United States Christianity, History, and US Politics

[ShieldWife]

Yes, yes it's hard to know which religion is the right one. But people should still pick one because the alternative of believing in no afterlife and absolute moral nihilism and relativism is too bad to contemplate.

I’m sorry, but this is pretty silly. Just pick any religion, as long as you pick one. So become a pacifist and wander the world as a chaste impoverished mendicant, or convert infidels at the point of a sword, or go into the woods and worship nature spirits, or you could audit your soul for the negative effects of Xenu’s thetans. Better choose one though. People who choose a religion generally choose the one that they have the most social pressure to choose.

Also, being an atheist doesn’t mean you’re a nihilist. There is such a thing as moral realism, we can come to conclusions about what kinds of behavior are moral based on human nature and the effects of those behaviors. We all do that all the time, both religious and secular people.

 

[Bacle]

The great irony of the situation is that religion fell out of favor specifically because of answering relativism quite robustly. The ideological premise of science looked at the superstitions, the plentiful axioms, the appeals to tradition and authority, and rejected religion to replace it with Empiricism. The notion that what can be known is what can be observed, answering relativism by saying that what is real is what doesn't change with the observer.

And then Empiricism as an ideological position unto itself became the victim of a murder-orgy on the part of basically every other philosophical basis we have today, with its remains an isolated premise of the scientific method. The twisted descendant that is Critical Theory is perhaps the chief origin of dissuasion from religion today, as it's a framework exclusively for highlighting the flaws of other philosophies that perpetually refreshes the arguments that led to religion beginning to decline.

Nihilism's the hard one to answer, as it becomes incredibly difficult to avoid with Empiricism because of the is-ought problem. You can't get directly from Empiricism to ethical conclusions, you have to take on moral axioms from elsewhere which then need to be defended.

In most religions, the logical mutual exclusivity between solving nihilism and solving relativism tends to take the form of holding a particular goal as an axiom, then describing metaphysics of how that goal is achieved, then describing how real actions affect those metaphysics. We can cut this down to just taking a goal as an axiom, but taking on axioms of means, such as using some valuation of intergenerational success as a goal and axiomatically prescribing a meritocratic system as the means, makes it more resilient as you don't have to defend the system you've build on the original goal as arising from that goal.

I’m sorry, but this is pretty silly. Just pick any religion, as long as you pick one. So become a pacifist and wander the world as a chaste impoverished mendicant, or convert infidels at the point of a sword, or go into the woods and worship nature spirits, or you could audit your soul for the negative effects of Xenu’s thetans. Better choose one though. People who choose a religion generally choose the one that they have the most social pressure to choose.

Also, being an atheist doesn’t mean you’re a nihilist. There is such a thing as moral realism, we can come to conclusions about what kinds of behavior are moral based on human nature and the effects of those behaviors. We all do that all the time, both religious and secular people.

Another reason religion has fallen out of favor is because there is a long track record of religions trying to suppress scientific facts and discoveries that run counter to scripture.

As well, the idea that you need the threat/reward of a bad/good afterlife to get people to behave has run smack into the reality that most young people are concerned more with the here and now they share with their fellow humans and have to deal with day to day, than anything that might happen in their afterlife.

 

[Captain X]

The divine punishment angle is a double-edged sword when you really think about it. Really, it's a round-about way of saying the only reason you are not a horrible person is because you fear punishment, whereas someone like myself is a good person simply because I desire to be.

 

[LordSunhawk]

One of these days I'm going to post up a thread debunking most of the tired talking points and false history of the Medieval period and the Catholic Church.

 

[FriedCFour]

The divine punishment angle is a double-edged sword when you really think about it. Really, it's a round-about way of saying the only reason you are not a horrible person is because you fear punishment, whereas someone like myself is a good person simply because I desire to be.

Most tired fedora tipping take lol. I feel like I’m back in early 2010s YouTube where Amazing Atheist and his retarded crew was the hot new thing.

 

[KilroywasNOTHere]

Playing devils advocate here, what if we replaced the threat of hellfire in the afterlife with hellfire in the here and now? Disobedience of tradition is punishable by exicution at the stake, the flamethrower or the firebomb. The fact of the matter is you can appeal to tradition and duty all you want but eventually it all starts to feel like empty air. When it comes to empires might makes right afterall.

 

[King Arts]

I’m sorry, but this is pretty silly. Just pick any religion, as long as you pick one. So become a pacifist and wander the world as a chaste impoverished mendicant, or convert infidels at the point of a sword, or go into the woods and worship nature spirits, or you could audit your soul for the negative effects of Xenu’s thetans. Better choose one though. People who choose a religion generally choose the one that they have the most social pressure to choose.

Also, being an atheist doesn’t mean you’re a nihilist. There is such a thing as moral realism, we can come to conclusions about what kinds of behavior are moral based on human nature and the effects of those behaviors. We all do that all the time, both religious and secular people.

I mean I do believe that there is a creator just by looking at nature and it's complexity and the human body I believe that there was one maker aka god who made everything. I also trust my ancestors to have picked the right way to venerate him aka Christianity. Without that I'd look at something like Zoroastrianism since it's duality of the cosmology of good and evil explains why evil, suffering, and bad things happen.

Oh and Shieldwife while not every atheist is immoral that is in spite of their atheism. Because by looking at things from a purely secular or material look at life there is not much that you could argue on why you SHOULD go for something. I mean here are a few examples the Etoro people of Papua New Guinea believe that young boys need to ingest the semen of older males to reach adulthood, their primitive society has done this for who knows how long it has not collapsed(heh it's a tribal society can they collapse?) But their people have managed to reproduce and survive without the people going mad and self destructing. By the standards of Darwinian survival they have passed. Would you say that what they do is morally ok? Or what about the Carthaginians they used to sacrifice babies to Moloch in the fire. They were destroyed by a foreign power Rome, the baby killing was not what led to them being unable to survive societal evolutionary pressure, (unless you think it was God destroying them like with the Caanites, but no material proof). Or our society, abortion as long as it's not forced does not seem to cause social pressure that causes damage. In fact some researchers claim that it's good because by getting rid of unwanted kids those kids won't grow up in abusive or neglectful homes by mothers who don't want them and thus become criminals and a drain on society. Earlier we were saying that's wrong, but just by looking at pure Darwinian material survival cost benefit looking at the pros verses the cons. It seems like you can make an argument that doing what is the moral wrong thing is actually beneficial for most of society. Then we have to ask if something we say is immoral is actually a benefit, is it actually immoral?

The divine punishment angle is a double-edged sword when you really think about it. Really, it's a round-about way of saying the only reason you are not a horrible person is because you fear punishment, whereas someone like myself is a good person simply because I desire to be.

Most tired fedora tipping take lol. I feel like I’m back in early 2010s YouTube where Amazing Atheist and his retarded crew was the hot new thing.

Captain, while atheists say this like it's a good argument it's really a bad argument, because yes without the fear of punishment you are a horrible person(not necesarily you, but people in general)
Here is an example a liberal comes at you and says we should abolish the police because they are racist, corrupt, etc. whatever after you say who will catch/punish rapists, murders, and thievs. They gasp and say "Are you saying the only reason you are not a horrible person is because you fear the police arresting you and throwing you in jail?"
Now I'm not saying that if the police were abolished you would kill or rape anyone, but let's pretend the police are abolished, do you honestly think that the rape rate, murder rate, or the rate of muggings, burglaries, robberies, crimes in general won't go up?

Playing devils advocate here, what if we replaced the threat of hellfire in the afterlife with hellfire in the here and now? Disobedience of tradition is punishable by exicution at the stake, the flamethrower or the firebomb. The fact of the matter is you can appeal to tradition and duty all you want but eventually it all starts to feel like empty air. When it comes to empires might makes right afterall.

I mean here is the thing, severity of punishment to a point can help deter, but we already have that with regular law enforcement. And law enforcement is made up of fallible people who won't catch everyone. But you cannot run or hide from God. When you die you stand before him and there is no where to go when his gaze is upon you. That's much different since any wrong doing is known by him you can't cover it up like you can for human crimes.

 

[KilroywasNOTHere]

I mean here is the thing, severity of punishment to a point can help deter, but we already have that with regular law enforcement. And law enforcement is made up of fallible people who won't catch everyone. But you cannot run or hide from God. When you die you stand before him and there is no where to go when his gaze is upon you. That's much different since any wrong doing is known by him you can't cover it up like you can for human crimes.

I agree 100% but the thing is God's will wasn't made for storing up treasures on earth like empires. It was made for Spiritual fulfillment and and preparation for the day of judgement when reality as we know it is no more. But we aren't talking about the reality after, we are talking about the carnal reality. (Keeping our empire, preserving our genes ect, ect,)

 

[The Immortal Watch Dog]

All those young, fit bodies... Yeah, I can see why that probably happens/happened.

TBH that they fuck each other retarded isn't something I have a problem with at all. I dated one of the girls who competed on the national team for TKD under 18 way back when and she basically lived like a Spartan 90% of the year and she wasn't even on the level of a pro athlete competing on an Olympic level.

And that rigidity is also why a lot of them implode, burn out and get subsumed in excess the moment they retire.

The problem I have is the absolute lack of discipline and unwillingness for their handlers to educate them and let them vent a little....Until the games and then they do nothing and let these young adults destroy themselves in a week or so of absurd excess.

One of these days I'm going to post up a thread debunking most of the tired talking points and false history of the Medieval period and the Catholic Church.

I'd love to see that and chip in if you'd like.

When you had Pope's who were some of the most brilliant engineers around (Galileo didn't get fucked for Heliocentrism, he was paid to prove it. He got fucked because he slandered the pope after he wasted the Church's time and money for a few years and he got called out on his laziness). ludicrous advances in metallurgy and science and Nuns had enough freedom that they could run literal brothels if it meant keeping the church solvent and protecting women..

And the whole "We didn't burn people for witchcraft because we thought witches were fucking gonzo, but we did burn heretics for strangling crazy women as witches".

The medieval Church wasn't really that bad.

The Renaissance church on the other hand..which always gets praised as some secular marvel was at one point commanded by a God damn furry who fucked a monkey and made one of the best Vatican archivists in history Judge a jerk off competition.

But no one talks about that...unless its to shit on the Spanish inquisition...which they do from a position of ignorance.

TBH it's an objective fact that were it not for the Church in Rome and in the one in Constantinople, Europe would have descended into utter and total barbarity and then been devoured wholesale by the Mongols.

And that's to say nothing of how degenerate Pagans were..People like to praise Druids forgetting they were child sacrificing fuckwits who used feces and urine to "purify homes" and would routinely seal orphans up in walls to "enhance the architecture" of a building.

It's so easy to malign Christians because Christians take it..but its an act of cowardice to do it IMO..specifically because you know they'll take it.

The divine punishment angle is a double-edged sword when you really think about it. Really, it's a round-about way of saying the only reason you are not a horrible person is because you fear punishment, whereas someone like myself is a good person simply because I desire to be.

Not especially? Most people who got nuked by God or the Angels in the bible knew what was coming to them and didn't give a single solitary fuck about it.

The smiting was to protect the people who did and preserve goodness, not to terrify people into compliance. That's an invention of Martin Luthor and his mongrel successors and the desperate Anglo-Catholics of the Anarchy who were trying to keep the bitchfit between Stephen and Matilda from basically making Mad Max look like an optimistic setting.

They were faced with collapse of civilization and made a call, it didn't work at all because again true evil doesn't care and they tried to roll it back but once that cat was out of the bag...well it set a precedent Protestants abused later.


edit- you people saying religion is falling out of favor, betray how privileged, isolated and echo chambery your lives are.

The vast majority of our species is religious and has been religious for almost fifty thousand years if not longer.

You represent the smallest minority on earth, you exert a grossly disproportionate amount of influence on society and you've actually stopped advancement and halted evolution..not encouraged it or fostered it.

Secularism has resulted in innovation and improvement but not invention.

We are not growing as a society or evolving any longer and we're running out of things to build upon and that's on you Fedora motherfuckers...Not the religious dudes.

y'all did this and hilariously make yourselves look like Religious fanatics and hyper violent sectarian bigots doing it.

You represent rape, murder, parasitism, sterility and stagnation.

The faithful represent art, high culture, scientific advancement and Darwinian evolution.

You are the bad guys killing our species and destroying our civilization not them.

 

[ShieldWife]

I mean I do believe that there is a creator just by looking at nature and it's complexity and the human body I believe that there was one maker aka god who made everything.

Yeah, I don’t believe in any of that. I don’t know if this a good thread for arguments against the existence of God(s) but the short answer is that I don’t see any evidence.

If we debated God’s existence, I’m sure that neither of our minds would be changed. Been there, done that.

I also trust my ancestors to have picked the right way to venerate him aka Christianity. Without that I'd look at something like Zoroastrianism since it's duality of the cosmology of good and evil explains why evil, suffering, and bad things happen.

I don’t particularly trust my ancestors. I don’t distrust them either, but I make up my mind based on my own evidence, not placing trust in others just for being related to me. Also, I have way more pagan ancestors than Christian ones, if I go back far enough.

I don’t know if there is any need for a supernatural explanation for suffering in the world.

Oh and Shieldwife while not every atheist is immoral that is in spite of their atheism. Because by looking at things from a purely secular or material look at life there is not much that you could argue on why you SHOULD go for something. I mean here are a few examples the Etoro people of Papua New Guinea believe that young boys need to ingest the semen of older males to reach adulthood, their primitive society has done this for who knows how long it has not collapsed(heh it's a tribal society can they collapse?) But their people have managed to reproduce and survive without the people going mad and self destructing. By the standards of Darwinian survival they have passed. Would you say that what they do is morally ok? Or what about the Carthaginians they used to sacrifice babies to Moloch in the fire. They were destroyed by a foreign power Rome, the baby killing was not what led to them being unable to survive societal evolutionary pressure, (unless you think it was God destroying them like with the Caanites, but no material proof).

Those groups are/were trusting in the religions and traditions of their ancestors.

Also, I don’t think that there is much evidence that atheists behave worse than theists. Sure, you have communist regimes which are horrific, but their religion isn’t atheism, it’s communism. Many secular nations often end up being pretty nice places to live. Scandinavian nations have been mostly atheistic for decades and were very happy well adjusted nations where crime was virtually non-existent: at least until those nations started receiving large numbers of theist immigrants who sent crime (especially rape) rates skyrocketing.

Or our society, abortion as long as it's not forced does not seem to cause social pressure that causes damage. In fact some researchers claim that it's good because by getting rid of unwanted kids those kids won't grow up in abusive or neglectful homes by mothers who don't want them and thus become criminals and a drain on society. Earlier we were saying that's wrong, but just by looking at pure Darwinian material survival cost benefit looking at the pros verses the cons. It seems like you can make an argument that doing what is the moral wrong thing is actually beneficial for most of society. Then we have to ask if something we say is immoral is actually a benefit, is it actually immoral?

You seem to be under the false impression that the Theory of Evolution is somehow tied to moral philosophy instead of merely a description of the processes that lead to modern life and its diversity. There are no moral proscriptions within the Theory of Evolution. For some atheists, evolution might inform their moral framework, but for most it probably doesn’t.

Moral realism is something like this: I don’t want to be murdered, you don’t want to be murdered, so let’s make an agreement that neither of us murder each other. Then we can apply that sort of thinking to a million other aspects of life and we have a moral framework. There will, of course, still be fuzzy areas and room for debate, as religions have as well. Though this method has the advantage of being easier to change and improve upon.

Captain, while atheists say this like it's a good argument it's really a bad argument, because yes without the fear of punishment you are a horrible person(not necesarily you, but people in general)
Here is an example a liberal comes at you and says we should abolish the police because they are racist, corrupt, etc. whatever after you say who will catch/punish rapists, murders, and thievs. They gasp and say "Are you saying the only reason you are not a horrible person is because you fear the police arresting you and throwing you in jail?"
Now I'm not saying that if the police were abolished you would kill or rape anyone, but let's pretend the police are abolished, do you honestly think that the rape rate, murder rate, or the rate of muggings, burglaries, robberies, crimes in general won't go up?

I mean here is the thing, severity of punishment to a point can help deter, but we already have that with regular law enforcement. And law enforcement is made up of fallible people who won't catch everyone. But you cannot run or hide from God. When you die you stand before him and there is no where to go when his gaze is upon you. That's much different since any wrong doing is known by him you can't cover it up like you can for human crimes.

One problem with any discussions of divine punishment related to Christianity is that Christianity has none. Of course, different denominations vary on this, but a common idea in Christianity (especially Protestantism) is that a person could spend their entire life raping and torturing babies and be a Christian (or a death bed conversion if you prefer) and still get into heaven. While a non-Christian could dedicate their lives to helping others, even give their life for others, and still be tortured in hell forever for not believing in Christianity - even a person who was never even exposed to Christianity. As I said, not all Christians believe this, but a lot do.

Even if Christianity was about punishments for bad behavior and rewards for good behavior and even if such a belief actually made people behave better (which is highly debatable) it still doesn’t mean that Christianity is true.

 

[strunkenwhite]

Like the only group that would be fine with abortion is atheism because of Cloak's arguments that I brought up.

I understand there is a long history of Protestants being fine with abortion—not all, obviously.

 

[S'task]

I understand there is a long history of Protestants being fine with abortion—not all, obviously.

. . . Not Protestants that are orthodox. The Protestant churches that were "OK" with abortion were those mainstream churches that had fallen to Modernism in the 1920 and 30s. Among the Fundamentalist descended Protestants, AKA the Evangelicals, they're as vehemently, if not moreso, anti-abortion than Catholics.

 

[Laskar]

oh no, *post* birth, on the argument that a child doesn't qualify as 'human' until age 8 or so.

"The Pre-Persons" was supposed to be fiction, Goddammit!

 

[KilroywasNOTHere]

I understand there is a long history of Protestants being fine with abortion—not all, obviously.

I don't know that first Protastant that is pro-abortion, unless you consider condoms an abortion which I would consider a stretch.

 

[Captain X]

Just rolling my eyes at a bunch of you...

By punishment, I'm not referring to God smiting anyone, I'm talking about going to Hell. If you're only a good person because you fear going to hell, this doesn't really make you a good person, especially when compared to someone who is a good person because of the morals they learned from their parents and other adults they looked up to as they matured, whether they are religious or not. Bringing up police and the legal system is a better argument than just whining about "fedora wearers," but it's kind of the same thing. Are you only a good person because you fear the police arresting you? That's basically what it comes down to again. It's funny, because this is yet another way that the regressive left reminds me of the religious right in that you have all these lefties going on about how guns have to be banned, because they know that if they had guns that they'd be murdering people left and right and are projecting that on to everyone else. The upshot there is that they think the law banning something they see as bad will somehow make everyone good.

And don't you dare talk down on fedora wearers unless you want to tell it to Indy's face.

 

[strunkenwhite]

. . . Not Protestants that are orthodox. The Protestant churches that were "OK" with abortion were those mainstream churches that had fallen to Modernism in the 1920 and 30s. Among the Fundamentalist descended Protestants, AKA the Evangelicals, they're as vehemently, if not moreso, anti-abortion than Catholics.

But would you agree that this disproves the assertion "the only group that would be fine with abortion is atheism"? That's all I was trying to say; I wasn't trying to make any broader point with my post.

I don't know that first Protastant that is pro-abortion, unless you consider condoms an abortion which I would consider a stretch.

Southern Baptist Church Scraps 1970s Pro-Abortion Resolutions

To the casual observer, it might appear that every few years Southern Baptists at their annual meeting feel it necessary to go back and clear the air on some old business. This year, messengers to the 2003 SBC annual meeting decided to undo several resolutions adopted by the convention in the...

catholicexchange.com

messengers to the 2003 SBC annual meeting decided to undo several resolutions adopted by the convention in the 1970s that expressed support for abortion in cases where the mother's or baby's health was in question.

This particular citation should not be seen as a claim that the SBC was highly permissive, but it was much more lenient than "only to save the mother's life" for example.

The resolution expressed regret that “1970s-era Southern Baptist Convention resolutions and statements” furthered the “'pro-choice' abortion rights agenda outlined in Roe v. Wade” and that some of the nation's political leaders referenced the comments and views of former SBC leaders “to oppose legislative efforts to protect women and children from abortion.”

Attitudes have changed a lot since 1973.

 

[Urabrask Revealed]

It's so easy to malign Christians because Christians take it..but its an act of cowardice to do it IMO..specifically because you know they'll take it.

I strongly support taking an islamic stance on insults to our Faith.

 

[FriedCFour]

The upshot there is that they think the law banning something they see as bad will somehow make everyone good.

You have zero ability to understand any politics that aren’t libertarianism lol. That’s why you think left and right both same because you can’t even wrap your brain around any concept that isn’t “muh secular liberty”.

messengers to the 2003 SBC annual meeting decided to undo several resolutions adopted by the convention in the 1970s that expressed support for abortion in cases where the mother's or baby's health was in question.

Disgusting

 

[Captain X]

Apparently I understand both you and them a lot better than either of you understand me.

 

[FriedCFour]

Apparently I understand both you and them a lot better than either of you understand me.

Hardly lol. Your arguments are centered around principles of harm, of non agression principles, and of human rights minus god derived. Things should generally be permitted unless they directly harm people, your politics derive from whiggism and classical liberalism, that humanity is generally progressing in its rights and in how we value and understand things and in economic prosperity. You believe that people should be allowed to do what they want regardless of what harm it may cause them because they have an inherent right to do so and it’s wrong to intervene in their choices. You think that government role is mainly just to stop other people from harming each other and violating each other’s rights. Since left and auth right disagree with those positions, and also think that the government should generally do things, you then equate the two together. I know all your positions generally because a few years back I would have said almost everything you are saying now and I look back shamefully at how stupid I was for thinking all of it.

You understand nothing because all you perpetually fight are warped strawmen of everything everyone else says and you really just play around to try and own the righties or lefties with petty little insults and mockery. Like just take “oh you think banning something will just magically make people stop doing it.” No, that’s never been the argument for anything lol. Making things illegal doesn’t make things go away, but obviously you don’t legalize murder or rape or theft just because it hasn’t ceased. These things have value in being illegal because it’s a deterrent and because it removes the people who do these things from the general public so they can’t keep perpetuating them. Like, I don’t want porn banned because I find it sinful (I do, but that’s not why I want it illegal) or because I think that will magically make no one use it or that it will eliminate porn. I want it illegal because I think it does massive harm to particularly men from a young age and warps societies conception of sex and what it’s for and makes them all around weaker people, more degenerate people, and addicts to something that plays on the single largest driving force in life next to actual survival which is procreation. You just assume and think all my positions on everything politically are just “forcing religion down everyone’s throats” and ignore all secular arguments in favor of that because it’s easier to dismiss any challenge to your worldview by doing so, and you get to stay in your nice little libertarian ideology box and never have to think that it might not be all it’s cracked up to be.