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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   20950 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026

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You are thinking in a worldly manner. If those people were God's followers, they are now in heaven, which is a far better fate than anything that could have happened to them here on earth.

Then why were they cowering in fear from the earthquake? Shouldn't they be looking forward to their deaths so they can ascend to eternal bliss?

Tyler Cowen's description of religious beliefs as a logically inconsistent but flexible mood portfolio seems like a pretty good explanation of why religious people respond to death and suffering the way they do.

From your linked post:

It is fine to miss those people after they are gone, but it seems that, in addition, their death is considered a tragic event to be mourned, and also if possible to be postponed.

Here's the issue. The Christians that I know behave exactly how Tyler claims they should. I've been to funerals where the attitude is exactly as described - joyful that the deceased is with God. And I've also been to ones where the attitude was mournful, and those were the ones where the deceased weren't Christian. It's a stark difference.

Of course this is my anecdotal experience. But this argument in the form of 'If Christians really believed, they would do this' is exceptionally weak, especially since stories of Christians joyfully going to their deaths as martyrs are so common.

Indeed, this whole argument about Lisbon rests on the assumption that they were cowering in fear rather than joyfully praising God. As far as I can tell there's no basis for that assumption. You're assuming your conclusion.

I think, if anything, Tyler's and perhaps your experience are because so many people today who claim to be Christians simply don't actually believe. It's certainly true that polling of certain denominations shows mass amounts of people who don't believe in even basic doctrines. At my church, though, we rejoice when someone goes to be with God, knowing that they faithfully ran the race.

Then why were they cowering in fear from the earthquake? Shouldn't they be looking forward to their deaths so they can ascend to eternal bliss?

No matter what Andrew Huberman says about how good it is for me, I can't take a cold shower without flinching.

But Andrew Huberman wasn't the one who laid down the ontological fundamentals of how cold showers make people flinch, nor is he the one who designed reality such that you have to go through a cold shower to get its benefits instead of just embedding those as the default state of existence.

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