Christianity

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Sculptor
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Re: Christianity

Post by Sculptor »

henry quirk wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 1:49 am
Sculptor wrote: Thu Dec 08, 2022 11:18 pmFrom witch burning to scalp hunting to strange fruit on Southern trees, to priests buggering children; Christianity gave them all to America.
One: I'm pretty sure murder, rape, mutilation, and sodomy (of children & adults) happened on the North Amercan continent well before European Christians arrived.

Two: European Christians who indulged in such acts were, every last one of 'em, institutional Christians, congregants in, servants of The Church.

Three: The Church, the Institution, is not the source of Christianity, but only the corrupter of Christianity.

Four: there's nuthin' at all in the thinking/words/living attributed to Jesus that can lead a man to commit, or that can justify a man committing, murder, rape, mutilation, sodomy or any other physical and moral atrocity.

Shall we review The Sermon on the Mount together? Shall we examine the man's living as recorded in the New Testament? I suggest we use The Jefferson Bible (as it is without any supernatural elements), but we can use any translation you suggest.
I'd love to see your evidence outside for mutilation and sodomy of children before the whites came.
tillingborn
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Re: Christianity

Post by tillingborn »

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Dec 08, 2022 2:58 pm
tillingborn wrote: Thu Dec 08, 2022 10:09 am
Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Dec 06, 2022 2:46 pmBut it does not explain at all why the legacy news media have so blatantly reversed themselves.
Is this an example?
I get it.
You clearly don't. In the example Fox News presenters are shown to be lamenting the fact that Republican voters didn't make use of early voting and postal ballots in the Georgia run off. This despite Fox telling their viewers since the 2020 election that early voting and postal ballots are subject to election fraud. At the time, that was your position too:
Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Dec 04, 2020 8:46 pmSo I think some obvious reforms are in order, including, I would suggest, a return to strict voter ID and in-person voting, for a start.
Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Dec 08, 2022 2:58 pmIf the news as the legacy media is now reporting is the opposite of what they so confidently declared a few months ago, then it is they who have defeated themselves. That's obvious.
If by 'legacy media' you mean Fox News, your point is well made. Do you have examples that clearly show another media outlet contradicting themselves about the examples you gave?
Immanuel Can wrote: Sun Nov 20, 2022 6:24 pmthe major media say one thing -- like, "Hunter Biden's laptop was a fake," or "certain vaxxes (J&J, AZ) are good," or "Russia fixed our last elections," and then later are exposed as having lied about these things
Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Dec 08, 2022 2:58 pmNow, you can take that point or leave it. But it's the point. I'll leave it there.
My point all along has been this:
tillingborn wrote: Sun Nov 20, 2022 5:03 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Sun Nov 20, 2022 4:40 pmIt's always one's own choice what ideas one decides to believe.
Well said.
In your reply to that agreement, you contradicted yourself:
Immanuel Can wrote: Sun Nov 20, 2022 6:24 pmWell, a thinking person doesn't just "choose to believe," as if "belief" were some kind of wish or imagining. He observes, considers the data, uses reason, and so forth, to make his convictions the most plausible and rational they can be.
You were right the first time. People choose which channel to watch. They choose which data to consider, it's called confirmation bias. They use their reason to create a narrative that matches their choices. In your case it is clearly obvious to everyone but you. You are very selective about which points you choose to respond to, and then you use your reason to concoct nonsense like this:
Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Dec 08, 2022 2:58 pmYour point is to try to divert the discussion away from the fact that the legacy media have defeated themselves, and turn this into a personal spat. Sorry...not going there.
Far from not going there, you started it by saying I pretend to misread and deliberately misinterpret, neither of which is true and are based on the fact you eventually acknowledged, that you misread what I had written. The personal things I say about you, are just those you show yourself to be.
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

Immanuel: re Dubious’ 4 foot post: Oh dear! Your work has been cut out for you.
Dubious
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Re: Christianity

Post by Dubious »

Alexis Jacobi wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 12:44 pm Immanuel: re Dubious’ 4 foot post: Oh dear! Your work has been cut out for you.
After all the times you've communicated with IC you should know by now that there is no input of any kind possible in a mind biblically lobotomized to all inconvenient reality. He will simply deny the whole thing as factual with a single and simple one or two sentence thrust from the keyboard and that will be that! It's a technique he invariably defaults to whenever an argument supersedes any attempt being argued against.

How often have you been on the receiving end of that? Who hasn't! I only quoted at length to once again give him the opportunity of disaffirming everything with a simple strident statement. It amuses me when he does that; I'm kind of perverse in that way and love to see a fundamentalist of his ilk mummify his brains even further with each denial.
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Lacewing
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Re: Christianity

Post by Lacewing »

Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 5:32 am
Lacewing wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 4:47 am ...all of the INCONSISTENCY that Christianity's claims and writings and actions...
Fire away, LW. Let's hear one.
All of the following Christian-led actions are completely inconsistent with the values taught by Christianity, yet they are ignored or sanctioned or excused or forgiven... all while condemning non-Christians who have done no such things.

Crusades
Holy wars
Terrorism
Political corruption
Sexual abuse of women and children
Mega-churches

What would Jesus think about any of these... and the countless ongoing abuses and deception throughout the ages carried out by those who represent and define Christianity for others?

Even if you claim that such 'Christianity' is not 'real' Christianity, it has been more profoundly destructive and long-lived than any news media inconsistency. If you really wanted to demonstrate the truth of Christianity as you see it, why not honestly discuss what has not conformed to that truth under the banner of Christianity, and acknowledge how non-Christians who do not fall for such deceptions have demonstrated more morality. Burying your face in the Bible while preaching at non-Christians is about as blind as it gets.

Considering your own deceptive tactics in discussions on this forum which have been pointed out by various people repeatedly, your values and tactics do not appear as different from mainstream legacy Christianity as you might claim. :wink: It's all for self-preservation over truth.

Christianity relies on and was built on all of the evils it claims to crusade against... all while claiming condemnation for people who do not walk under that banner. If you cannot see the inconsistencies in that, what madness are you trying to protect? Any conscious and honest person or god can see the real source of where evil is born and perpetuated -- exactly where many might least expect it. In the opposite direction from where Christianity accuses and points! That's what protects it and allows it to morph and grow in the self-serving ways of men. Haven't you noticed?
Last edited by Lacewing on Fri Dec 09, 2022 2:28 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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henry quirk
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Re: Christianity

Post by henry quirk »

Sculptor wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 12:42 pmI'd love to see your evidence outside for mutilation and sodomy of children before the whites came.
I have no scholarly or academic evidence to offer. It may exist but I'm not huntin' snipe today. Common sense, however, tells me where there are people (red, white, black, or yellow) there are atrocities. Why would you believe red man didn't aggress against red man (or red child)? What special quality did, does, the Native American possess immunizing him from violence and perversion? Was, is, the red man sumthin' other than, sumthin' less than, a free being? Was, is, he incapable of of choice (good and bad)?

And, most importantly, what does any of this have to do with Christianity (rockbottom: a free will living in adherence to the words of Jesus) vs institutional christianity (the great hierarchical machine which, as I say, is no kind of Christianity at all)?

As I say: there's nuthin' at all in the thinking/words/living attributed to Jesus that can lead a man to commit, or that can justify a man committing, murder, rape, mutilation, sodomy or any other physical and moral atrocity.

Have you selected a translation yet? Again, I suggest the Jefferson Bible. It's drawn strictly and only from the Gospels and has no supernatural elements. It gets to the heart of Christian thought directly. But, as I say, we can go with whatever translation you like.
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

Dubious wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 1:25 pm
Alexis Jacobi wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 12:44 pm Immanuel: re Dubious’ 4 foot post: Oh dear! Your work has been cut out for you.
After all the times you've communicated with IC you should know by now that there is no input of any kind possible in a mind biblically lobotomized to all inconvenient reality. He will simply deny the whole thing as factual with a single and simple one or two sentence thrust from the keyboard and that will be that! It's a technique he invariably defaults to whenever an argument supersedes any attempt being argued against.

How often have you been on the receiving end of that? Who hasn't! I only quoted at length to once again give him the opportunity of disaffirming everything with a simple strident statement. It amuses me when he does that; I'm kind of perverse in that way and love to see a fundamentalist of his ilk mummify his brains even further with each denial.
Yes, and what interests me is just what you point out: an incredible resilience despite any proposal or evidence to the contrary that maintains one within a belief-set and dead-set on *taking on all comers* in defense of it.

So, it turns out then that the *thing believed* is far more crucial than any specific element through which the *thing believed* has been constructed. What is the *thing believed* then? That there is a God who exists and who communicates with the believer. I mean, that seems to be the essential core of it when you examine what many religious, and certainly Christians, actually do believe. They describe God as having 'entered their lives' in such ways that, for them, proves god exists. For many people this experience is that platform upon which a new life, a completely reorganized life, is built. And you could not ever take that away from them because the real evidence is in that. In what has become manifest in their life, in their own self. I could cite many instances of Christian believers who base their allegiance to Jesus Christ on *what Jesus did for them*. To insist that they move from that dedication amounts to a violation of the entire relationship. It would amount to betrayal. In most cases, or in many cases at least, the believer's dedication to the preaching mission is always based on sharing their own conversion process and history. It is rarely 'academic' or 'intellectual' it is always personal and necessarily emotional-sentimental. It does not just deal with hard and cold facts but rather with a sort of quintessence.

I am reminded of what Immanuel said to me years back now. The gist was "I gave my life to Jesus Christ when at university. And Jesus has carried me all the way through to today". The sense in the statement is that an *anchor* was discovered which provided the foundation.

Now, I have (as you have gathered and even from what I just wrote) developed an *explanatory mode* to help non-believers -- those who have no capacity for nor interest in so-called 'spiritual life' or mystical life -- which is also an explanatory model through which the belief of believers (their core experience -- can be preserved while the entire *construct* is dismissed. The long essay you quote from is an example of the "deconstruction" or "dismantling mode". It wrecks the *belief system* but from the position of 'rational evidence' and basically from an intellectual position. Having read it, having assimilated it, how can the Believer still maintain their belief? This is frustrating to no end to those, like yourself, like Sculptor, like the formidable Tillingborn, seem to have not an iota of 'spiritual life' or mystic life. I admit that their opposition to *the Christian belief-system* is a complex construct in itself. There are a dozen reasons, all of which are sound, as to why they are *certain beyond certainty* that their critical position decimates 'belief'. And yet it doesn't!

The Christian, the committed Christian, will believe despite every anti-belief armament lobbed against dedicated belief. They will tell you that their life depends on it.

What I gather you have noticed that I do -- I call it a manoeuvre, an action that is carried out with an end in mind but which does, also, involve a sort of cunning creativity -- is the declare that *all pictures are only pictures*. It is not the *picture* that counts but rather something within what is believed, and what is encountered through belief, that matters. You have presented an essay which is a complete intellectual armament-system that if applied as the compiler of the essay desires will destroy the possibility of belief. And though I cannot, personally, invest myself into any element of the story about things-believed that comprise the essay, I can and I do resort to asserting that when it comes to certain essential ideas, that these ideas *exist* in the realm of the metaphysical. So then, all that is *metaphysical* to life, to the mind, to thought, to the vision of what life is, most certainly *exists*, has effects, but which cannot ever be located within mere phenomena or, in this sense, within the world of Becoming.

No part of this do you, nor do I think can you, accept. In post after post you have described why this is. And you have revealed a means-of-seeing; a sort of lens-of-seeing that explains why you see what you see, and also why you cannot see what others, either unconsciously see but do not really understand, or still go on believing even when the *ladder* to the belief they hold has been grabbed away.

My view is, of course, that there is a *higher dimension* of mystical belief that can abandon the ladder entirely and can resolve to hold to *important essences* which only really have to do with meaning & value. How can one get to that *higher dimension* then? Purification of the seeing mechanism.

One problem, which I certainly admit, is that the god-believers that swarm in our present (let's say on the American scene) as Q-anon-style Christians, as deranged Evangelicals whose minds are overheated and whose hallucinatory Visions are more like externalized nightmares and topsy-turvy swamps of steaming phantasies that seem to *possess* their entire being, that these people have a tremendous amount of power in our present. Far too much power. We see, and without doubt, that they are extremely dangerous. They seem, quite literally, edging the world toward some sort of externalization of their phantasies which they see as "predictions" and 'prophecy". They invoke conflagrations.

And it is true that were we to encounter and talk to one of those that we would discover in them a disordered mind and a disordered perceptual system. And once we did point out to them that what they believe has a mad aspect they would then look back at us and *see* the Devil trying to convince them that what is *true* is not true. That they are dealing with a mental and spiritual derangement that, I think it fair to say, requires forms of psychological help.

How could they be brought back to Earth? And then What is Earth?

My efforts here are to take the challenge to try and explain what is going on today. To look into things and to clarify what it is that we are seeing and why.
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

Lacewing wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 1:36 pmConsidering your own deceptive tactics in discussions on this forum which have been pointed out by various people repeatedly, your values and tactics do not appear as different from mainstream legacy Christianity as you might claim. It's all for self-preservation over truth.
Yes. It is obvious to those gazing on that dear Immanuel, for all his careful prose, for his *pose* as an intellectually capable person, is actually a low-level believer and perceiver who has got for himself the external structure of a 'competent intellectual'. He has studied philosophy apparently intimately. And yet he is nearly completely incapable of thinking and reasoning philosophically.

It has been, for me, one of the most amazing & alarming experiences of my career on the Internet and on any forum. What he is literally incapable of seeing about his own self-presentation (the core of his system of seeing) we have no choice but to see. And this thrusts us back into an analysis of our own *structure of belief* in relation to which we are given an opportunity to examine.

Quite interestingly, this issue (which is hard to pin down really: belief is not simple) dovetails into what I might call the *microcosmic* aspect or dimension. Putting aside the cores of religious belief, grounded as they are in the thoroughly outrageous such as Divine Men who descend to Earth, angelic visitation, and beams of healing energy from the god-source of all Creation, we have to interpret our merely local world. Our political and social worlds. The worlds of the operation and functioning of the economic system, indeed the global system.

"Legacy Media" means (or should mean really, as I pointed out to buoyant Tillingborn) systems of information selection, confection and distribution by the System itself, from out of a nexus of complicit ownership interest. If we cannot begin to see and understand from that basic premise, we cannot, I do not think, see, think or reason critically.

It is true though what Immanuel does say: the legacy media (I can refer to the NYTs which I read daily) is no longer a trusted source of relatively unbiased 'news', it is something comparable to a Maoist propaganda-organ. Its articles have imbedded in them something like 'Maoist struggle-sessions'. It functions, or many who write there, or it has an editorial policy, that carries on analogously to the Maoist Red-Guard. This is true. It is also deeply partisan and allied with sectors within the American political, economic and social structure which do, and very much so, have certain *plans* for America.

Now, I know that this is a fair statement but I also know that as a declaration it has to be applied carefully, and explained just as carefully and prudently.

But how then, and with all the previous said, shall I then go about seeing and explaining Fox News, Newsmax, Breitbart, Occidental Observer, The Daily Wire, The Federalist, The Gateway Pundit, Jihad Watch, The World Net Daily?

It is somewhat as Tillingborn fairly points out: We select our sources of true information from those who have a worldview and perceptual system (with a range of desires and wants as well as senses of what is *right & good*) and we "invest' in them. And simultaneously we disinvest from sources that counter our established views. Those we preference and elevate.

But here *truth* becomes a category of assertion that has not been sufficiently explained. To be really & truly truthful one cannot be invested in the system. One must have a non-complicit stance. But that stance is in fact not possible to have. Though I will say that it might be approximated.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Christianity

Post by Immanuel Can »

Lacewing wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 1:36 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 5:32 am
Lacewing wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 4:47 am ...all of the INCONSISTENCY that Christianity's claims and writings and actions...
Fire away, LW. Let's hear one.
All of the following Christian-led actions are completely inconsistent with the values taught by Christianity, yet they are ignored or sanctioned or excused or forgiven... all while condemning non-Christians who have done no such things.

Crusades
Holy wars
Terrorism
Political corruption
Sexual abuse of women and children
Mega-churches
I can't speak for "mega-churches," because all it means is "big church." I have no idea what "political corruption" you refer to. And as for "terrorism," I have not the slightest idea what you could possibly have in mind.

But "crusades" were Catholic...and were done far more and longer by Muslims than by anybody. Likewise, "Holy wars." Priests, and "sexual abuse of children" is likewise a Catholic issue. And not one of these is remotely Christian.

If you think they are, then I suggest you seek out the passages of Scripture that you think approve them. I can give you dozens that prove such things are wrong.

Now, as for Atheists being innocent, over 140 million people died in just the past century as a result of entirely secular wars. And at least 100 million of them by proponents of the most famous (and bloodthirsty) Atheist cult, namely Communism. So I don't think even the Muslims or the Catholic Church can wash their feet in Atheists' dirty water.

I'm disappointed, LW. I thought you might have something new, interesting and challenging -- something that hasn't already been abundantly debunked. I'm not seeing it, so far.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Christianity

Post by Immanuel Can »

Dubious wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 7:48 am You are far too modest! Why just ask for one?
You just copied somebody else's screed. Likewise, I'll simply refer you to the many apologetics websites online that will answer all of these. You won't have trouble finding them.

When you're done reading, get back to me.
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 3:17 pm
Dubious wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 7:48 am You are far too modest! Why just ask for one?
You just copied somebody else's screed. Likewise, I'll simply refer you to the many apologetics websites online that will answer all of these. You won't have trouble finding them.

When you're done reading, get back to me.
Thus you masterfully avoid every single aspect of the critical, and philosophical, and topical, conversation. This is your specialty, is it not?

What are those apologetics websites you refer to so I can refer to them? Would you kindly post a link or two? Or is this something for an general epistemology thread? 🙃
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 3:17 pm
Dubious wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 7:48 am You are far too modest! Why just ask for one?
You just copied somebody else's screed. Likewise, I'll simply refer you to the many apologetics websites online that will answer all of these. You won't have trouble finding them.

When you're done reading, get back to me.
Here is one on the Virgin Birth:
I don’t believe, however, that most evangelicals believe it because of the rationalistic defense given by early fundamentalists. While encouraged by such arguments, we recognize that this point and counterpoint can go on and on. Nor do we believe that God could not become human in any other way than by the virgin conception. God could have become incarnate in other ways, to be sure. He’s not bound to some set of higher spiritual or physical laws. But it does seem to us especially fitting that he would be born of a virgin, raised in a family, and that he would live in the warp and woof of the life we know.

We think the argument of silence—that is, that it is not mentioned in the rest of the New Testament or in the early church precisely because it wasn’t controversial—makes a lot of sense. Evangelicals simply assume the reality of the miraculous, in part because many of their own conversions have been nothing less than miracles of grace. We know at an existential level that God interrupts history from time to time. Miracles happen.

So we have a hard time understanding the problem. That is, if one believes that God is mighty enough to create the heavens and the earth and to raise Jesus bodily from the grave, how hard can it be for him to enable a virgin to conceive? We are baffled by Christians who balk at the Virgin Birth and don’t blink at the creation of the universe or the Resurrection. It is, to use the words of Christ, to strain out a gnat while swallowing a camel.
That is what I referred to:
AJ wrote: They describe God as having 'entered their lives' in such ways that, for them, proves god exists. For many people this experience is that platform upon which a new life, a completely reorganized life, is built. And you could not ever take that away from them because the real evidence is in that. In what has become manifest in their life, in their own self. I could cite many instances of Christian believers who base their allegiance to Jesus Christ on *what Jesus did for them*. To insist that they move from that dedication amounts to a violation of the entire relationship. It would amount to betrayal. In most cases, or in many cases at least, the believer's dedication to the preaching mission is always based on sharing their own conversion process and history. It is rarely 'academic' or 'intellectual' it is always personal and necessarily emotional-sentimental. It does not just deal with hard and cold facts but rather with a sort of quintessence.
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Sculptor
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Re: Christianity

Post by Sculptor »

henry quirk wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 2:07 pm
Sculptor wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 12:42 pmI'd love to see your evidence outside for mutilation and sodomy of children before the whites came.
I have no scholarly or academic evidence to offer. It may exist but I'm not huntin' snipe today. Common sense, however, tells me where there are people (red, white, black, or yellow) there are atrocities. Why would you believe red man didn't aggress against red man (or red child)? What special quality did, does, the Native American possess immunizing him from violence and perversion? Was, is, the red man sumthin' other than, sumthin' less than, a free being? Was, is, he incapable of of choice (good and bad)?

And, most importantly, what does any of this have to do with Christianity (rockbottom: a free will living in adherence to the words of Jesus) vs institutional christianity (the great hierarchical machine which, as I say, is no kind of Christianity at all)?

As I say: there's nuthin' at all in the thinking/words/living attributed to Jesus that can lead a man to commit, or that can justify a man committing, murder, rape, mutilation, sodomy or any other physical and moral atrocity.

Have you selected a translation yet? Again, I suggest the Jefferson Bible. It's drawn strictly and only from the Gospels and has no supernatural elements. It gets to the heart of Christian thought directly. But, as I say, we can go with whatever translation you like.
I've done some anthropology in my time; Human practices differ but small scale societies tend to thrive co-operatively and you you get the potential for atrocities in two clear ways. The first is that in large scale societies people are allow to slip through the cracks from what is acceptable. That can be achieved by emigrating to another country (eg where you can rape as many natives as you like them being savage); or cross state lines like serial killers.
The other way is simply by use of religions which can attract enough people to form shared values which are impersonal. Such impersonal values are hard to pin down in small scale societies so everyone has to know the score and the standard practice or be vilified .It's harder to get away with wife beating if everyone lives in tepees. Whereas when societies grow bigger ideologies such as "chosen people" can be used to subjugate alienate sub groups like back people, foreigners trans gays etc..
ANy hoo I doubt you are interested in the details.
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Lacewing
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Re: Christianity

Post by Lacewing »

Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 3:10 pm I'm not seeing it, so far.
That's clear.
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Re: Christianity

Post by promethean75 »

mmhm, and remember it wuz when societies of material producers acquired surplus stock and committed to staying in, and developing agriculturally, one specific spot, that the proto-bourgeois 'management' class was born.... in those days a task given to elders, high military ranks, and priests. and presto u have the first state, the first government, and guess who ain't making any decisions about what to do with all that society's wealth? the goddamn workers that's who ain't.

but humankind gets a pass for the racism it practiced naturally the first seventy thousand years of its evolution. in those days we were still to dumb to know anything about genetics and the meaninglessness of everything - an intellectual development happening only recently - and so in addition to sensing in a primitive animistic way some existence of a 'soul' (Jaynes proposed a bicameral mind stage kind like a minor schizophrenia) that set us into a delusional state of grandeur and self-importance, we also thought the other human looking bipeds differently colored and shaped were always the bad guys.

as u can see we were made incredibly anxious and paranoid at a very early stage in our evolution. we know now its all nonsense and we're just intelligent monkeys fighting over property and reproductive privilege.

u see that ironically it wuz the nihilism brought by science that made the species humble, finally. we had to be humiliated to improve upon the self righteous brutes we once were, see. Still fighting over property and practicing moronic economics tho... just at a much more highly advanced level.
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