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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024

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That is, to say the least, unusual among modern ethnoreligious memes.

Looking at Wiki's examples of ethnic fusion ethnoreligions, other than Jews, I'm seeing 10 Christian sects (i.e. other people who believe Moses was a prophet of God), 4 Islamic (likewise), 1 Jewish-but-distinct (ditto). That still leaves a few Sikhs, Mandaeans, and Zoroastrian sects, but they seem to be outnumbered about 3 to 1 (by sect count) or 1.5 to 1 (by population). Ethnoreligions which don't treat the Book of Numbers as scripture are the unusual ones.

Although... why should we limit our numbers here to ethnoreligions? If I meet an Asian guy who thinks Jeffrey Dahmer had some great menu ideas, I'm not going to think "well, at least they're not the same ethnicity!", I'm going to smile non-confrontationally and back away slowly. Most religions with murderous scriptural lessons tend to downplay or backpedal from them a bit, but that goes for most Jewish believers as well. The "Genocide is good when He orders it" message is in the Bible and the Quran, with billions of followers. The killer is calling from inside the house!

Fair enough, I should have said “unusual among the founding principles/origin myths/civic religions of modern nation-states”, and I think it’s accurate to characterize Judaism as the founding principle and raison d’etre of modern Israel.

I would completely agree with the assessment that a rational observer should be extra vigilant re: genocidal intent or actions from explicitly Islamic nation-states; indeed 20th and 21st century history provides us with examples of such. As for explicitly Christian nation-states, I would say less so, both because they are almost invariably Christian-in-name-only (cf. regular attendance rates at any of the established churches in Europe), and because modern Western Christianity has memetically shed its attachments to the wanton bloodlust of the Old Testament.