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Idk I think it was good that northern states realized segregation made America look bad and voted for federal laws to ban Jim Crow instead of saying what they do in Mississippi isn't anyone else's problem
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Jul 6, 2023 18:38
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PortobelloPirate posted:However, all of the major religions have precepts about how to live life here on earth that are just flat out incorrect. I don't know how a precept can be "flat out incorrect." There's no truth or falsifiability to a religious rule like "fast and give to charity on certain calendar days" or "pray 3 times a day" or "build a fence around your roof." It's just something you can do or not do, it's not a claim. VitalSigns posted:Idk I think it was good that northern states realized segregation made America look bad and voted for federal laws to ban Jim Crow instead of saying what they do in Mississippi isn't anyone else's problem Paraphrasing Abraham Joshua Heschel, they weren't guilty but they were responsible. Their responsibility came not from the fact that they shared some nebulous identity with the guilty party, it came from the fact that they had the power to intervene on behalf of justice. PortobelloPirate posted:If all religion were purely spiritual in nature and solely focused on the afterlife, I’d get it. Bluntly, just speaking from my experience as someone who grew up with some religion and now goes to services every weekend, this sounds dreadful. A religion ignoring the material realities of our lives is like a driver ignoring the road. And we don't know jack about any afterlife so it doesn't make sense to focus on it, certainly not "solely." In my view, which is obviously biased by my own religious background, a good religion is a machine that leverages our social networks, cultural traditions, and individual creativity to trigger feelings of transcendence, and then manipulates those feelings to make it easier to cope with misfortune and harder to tolerate injustice. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Jul 6, 2023 |
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Jul 6, 2023 20:25
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There's also the issue of benefiting indirectly from the dominance of certain religions. All practicing Christians benefit from Sunday being the bank holiday (except for the ones who keep the Sabbath on Saturday). All practicing Jews (and the Christians who keep the Sabbath on Saturday) benefit to a lesser extent from Saturday also being an office and factory holiday (and it's not unrelated - Saturday off was originally pushed by certain Jewish organizations). The whole annual calendar is keyed around mostly Christian holidays, that really works for you if you're Christian, and against you if you're of a different religion.
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Jul 6, 2023 20:53
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Absurd Alhazred posted:There's also the issue of benefiting indirectly from the dominance of certain religions. All practicing Christians benefit from Sunday being the bank holiday (except for the ones who keep the Sabbath on Saturday). All practicing Jews (and the Christians who keep the Sabbath on Saturday) benefit to a lesser extent from Saturday also being an office and factory holiday (and it's not unrelated - Saturday off was originally pushed by certain Jewish organizations). The whole annual calendar is keyed around mostly Christian holidays, that really works for you if you're Christian, and against you if you're of a different religion. I was hoping that our first Muslim president Barack Hussein Obama would implement Sharia law and give us half-days on Fridays (which is great for the winter shabbosim when sundown is at like 3pm). Just another failed promise - libs will say it's because the Republicans were so inflexible but there were four months he had a supermajority and didn't make any effort on it.
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Jul 6, 2023 20:57
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It is not unreasonable to expect that members of a voluntary-association group/category speak out when other members of that category/group do things they find objectionable. We, after all, rightly expect that men criticize other men for toxic masculinity and other such bad behaviors, and 'man' is not a voluntary association/identifier the way a religion or ideology is. There's all sorts of issues around power dynamics and bad faith actors - particularly when we talk about Muslims 'failing' to properly condemn jihadists or whatever - but the basic underlying assumption I think is pretty sound. Silence is violence, except for religions? If you identify as a Christian - an identity that is entirely voluntary and based around an allegedly shared ideological/religious framework - and do not speak out when other Christians do heinous things, especially when they are claiming they are doing them because of their Christian identity - I do not see why anyone should assume that is not tacit approval.
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Jul 6, 2023 21:07
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I reject the idea that religion is a voluntary association any more than the country where you live, or the culture with which you affiliate, or who your family is, or what your name is, or the language/accent in which you speak, is a voluntary association. Yes it is theoretically possible to change all of those things about yourself - sometimes it's even possible to change your race or gender assignment within society - but that doesn't mean we consider those things to actually be voluntary. The human reality is that there are enormous obstacles - psychological, social, and material - to abandoning the culture in which you were raised. This idea that religion is just a voluntary club for people with a shared ideology/politics might be a good description of some strands of Protestant Christianity in the US but it fails to describe how religion actually functions for most people in most of the world, where it's inseparable from cultural and communal lif. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Jul 6, 2023 |
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Jul 6, 2023 21:20
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Civilized Fishbot posted:I don't know how a precept can be "flat out incorrect." There's no truth or falsifiability to a religious rule like "fast and give to charity on certain calendar days" or "pray 3 times a day" or "build a fence around your roof." It's just something you can do or not do, it's not a claim. Perhaps “flat out harmful” would have been more accurate.
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Jul 6, 2023 21:31
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Dopilsya posted:Maybe I'm misunderstanding op's point, but I don't think that's a fair comparison. I think an analogy might be-- Mississippi does something really lovely and claims to do so in the name of America/the founding fathers/etc., but haranguing people in Vermont for failing to take the Mississippi government to task over it doesn't really make sense even though they're both part of the big club that is "Americans." No, it's like someone talking about how lovely Americans are about race and pointing out you live in Vermont and not Mississippi. That's great, and the history in Mississippi is worse, but it doesn't add anything to the conversation or negate the overall point. Hell, even if you lived in some magical completely non-racist bastion of the US it still doesn't add anything to the conversation or negate the overall point. About that particular church: http://ww1.antiochian.org/homosexuality assuming these are the same denomination the poster was talking about, they're the flavor of homophobic where being LGBT is totally fine as long as you don't ever act on it and engage on a homosexual act. I didn't look up their stance on trans folks, but I think I can make a educated guess. I wonder what their stance on abortion is. I stand by the #NotAllChristians. Civilized Fishbot posted:I reject the idea that religion is a voluntary association any more than the country where you live, or the culture with which you affiliate, or who your family is, or what your name is, or the language/accent in which you speak, is a voluntary association. Maybe worldwide, I don't know, but I don't think this is true for most of the US.
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Jul 6, 2023 21:42
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https://www.reuters.com/world/australian-minister-calls-trump-jr-big-baby-over-cancelled-tour-2023-07-06/ I'm not even sure what the point of Jr doing a tour in Australia even was. 
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Jul 6, 2023 21:47
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DeadlyMuffin posted:Maybe worldwide, I don't know, but I don't think this is true for most of the US. You think it's easy for an American Jew to stop being Jewish or for an American Muslim to stop being Muslim or for an American Hindu to stop being Hindu? These identities are inseparable from broader cultural and communal affiliations, and deeply ingrained the person's own psychology from birth. It's not voluntary any more than our names or the languages we speak or where we live is voluntary. You can change any of these things, but it means overhauling your lifestyle or personal identity or both. It is scary and expensive and difficult. I stand by what I said - "this idea that religion is just a voluntary club for people with a shared ideology/politics" is really just talking about much of American Protestant Christianity and maybe certain Protestantism-influenced Catholic communities. Many of the posters in this conversation are saying things about American Protestant Christianity, things that look basically true to me, but then talking about "religion" as if the whole of religion is or ought to be American Protestant Christianity. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Jul 6, 2023 |
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Jul 6, 2023 21:49
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OgNar posted:https://www.reuters.com/world/australian-minister-calls-trump-jr-big-baby-over-cancelled-tour-2023-07-06/ There were dudes with Trump flags in Sydney protesting mask/vaccine mandates. The American far-right is unfortunately a global brand at this point
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Jul 6, 2023 21:54
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OgNar posted:https://www.reuters.com/world/australian-minister-calls-trump-jr-big-baby-over-cancelled-tour-2023-07-06/ Nah, that'll never happen
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Jul 6, 2023 21:54
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FlamingLiberal posted:At some point maybe he will realize that he only had any 'fame' because of his dad He absolutely realizes it, that's why he's the most enthusiastically/desperately integrated into the Trump media circus while the other kids are either quiet or working on more independent brands. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Jul 6, 2023 |
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Jul 6, 2023 22:01
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Civilized Fishbot posted:I reject the idea that religion is a voluntary association any more than the country where you live, or the culture with which you affiliate, or who your family is, or what your name is, or the language/accent in which you speak, is a voluntary association. I'm aware it's very difficult, but like, there are atheists coming from every single religious background. There's a difference between being immersed in and part of some generalized cultural background radiation and actively identifying as part of something. And also just because something is difficult does not mean it is okay not to do it. If you were raised a lifelong racist in a family of Klan members, I think we'd all agree you still have a moral obligation to not be a bigoted piece of poo poo, even if turning your back on your familial and cultural background is extremely difficult. But either way, the question is moot because, again, we recognize men have a responsibility to call out toxic masculinity. So even if we assume that 'Christian' is the same sort of category as 'man' then Christians still have an obligation to call out bad behavior by other Christians, at least in societies where Christians form the dominant religious group, just as men do in patriarchal societies (read: pretty much all of them, ever).
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Jul 6, 2023 22:06
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An atheist from a Protestant background and an atheist from a Jewish background are going to be different culturally. There's a whole culture behind or around or inside these religions that doesn't end when you say "well, I'm not going to Church/Synagogue anymore", or even when your grandparents already did that.
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Jul 6, 2023 22:10
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Civilized Fishbot posted:He absolutely realizes it, that's why he's the most enthusiastically/desperately integrated into the Trump media circus while the other kids are either quiet or working on more independent brands. Eric was always in the background doing the business stuff, Ivanka to a similar degree. Her husband was much more publicly involved with policy than anything else.
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Jul 6, 2023 22:10
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Absurd Alhazred posted:An atheist from a Protestant background and an atheist from a Jewish background are going to be different culturally. There's a whole culture behind or around or inside these religions that doesn't end when you say "well, I'm not going to Church/Synagogue anymore", or even when your grandparents already did that.
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Jul 6, 2023 22:15
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Absurd Alhazred posted:An atheist from a Protestant background and an atheist from a Jewish background are going to be different culturally. There's a whole culture behind or around or inside these religions that doesn't end when you say "well, I'm not going to Church/Synagogue anymore", or even when your grandparents already did that. Yes, and nothing I said changes that in any way. I still identify as an ethnic and in some respects cultural Jew, despite having been an atheist since, like, shortly after my bar mitzvah funny enough - could have saved my parents a lot of money if I'd only realized things sooner. My point is it's still a voluntary association unless you are living in a society that punishes apostasy with death or whatever. Like there is almost nothing you are saying that cannot be applied to being raised a man.
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Jul 6, 2023 22:15
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:If you were raised a lifelong racist in a family of Klan members, I think we'd all agree you still have a moral obligation to not be a bigoted piece of poo poo, I think under any circumstances you have a moral obligation not to be a bigoted piece of poo poo. Would you be obligated to change your name, so that you're no longer identifying yourself in a way that's similar to bad people? If we change the analogy from family to culture - and culture here is a better analogy for religion - we have the actual situation of many American southerners, that their culture is disproportionately afflicted with racist assholes who are racist in the name of the culture. Does this mean southerners are obligated to stop being southerners, to stop cooking collard greens and chicken fried steak and to start pronouncing words like they're from Ohio? I think the obligation is to not be a bigoted piece of poo poo or friendly to bigoted pieces of poo poo. You're not obligated to change your culture or religion because it's somehow been tainted by bad actors. All cultural expression is reproduced in a variation that serves the ruling class. quote:But either way, the question is moot because, again, we recognize men have a responsibility to call out toxic masculinity I have that obligation because with power comes responsibility, so when I have the power to speak up I have the responsibility to do so. The reason I have that obligation isn't that there exists such a thing as gender-level guilt or gender-level responsibility quote:just as men do in patriarchal societies (read: pretty much all of them, ever). The idea that societies have always been patriarchal is both historically inaccurate and politically counterproductive because it implies that societies are necessarily patriarchal.
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Jul 6, 2023 22:23
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Civilized Fishbot posted:You think it's easy for an American Jew to stop being Jewish or for an American Muslim to stop being Muslim or for an American Hindu to stop being Hindu? These identities are inseparable from broader cultural and communal affiliations, and deeply ingrained the person's own psychology from birth. It's not voluntary any more than our names or the languages we speak or where we live is voluntary. You can change any of these things, but it means overhauling your lifestyle or personal identity or both. It is scary and expensive and difficult. Jews are 2.4% of the US population according to my quick googling. The percentage of Muslims is 1.1 %, and Hindus come in at 0.7% I'll bet there's a decent chunk of them that can walk away from their religion and even if there isn't, I said most of the US, and your response is "oh yeah? What about this small percentage???". Well, they aren't "most". So I don't see the issue 
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Jul 6, 2023 22:26
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More infighting  "During internal deliberations almost two weeks ago—which occurred after Greene confirmed to multiple publications she indeed did call Boebert “a little bitch”—Boebert agreed with another member who argued against removing Greene, out of respect for her right to “freedom of speech.”" https://twitter.com/notcapnamerica/status/1677054478082621440 "The Freedom Caucus, also known as the House Freedom Caucus, is a congressional caucus consisting of Republican members of the United States House of Representatives. It is generally considered to be the most conservative and farthest-right bloc within the House Republican Conference."
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Jul 6, 2023 22:28
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DeadlyMuffin posted:Jews are 2.4% of the US population according to my quick googling. The percentage of Muslims is 1.1 Yeah sure, I'm just pissy about goons saying "religion is [x]" and they mean "mainline protestant Christianity and white-people Catholicism is [x]." Which is really just pedantry but yesterday this stuff led to someone saying that Muslims and Jews shouldn't be upset when they're considered responsible for war crimes, which really leads to harassment and violence. I wonder what percent of people in this thread don't consider themselves Christians yet still celebrate Easter or Christmas. It is easy to say you're no longer X, it is the work of a lifetime to stop actually being X, and if we're going to say that guilt is metaphysically stapled to X then clearly it's the second one that matters. Seems easier to say "individuals are morally responsible for the injustices that they have the power to stop, regardless of what they do or don't have in common with the perpetrators or victims." Is there a reason not to go with that? Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Jul 6, 2023 |
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Jul 6, 2023 22:31
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Civilized Fishbot posted:I think under any circumstances you have a moral obligation not to be a bigoted piece of poo poo. Would you be obligated to change your name, so that you're no longer identifying yourself in a way that's similar to bad people? Like during the Forever War years I do think Americans - myself included - had an obligation to decry the actions of the government and the warhawks. Silence is violence, and I do not understand why some people believe religions are exempt to that truth. If someone claims to be doing something in accordance to a value/affiliation/identity you and they both share, and you do not call that behavior out when you are able, then why should any third party assume you do not support it implicitly? As I said initially, I get there are complicating factors in how this discourse plays out WRT power dynamics and bad faith arguments by bigots, but my argument is that the underlying truism/reasoning is sound. Silence is violence and inaction in the face of injustice is implicit support. And as with men and toxic masculinity, this is compounded by unequal power dynamics. If you are a Christian and you are silent in the face of the theocratic injustices being perpetrated by certain prominent American Christians, why should I or anyone else assume that your silence is anything other than support? quote:The idea that societies have always been patriarchal is both historically inaccurate and politically counterproductive because it implies that societies are necessarily patriarchal. Most != all. That most societies have been patriarchal is not historically inaccurate. And even if they were, that would not necessarily imply that society is necessarily patriarchal - that would be merely one interpretation of the data, not the only one. You cannot derive and ought from an is, and correlation is not causation.
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Jul 6, 2023 22:57
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:I never once said that people have an obligation to change their religion. My point, which I stand by, is that if other members of your religion - or any other voluntary association group to which you belong Yeah I disagree that religion is voluntary because for many of us it's unspeakable from our culture and psychology which are involuntary. For some it's voluntary, but to say as a rule that religion is voluntary is ignorant of the reality of how humans work and live. To say "religion is voluntary" is like saying "your accent is voluntary" or "the language you speak is voluntary" - yes that's technically true, and for some people it might be practically true, but for a lot of people the human reality is that it's an involuntary part of who they are. I think your thinking has two issues: first you seem to think that responsibility isn't just a function of individual power or lack thereof, it's also a function of whether you share some cultural identity with the perpetrators of injustice. To me this is silly metaphysical idealism. Men are usually obligated to speak out against toxic masculinity because we usually have the power to do something about it by speaking our, and that's the only reason, it's not some Man Job that men are called to do to wipe the stain off our gender. And the other is a belief that religion is voluntary in a way that I'm sure you wouldn't consider other deeply ingrained cultural or social expressions, like language or accent or place of residence, to be voluntary. quote:Most != all. But what you said was "pretty much all." Denying the existence of matriarchal societies, or acting like they're some weird fluke and not a formerly common form of life, is a patriarchal project, just like denying the existence of societies without debt is a capitalist project. It limits what people can imagine or consider realistic, in service of the status quo. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 23:19 on Jul 6, 2023 |
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Jul 6, 2023 23:05
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Civilized Fishbot posted:He absolutely realizes it, that's why he's the most enthusiastically/desperately integrated into the Trump media circus while the other kids are either quiet or working on more independent brands. Except for Eric, who is currently staring into a mirror in a desperate attempt to form his first ego boundary.
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Jul 6, 2023 23:25
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Civilized Fishbot posted:Seems easier to say "individuals are morally responsible for the injustices that they have the power to stop, regardless of what they do or don't have in common with the perpetrators or victims." Is there a reason not to go with that? Yes. Take a wild hypothetical: you're talking to a klan member. That individual leaving the klan wouldn't stop them from existing, the injustice wouldn't change, but leaving is still the moral act. There are positives in some religions, even some religions that are against abortion, LGBT rights, etc. So I think each person needs to do their own moral calculus. But I have absolutely zero sympathy for "actually *my* Christian church is okay so you can't generalize". gently caress that noise.
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Jul 6, 2023 23:59
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DeadlyMuffin posted:Yes. Take a wild hypothetical: you're talking to a klan member. That individual leaving the klan wouldn't stop them from existing, the injustice wouldn't change, but leaving is still the moral act. I think leaving is the moral act because this hypothetical of someone where it literally doesn't make any material difference whether they're in the klan or not is absurd. I don't agree with the idea that people can be morally obligated to do things that don't have consequences. Consequences are what give weight to our actions. Leaving the Klan might reflect well on someone depending on their reason for doing it - assuming they're not leaving because they're mad they don't get to be the grand wizard or whatever, that they're leaving because they're disgusted by violent racism, that shows the person has a good heart, but if you're telling me that nothing changes as a result of the decision then to me that means the decision morally null. Any other way of thinking about it, where actions have moral weight beyond their actual material consequences, feels, well, religious. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Jul 7, 2023 |
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Jul 7, 2023 00:05
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I know it's a religion derail but it's a pretty good discussion. Briefly: my thing/hang up with it all, beyond some of the stuff I've already written, is that I've had more than I don't know what to do with that nor how to have a reasonable conversation about it moving forward. When you've just told me to my face that my life is doomed until I accept Jesus Christ and the Truth of his teachings, where exactly am I supposed to take that and why shouldn't I feel shamed at best or insulted worst? I mean...check that...I DON'T react that way but, often, that is the clear messaging and very often the intention. I don't want their pity. I'm not seeking their guidance. I don't particularly need their prayers. And I sure as poo poo don't want to start voting for Republicans to save my soul. So much of it is simply absolutism. In my experience, this has been the vast majority of my interactions with True Believers of any stripe. Usually, I'm happy to let them go about whatever gets them through the day but their version of that is "well, hope you like your miserable life and eternal damnation in hell". I've met my fair share of smug, arrogant atheists too and I try to never act that way, but they PUSH, and I'm not the one running around telling everyone I else I know the all the answers either. BiggerBoat fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Jul 7, 2023 |
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Jul 7, 2023 00:19
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bird food bathtub posted:I think a big point of clarification is needed around power dynamics, and specifically how they exist in the U.S. If you're in the U.S. and you say "Those Muslims need to do something" you're an rear end in a top hat targeting people that already get poo poo on and don't have the power to force their viewpoints on the rest of society. When talking about the rotten edifice that passes itself off as "Christianity" in the US your criticism is being aimed at the dominant power structure in the nation that absolutely has the power to ban abortion, tell anyone not cis and hetero that they need to shut up or kill themselves and make it happen, rewrite national education standards and so on. That it is absolutely a valid target that needs to be criticized and the space exists within that power structure to say "Those Christians need to do something" because if they're not taking a stand against it then gently caress them they're a part of the problem that everyone else is suffering through. If someone in the dominant power structure doesn't like that argument they don't get to point out what happens to the oppressed and scream about how unfair it is to themselves. They're inside the club house. They get all the perks of membership. It's totally fair game to me to point out how lovely they're being to everyone outside. Don't like it? Fix the loving problems since the power exists within that club house to do so. Not doing so is causing the problems, and people outside the club house don't get the chance to do so. The people who go to that church that's doing outreach for trans kids and helping refugees Desantis bussed north isn't in the same "clubhouse" as the people from the strip mall that are harassing school boards and protesting at abortion clinics. The former has no power over the latter beyond what they are already doing, and wouldn't be considered as allies or fellow Christians by them. The "My Persian neighbors are Muslim so I think they should do more to denounce ISIS" argument is dumb for a whole lot of reasons, and most of them would be equally valid in a country where Christianity and Islam had similar influence. Your argument isn't better than it is. VitalSigns posted:Idk I think it was good that northern states realized segregation made America look bad and voted for federal laws to ban Jim Crow instead of saying what they do in Mississippi isn't anyone else's problem Yeah, the United Church of Christ had better get on the Pope about the Baptist churches spreading homophobic hate speech. He can send in some hardass Episcopalians to crack some heads and....wait, that's not how it works, that's not how any of this works. That's the kind of nonsense this is. Only even moreso: multiple major churches are splitting up because the mainstream body moved toward social justice and inclusion and, unlike southern states in the US, there's nothing to keep individual right-wing congregations from thumbing their nose and making their own church with
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Jul 7, 2023 00:26
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Bwahaha https://twitter.com/AriDrennen/status/1676951565293289472?t=AHQ_YRtgftOsvuBlt8jlug&s=19
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Jul 7, 2023 00:52
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Civilized Fishbot posted:I think leaving is the moral act because this hypothetical of someone where it literally doesn't make any material difference whether they're in the klan or not is absurd. I don't agree with the idea that people can be morally obligated to do things that don't have consequences. Consequences are what give weight to our actions. What if dad and dear old grandpa, and all the cousins and uncles were also in the klan and it was a tightknit family that looks after each other? Is someone who is just a Klan member but doesn't participate in the cross burnings or whatever morally okay for being a member of the organization? They are if I follow your logic. I didn't say religious people are morally obligated to leave their religions if the organizations are lovely in some way. I said they need to do their own moral calculus. I have a few friends who are devout Catholics. The Catholic church has some seriously horrible poo poo, and continues to have some quite abhorrent views (imo) They clearly have decided that the good they get out of it (family, comfort, whatever) outweighs the negative. Maybe the support they give is small and they feel the good outweighs the bad. Maybe it does! But the bad is nonzero. So do your own balance, but don't pretend that there's no harm at all being done if you want to be honest with yourself. DeadlyMuffin fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Jul 7, 2023 |
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Jul 7, 2023 01:25
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DeadlyMuffin posted:What if dad and dear old grandpa, and all the cousins and uncles were also in the klan and it was a tightknit family that looks after each other? Is someone who is just a Klan member but doesn't participate in the cross burnings or whatever morally okay for being a member of the organization? They are if I follow your logic. I don't really know how the KKK works well enough to follow you down the road of this analogy - by my understanding it's a terrorist outfit where doing terrorism is a necessary part of it, not a country club or Third Place where you can get together to schmooze, but I really wouldn't know too well. If you're saying that you believe no injustice is affected by this guy's choices then the intuition is they don't matter morally, although leaving makes him more likable than staying. If it sounds crazy to say that exiting the KKK isn't a moral obligation, that's because you imagined a crazy or impossible situation, a KKK member who isn't involved in injustice. I think our moral obligation to do something is explained entirely by the consequence of doing it. And our responsibilities are determined by what choices are available for us to make, not from some collective Male/Christian/Jewish/Muslim identity that redistributes accountability collectively. If our identities empower us to do more about injustice, that gives us more responsibility - because of the material consequences of our choices, not the spiritual stain of our affiliations. To me it seems like all that stuff simplifies and essentializes messy cultural constructions, obscures the relationship between power and moral duty, and, in the case of ethnic/religious/cultural minorities, justifies dangerous bigotry. On the last page we were told Muslims should "stop bitching" about "guilt-by-association" for what the Saudi government does, and now we've reached a point where being a member of the wrong religion is implicitly analogized to being part of a violent terror cell. If someone says "ugh this He Gets Us stuff is really getting on my nerves, I hate Christians" that's not an actual social problem. But in the logical contortions to say that it's actually in all seriousness a great and important way for grown adults to approach moral responsibility, we end up validating really ugly stuff. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Jul 7, 2023 |
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Jul 7, 2023 01:56
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DeadlyMuffin posted:Yes. Take a wild hypothetical: you're talking to an American. That individual leaving the US wouldn't stop them from existing, the injustice wouldn't change, but leaving is still the moral act. I like this logic
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Jul 7, 2023 02:02
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OgNar posted:More infighting
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Jul 7, 2023 02:21
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My real issue with going on about it being Christians needing to take responsibility like this is that Evangelicals and other shitheads like the Prosperity Gospel fucks aren't actually Christian anyway; they live in their own heretical cult space and basically run things from there. Like, seriously, they jerk it to Jesus as publicly as possible, but thats as close as it gets to Christianity, otherwise ignoring literally anything else that every other branch pays attention to. Which makes it even more infuriating when they in turn go "nuh uh Mormons aren't Christians" like they did with Romney in 2012 (Romney is and was a fucker but that was some hypocritical poo poo). Like, pointing out that these fucks aren't Christian at all? Maybe that far is fair, but otherwise it's like making GBS threads on Hondurans because of something that happened in Guatemala or the like, where they just ain't the same thing at all.
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Jul 7, 2023 04:14
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Karatela posted:My real issue with going on about it being Christians needing to take responsibility like this is that Evangelicals and other shitheads like the Prosperity Gospel fucks aren't actually Christian anyway; they live in their own heretical cult space and basically run things from there. Yeah, the actual way to bring the Klan into this discussion is that the modern Klan itself was founded in the 1920s as an explicitly Christian organization, and yet most (though of course not all) of its victims were themselves Christians. The churchgoing black people and Catholic immigrants the Klan hated were not complicit in that hatred, and that would be equally true whether or not they themselves decided to renounce Jesus and the cross because the Klan called themselves Christian.
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Jul 7, 2023 04:37
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VitalSigns posted:Idk I think it was good that northern states realized segregation made America look bad and voted for federal laws to ban Jim Crow instead of saying what they do in Mississippi isn't anyone else's problem Yeah, which is why these other churches openly preach their acceptance of LGBTQ. You just don't hear about it on the news because they're not evangelical mega-churches with infinite money.
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Jul 7, 2023 06:16
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Karatela posted:My real issue with going on about it being Christians needing to take responsibility like this is that Evangelicals and other shitheads like the Prosperity Gospel fucks aren't actually Christian anyway; they live in their own heretical cult space and basically run things from there. Hondurans are a minority with little to no political power. The evangelical Christians have a vastly disproportionate amount of political power in the US and are able to effect terrible change upon the country because of it. For a lot of people, they are the face of Christianity, and they are the "Christians" that come for your rights and tell you that you don't have any right to exist. It doesn't particularly matter how hypocritical they are or how far from Jesus they are, because they are the face of Christianity in politics. making GBS threads on Hondurans in the US is bad. making GBS threads on US Christians in the US, who have a ton of political power and who are pandered to by the vast majority of politicians, is a whole different kettle of fish. One has power and one does not. This is not a complex or complicated concept.
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Jul 7, 2023 06:42
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Civilized Fishbot posted:To me it seems like all that stuff simplifies and essentializes messy cultural constructions, obscures the relationship between power and moral duty, and, in the case of ethnic/religious/cultural minorities, justifies dangerous bigotry. On the last page we were told Muslims should "stop bitching" about "guilt-by-association" for what the Saudi government does, and now we've reached a point where being a member of the wrong religion is implicitly analogized to being part of a violent terror cell. Honestly, it just sounds like you are trying to absolve your conscience for remaining a member of a group that has caused/is causing others harm by saying that your actions alone aren't causing that harm so it doesn't matter. I could make a list of things the Catholic church has done that caused far more harm in total than the Klan (their treatment of native Americans in the US alone) My point is that by being a member people do carry some moral responsibility for that, however small, and that needs to be part of their determination about what the right thing to do is. DeadlyMuffin fucked around with this message at 13:38 on Jul 7, 2023 |
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Jul 7, 2023 12:41
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You can leave a religion while still holding onto cultural traits that came from that religion. You can still have dinner with your family on a Sunday after you have made the choice to no longer believe in God. You can donate money to the poor with or without a church. You can dress however you like, for whatever reason you like. Religion and culture influence each other, but they are different things, and if you can't see where one ends and the other begins, then you are absolutely participating in the weaponization of religion in society.
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Jul 7, 2023 14:29
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