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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3743 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 13, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Do the religious people on here actually believe in Christianity? Like do you actually believe that Christ rose from the dead, Garden of Eden, Jesus is the son of God, the Trinity, virgin birth, etc? Or is more Deism and you like the community from going to church? I have a hard time believing most adult converts i.e. JD Vance actually believe these things, but I'm curious if I'm wrong here.

Yes, literal bible, young earth creation etc, the whole gamut.

Uh. Why?

This is a genuine question. I cannot personally imagine what it feels like to believe some of those things. To think “yes, the Earth is only a few millenia old” and not feel a deep-seated confusion at the contradictions. I’m not trying to rehash the early-2000s smugness debates, but I really would like to know how your experience differs.

I can at least model how other people experience faith, even though I’ve never felt it particularly compelling. But YEC? Specific dogmas? Alien to me.

This is a genuine question. I cannot personally imagine what it feels like to believe some of those things. To think “yes, the Earth is only a few millenia old” and not feel a deep-seated confusion at the contradictions. I’m not trying to rehash the early-2000s smugness debates, but I really would like to know how your experience differs.

You just posted a big denial-ish of most of evolution/human behavioral biology.

The presence of nonwhite people has not changed the character, traditions, even the political landscape of the area.

But that could only be true if they are there in very low number.

Obviously I believe you genuinely believe this, and that you are wrong and that your system can't survive contact with high quality enough logic or evidence. Nonetheless, you have contact with lots of humans every day. How much contact do you have with abstract geology?

The only difference between being wrong about HBD and being wrong about the age of the Earth is that one has more practical applications in daily life but the direction of what normies around you say about your wrongness or rightness differs (practically it is reversed). If you are insulated to consensus statements then it is very easy to hold any belief in this square depending on your other personality inclinations.

So anyway you probably know what it feels like to believe wrong things (as do I, probably, in some other domain) but maybe you don't know what it's like to have a majority of random people disagree with you? Well I know what that feels like so I guess I know what he feels like despite not sharing his geological theory.

Why is that a big denial?

I think Clavicle was making a lazy, shorthand version of the argument. He doesn’t have numbers for the TX Indian population (it’s less than the Lizardman Constant). He didn’t show an example of failed assimilation. He just pointed at brown faces and said, hey, look how spooky this is! I’m sure he has his reasons, but this is awfully sloppy, and I can criticize it even if I agree with the model of human behavior.

In my experience, the presence of Indians and Hispanics has not in fact destroyed Texas culture. We’ve remained quite firmly American. Republican, even. I don’t know where our clavicular lives, but it sure looks like he’s formed an opinion based off one Twitter photo.

Now, I do think we disagree on the possibility of assimilation. Your link doesn’t appear to say anything about interbreeding, only that certain European populations performed and still perform better than others. Would you say that all those groups have failed to assimilate to American culture?

It also suggests that such groups can’t have assimilated because they don’t vote “like the rest of White America does.” This is obviously inane. I almost suspect that the author isn’t actually American; he’s ignoring the massive regional splits which have existed (and shifted) since the founding of the country. When the absolute whitest states in the country go solid blue, something else is obviously at play.

So yes, I think that cultural assimilation absolutely happens before genetic assimilation. It’s happened before and it is happening with Asian and Indian and Hispanic populations. I don’t see how this contradicts anything about “evolution.” People are more than their genes.

Your link doesn’t appear to say anything about interbreeding, only that certain European populations performed and still perform better than others. Would you say that all those groups have failed to assimilate to American culture?

Because they act differently from one another due to genetic reasons insofar as they have failed to interbreed appropriately.

I almost suspect that the author isn’t actually American;

IIRC he's Southern and the subtext is the wops and greaseballs (I'm being comedic here) never assimilated to that, which they didn't. And neither did the Scandinavians, have you seen Minnesota? And the Germans had to be forced to stop speaking it and then they interbreeded a lot with the English so that produced a mixture, which I think more or less destroyed or permanently crippled American liberty but I don't know for sure (Germans are admirable in many ways but they have never understood liberty).

It also suggests that such groups can’t have assimilated because they don’t vote “like the rest of White America does.”

That Anglo-German breeding group leans Republican while all the others, including other European strains that have been in the country for over a century, lean Democratic.

I don’t see how this contradicts anything about “evolution.” People are more than their genes.

But how much more? Genes predominate.

So yes, I think that cultural assimilation absolutely happens before genetic assimilation.

Interestingly even if that is true to a small extent, it is the spaghetti effect. Italians are assimilated because spaghetti is American food. I wonder how that happened ... tacos and burritos might as well be now too. Ah, but that's the least heritable and most shallow form of culture. The deep and heritable components require interbreeding.

How do you define assimilation? I think that word does a lot of work in your argument. I think I replied to you before that it was almost offensive how you seemed to water down culture into hats and sports. Then you also kind of imply if immigrants force natives towards their center of gravity that also counts -- you can't call Americans unassimilated for voting for the Democratic party, which heavily relies on non-legacy American votes, for example. Because everybody knows that party, and spaghetti, and fajitas are as American as Thomas Jefferson.

Hypothetically, if this planet wasn't the first life-bearing planet God ever made, and it wasn't made literally from nothing, I think it is possible to have a young Earth without invalidating scientific dating methods.

But I am far from an expert on scientific dating methods.

If it was made from nothing it could easily be created to look like an older Earth too.

With God, all things are possible, and He sure does occasionally work in mysterious ways.

I would just rate that as less likely.

There are lots of YEC people. Mathematically, there are more of them than there are regular churchgoers. DFW is full of people believing it; there’s a creation museum in, I think, Carrollton. ‘People believe this’ is a thing you’d have to be willfully ignorant of, not simply something you never run into. Filter bubble effects might be real, but you work at a defense contractor in DFW.

Oh, I’m sure I know some. I don’t understand them, and I’m certainly not going to interrogate them about their mental state in person. Pretty sure I already lost one friend by telling him that UNSONG was comedy.

I didn’t know there was a museum like that in Dallas. My “favorite” is the one in Glen Rose, also known as Fossil Rim. No prizes for guessing what they’ve found there.

Ah yes, thats thé exhibit on where man walked with dinosaurs- there’s the proof(human and dinosaur footprints nearby). It also has a variety of dinosaur stuff which is fun for little boys regardless of their(parents’) opinions on the age of thé earth.

Why not?

A book claims to be the inspired word of a God who cannot lie, I see the options as you can either believe it is from beginning to end, you can decide you above everyone else who has approached this text are the true arbiter of what is and isn't God's word, or you don't believe any of it because a falsehood in the text invalidates the claims of the text.

I can and have learned about other traditions or explainations that differ, whether thats reading the Epic of Gilgamesh's flood account, other faith's creation accounts, or other interpretations of the same scriptures, or naturalist explanations of origin of life.

But at the end, I've made my choice, maybe not perfectly, but its mine.

Suppose I write a book of mixed sensible life advice and myths, then claim it is the inspired word of a God who cannot lie. Which of the three options would be the most sensible approach to such a book?

Yeah, I take option 3. What I struggle to understand is why you go for 1. It feels to me like the worst of the options, but obviously that’s not the case for you.

Which option would you say applies to Catholics?

you don't believe any of it because a falsehood in the text invalidates the claims of the text.

It's not really falsehood singular though, is it? How do you square the infallible word of God with the dozens if not hundreds of factual errors contained within the Bible?

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