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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   20137 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026

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First, Scott is not a Christian. I think this is a difference that gets forgotten or not even considered in such discussions, because the assumption is "Well we're all the products of modern secular Western society here, so we all share the same values, right?"

So he's gonna make Jewish jokes about the boy from Nazareth. And as far as offensive Jewish jokes about Jesus go, this one is barely a one on the scale if it even makes it that far. Hell, I'm still salty about a stupid lapsed Catholic Irish comedian's dumb joke on a chat show decades (by this point) ago because that wasn't the time for it and they should have known better and it was still within a cultural context where they could get an easy shock reaction by mocking Jesus.

Second, he does have personal loyalty to the Big Yud, because back when he was young and impressionable and the kids were just getting started with this Rationalists thing, they were all in the fandom together. Good times, good times. And those of us who have been there from the start, or pretty near to it, in our own fandoms know the kind of bonds that means.

Third, I give Scott a hell of a lot of the benefit of the doubt, because he's earned it as far as I'm concerned. Some random 'who that?' on the Innertubes, I'll gladly leap upon him and rip off his face. Scott has been way more tolerant of religious posting on his website when us Christians get into it among each other.

Fourth, he's able to take it as well as dish it out, see any of the House Party posts on his Substack.

Fifth, this tweet should remind us of the scandal of Christianity. We're used to swimming in that water by now, two thousand years or so later, but it did not start off as "our teacher says we should all be nice". The religious establishment of the day were shocked by what they were doing, see this chapter of Luke (for one):

36 One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and reclined at table. 37 And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, 38 and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. 39 Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.” 40 And Jesus answering said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” And he answered, “Say it, Teacher.”

Sixth, I think I do not yield the palm to any here in being judgemental (particularly of sexual excess) so every now and then I need to get smacked upside the head by a seven hundred year old poem reminding me "Your ways are not God's ways, and God's ways are not your ways":

Venus: Ardent Lovers

Dante knows from Beatrice's enhanced beauty that he has risen to Venus, the third sphere of Paradise. Here he encounters four individuals among the rejoicing souls of men and women whose lives were greatly influenced by sexual love and desire. Charles Martel, a ruler from the house of Anjou whom Dante likely met in Florence (not long before his untimely death), chastises other Angevin rulers for their misdeeds and explains how the character and ability of individuals are determined not by heredity but by nature, through the workings of providence; society suffers when people are forced into professions for which they are ill suited. Cunizza da Romano, sister of a blood-thirsty warlord whom Dante saw in Hell, led a full and adventurous love life, with four marriages and at least two other significant relationships. She foresees a series of bloody acts and betrayals that will stain the March of Treviso (in northeast Italy), and directs Dante's attention to a companion in Venus whose achievements merit lasting fame. Folco of Marseille, who in his youth was consumed by sexual desire, was a troubadour (he wrote Provençal poetry) before turning to the religious life, first as a monk and later a bishop. He in turn lavishes praise on Rahab, a biblical prostitute who was the first spirit to adorn Venus, before harshly criticizing contemporary church leaders. Folco also identifies Venus as the celestial location at which the shadow cast by the earth comes to a point.

103 'Yet here we don't repent, but smile instead,
104 not at our fault, which comes not back to mind,
105 but for that Power which ordered and foresaw.

106 'Here we contemplate the craft that beautifies
107 such love, and here discern the good
108 with which the world above informs the one below.

109 'However, so that you may leave this sphere
110 with every wish that here has been engendered
111 satisfied, I must go on.

112 'You want to know who occupies this luminescence
113 that scintillates beside me here,
114 like a sunbeam gleaming on clear water.

115 'Know then that within it Rahab is at peace,
116 and, since she is of our number,
117 our highest rank receives its seal from her.

118 'Into this heaven, where the shadow of your world
119 comes to a point, before any other,
120 first in Christ's triumph, she was taken up.

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