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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34440 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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I have seen this take many times but I have never taken the take from the other side: someone who admits openly that they just want a video game checklist for their own morality. It is so far away from anything I would ever want that it's impossible for me to imagine that real people would reach that conclusion. Do the people who want to live that way know that's what they want? Would they be turned off if they heard their views described the way you've described it?

They don't say it in those words. Instead, they suggest that without the fear of god and the set of rules there's simply no other way to create internal drivers for morality.

It's tough to keep your face straight when someone says the only reason they don't act like a piece of shit is the fear of eternal damnation. The vast majority of Christians aren't like this (IME) but they're out there.

Instead, they suggest that without the fear of god and the set of rules there's simply no other way to create internal drivers for morality.

No -- instead I'll suggest that without the fear of God "morality" is an unintelligible term.

If you think it's somehow 'wrong' to put your unwanted infant on a dung heap to die of starvation or be sold into prostitution; if you think it's 'wrong' to sail down the coast to where the people talk funny and kill the men, rape the women, and enslave the children; if you think that all humans are of equal (and infinite) moral worth; you just might be descended from a Christian culture.

Baseline human 'morality' looks like Genghis Khan, and I don't recognize it as such. It's just game theory.

I don't think Israel is descended from a Christian culture, and it's a lot closer to Western morality than its neighbors. I don't think Japan is descended from a Christian culture either, but if you went to Japan and started preaching about how you should sail down the coast and rape and enslave, people would think you're insane.

if you went to Japan and started preaching about how you should sail down the coast and rape and enslave, people would think you're insane

Boy of all the examples to pick. Japan was precisely that way within living memory. What changed?

As to Israel, modern Judaism is younger than (and a reaction to) Christianity, and also Israel is heavily populated by Western (somewhat Christianized) Jews, and if you go ask the Jews who are still fairly un-Christianized they'll gladly tell you that non-Jews are only there to serve Jews.

if you go ask the Jews who are still fairly un-Christianized they'll gladly tell you that non-Jews are only there to serve Jews.

What? No.

What? No.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovadia_Yosef

Ovadia Yosef (Hebrew: עובדיה יוסף, romanized: Ovadya Yosef, Arabic: عبد الله يوسف, romanized: Abdullah Yusuf;[2] September 24, 1920 – October 7, 2013)[3] was an Iraqi-born Talmudic scholar, a posek, the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1973 to 1983, and a founder and long-time spiritual leader of Israel's ultra-Orthodox Shas party.[4][5] Yosef's responsa were highly regarded within Haredi circles, particularly among Mizrahi communities, among whom he was regarded as "the most important living halakhic authority".

So, what was his attitude towards non-Jewish people?

In a sermon he delivered in October 2010, Yosef was strongly condemned (including, among others, by the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee)[81][82][61] after stating that "the sole purpose of non-Jews is to serve Jews".[61][62][83] In his sermon, he said:

"Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel.[84]

In Israel, death has no dominion over them... With gentiles, it will be like any person – they need to die, but [God] will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they'd lose their money. This is his servant... That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew," Yosef said.

"Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat.

That is why gentiles were created"[84]

Do you understand the difference between "the Jews" and "one Jew"?

I'm not claiming that most Jews would disagree -- only that the ones who do have undergone much more cross-pollination with Christian thought than those who don't.

Something like: The less Christianized the Jew, the more likely the Jew is to believe that Jews matter more than non-Jews. But now I'm saying something that is true of all people. Such Jews are unique in some of the particulars but the overall picture is common to man.

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