Pence warns christian graduates "prepare to be ridiculed and shunned".
77 replies, posted
I think it kind of depends on your definition of "based on Christianity" since I'd argue that Doom draws heavily on Christian ideas, it just takes them in a different direction by asking what if the biblical armies of hell were literal standing armies going to actual war with humans. As I mentioned before, a lot of JRPGs use Christianity and other religions as bases for some of their own theming and imagery. One that stands out quite strongly to me is Final Fantasy Tactics, a game whose story actually reminds me somewhat of the novel trilogy His Dark Materials, by having a world, roughly analogous to medieval Europe (the updated War of the Lions translation even uses old English and describes the game's time period as the middle ages), where the main character is branded a heretic and forced into exile when he discovers that the ruling church are malevolent in nature with their Christ-like figure and his 12 apostles (called "braves" and mostly given Hebrew names like Belias, Hashmal, Adramelech, and Zalera-an anagram for Azrael) actually being demons.
I'm not the one with a credibility issue here. Your objection to Islam and Christianity sharing a similar relationship to liberalism was shown to be completely irrelevant to the topic at hand the moment you admitted you were referring to economic liberalism, not civil rights liberalism. I'm not going to waste my time looking up a book that, if your posts are any indication, is going to consist of nothing but mindless verbiage and masturbatory spouting of ideology about something that has absolutely nothing with what we were talking about here. Because, in case I haven't made it abundantly clear enough for you at this point: Capitalism has fuck-all to do with what this thread is about.
I've pointed this out before but you have a really weird and selective reading of history. What are your thoughts on the spanish inquisition? Not the Monty Python joke
Was far less brutal and terrible than what is popularly believed, much of which were made up tales by Protestant writers in the 1600s as ad hominen attacks against the Catholic Church.
I'm pretty sure the implicit question here is whether tempcon believes Christianity actively facilitated the rise of liberalism.
Yeah pretty much. and it was uh some level of brutal, people were executed
The Inquisitions (which contrary to popular belief were not unique to Spain and were part of a long running Catholic tradition) actually do have some influence on early liberalism in that they laid out early rule of law and court proceedings in Western Europe. Pope Gregory IX literally told an Inquisitor it was better to let the guilty go free than to punish the innocent, the exact principle that the modern idea of innocent until proven guilty is based on.
So, as I said, much like Islam during its golden age. Still waiting for a response from tempcon on that point, though.
"3,000 to 5,000" over the course of 350 years isn't really all that much for the time period. At its peak estimate, it's only 14 people a year, a vastly tiny amount compared to say, the French Revolution that executed over 2,500 people in one year. It was also far, far less a death toll than what Protestants committed to during the Reformation period in the same centuries.
On top of that, despite popular belief, there was a rigorous court procedure in finding guilt. And executions were sentenced and sanctioned by the state, not the church itself. The crown of Spain saw heretical belief as a threat to their monarchy and so pursued it as a capital crime.
Also the Directorium Inquisitorum, a sort-of inquisitorial handbook written by Inquisitor-General Nicholas Eymerich, specifically stated that interrogating via torture was misleading and unreliable.
I never admitted that and I don't know why you are strictly separating the two. They've historically gone together. I'm aware that there are currents on the left that have attempted to keep one and ditch the other, but they haven't worked out well. They either get watered down, like social-democracy, or they end up cannibalizing the former with dictatorship and become ripe for a color revolution.
I also don't know why you are suggesting Christianity is alien to 'civil rights liberalism'. It has a long history of informing liberal reformism in America in particular.
I don't see it as part of Christianity's formative influence on liberalism, just the modern nation-state.
Does it really need one? A historical constant when it comes to progress in the Middle East is that all old transnational empires, such as the caliphate at the center of this age, would have to be dismantled, the different peoples within freed, and the religion made more independent of the state in order for it to be something other than an obstacle to liberalism. Russia remained backwards for similar reasons, although it ultimately had a different relationship to modernity in the sense that it was a nation that could exist independent of Tsarism. I think only al-Andalus had any potential, although this also speaks to its distance from Islam as much as Islam's potential to be liberalized.
Outside of that, Sunni Islam especially seems pretty irredeemable and constantly in reaction to modern forces of liberalism, nationalism, and socialism. I think it has a problem at its core of being a young upstart religion based on large-scale conquest of old and diverse territories at the heart of early civilization, leaving it prone to stifling despotism. Christianity has much less of that character, it often aiding in the formation of modern nations, their middle class, and their civic life.
Arab nationalism had a necessarily revolutionary nature from the outset as a result, although this meant it took more from socialism than liberalism in influences. Regardless, it hasn't aged well. The Middle East looks like it's sliding backwards if anything, which speaks to the fact freedom is not the historical endpoint. It's a product of a certain set of conditions (that will always be debated) that are not and never will be universal, which is why liberal-conservatism is not going anywhere and the equivocation between the Christianity it espouses and Islam is fraudulent. They are not 'equally reactionary' nor would I describe Christianity as such at all, since its antagonism is less with liberalism and more with the left.
Every religion and sufficiently socioeconomically advanced cultural group has had historical golden ages and dark ages.
When the golden age of Islam was happening Muslim philosophers, mathematicians and scholars were at forefront of developing art, science and culture and were (for the time period) reasonably secular and accepting of various faiths, while Medieval Europe had essentially broken down into a large number of small warring tribes who were constantly in-fighting and killing each other over petty cultural and religious differences. But those muslim scholars had only been able to get so far because they had continued the work of the ancient romans and greeks, who were up until that point the predominant cultural group that had spread civilization, including the knowledge of art, science and culture they had developed, all across the known world. Those romans and greeks in turn were standing on the shoulders of even more ancient cultures from Africa, such as the Egyptians and the Carthaginians who had formed their own empires tens of thousands of years before Rome even existed.
And then, just like the Romans and the Egyptian empires collapsed into a large number of small warring tribes, the Islamic Golden Age ended with the islamic empires collapsing into small warring tribes, the small warring tribes in Europe congregated into larger empires and used ship-building methods invented by vikings and guns invented by the Chinese to become exorbitantly wealthy by stealing the wealth from already existing advanced civilizations in America. Christian scholars then became the main caretakers of the knowledge previously held and further refined by the Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Islamic scholars. Christian religious leaders were the first in these Christian empires to petition other Christian rulers for increased humanitarianism, such as the abolition of slavery and social welfare. And all of this is just where the history of Europe is concerned.
When you look at history in this way, you can't really view it as the result of conflict between different cultures/religions. The rise and fall of various cultural and religious groups had more to do with historical means and opportunities than whether any one culture or religion was actually 'better' or 'worse' than any other. Like pretty much everything, the truth is much more nuanced than 'religion is good' or 'religion is bad'. There have been just as many good devout christian/muslim/jewish/hindu/budhist/whatever historical figures who have progressed the development of culture or society as there have been bad christian/muslim/jewish/hindu/budhist/whatever historical figures who have used their religion has a cudgel to oppress or put back the development of positive cultural values for generations. We cannot look back at history with a modern cultural lens and fairly judge historical characters without understanding the sociocultural and sociopolitical situation that underpins much of human behaviour.
Pretty much every religion promotes whatever we would call good cultural values, e.g. 'treat others the way you wish to be treated', 'respect your enemies even if they have different beliefs than you do', 'donate to charity', 'don't kill or rape people', 'be a good person', etc. If you think your religion is the only 'good' religion and that other religious texts don't condemn bad behaviour than you either don't know enough about other cultures/religions and you need to go out and talk to people of other religions/cultures or you've bought into political propaganda.
Humans writ large are generally harmonious and prefer cooperation over conflict. Modern archaeology shows us that paleolithic human tribes generally cared for and shared with each other, looked after the old and sick members of their tribe, and collaborated on civil engineering projects long before the existence of organised religion. The myth of the uncivilized caveman/barbarian is just that, a myth. Our cultural stories, our mythologies and religious and spiritual beliefs, served to promote and diversify our already existing good cultural values.
It's true that in times of strife, the strongest and powerful members of the tribe survive. But in times of peace it is the most collaborative and good natured individuals who are most able to collaborate and collect their strengths with others who truly thrive. The notion of 'survival of the fittest' is often misunderstood, people usually interpret it to mean the strongest, fastest, smartest individuals are the most likely to survive, but that's not necessarily the case. 'Fitness' in an evolutionary sense doesn't mean physical fitness or mental fitness, it means how much an individual 'fits' into their natural physical and social environment. This is why we don't only see the biggest, strongest, fastest, most intelligent animals, like lions and cheetahs and elephants, but we also see social animals with complex social dynamics and symbiotic relationships, like bees and ants, herd animals and quite obviously, us.
Sometimes the most advantageous survival strategy is to be brutal and manipulative, sometimes the best strategy is to be kind and generous. There will always be both kinds of people in the world, there have always been people who have disagreed with their contemporary ruling class in every country, every culture, every religion across the world, the only part that matters is who actually holds the power at any moment and what kind of environment we are fostering. As humans, unlike every other animal that has ever existed, we have the unique power to actually manipulate and even change our own environment.
Whether or not any specific culture or religion or civilization thrives or dies out, it isn't going to be the 'death' of human kindness or morality. We were not a bunch of slobbering barbarians and then Christianity/Islam/Budhism/Hinudism/whatever came along and 'civilized' us and made us act like good people, we had those positive, innate cultural values already. Religion is just an amplifier, where there is good cultural behaviour it amplifies it by providing a shared common identity among multiple tribes so that our sense of cooperation carries across beyond our own tribal group- and when there is a bad cultural behaviour it amplifies it by providing the ultimate 'the end justifies the means' mentality, where our own petty struggles over land and resources suddenly becomes a moral, biblical conflict for the fate of all humankind against an ultimate evil that must be destroyed at all costs.
So, in summary, what we should be concerned about is not which religion/cultural/set of moral beliefs is getting bigger or smaller, or winning or losing, but whether the actions we make are going to lead to better world, one where success results from mutual respect and cooperation, or a worse one where it results from simply having the most power.
You said Christianity was the foundation of liberal conservatism. That's the very definition of liberal conservatism: Economic liberalism and social conservatism. You insist that we consider the American political spectrum, so the real life example of liberal conservatism would be the GOP. Very liberal when it comes to economics, yet very reactionary and anti-civil rights when it comes to the social aspect. If there's any political orientation that strictly separates the two, it's this one.
I don't know what alternate world you live in where social-democracy "hasn't worked out well". Social-democratic countries are objectively better places to live in than liberal-conservative ones. Unless you're among the richest, I suppose. The poor there don't have to work two jobs just to make ends meet, nor do they have to avoid going to the doctor if they don't want to go bankrupt.
But I'm afraid that further inquiry will just lead to yet another incoherent rant about France on your part.
Before I start answering your other questions, why don't you answer mine for a change? For example: How does Hitler liking Islam better than Christianity invalidates the list you were originally quoting? More importantly, what the fuck does liberalism have to do with that original post you quoted? How does this largely off-topic claim of yours, that Christianity and Islam relate differently to liberalism, negate the fact that there are Christianity-motivated extremist groups out there that commit mass murder at a greater scale than fucking ISIS to impose biblical law?
I think the meaning isn't obscure, I don't think Christianity can be described as a threat to liberalism as much as a wing of it. You have to choose between having me give generalistic and broad statements or verbose ones. I didn't write more there because I didn't want to load up a point.
I don't do that anymore since I think the best way to keep people engaged is usually to flesh things out in a back and forth.
No, I am aware of that. I would still say that you can generalize and make predictions of where these things overlap and where they contradict. I think the integrity of these categories is not incompatible with nuance.
Nope.
I kind of sympathize with the message of your post, but I think you have the wrong idea about me. For example, me disagreeing with Axel's politics is not a refusal to see anything but headcanon. That's me being adamant in my differences with him since I've had a lot of time to get to that point.
I've actually touched on the message of your post before in debates over whether our left is actually everyone else's right.
Yes, but the latter is couched in the pursuit of a better free society. It's not strictly separable from liberalism, it's a variant of it that believes it has a better claim to delivering on liberal goals. That's not a very common feature of conservatism elsewhere.
There's no reason for us to say that I'm only talking about economic liberalism.
No, because libcon Christianity is not a rejection of liberal civics. It's the opposite, they don't think a civic identity can exist without it as something that binds us. They also see it as a check on both the power of government and the masses, which fits nicely with liberal goals.
You are trying to equate the differences of this with left-liberalism to the Islamic relationship with liberalism, which is more of a wholesale rejection. It's stupid.
It's just a common complaint I hear from more fervent left wing people, thus the 'succdem' meme. Basically the idea social-democracy, along with labor, has suffered with neoliberalism and no longer has any capacity to be progressive.
The point was the two had different histories which lent to one being amicable to liberalism and regarded as meek by fascists accordingly. This related to the attempt at equivocation in the tweet, I thought it was ironic since it cited Nazis.
The question about whether Christianity has its own ISIS is directly connected to a bigger debate over whether they are both irredeemably illiberal and it's just chauvinism to note the backwards character of Islam.
Just because it delusions itself into thinking that social reactonarism somehow bolsters individual liberties doesn't make it fundamentally different to regular conservatism. Actions speak louder than words, I'm not sure why I should give much of a shit that American conservatives can't help but constantly yap about freedom despite doing nothing on that front other than attack personal liberties.
There's a very simple reason, which is that nobody here gives a damn whether ISIS supports a conservative fiscal policy or what their view on antitrust regulations are. They most likely don't give a shit either. Economic liberalism is completely irrelevant here. And as we've seen extensively now, social liberalism is separate from economic liberalism, they have nothing in common other than a word.
You're just constantly trying to reframe liberalism in this context as being comprised of both economic and social aspects to muddy the waters. In fact you're the one who brought up the concept in the first place because of how ambiguous this wording is. You could've used the expression "civil liberties" or "progressivism" instead, for example, and it would have been just as relevant to the original post you were quoting.
Again, "they think it does X" but they don't actually do X. Not exactly a significant difference. Next.
So their point is that social-democracy remains too economically liberal to be properly socially liberal? That just completely goes against your point: Rather than show economic liberalism and social liberalism go hand in hand, it points towards an opposition between the two.
And outside of those complaints you can't objectively claim that social democracies "don't work out" to the same level liberal-conservative societies dysfunction. Shows economic and social liberalism aren't tied either way.
I could use the exact same logic to claim Christianity is amicable to fascism, racism and genocide by bringing up the KKK. But that wouldn't make sense, because just like much of your points that would be nonsensical garbage.
Whether Christianity has its own ISIS isn't up for debate in the first place. It's already been pointed out in the very post you've quoted that it does, religiously motivated Christian extremist groups have already committed even worse and bigger atrocities than ISIS in the name of forcing their religious views onto others. Your attempt at derailing the thread by manufacturing an irrelevant debate voluntarily based in vague-ass terminology doesn't change hard, cold facts.
So "not all that many" people were executed for what are effectively thought crimes. That seems awfully brutal to me, dude.
Heresy had a much more specific definition than people think. While it's true that it violates the modern idea of freedom of religion, the Inquisition only considered it a punishable offence when people engaged in practices that the church declared blasphemous or paganistic, action that was witnessed was a requirement for charges to be drawn. Additionally, because I just can't stop harping on about the difference between the Spanish Inquisition and the Catholic Inquisitions at large: outside of Spain the Inquisition only had authority over self-described Christians and was not allowed to target Jews or Muslims on the grounds that they were outside of Christian authority, the Spanish Inquisition only technically went after Jews and Muslims because, several years before its establishment, the Spanish crown had ordered large amounts of religious minorities to convert to Catholicism or face expulsion, thus it fell to the Inquisition to determine if these conversions were true, or if the nominally converted still practiced their old faith in secret.
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