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Vietnam? Sure. Japan... not so much.

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