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I wish I could show these statements to people even a few years ago. “Don’t worry, the chemical castration we will do to your children is probably reversible, and we only physical mutilate some of them!”
It’s just incomprehensible. How did we get here?
Don't worry the brainwashing into religion is probably reversible and we'll only intellectually and culturally ruin some of them. And mutilate a fair number (depending on religion).
It's just incomprehensible. How did we get here?
Its easy. If you believe in the fundamental axioms its not crazy and if you don't its a cult of God-flesh eating, God-blood drinking psychically mutilated Manchurian candidates who infest the planet.
Trans ideology is no crazier than pretty much every religion. So if religions can demand crazy things and religions are just ideologies with a supernatural skin, why is it surprising ideologies look crazy from the outside?
Magic cannibalism, magic underpants, magic apples, magic hammers, magic hats, magic babies. Magic loaves and fishes.
If you can convince people of that, to the extent some religions practiced literal human sacrifice, why are you surprised by getting here?
We got here the way we always did, someone came up with something to believe (palpable nonsense or otherwise), convinced other people to believe it and everything cascades from there.
This isn't some new development, this is how we (humanity as a whole)operate.
Might as well be taking communion when told this is the literal blood of Christ despite not changing in any detectable way and thinking "how did we get here, its incomprehensible".
Why? A religion is just an ideology with a supernatural skin. Can compare it to the terrible things people have done for Communism or nazism or some other not religious ideology if you prefer, it doesn't change the point.
Sure, but the point I was countering is that its rise was incomprehensible. If people will believe everything from God-cannibalism, to equality of the masses, to child sacrifice, trans ideology is far from the most extreme thing to be believed. It's rise is entirely comprehensible. Doesn't mean it's good or positive of course, but it's entirely within the kind of belief sets that humanity previously and currently holds.
Even that isn't incomprehensible though. It's been decades in the making. It's the push against the previous more conservative dominance which pushed many types of people to the fringes. It's not a coincidence the lefty coalition is pro-LGBT, pro-choice, pro-minority. They are explictly fighting against the previous order. That's how this works, it's how it always works. This is just the next step in that push.
It's entirely understandable, ESPECIALLY because of the prior attitudes of those who adopted it. The T part is just the next logical push on the cultural battlefield. I'm honestly surprised you're baffled! Gay people and trans people have previously been discriminated against, therefore steps should to be taken to normalize that behaviour so that it does not happen again. It's simple and straightforward. It may not be correct or good for society overall, but it's not baffling or incomprehensible.
It's not actually been fast, consider Love Boat had an episode in 1982 where they tackled basically the idea that a trans person is still the same person you knew and should be supported. That is 40 years ago on mainstream TV. It's a decades long process.
And with this simple argument, the groomer discourse became 1000% justified.
Also, the movement went way beyond merely ensuring non-discrimination. You need to also explain how and for what purpose it went as far as it did.
No it's not. Things didn't move much since then until the mid 2010's.
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As an atheist, I will say that, while there are a lot of aspects of traditional religions I do not like, I find many new-age ideologies (e.g. Scientology, Heaven's Gate, Rajneeshi Neo-Sannyasins, Synanon, NXIVM) to be even worse, even if only slightly, for reasons such as these:
New age religions come off as extra "Fake and Gay" in comparison to Christianity or Buddhism, in no small part because of their lack of age and much smaller tradition to draw upon. Traditional religions are Lindy because they've managed to persist in spite of the erosion of the ages; their new age rivals, on the other hand, are plainly from a much less mystical and much more informationally-aware time, and as such their beliefs are built on much sandier foundations (e.g. the entire founding mythology of Scientology literally being a sci-fi story told by Hubbard).
New age religions are at least slightly more likely to lead to cult-like behavior (likely due to the aforementioned weakness of the religion as a young and new belief system that tends to be created practically from whole-cloth), which often tends to have pretty negative outcomes for their members; such people may end up psychologically-broken, physically-disfigured, or even dead. Yes, I'm aware that some traditional religions can lead to similar harms (e.g. refusing medical treatments in favor of prayer), but I think cults have a much worse track record on net.
"I love ancient trees, they are so majestic!"
"I hate little seedlings, they are so ugly! Stomp out these dirty weeds!"
Just have patience, it does not need more than century for delusionary doomsday cult to transform into respected ancient religion with magnificent art and architecture.
I guess what I'm saying is that certain religions have a sort of grandfather clause. Meanwhile, I'm less charitable to any blood spilt to build Flag Buildings.
Too plain work of architecture for your taste? When future Flag Houses will be magnificent marble buildings full of frescoes and golden icons of Ron Hubbard, would it change your mind?
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Do you believe your ideology is crazy?
No, thats the point i am making. Firmamento is i believe a devout Catholic, so i am asking him to take a step outside and realize that just as he thinks the beliefs in question being acted upon is incomprehensible, from an outside perspective many of his beliefs seem similarly or even more so incomprehensible when it comes to how millions of people end up believing and acting upon eating the body and blood of the son of a God and this is some entirely normal thing to do.
I got that, but doesn't that mean that you do think your ideology is crazy? Or rather, you know your ideology is crazy, but you don't think about it? I guess what I'm asking is how do you square this understanding with your belief in your ideology? The religious can at least gesture in the direction of history and say 'ok the supernatural stuff sounds crazy I guess but our results speak for themselves'.
My lizard brain decision tree for this sees ideology as religion minus the supernatural and so minus the crazy - it's not a perfect heuristic, but it used to serve me well (and is also probably part of why, like firmamenti, I too scream "how the fuck could this happen?" at the sky roughly once a quarter).
No it means i think that my ideology might LOOK crazy but if true is not.
Just like Catholicism looks crazy but if transubstantiation is true (and God is real et al) it is not actually crazy.
I am not talking about outcomes, Catholicism might give good outcomes for some believers while also being entirely insane. Those are orthogonal issues.
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What is the difference between supernatural and natural. Given some phenomenon X how do you classify it as natural or supernatural, under the assumption that you believe X to be truly occuring?
IMO when you talk about certain things being supernatural you are already at least halfway to the position of the non-believer. In many formulations gender is a metaphysical object.
The supernatural is that which humans are incapable of explaining with reason and science. What do you think is the difference between ideology and religion?
Fair enough but that would mean that anything that has a natural theology isn't a religion, for example Heaven's Gate, Scientology and Catholicism.
It's probably just a difference in intensity rather than in quality.
Do you think? Modelling ideology as religion without the supernatural, the difference imo is elements the believer takes on faith - those things believed despite evidence to the contrary. Scientology has thetans etc, heaven's gate had ascension etc, Catholics have transubstantiation etc. I see the supernatural as an important distinction between religion and ideology, because it is faith in something that appears absurd to others which defines the religious believer, and in my mind the only rational justification for an absurd belief is supernatural in origin. The supernatural is inexplicable to science, and therefore it looks crazy to the non believer, but the believer has been exposed to the religion's truth, which from a natural perspective induces a folie a deux that unites the followers, or from a supernatural perspective unites them around the revealed truth. Or at least that's how I see it.
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Too much charity.
Early and often, that’s the real solution.
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