site banner
PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   33139 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

6
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Christians are the most persecuted group in the world. Their plight is almost entirely ignored by corporate media.

This is certainly true if you count by volume. It seems likely to me that Jews may be more persecuted as a percentage of all Jews, because there are very few Jews and billions of Christians. According to the non-profits who care about this sort of thing, 380 million Christians live in countries that have high levels of persecution and discrimination towards Christians.

Listing Mexico and Colombia as places where Christians are persecuted seems like they're using a tendentious definition of 'persecution'.

If you click on the individual country they explain their reasoning. Here was the reasoning for listing Mexico:

Although the majority of Mexico's population is Christian, many believers live in danger of persecution, particularly from criminal gangs, drug cartels and indigenous groups. In many parts of the country, the presence of criminal groups is growing. Christians who bravely speak out against their activities, or who are involved in community work or evangelism (especially with youth, drug addicts and migrants) are deemed a threat. That makes them a target. In some cases, Christian children or the children of church leaders are singled out.

In some Indigenous communities, those who decide to leave ancestral and traditional beliefs to follow Jesus face ostracism, fines, incarceration and forced displacement. Given that indigenous leaders are those who administer justice in such areas, believers have no one to turn to to investigate wrongdoing and protect their religious freedom. These families can also face harassment from the community, such as property damage, restriction of access to schools for their children, and threats.

A non-religious Mexican is equally vulnerable to gangs and cartels. They don't quiz you on Bible knowledge and statements of faith before cutting your head off. They don't target Christians. I'm calling BS.

A bleeding heart would switch the framing in the indigenous Mexicans. They are the oppressed minority. They are also almost all Christian. Google says 78% Catholic and 10% protestant. Almost exactly the same as the general population of Mexico.

This is starting to remind me of the "trans murder epidemic" in the sense that the most salient cases are people murdered for reasons totally unrelated to being trans and there may not even be an epidemic anyway.

I did click through. I was underwhelmed. 'Persecution' implies some sort of specific targeting on account of religion. Christian gangsters going after Christian community leaders for reasons orthogonal to religious identity sounds more like Mexico has a crime problem than a religious persecution problem. Mexico is an overwhelmingly Christian society with relatively high rates of religious involvement in communities

I confess to being skeptical of the claims about indigenous communities. Most of these indigenous communities are already Christian (albeit a form of Christianity that would look pretty weird to American Protestants), and looking at their own report it looks mostly like sectarian friction in rural communities.

--

The point of all this being that I think they are being sufficiently smudgy with their representation of facts in areas I have some knowledge of to make me question their reliability elsewhere.

Sectarian persecution is, under a liberal epistemology, certainly religious persecution.

I would object to describing the situation as “Christian gangsters going after Christian community leaders”. I don’t think anyone can rightfully complain “No True Scotsman” if I say that the vicious killers of the cartels, who murder pastors because they help addicts recover, are not Christian.

If you think their standards are too loose, fine, but is there any doubt that millions of Christian’s are currently being persecuted? If not in Mexico or Columbia than certainly in China, North Korea, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, and other countries that enforce laws against Christian religious practice.

I am once again obliged to note that despite direct, unambiguous textual pacifism, Christianity was the faith of choice for a continent full of warrior-aristocrats who, in between constantly fighting each other, would make an effort to prove their faith by going halfway around the world to fight other people. These Christian warriors routinely behaved appallingly, not only to heathens but to their fellow Christians (and this is before we touch on a number of incredibly savage sectarian wars). On more than one occasion they would literally make war on the Pope.

So yeah, I don't have a problem saying that it is entirely within a reasonable understanding of Christianity that a gangster who murders a priest can still be a Christian. It is not the only face of Christianity by a long shot, but it is certainly one of them, and one with a long history.

is there any doubt that millions of Christian’s are currently being persecuted?

I think the claim that Christianity is uniquely persecuted and demands special attention above and beyond other religions is questionable at best. The argument is not helped when there seems to be substantial misrepresentation going on - namely that the vast majority of 'persecuted' are Christians living in Christian-dominated countries that happen to be shitty places live.

To be perfectly ungenerous, my experience with people bringing up the claim is that they are usually not actually interested in intrareligious humanitarianism*; they are simply grievance-mongering and reinforcing a siege mentality amongst American Christians. How does Darryl Cooper feel about admitting tens of millions of Christian refugees from the Middle East/Africa or Latin America or China into the United States? Or, alternatively, vast amounts of humanitarian aid to those same regions? I have a weird feeling I'm significantly more in favor either of those than he is.

*to be fair to Open Doors, I don't think they are doing this, but they also have the receipts that people like Carlson or Cooper or Walsh do not.

I don’t think anyone can rightfully complain “No True Scotsman” if I say that the vicious killers of the cartels, who murder pastors because they help addicts recover, are not Christian.

The conquistadores were Christian. Tomas de Torquemada was Christian. The Mafia families were (and are) Christian. So, yes, I think people can rightfully complain "No True Scotsman". The cartels may indeed be persecuting particular Christians, but not because of religion.

The Mafia tick the "Christian" box on the census, but most accounts of the initiation ceremony where you become a "made man" say that it is explicitly blasphemous. So the Mafia being fake Christians is a much easier case than some of the others in this list.

Tomas de Torquemada did, in fact, persecute due to religion.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats