georgioz
2hr ago
My theory is that it's because of a distaste towards the Levitical system in general. As modern Christians, we don't need to make offerings for our sins, so the whole concept seems alien to us. Never mind that it's the system God chose to give to Israel - it just feels wrong! Why couldn't God choose to forgive sins without all this slaughtering of innocent animals? Why does blood have to have this significance? It seems barbaric to modern sensibilities. So if some people have this distaste towards the idea of blood sacrifice, it seems reasonable to me that such distaste would apply also to theories of Jesus as a blood sacrifice, even if the text of Scripture seems to treat his death as such. I wouldn't call this a theory of mind necessarily, but perhaps a vibe check?
Exactly, this is the sin of pride where I am the judge of God and if he did good or evil. It is the same distaste that many people have with Job and his testing and they do not take Gods answer in Job 38 where God says stuff like Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?, basically saying Job to trust his divine plan. No, people think that they can judge God.
By the way on related not I recently watch one discussion where somebody told that he cannot believe God who accepted slavery. Of course slavery is bad so God is bad. The opponent had a really good answer:
Imagine that you are old testament tribal chief and you just won a skirmish with rival clan where you killed 20 enemies and captured 80. What will you do with them?
- Send them back to their tribe so they come again next year
- Kill them on the spot, thus also condemning their wives and children over there to die of starvation
- Imprison them and their wives in perpetuity, for which you do not have any resources
- Imprison them and their families and make them work so they are no longer threats, but so they can also earn their living
Back then the slavery was in fact a humane way to deal with your enemies. It was not unheard of for victorious tribes to genocide and wear skulls of all men and just kill boys and ugly women and infirm and old, and take young and beautiful girls as second or third wives. That was the norm, not slavery. There is always context in these things and the Bible was the text that was talking about how to behave toward slaves. It was Geneva Convention of its time.
georgioz
2hr ago
PSA has several deep problems, the main one being Christological and trinitarian. The "Penal" in PSA means that God the Father punished the Son in some way - the original reformers even went as far as to describe it as "Damnation", meaning that Jesus was cut off from Fathers grace and this momentarily the trinity was broken and the dogma of eternal consubstantiation does not apply.
As far as I understand the early Church councils dealt with these problems implicitly by focusing on Christology, thus they are shared among Catholics and Orthodox Christians. Jesus did not die to substitute his life for "Justice", he was not crucified as "punishment" for our sins, he "satisfied" the Justice by his voluntary sacrifice by annihilating the reason for punishment. Jesus is not some sort of quasi-Job or a new prophet who was tested by the Father or who died as a result of his sin or sins of others or even world sin, pecatorum mundi . As explained before, this is impossible through trinitarian doctrine, it would mean that one person of godhead is angry at another person of godhead, or in catholic theology it would be privation of eternal love between three persons of godhead, an impossibility. Instead the crucifixion represents the voluntary act of love of God in form of the second person of the Godhead voluntarily healing the rift. By this action there is true ontological change in humanity.
Jesus role was to heal the rift introduced by Adam, the New Israel in form of The Church then partakes in this miracle by Christians being able to partake in true deification in this life. That is why we see saints in Revelations being part of heavenly divine liturgy - deification and glorification is a thing that can happen in this life, it is not postponed until after eschaton.
That is also why in Nicaean-Constantinople creed Christians talk about descend to hades. That is where the Son descended and preached gospel to all everybody in his defeat of death. This resolves the situation where Old Testament did not truly recognize atonement of sins, as the nature of the man was not healed yet. This is the function Jesus performed after death and before resurrection.
No salvific mechanism at all in the cross and resurrection. Rillera does say that God can forgive out of his own desire, which would mean there is no necessity for the cross other than as a ritual and as a proof of Jesus’ agency as the "forgiving one". This would seem to open the door to universal salvation, which Rillera hints at in his discussion of 1 John (214), though he more explicitly goes after the "Limited Atonement" of TULIP.
There is a sense in which the crucifixion is universal, it heals the rift introduced by Adam. But this is healing of broken nature of humanity instead of universal promise of salvation. Now it is on free will of every Christian to cooperate with God in the process of deification to willingly accept Jesus Christ and accept salvation. Catholics do not have the concept of Faith Alone, we view the salvation as a process, willing cooperation or synergeia with divine power to participate on God's grace. There is always a possibility to turn away from that grace, that is why it is necessary for Christians to participate on sacraments including eucharist.
I can buy most of these points (though Hebrews 5 implies that sin sacrifices had paramount importance in a priest's duties). However, Rillera makes a leap of logic when he then concludes that PSA isn’t supported in the Bible. Romans 3 states that God displayed Christ publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. Romans 5 says that Christ died for us (though it stops short of claiming he died in our place), and it is clear that we are justified through Christ’s blood which saves us from God’s wrath. Isaiah 53 says that the suffering Servant "was wounded for our transgressions, the chastisement for our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed...the LORD [YHWH] has laid on him the iniquity of us all"; with clear substitutionary implications (3). Colossians 2 states that Christ "canceled out the certificate of debt....having nailed it to the cross".
The way I understand this legal language is in form of jubilee as in Leviticus 25, again a type from old testament foreshadowing the New Testament reality. It is not that Jesus paid our debt, his sacrifice was a cosmic event, he defeated death, changed ontological nature of all humans as second Adam and thus in celebration God enacted universal debt amnesty for all humans. Christ did not pay the debt in his blood, his blood and descend to Hades annihilated all debt contracts.
As for the old testament "sacraments", Catholics view it as a type. Circumcision is a type of how one is introduced into the Israel, this is fulfilled in new testament as a baptism together with regenerative properties and induces the person into a New Israel - unam sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam, the one holy universal apostolical Church. This is the true continuation of the prophecies in the same way Jesus is messiah and fulfilled the prophecies of his first coming, the Catholic Church fulfilled the type in New Israel as the continuation of the tradition. This is the same thing with sacrifices - what Jews in old testament tradition did was a type, it was not true sacrament but the type of the sacrament we now do in a church during the liturgy. We continue the tradition of Melchizedek priesthood, where the Jesus is the head of the church and catholic priests participate in this eternal priesthood via apostolic tradition. Catholics have dogma where priest act as in persona Christi during the eucharist and participate in this age old sacrament of Pascha. That is the fullfilment of the sacramental type after the first coming of Son of God.
In a sense protestants in their view of sacraments, priesthood and other things as "symbols" deny the reality of the Christ as fulfillment of old testament. They adhere to symbolic language of quasi-sacraments of old testament without crucial update of fulfillment of messianic prophecies in Jesus who established the sacramental reality and ability of Christians to participate in divine Grace in this life.
I don't think it has to be necessarily "central". Even now we have a book from the standpoint of Potter , and then there is some knowledge dump either at the end of the book or as part of story progression for "grand reveal". It is very similar to Sherlock Holmes stories, only with less breadcrumbs.
In the alternate universe we can have a relationship between Malfoid and Potter limited to couple of pages of interaction and some new stories of her exploits. It does not have to take much of the books, she is still a double agent and they may have very few times where they can have genuine conversations. A moment stolen under cloak of invisibility or after Potter rescues her from Fiendfyre after psycho Crabble underling declined her authority and indulged his violent tendencies inside Roome of Requirements. Imagine the pivotal point of the war where Harry uses Elder Wand licensing properties to defeat the Dark Lord. In the books it was explained by ghost of Dumbledore to Harry after the fact. In this new narrative this could easily be done a few pages of inside story of Malfoid using her guile to talk to Ollivander who would explain it to her and she could pass it over to Potter.
You could easily play it out as ongoing courtship and gradual gaining of respect - which the book does anyways. It is not a full romance novel where Potter takes Malfoid on a ball or whatnot. It is gradual warming of their relationship, with a payoff at the end after defeat of Voldemort where Potter and Malfoid embrace each other in front of the whole school, thus revealing what really happened. Only with a couple of passages leaving breadcrumbs so the infodump would not be so grating. E.g. imagine that Malfoy's mother Narcissa learns that her daughter conspired with Potter against Voldemort. It would make her turning against Voldemort and protecting her daughter more believable, it is not just some emotional fart, it is a rational decision to change her mind as even if Voldemort wins, her daughter and probably her whole family would be executed for high treason.
This would also show how reign of terror of Voldemort is inefficient and self-defeating ideology, as it can turn the most stalwart supporters into opposition due small things, like during Wu Guang uprising where a general decided to start rebellion because even smaller infraction of failing his orders due to rain meant forfeiture of his life. Similarly for Narcissa she would immediately know her daughters and whole family life was forfeit the moment she learned her daughter conspired wiht Potter. Her decision to save him would turn from some random action of mercy into an action of calculated preservation, her move against her husband would be more believable as she would not dare to tell him in fear of Voldemort learning the secret via Legitimens, this turning her rebellion against her husband into genuine act of protection of her daughter and her husband. There are other parts, for instance Malfoid could be a prodigy at occlumency exactly as male Malfoy, who was able to resist Snapes Legitimens powers. In this very same book Potter even tracks Malfoy through map and tries to revel secret plot of her trying to pull off the plan to bring Death Eathers into Hogwarts. Malfoid could explain to Potter the Reign of Terror that grips many families into obedience and they could move forward, in a sense she could even be his Occlumency mentor or whatnot.
There are many such possibilities by having Malfoy as romantic interest and turned into Potter's side of the story.
It absolutely makes sense. Malfoy was always written as a character who was forced by his upbringing and overbearing father to play a role of the Slytherine chosen one. He battles with this role until the final showdown where he was tasked to kill Dumbledore and failing to do it for moral reasons. Later he and Potter even protected each other, their relationship grew to something like reluctant respect.
Having Malfoy as a female love interest absolutely fits the overall story, it only deepens Malfoys rebellion against his supposed destiny by romantically attaching herself to Potter after Dumbledore killing. The reluctant respect can be easily turned into romantic relationship with only a few nudges. Female Malfoy feeding information to Potter from the inside of Umbridge cabal or Deatheater world would make the story more interesting and believable, with Potter or Hermione being able to make more planned and informed moves, possibly even willingly falling into "traps" in order to protect Malfoys double agent identity. It also changes the "dumb luck" aspect of Harry surviving many of these things into a story, where he has more agency and where he willingly choses to do it for good reasons.
Plus it is not as if Potter and Ginny was some huge thing anyways, she was absolutely unimportant side character except for the forced plot of the journal possession - which I think would make more sense for female Malfoy anyways. Having teenage romance playing some part in the story would make sense to most people. Moreover it would turn the story more into Romeo and Juliette style of story, where both Potter and Malfoy were manipulated by powerful wizards like Voldemort and Dumbledore in their generation war, and their story could turn into carving out something for themselves by finding their own independent path refusing to play stooges for either side - especially when they both realized that they were only pawns to be turned into shaheeds of this wizard conflict. Plus in the end it would turn Malfoid into a true heir of Salazar Slytherine - by refusing to be manipulated and being in that independent mindstate, in the same way Potter is the heir of Gryffindor thus explaining why the Slytherine exists as a house. It would be interesting way to develop the story.
In fact it is Ginny who is the romantic slop content, she is enamored by Potter due to Quidditch and his fame and by gratitude after he rescued her from being possessed by the journal. Female Malfoy falling in love with Potter is much more nuanced story as she would experience real character growth while being crucial to making the plot make sense. For instance by female Malfoy figuring out the secret of Elder Wand licensing rules from imprisoned Ollivander imprisoned in Malfoy estate and passing that knowledge over to Potter would make a lot more sense in the final battle.
The more I think about it, the more I like this fanfiction. There are for sure many other areas where female Malfoy would improve the book immensely.
Luckily, in our society, male bodies do not necessarily fight (drones and guns do) and male bodies do not necessarily work (computers and robot arms do).
This is absolutely not the case, often espoused by people who are far removed from physical realities of stuff. Yes, the final deathblow is dealt by a drone or a bullet, but there are people operating those drones and guns. Women have hard time even filling up a pistol magazine as it requires certain strength. Light infantry backpack can weight 50 to 80 pounds of weapon, ammunition and other equipment such as mortar shells or electronic equipment. Tank crew of 4 has to spend 8 manhours of maintenance for each hour of operation of the tank, they need to drag heavy equipment such as repairing tracks, help with refueling and loading ammunition etc. And that is for peacetime, during field operation they have to do it all without specialized equipment, sometimes with minimal or no sleep and under constant threat of ambush. One of the best strategies to defend against drones is to dig, which requires shovels and dedication to create tunnel network. There are still people who crawl into small spaces to remove debris from a clogged pipeline in order for things to work. Roofers in Arizona work at 100 degrees Fahrenheit / 38 degrees Celsius walking on 160/70 degrees roof to do their job. Women would literally die of heatstroke doing such a job.
And we are not even talking about other intangibles, such as men easily sliding into a hierarchical organization, following orders and spontaneously creating new hierarchies in case of change. Or how men are "interested in" crucial jobs as they innately draw satisfaction from such a thing. Imagine the latest story: an amateur astronomer discovered new exoplanet by analyzing raw data from previous experiments using Claude. What is the chance he is a man as opposed to a woman? Of course he was a man obsessed by perfecting some strange niche area of research. You may think of it as a stupidity, but the same goes for every endeavor - a man who proposes some improvement on the spot how to better dig into a frozen land, how to move supplies, how to use new AI technology to guide drones to hit Russian tanks etc.
Male bodies by themselves provide huge advantage in physical world. But male minds and social behavior is equally - if not more important in this manner.
georgioz
4d ago
Sure, but in this sense men have duty to protect the tribe. They will be conscripted and send off to war as we now see in Ukraine or Russia and as it happened many times last century during world wars and other conflicts. Do women have duty to marry and have children? In fact do they have any gender specific duty at all?
georgioz
6d ago
Sure, that is one way to look at it, although I would not say it is just female mode of power. This is a classic techne of power: create byzantine rules and then apply them selectively whenever you want to arbitrarily punish somebody. There is the classic quote by Lavrentiy Beria, the chief of Joseph Stalin's NKVD: "Show me the man, and I'll find you the crime."
I AM bought in on the idea that the crushing of funding for various NGOs and similar government agencies
I just want to note how nonsensical this sentence is on its own. It is incredible how the very acronym for non-governmental organization is now tied to government funding and nobody bats an eye. And it is not just USA, it is the same in EU and everywhere, NGOs are now openly used as vehicle to support government policies at best and vehicles for corruption and nepotism at worst.
The word NGO itself is used for deliberate equivocation and propaganda, as if government is crushing private charities - by not giving funds. By the way, the same language was used by Harvard president Randall Kennedy in his latest debate against Crowder, where good professor likened Trumps funding cuts to "extortion". It is like the classic beggar vs rich man joke:
A rich man goes to work and notices a beggar on the street. Taking pity on him, he pulls out a $100 bill and hands it over. The beggar thanks him profoundly.
This goes on every single day for a week, and the beggar is absolutely thrilled. But the next day, the rich man doesn't show up. He doesn't come back the day after that, either.
Finally, after a week of being gone, the rich man walks by again with $100 in his hand.
The beggar stops him and asks, "Where have you been all week?!"
The rich man smiles cheerily and says, "Oh, I finally took my kids on a vacation!"
The beggar glares at him angrily and yells, "With my money?!"
I've talked before about how a lot of rape-culture controversies arise because under a consent-only view of rape, and a criminal legal standard of intent mens rea, you can run into the scenario in which there is a rape, but there is no rapist. A woman feels that she did not give consent, or that she was coerced into giving consent; but the man feels that she did give consent, had no intent whatsoever to have sex with her against her consent or to coerce her consent, and would have stopped within a reasonable interval after consent was withdrawn. This is a common disjuncture.
That is because the consent based criteria such as FRIES is absolutely stupid and make rapists out of people who would not be such under any rational standard. Whenever your wife wakes you up with her hand on your dick, she technically raped you. Whenever you have glass of wine during dinner with your GF and then hop on it, you are raping each other. Under this definition millions of people commit rape every single day.
I am not sure what people want. We have a society where Aella can write succesful blogpost about birthday gangbang with detailed flowchart of how many men did what to herself and fluffers she hired. And we pretend that not only is that a normal thing, but she and Scott Alexander and rest of their depraved butt magic sex cult then promptly rage against "conservatives" and prudes who are disgusted by such practices, which I think includes majority of the population.
We live in this crazy world where people have "rights" do do such depravities, which in practice means that you actually have duty to defend such a behavior. And yet somehow you are supposed to be selectively upset based on some technicality. Imagine that Aella was in some manic episode, she was given some drugs beforehand and in fact those dozens of men she invited actually raped her. Or even vice versa - that any of those men had some drink before and thus did not have full capacity to withdraw consent and were raped by Aella or whatever. In fact I am absolutely sure that something like that happened in practice, that is the way this depraved game is played. The same goes with porn which is at the same time protected by 1st amendment, widely consumed and yet from time to time we have some story about how this whole industry is one huge meatgrinder of souls where all participants numb their senses with copious amount of drugs, psychiatric medication and alcohol. So again, at the same time you should be on the side of Larry Flynt against People, and also at the same time you should be outraged on command whenever some sob story comes from a porn actress. It is just stupid and unworkable position.
In the end I don't care. If I was absolute monarch, I would line everybody involved in that Cornell shit including Jane Doe on local plaza and gave them punishment of 30 lashes as a form of justice. I would also fine each of them $50k for inflicting this stupid shit on unsuspecting public, who all collectively lost uncounted quintillions of brain cells by being forced to witness all that stupidity. Case closed.
This is exactly the opposite of my conclusion. Women being "equal" means men and women compete everywhere ranging from fights who stays at home with kids to competition with women for your job position to politics and societal arrangements. Equal rights eventually means erasure of duties and related social norms.
For instance if it is a new arrangement that women have "right to be sluts", this flattens all social expectations, no slutshaming etc. Moreover this also wildly rearranges societal expectations - women no longer have duty to be chaste, which means more fights at home if husband expects such a behavior as it is oppressive and goes against "rights". Just one more thing to argue and fight inside relationship.
Or take another change - equal pay for men and women. If men and women have equal pay, this then means that in increasing number of cases women will outearn men. This should then come with corresponding change in norm of women as primary breadwinners and their duty to take care of their husbands. But at the same time women also have right to be hypergamous and expect men to outearn them. These rights and expectations are going against each other, which means clash and strife.
If men and women can be whatever they want to be, then there is nothing wrong with somebody being incel jerking off at home. He has his first amendment right to watch porn, it is no longer expected that men should marry or take care of family as it is their right not to chose so - so there is nothing wrong with somebody living in small apartment and playing videogames. In fact if this is their right, it means it is your duty to defend this lifestyle from any infractions or shaming. Every right and norm has counterpart in duty. If everybody has right to free healthcare, it means it is somebody's duty to finance the whole system. To then turn and be horrified by incels choosing their lifestyle you defended or bitch about healthcare taxes you clamored for is illogical. You are adopting traditional norms and duties while at the same time saying that abolishing these norms and duties is fantastic progress toward equality. It is crazy position.
The first thing you might be wondering is "why is this not in the above section?". For most people, obviously men and women are different. There are biological differences based on hormones and genes. But I think what is different is a subtle and key distincter that makes this much less of a forceful offense, and more of a subtle one.
I will use this quote of yours as I think that "not all men/women" defense discounts it. To give an olive branch, men and women have the same ontological value as humans. I would even go as far as to say that from my view they should all have the same virtues: both men and women should be for instance patient, kind, diligent etc.
However I think this really discounts the huge differences on average between men and women, which really make the difference. I like how I think Andrew Wilson put it: while men and women should aspire to the same virtues, there are different consequences and these virtues have different hierarchies. If for instance if an alien changed all women who would stopped to be chaste tomorrow and fucked around, we would end up with bunchload of unwanted pregnancies with everything that follows. If the same goes with men (and they would not become violent), then we would probably end up with more tissues spend jerking off and some sluts having exceptional revenue that day. The same goes for instance if all men suddenly got lazy and nobody would show up at work: the society would stop working, stores would not get supplied, electricity would fail and so on. If all women stayed at home the situation would be bad, but not as much.
There are real differences in primary duties between men and women - and again not ALL men and ALL women, but on average there is meaningful difference and if it is ignored, it can have far reaching consequences and saying otherwise is standard Lewontin's Fallacy
There are studies showing that women are more interested in things and men are more interesting in people. Men are more effective in physical strenght and violence than women. Men are more suitable to adverse situation ranging from stress (being less anxious) to physical stuff (e.g. being able to be a roofer in Arizona summer, where women would literally die from heat stroke). Women are more interested in socialism and flattening the hierarchies, men are more comfortable with competition and following orders. The quintessential male organization is the army, the quintessential female organization is the sewing circle/quilting bee. And you see it in real life from voting patterns, different mating strategies and everything else.
I think it is not healthy to view the relationship between men and women as adversarial by necessity, but in modern world it was forced to be. Women compete with men on all levels from individual relationships via individualism to corporate sphere to politics. Men and women are not interchangeable, they have different duties and they steer institutions such as marriage or motherhood, organizations such as Army or corporations and even whole societies toward different goals. Helen Andrews has great speech about that here
georgioz
12d ago
I'd add that New Atheism is also failed metaphysics and epistemology. I also agree that it was a substitute for hamartiology and to some extent narrow axiology. However in a very funny ways it adopted the overall cultural flow of other philosophical traditions, ranging from hermeticism to humanism to naive empiricism, namely that you can get to "The Truth" by critique and negation. All you have to do is to identify the Big Bad (e.g. religion), remove it, and then everything will be "better".
Of course there is no grounding for what better means, what is "The Truth" or anything like that. What happened next is the search for the replacement. Sam Harris tried to tie it to Secular Humanism, utilitarianism and the rest of it. This is the same what Big Yud and Alexander tried to do in their own way reviving Quine with addition of quantum physics and a lot of parables and stories. I see a resurgence of some new grey tribe attempts at philosophy, mostly going for some sort of idealist monism be it Sean Carolls "universal wavefunction is all that exists" or Max Tegmark mathematical realism or computationalism of Joscha Bach. These are all some sort of RETVRN to previous philosophical traditions dated even to presocratics, but instead of "all is water" or "all is flux" we now have these new monadic entities. Only they are even stupider as they want to have legitimacy of empiricist tradition without addressing arguments from Hume or Quine. Of course there are other splinters, including roundabout return to religiosity and Christianity, the latter of which I consider a more robust paradigm.
However significant part of the crowd was captured by the thrill of the hunt and went over to Critical Theory tradition, it just provided other Big Bads after the original project failed. That is why I sometimes called these philosophizes as theological conspiracy theories - they evade all the hard questions just assume that things can get better if we tear down "bad" things around us.
So New Atheism failed, because in the end it was always broad tent "anti-something" coalition and there were internal fractures regarding where to move next.
What victim. A moron who lets some random chick snort ketamine from his dick before gangbanging her with his 3 equally moronic friends? I am sorry that I do not have much sympathy for such a victim. Neither do I have sympathy for said chick who voluntarily went into such a situation. I am not thinking of any of them as some victims.
Like I said, everybody is an asshole in this story. Or am I supposed to be male or female feminist who thinks of a college men and women like that as "kids having fun" and at the same time as unthinking victims of systems of oppression who are just bunch of atoms in motion inevitably dancing to the tune of power structure of Patriarchy, Rothchilds, GloboHomo power brokers and TechBros who beamed subliminal messages about ketamine orgies into their empty heads via TikTok? I dont think so.
I’ll quote a 2011 blog post from an Australian Catholic social conservative author who is also critical of the Manosphere:
This is by no means a Catholic critique at all. There are two completely different ways of how modern feminism or even modern thinking breaks down intersexual relationships. The first one is that the basis of Catholic teaching is not some maturity or anything like that, our morality is Virtue Based. Both men and women should strive to be virtuous: humble instead of prideful, chaste instead of lustful, generous instead of greedy, kind instead of jealous, balanced in moderation instead of gluttonous, patient instead of wrathful, diligent instead of slothful. Above all these virtues we have Christian love, caritas as guiding principle. There are of course other virtues such as courage or wisdom which are subsided in there. The point is that Christian ethics is Virtue Ethics, it is not utilitarianism or harm reductionism - it is centered around personal virtues related to deification and individual relationship toward God and other people.
Catholic anthropology follows this in sacraments. In baptism, a child is introduced into a community where mother, father, godfather and godmother take responsibility to educate the child toward these virtues in form of caretakers utilizing methods of discipline and consistency to teach the child. This results in first communion around age of 7 o 8, this tracks the ability to discern between good and evil, the child is capable of sacrament of confession and to decide on what is good and evil. From there there is the period of theological grounding for child's decision making, the parents are there as teachers with the child having more autonomy to explore these realities. The child is a catechumen and this period ends around age of 15-16, where he is considered and adult but still to be mentored by other people, including parents and the community.
Now the point is that in terms of maturity, by age of 16 you as a Catholic should be fully aware of what is Christian moral teaching, what are vices and virtues and live you life accordingly. There is no eternal "kid" mentality where somebody can be 28 and still "exploring" as some forever university student, it is preposterous. You can be 17 or 18 years old and preparing yourself for marriage and taking care of children in the same loop. Maturity is not about wealth, "responsibility" in terms of being a manager of team of 50 people or anything like that. While this is of course one way to grow, it is by no means implied in catholic teaching. You are mature as long as you posses ability to discern good and evil and as soon as adult Christian you know the doctrine to live virtuous life. The catholic teaching of responsibility is stemming from subsidiarity, by age 15-16 you are fully capable of thinking and managing yourself, and you are preparing to take care of your closest family such as husband/wife and even children and whole community. But this is reciprocal, The Church is proper way to live Christian life and the community is helping everybody till their last days. The process of deification is a lifelong process where the whole community including your priest is helping you in this endeavor.
When Hymnowitz points to the Star Wards nerds, all I can think of is the "mature" female SATC equivalents. I admit that men sitting in mom's basement jerking off to online porn are pretty shallow, but so are the women who spend their lives shopping for bags, clothes whilst riding the carosel waiting for the enabling supplicant whom will provide them with lifestyle to which they are accustomed.
That is not lack of maturity, these young adults are mature enough to have capacity to understand what is going on. It is lack of virtue. You can be 80 year old alcoholic bum jerking off on your pissed matrass doing stupid shit. We do not think that such a person did not mature, they are just lacking virtues.
I am reminded of the usual reddit "Am I the Asshole" threads. What usually happens is that in any given story everybody is an asshole in there. It ties to a very good article of jugaad ethics, which uses the Indian word of tying the new to the old one as a workaround, such as having a donkey or a bull trying to tow a modern car. This is what happens when you tear down Chesterton fence and observe the aftermath.
What I see lately is percolation of various worldviews into ethical system informing morality, which ultimately has reach toward law as law is "minimum of morals". One of them is the overarching result of various forms of physicalism - there is no free will, we are all just atoms in motion, sometimes imbued by various outside sources and "systems" of oppression. So a psychopath murdering her own children has no true agency - it is all failure of systems that did not provide help. And at the same time there is visceral need to put some personal blame somewhere, there has to be some agents - even unwitting ones - perpetuating some systems. Like in this example - we are talking about minutiae of what constitutes a "consent" and who has ability to clam systematic influence as opposed to agency.
It is a car crash waiting to happen, where some people are for the first time confronted with their worldviews and moral presuppositions colliding with reality. If anything, it is fascinating to watch.
I think it is quite the opposite. The Culture War is more alive than ever. There still are woke progressives although they want to rebrand to Woke 2.0 silently distancing themselves from some of the more stupid stuff, but it is still there only bubbling beneath the surface. You have revival of Christianity either in form of true conversion but also silently in form of "cultural Christianity". You have other stuff especially in Europe with regards to rising popularity of Mumdani style socialism, you have literal Islamists popping up more often as Muslims especially in Europe get more power.
In terms of policies you have age old stuff like immigration or wars. But there are various interesting issues rising up, like for instance the gender wars stemming from huge divergence of voting patterns between men and women which are driven by completely different worldviews as attested by Lindsay Clancy trial. You have Palestine vs Israel conflict creating strange bedfellows between progressives, Islamists and alt-right agreeing on who is the source of all evil in the West.
To me it seems not at all clear which ethos and ideology or culture will rein in let's say 20 years. Will it be the same GloboHomo technocratic coalition trying to hold the post war liberal consensus as outlined in official UN documents such as 17 Sustainable Development Goals? Will it be some sort of right wing conservative nationalist coalition? Will it be rationalist technobros developing AI overlord who will rule with iron hand of utilitarianism where everybody is hooked on some sort of UBI and robot hookers? Will it be some sort of South African style of failed country split in tribal conflict over diminishing resources in the middle of failed AI dystopia and demographic crisis?
georgioz
14d ago
That, or as the comment from the gold mine of youtube comment section put it more succintly:
She went to the Zuckerberg school for human emotions
Thanks for the link. The comment section is gold, I really liked this one:
"It took me a really long time to be able to cry on command... but check this out" single tear rolls down cheek
Or how the other comment put it:
She almost shit herself producing that teardrop
I am still laughing my ass off over it, a real goldmine in there. Also I unironically think that we may be witnessing a birth of a new hero for Lindsay Clancy's gaggle of lunatics. I'd not be surprised if a few years down the road Holmes is AOCs chosen for vice-president or something like that.
Underdetermination is exactly why reversing stupidity doesn’t get you intelligence.
I agree, that is why I wrote:
Also I agree that reverse stupidity is not intelligence, but stupidity is at least a hint of lack of intelligence.
I also agree, I'd say that in my Christian worldview there is not only lack of ontological substance of evil but also of a lie, Steresis aletheias. There is infinite way of how to be wrong, but only one way to be correct in my theology. In other theologies there is only infinite ways of being wrong without any metaphysicaly objective way of aiming toward truth, as this objective truth does not even exist.
That gets you back to a state of Cartesian doubt
Carthesian doubt was not deep enough. He did not doubt time or language for instance. His cogito ergo sum should in proper sceptical tradition be something like sgdsjvfdngfd lshgfk h lsng, only even more stupid, as he should doubt meaning of very language.
The most information you can get by rejecting paradigms is zero.
This cannot be true as there should be way to doubt your paradigmatical grounds, otherwise it is just pure dogma. In other words you are just asserting grounds of your paradigm as correct without any justification, thus basically creating a new fairy tale.
I can give a steelman position to the OP argument. I can tie it to my older post about theology, which is paradigmatic disjunction. There is famous Quine proof of Underdetermination of Scientific Theory, meaning that data are not neutral towards underlying paradigm and interpretation. Therefore you do not just have The Science™, it completely relies on underlying paradigms that select what to study, how to formulate hypothesis, how to formulate and propose theories that explain data which are dependent on presuppositions.
So in the end it is just a pure conflict theory. There is no absolute The Science™, all science is instantiation of their underlying theology and paradigm onto data. Be it Socialist Science, Scholastic Christian Science, Progressive Science or even Rationalist Yudkowskian Science. In that sense the OP just hates the Progressive Science with its own paradigmatic blind spots and correctly identifies it as a Conflict Theory with Lab Leak being one of the example. Even more prominent one was the petition of The Scientists™ to allow BLM protests in the middle of pandemic as they consider racism as greater threat than COVID-19.
Also I agree that reverse stupidity is not intelligence, but stupidity is at least a hint of lack of intelligence. Reverse of stupidity of let's say paranormal science is not intelligence, but it is not a reason not to dismiss it.
You said "provably infected" (in your earlier post), not me. I'm happy to stipulate that any evidence that could prove the infection status of the lab animals at WIV (in either direction) has been lost.
They were "provably infected" by coronavirus and it is proven by loads of research on that published by WIV. You shifted the goalpost that there is no proof of animals in the lab being infected by this specific SARS-CoV-2 strain. I agree, there is no proof mostly due to purposeful destruction of data and samples. On the other hand there is also no proof of any animal infected by any coronavirus in some mystical smuggler/breeder supply chain leading to Wuhan needed for zoonotic origin. But the lab leak at least has the proof of tens of thousands of animals in cages living for decade+ a few miles down the road being provably infected by coronavirus infections and experimnented on. Nothing even close to such a proof exists for zoonotic origin, there is no animal reservoir, no causal link, no breeder farm identified. There is nothing.
Your response is isolated demands for rigour and (entirely plausibly) slinging allegations of dishonesty at the Red Chinese authorities.
Quite to the contrary. The zoonotic origin story has the same problem that you presented - there is no direct ancestor found anywhere in the wild. It was not found near Wuhan or anywhere else. The distance toward COVID-19 strains require quite a leap. So this fact does not save zoonotic origin. So you require rigorous proof of plausible research in biolab that provably produced the exact SARS-CoV-2 strain of the virus. And lack of evidence is evidence of absence. But you do not require the same evidence for zoonotic origin, which should leave massive trail up until it reached Wuhan market from either Laos or Yunnan or some other unknown bat cave thousand miles and decades of natural mutations away from what was produced in form of two lineages of SARS-CoV-2. That is isolated demand for rigor.
Also I am not slinging "allegations" but facts about Red Chinese authorities. They refused to cooperate, provide data, samples or anything. In fact they provably slaughtered and removed all animals on the market, bleached the whole area and never presented any animal sample from lab to the public, scrubbed the WIV database and more. How is that an allegation? You yourself agree by saying that:
As you point out, the Red Chinese were destroying both potential evidence that could have supported wet market zoonotic spread and potential evidence that could have supported lab leak. This is not surprising, as the official Chicom position at the time the evidence was destroyed (being enforced inside China with the usual Chicom techniques of truth suppression) was that the virus originated outside China.
So yes, Red Chinese authorities are purposefully obtuse and dishonest. You say that nobody coming forth from the lab is implausible, which makes you discount Lab Leak angle as unlikely conspiracy - so again absence of evidence is evidence of absence. But I can do the same for zoonotic origin: out of the whole conspiracy chain of wildlife smugglers, breeders, market employees and customers - not one person was overcome by conscience to say that they in fact had smuggled a bat from Laos together in cage with a racoon dog which created the pandemic? In fact this chain was broken by Chinese Authorities who could have tested animals, focused on specific stall and investigate the whole supply chain, but this time they scrubbed all the evidence. This is not what happened in the past outbreaks where zoonotic origin was proven to an animal held in a specific hotel room in Hong Kong in SARS outbreak in 2002-3 or camel virus reservoir for MERS 2012. Additionally, unlike Lab personnel who are all vetted and gagged by contracts and career or criminal charges, the zoonotic origin this is an operation of ordinary people and we do not have a single peep about this massive smuggling/breeding operation delivering dangerous infected animals for 1000 miles over to Wuhan. Not even somebody talking to his sister who talked to her boyfriend to leak it? Why is that absence of evidence not a kill shot against zoonotic origin?
False dialectic exactly according to the lack of evidence formula. Also we lack evidence exactly because Chinese communist institutions refused to cooperate in independent investigation and actively acted against it - they destroyed data, slaughtered animals on the market, bleached residual evidence and gagged researchers. So it is doubly ignorant to use lack of public evidence as evidence of absence.
I can also reverse it and say that based on the publicly available information none of the animals was proven NOT to be infected with SARS-CoV-2. It is just Chinese government communication that none of the staff or animals tested positive, none of the live samples or anything like that remains. Which is highly suspicious as it seems unlikely that none of the hundreds of staff were tested positive in the middle of supposedly zoonotic outbreak inside Wuhan in March-April of 2020. But this is not even the main point, it is possible that the leaked animal was from some earlier batch of research that leaked on the market in 2019. Testing animals in March 2020 would not be proof of absence of a virus in animals in 2019. But again, we do not even have that as Chinese government refused to cooperate.
I can also say that there is no publicly available information that would provide evidence of any actual zoonotic link. Zoonotic origin is all circumstantial, there is no "animal zero" proven, there is no cluster of infected animals or any physical link of infection and mutation from bat to human. There is no hard evidence of zoonotic origin, so it is pure speculation and fantasy story bordering on conspiracy.
And I literally mean it - it presupposes that some breeders traded various animals including bats in some hidden breeding stations where the virus spread between animals until it reached Wuhan market and jumped on a human. There is no proof for any of that - there is no evidence of any breeding farms with the final virus strain or any of its its precursors, there is no link leading from bats to any other animal virus reservoir or anything like that. It is a literal conspiracy theory inventing invisible wildlife smugglers, underhanded breeders and unscrupulous sellers in complex supply chain who delivered deadly virus to Wuhan and killed millions of people on Earth without leaving a shred of evidence. In past zoonotic outbreaks, we were able to trace animal reservoirs and vectors easily such as SARS-1 in 2002-3 or MERS 2012. How is such a preposterous hypothesis more plausible than a another lab leak that happens all the time?
"A lab leak virus that looks plausibly zoonotic just happened to have its first superspreader event at a wet market 10km from the lab" is not an unlikely coincidence - see Rootclaim's post-debate rebuttal."
I can revert it. Is it plausible that one of the hundreds of provably infected animals held in cages in lab down the road was the source? What kind of false dialectic was presented in the debate - if the source of infection was the market or the lab - and if it was the market it automatically was zoonotic, meaning no lab leak?
I don't think there ever was a real disagreement of null hypothesis of the origin of COVID. The situation is as follows. We have the only biolab with Biosafety level 4 certification in China that studies bat coronaviruses related to SARS for decades, that biolab is Wuhan Institute of Virology. They produce papers where they admit that they engineer specific bat coronaviruses such as this one from 2016 named Bat Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Like Coronavirus ORF_X Modulates the Host Immune Response in Journal of Virology. And now mysteriously in a country of 1.4 billion people with 100 cities with population of over 1 million people and out of almost 40,000 wet markets in China we see a new strain of bat coronavirus turning into COVID-19. And this event happens a few miles from the institute. By this fact alone the likelihood is overwhelming on human origin of the virus.
Add to the opaque nature of Chinese communist institutions. We have precedents for this such as in Soviet Union, where they wanted to bury even catastrophes like Chernobyl, which only had to be confirmed by outside sources - two days later in Sweden where they detected increased radiation. This is nothing new. We have proof of Chinese scrubbing data from the lab - they literally deleted their database of tens of thousands of tested animals in September 2019 due to "hacking". They bleached everything in the market destroying biological data. We also have circulation of claims and counterclaims of Wuhan employees being hospitalized for alergies or cold. By the way, to this day we do not have any confirmed deaths from COVID of any of the hundreds of staff of the institute, including any old goats and administrators - despite the supposed zoonotic origin of the Virus and catastrophic situation in Wuhan. And now some people just say we lack evidence for lab leak hypothesis. No shit, but we also lack evidence for zoonotic origin, it is all just circumstantial.
Lab leak is the most parsimonious and likely explanation of the whole thing and any other explanation such as some mysterious transmission from bat to pangolin to thousand of miles travel to Wuhan is the real conspiracy theory. Also it is not without precedent, there were two documented leaks of SARS just in 2004 in Bejing biolevel 3 lab investigating SARS. Back then it was concluded that the lab was hugely negligent and did not apply the safety level to proper standards. By the way the ascendancy of Wuhan lab to study viruses was exactly in the aftermath of Beijng catastrophe and by 2010 the Wuhan became the crown jewel of Chinese research into SARS and other coronavirus infections. In fact this Beijing-Wuhan rivalry was fueled by different commie institutional players inside the Chinese power structures (Ministry of Health vs Army/Academy of Sciences) and could potentially be one of the reasons and motivations for cutting the corners when it comes to safety, including conducting part of the research in Biolevel 2 and 3 facilities.
Anyways, I do not care if it was some sort of breach of containment, a bioweapon research or even age old communist corruption where some janitor sold infected animals scheduled for incineration to the Wuhan wet market for $10 profit as it is usual in communist countries. Which by the way shows the false dialectic of "Market Origin" vs "Lab Leak" - these are not mutually exclusive, it is not impossible that an infected personnel or even infected animals leaked from the Lab into the market few miles from said lab. Both theories have plausible explanation of "infected animals at the market", just competing source of said animals. And even in this scenario - what is the most likely source of said infected animals. A bat cave thousand of miles away transmitting it to to pangolin or racoon or dog or civet that ended up in said market? Or that the source was literal hundreds of provably infected animals in cages a few miles down the road. That the virus leaked from the lab is still the most ready explanation of the situation especially by virtue of opaqueness of communist regime.
Imagine that you had the same standard for any other thing. Let's say that a local corrupt politician who had provable ties to local mafia suddenly won $1 million in a lottery. What would be the most plausible explanation:
- He was just a lucky winner
- He was gifted the winning lottery ticket from local mafia, who purchased or even robbed it from some anonymous local lottery winner
And now it seems that all journalists and academia are for some reason going for "nothing to see here", or "lottery ticket is valid and not counterfeit" and any other number of explanations. And moreover they would claim that the mafia tie is a "conspiracy theory" and an offence, for which you will be depersoned and cancelled. In the past no respectable journalist would drop this story, and the corruption angle would never be declared as "conspiracy theory" using strawman story of how the lottery ticket is not fake etc.
Reader's will not wonder about that, as in the OG books Potter defeated the bad guy be sheer cosmic luck during all occasions. But I had similar discussion about how Hermione and not Potter is the true hero of the story.
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