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This reminds me of my tenure on the Atheism+ forums, back before my redpilling/blackpilling (I don't know what to call it, since I didn't really change my beliefs, I just realized the people I thought were on my side, aren't).
A+, as you know, was woker than woke before "woke" became a thing. And one of my "WTF?" moments when I realized these people are fucking crazy is when they went hard on defending... Muslims. Not against general racism and bigotry, but against criticisms that the "New Atheists" had no problem applying to every other religion.
At one point, the forum got trolled hard by a poster from one of the hater-forums who monitored them, a set of people running an account that adopted the persona of a gay man who proceeded to post long effort-posts about the connection between homophobia and Islamophobia, and how seeing the latter "triggered" him, as a gay man, despite the fact that he was an atheist.
The mods on the A+ forum proceeded to take him very seriously and started modding comments that were too "Islamophobic."
He also declared that the term "homosexual" was homophobic. The mods proceeded to mod anyone who used the word homosexual.
I was one of the few people who pushed back and kept getting in arguments with him, until he eventually DMed me and let me know what the game was. I already suspected something of the sort, because to any sane person his arguments were so transparently nonsensical. But the mods and the other SJWs on the forum ate it up.
As to your broader point, I think liberals like Maher and Harris suffer from a misapprehension that I had myself until recently (my beliefs have changed on this one): that Islam is just another religion and that, like Christianity and Judaism and other bronze-age religions that were once full of barbarism and genocidal ideology, the civilizing effects of modern Western liberalism will eventually secularize them until they are just like the rest of us, and we'll have a big joint Christmas/Hannuka/Ramadan holiday season.
This does happen to an extent. Moderate Muslims in the West are... mostly like the rest of us. I hesitate to say that Islam is fundamentally incapable of undergoing some kind of "Enlightenment." (Leaving aside the arguments from some of our resident Christians that post-Enlightenment Christianity isn't real Christianity at all.) I don't think Islam is some sort of unique Neal Stephenson mind virus that turns its followers into violent p-zombies even if many of Islam's critics do.
But I am pessimistic about Islam, in its current form, being capable of coexisting long-term with other ideologies. I have a lot of other uncharitable and blackpilling thoughts I've been tossing around and trying to decide how much of it is Chinese Cardiology and selection bias.
I do think a blanket "Muslim ban" is stupid (and clearly unconstitutional). But a ban on importing large numbers of people from countries that just happen to be dominated by Muslims of an uncompromising, anti-Western, pro-jihadist bent does not seem irrational or bigoted to me, but it would be hard to frame it in a way that would be acceptable to those who believe Islam is "just another religion."
I say, who cares? I mean yes, maybe in 400 years the barbarians' descendants would be as civilized as we are now, or much more, and their descendants would look with horror on what is being done now and conduct ceremonies to honor the innocent victims of Islamic terror in 20th-21th centuries. Why should I care whether it happens or not? I won't live in 400 years, I am living now and the barbarians are committing their barbaric atrocities now. Screw that 1000-year stare the ivory tower idiots try to sell us because they read a couple of history book and now they think for some reason they are oh so much smarter than the rest. If there are barbarians now, they should be judged now. If some crazy Christian dude would come and try to burn heretics on the central square of my city, I think he should be jailed, and if he resists, shot. I want the same treatment for crazy dudes of all religions. If declaring "it's just another religion" helps that, so be it, I don't care. I don't see why either way would matter here.
The thing we need to realize here is we don't need any special case for Islam. On the contrary, we should stop applying special cases for Islam - and that's what is happening constantly in the wokesphere. Rape? Of course it's horrible, one of the most horrible sins imaginable! Oh, you mean it's done by fanatical Islamists who proclaim to be oppressed? Ah, that's different business, we need a nuanced approach here! Woman oppression? That's bullshit, maaan! Oh, you mean woman oppression in Saudi Arabia? Maaan, you can't apply your morals there! Well, yes, I can. Screw that. That's the root of all evil here. If we ever manage our culture to stop doing that, we'd win 99% of the battle already.
Again, I say I don't care, it's not my problem. I mean, it's not on me to figure out how to make requirements on Quran work in the modern world. What needs to be done is the uniform demand to live by the modern world rules, no ifs, no buts, no coconuts, no discounts and "nuanced approaches". If you can do it and keep the Quran - fine, keep it. I don't mind at all, I don't care what you do to achieve it, whatever works for you. If you can't - you should be either forced to, or be forcibly expelled from the places where civilized people live. That should be the test - whether you can follow the civilized society rules.
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I can say for a fact that this is untrue. Sam's entire career has been about arguing with liberals who think this.
I would argue he doesn't just think it's pernicious today (though in normie arguments he'll often focus on that). No, his phrase was "the only problem with Islamic fundamentalism is the fundamentals of Islam"
He had basically the same speech to give to everyone and it was:
If you want to see him break out the classics he basically hits most of the notes in this one video
Yes, he will say that he thinks Islam should be reformed and we need progressive Muslims. But he will also basically say those are noble lies and the rest of us (or him at least) need to say the truth. And yes, he recognizes this contradiction and has no solution for it.
I'm more familiar with Bill Maher than Sam Harris, so I believe you. I think he's unfortunately correct.
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One problem is that most of the arguments that can be used in favor of a Muslim ban can also be used in favor of banning people who have far-left or far-right views. Even if there might be some good pragmatic reasons for being wary of Islam, banning Islam is a slippery slope towards banning every militant ideology that is incompatible with the mainstream of today's West. But I would not want to live in a country that is even as censorious as modern Germany, much less China. Personally I think that Islam is stupid, but I think that communism and fascism are stupid too, and I perceive that banning communists, fascists, and Muslims from immigrating to the US, aside from just grating very strongly against my pro-free-speech attitude, would also open a whole can of worms that could potentially lead to banning even people with much less far-out political views, myself included.
Adding onto this, as a participant in New Atheism at the time it was definitely noticed by some atheists that what the evangelical Christian right (at their generational height of power in the Bush administration) said about Muslims while calling for bans on them, leveling the middle east, profiling and so on matched and rhymed with the things that they also said about us. Given many new atheists were former evangelicals in heavily religious areas, myself included, we were quite familiar with how much hatred they had for "secular humanism" and atheists in particular.
There was a distinct feeling that if the Bush administration put this unpopular religious minority on the chopping block, we could end up being targeted down the line in the sense of the "first they came for the socialists, and I did nothing because I was not a socialist" speech.
This is a very self serving far left take which justifies Christian hostility towards "secular humanists".
The neocons are influential now and wrecking harm and new atheism had plenty of crossover with that but you are going to frame your political coalition as the victims by focusing on the past. This fails to address the current problems of our time and gives excessive sympathy over the past to atheists.
"secular humanists" have had their influence and have targeted others especially Christians, so please stop with this victimhood narrative. Atheists are one of the groups that poll as one of the most pro censorship in fact.
Importantly, the ideology of these atheists has western civilization at a trajectory of destruction. It is justifiable to suppress that ideology just for not caring about extinction and low fertility rates. If atheists in general were so good, they wouldn't poll so far to the left. Now, I think personally that there are some wise atheists so I am against hostility towards every atheistic person in a general manner from political discourse. But I don't buy into this idea of atheists as on average the wise people who have abadoned stupid dogma.
And even their anti religious sentiment seems to somehow focus especially against Christianity, with certain other religions (less so Islam) getting much less criticism.
Now, there are problems with Christianity and progressive Christianity is a disaster that shares the pathologies of the "secular humanists" so there also needs to be a significant change but the reality is ironically that a Christian society of a somewhat conservative bent is more successful in creating a society ruled by humanism than "secular humanists" have ever been. It is a model that worked, while you "secular humanist" atheists have behaved in inhumane and destructive manner in societies you ruled over. Albeit the term secular humanism is a misnomer and those using it are not eager to gatekeep that their faction does not include cruel fanatics willing to be inhuman in the name of humanism. Moreover, there are tradeoffs and some of the rules and behaviors encouraged by Christianity are actually necessary components of a lasting civilized society.
So rather than recreating a wise framework from a "secular" perspective, the "secular humanists" just adopt, or are in fact part of the leaders of a far left ideological dogma that works badly. The vaccum left by Christianity's decline does not lead to less fanaticism, as the new ideological religion is promoted with fanaticism.
Today, Christians are arrested in Britain for silently praying in abortion centers. When a trans mass shooter kills Christian kids due to anti christian and anti white racism, the American goverment promotes transgenders as the victim. Not to mention all other left wing associated racism against whites who are more right wing coded and direct promotion of progressive stack. So enough with this idea of groups in a left wing framing due to events of the past are the victims against the right wing oppressor. Especially funny you bring up the socialists when they have also done their own great share of crimes.
This one sided obsession is incredibly destructive, and atheistic anti christian types have been rather willing to use power to screw over others in modern history. Have some humility and consider your own faction's sins, and whether your faction's influence have made things worse.
Are you using ChatGPT? The longwinded passages that read as if responding to things that weren't said in my post have certain qualities and odd phrasing that are seriously tripping my AI-generated content radar.
Instead of responding to anything of substance you just throw some false accusations. If 2 days pass and you haven't come up with something that addresses the actual post, it is better if you say nothing.
I'm still suspicious.
The argument revolves around self preservation.
I was a rightist at the time, as were all atheists I knew, and I would still be one for another decade afterwards. One doesn't have to like a group's beliefs - and I very much dislike Islam - to be against empowering others to inflict collective punishment and wage concerted attempts at destroying them. You've already advanced to arguing that atheism is incompatible with western civilization, which is what was being said in the arguments building up for going after rando Muslims.
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We are overburdened with too many communists and fellow travelers in the US. Let's not import any more
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Communists are already banned from immigrating to the US.
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Whatever about the Enlightenment, what made me laugh (I don't see it so much these days, if it's still going around) is the notion that what Islam needs is the Reformation.
Dude, (1) have you any idea what the Reformation was all about and (2) Islam had its Reformation, just like the European one: go back to the bare word of the holy books, no intermediaries, strip away all the accretion of worldly ideas, pull down the images and luxurious living. The Taliban who blew up the Buddhas were Reformers in the same vein as those who smashed the statues in churches all across Europe.
This pop-culture notion of the Reformation being all about 'freedom of conscience' and 'the church can't tell me what to do' is one that comes very long after the aftermath of the Wars of Religion and the fissiparous nature of Protestantism, particularly in America, where denominations split and split again over disputes as to interpretation of the Scriptures and godly living, so that eventually through exhaustion, Western societies were "we won't have a state church, and where we do, it will be subordinate to the civil government and not the other way round". Calvin tussled with the civil authorities as to who would have authority in Geneva and won in his lifetime, but after his death the civil authorities gradually pulled back power into their own hands.
It also had its own Enlightenment. The Golden Age of Islam and the whole Abbasid Caliphate was very loosey goosey with its Islam, with a focus on education, science, and (often Greek) philosophy for a few centuries until everything got buttoned up during the Middle Ages and especially after Al Ghazali. There's a reason that, of what wasn't from the Greeks, a lot of the recovery of mathematics and philosophy in the European Renaissance was recovery of texts from the Islamic world (which was simultaneously becoming less interested in these things).
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Yeah, Protestantism may have contributed to the growth of liberalism, but in itself it was not a very liberal movement. You can see that by looking at Martin Luther's calls to suppress peasant rebellions, or at the nature of the Puritans' society.
That damned nonconformist John Locke was a real anti-liberal, you know.
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This is something that's always struck me about calls for reform. Consider something like Quranism, the idea that Muslims should reject the sunnah and hadith, and this long tradition of interpretation and jurisprudence, and return to the purity of the Qur'an. As you can see, the wiki article on it is written mostly from a Western perspective and is very sympathetic to the idea, seeing it as more open and tolerant than the alternative.
It's just - did we forget the Protestant Reformation entirely?
Throwing out all tradition and interpretation and bypassing all the mediating institutions of a tradition is something that was attempted in Europe. The result was well over a century of bloody, fratricidal war and a multitude of new sects, many of which were more fanatical and violent than the order they originally criticised. Throwing out interpretation in favour of acting according to the original, pure divine revelation is a recipe for fanaticism, not tolerance!
(For what it's worth I say this as a Protestant; I don't mean that the Reformation was 'wrong', whatever specific claim you might attach to that. But the Reformation certainly had a price.)
Yes. The post modernists told us that the past didn't matter and "the intelligentsia" believed them.
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I'm not sure if you mean me, but I know the Reformation was not about "freedom of conscience." I refer to the Enlightenment because that is generally regarded as the period in which the church lost much of its grip on state power. (Yes, I know it's more complicated than that, yes, I know "the Enlightenment" is a term like "Dark Ages" and the "Middle Ages" that doesn't neatly define a time period or movement.) The point is that Islam has never had any real subordination to civil authority. Muslim countries controlled by secular authorities generally need to use pretty brutal suppression methods and still give lip service to being Islamic.
Of course the Reformation is something different. Islam has had several (arguable) equivalents. Certainly it's had many schisms, the Shia/Sunni one being only the most notable.
No, I didn't. But it was a popular view in media articles a few years back, and I got dizzy from simultaneously shaking my head and rolling my eyes. Part of that is down to the lingering anti-Catholicism which swallowed the view of "heroic Reformers standing up against a dictatorial Church" and imagined that carried over to modern Christianity, where now the "dictatorial Church" wasn't the Pope any more but the Evangelicals, and the liberalised mainline Protestant denominations were the 'heroic Reformers'. "Hey, this lady clergyperson from one of the Seven Sisters denominations is wearing a rainbow stole and marching for abortion rights, now that's what the Reformation was all about and that's why Islam needs one!"
Yeah, I would love to see the faces of Luther, Calvin, etc. when looking at that example 😁
No you wouldn't. Cruelty helps no one.
Why would it be cruel? The denominations that went liberal have Good Biblical Justifications for their decisions (mainly "Jesus is all about love") and the Reformers based their demands on "the unmodified word of Scripture (as we interpret it)". They certainly never envisaged the day of lesbian lady clergypersons marching for abortion, but that's what you get when "every man has a pope in his own belly", as they found out quite soon. That's not what the Reformation was about, but it's what the modern view of the Reformation thinks it was about.
Isn't it Catholics who are usually accused of cannibalism (based on transsubstantiation)?
Generally! But y'know, if you're going to do the "sacrifice a god" thing, you should commit fully to it!
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It's one of those times that far-group and out-group are useful distinctions.
For the New Atheists, Christianity was the out-group. They lived/live in majority Christian countries. Christianity was the dominant religious and cultural force, and that was their enemy. Cool secular scientific rational materialism was being oppressed and kept down by the Bible-bashers.
Islam? That's the far-group. They weren't living under Islamic religious rules in Muslim-majority countries. So they could patronise Muslims and get the extra benefit of pats on the head for not being mean to all religions, just to the nasty ones like Christianity.
I also think the New Atheists/Atheism+ just didn't understand the reasons why people believe. If you're a believer, it's because you're stupid and/or hypocritical. You can't really mean the things you say you believe. So if you're anyway smart, you're going to be influenced by Western secularism and become more liberal, on the way to dumping religion completely. That people can sincerely hold and believe traditional tenets is one of those "does not compute" moments for them.
Hence why Dawkins etc. clamoured for arrest the Pope but never bothered calling for arresting the Grand Imam. Muslims just were not a threat to them or their way of life or their influence or power (such as it was).
Nah, that’s not it. Harris and Dawkins took tons of shit from A+ and the rest for being ‘islamophobic’. They know full well that Islam is far worse than Christianity (or Jainism, to take Harris’ favourite comparison), they just aren’t ready to compromise on liberalism (eg, free speech and immigration restrictions on muslims). They hope that liberalism will work like it has worked so many times before, even as it faces a more formidable enemy. An enemy whose primary weapon, death for apostates and critics, is designed to counter liberalism’s weapon, free speech. Sadly, I think the compromise is necessary. The risk is just not worth it.
But liberals have compromised repeatedly against freedom of speech. And Sam Harris have endorsed an ends justifies the means ideology. But is Sam Harris even a liberal or a neocon? That this question isn't asked, tells us what kind of ideology the tribe of people calling themselves liberals are comprised off. Plenty of far leftists and neocons there.
There is something more going on than principles here.
What is going on is that liberals have much less will to power and are more quoka like when it comes to standing up against groups associated with the left and the narrative tm. This also applies to those who might make an exception for one particular demographic.
This has to do with the history of the left, and how it has sided with said nationalisms, and political tribalism. It also has to do with the phenomenon of "running from the far right". The attempt to not be a far righter and have positions that are associated with the far right ends up with people endorsing unreasonable and unfair positions, since they are unwilling to actually admit that maybe those they consider as far right extremists are right on SOME things.
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Given that liberalism successfully defeated both national socialism and communism, all in the span of just 100 years or so, I don't see why Islam is supposed to be such a big threat to it. National socialism and communism even had the advantages of being mainly preached by white-looking people in economically advanced and militarily powerful countries, as opposed to mainly being preached by foreign-looking people in weak countries. Also, unlike with communism, there is very little danger of influential politicians and intellectuals in the West converting to Islam. At most they might be sympathetic to Islam.
And if you think specifically about secular liberalism, well, one can argue that secular liberalism didn't even just outcompete national socialism and communism in the span of 100 years, it also, while it was doing all that, basically ended Christianity as a political force in the West after first using it as an ally of convenience against national socialism and communism. Secular liberalism should not be underestimated. It has some powerful advantages against other ideologies.
I think liberalism would win anyway, but I’d rather not have The Eastern Front, Civil War Edition , if all it takes to avoid it is closing the border and telling imams they can’t teach death for apostasy anymore. As you say, islam is so weak that expansion by the sword is not even an option for it, unlike nazism and communism. So the wolf is not really at the door-door, we can just tell him to fuck off. It would be a huge own-goal to import a problem that’s so easily avoided. Let liberalism and islam duke it out in their countries, and they can have their algerian civil wars instead of us.
I'm not into that but to be fair, I am realizing now that the version of liberalism that defeated the Nazis and communists was quite a bit less liberal than the version that I want. For example, communists were actually persecuted back in the first half of the 20th century in the West.
It was not "liberalism" that "persecuted" communists. Liberals were often fellow travelers.
The society that defeated the nazis was not ideologically liberal but had a mixture of liberal and non liberal beliefs. Like in fact most of the people called far right extremists and hated by liberals today.
Contrarily, most people who complain more about the far right today have insufficiently conservative views and are also insufficiently pro groups associated with the right.
It is not fair for liberals who are quite more far to the left and antinativist, to claim that they are part of the same tradition to people who are actually part of a different tradition. Modern liberalism is part of the new left and it represents a break from the past. It is continuous from some extremists that existed in that period too, but not the general society. It is much more far to the left and antiwhite than what Eisenhower or Churchil argued for. Of course neither figure was successful in the domestic culture war on the long term.
I don't agree with focusing on intolerance to far left communists in the first half of 20th century as the problem of liberalism.
As society and elite institutions became more liberal and left wing this did not result in less authoritarianism.
snip
https://unsafescience.substack.com/p/the-new-book-burners
Moreover, seems that this discussion is full of people who are forgetting the neocons.
Are coups, CIA involvement, and politicians like Zelensky who ban political parties and don't oppose new elections part of liberalism? Is the American miliary industrial complex, AIPAC, thinktanks, the lobyists who fund them and politicians like Nikki Haley who also is ex director of Boeing part of liberalism? Because they seem to be pushing for constantly more authoritarianism. What about the highly influential ADL and the mainstream liberal parties that are also promoting more censorship?
Is Greenwald and Snowden, and Manning and Assange, part of liberalism, or the enemies?
If we define liberalism more narrowly, then liberals should be less arrogant about their current victory. A question arises if they even qualify. And if we define it more broadly, then it isn't the principled pro freedom, pro rights, against racism ideology that it is claimed to be.
Is modern South Africa a success of liberalism, or a failure? Unlike the academics who see no evil, hear no evil and can't see left wing extremism, we should examine this.
What about those who support mass migration and are against islamophobia, and are antinative racists and support hate speech laws to enforce this ideology? Do people who defend rhetoric like "kill the boer" such as ADL qualify as liberals?
To conclude, there is a confusion about what liberalism means from liberals and is hard to separate it with far leftism and even warmongers, neocons, the American establishment and the desires of partisans for say the uniparty, or Democrats in particular.
What you advocate will likely end with the muslims who claim they will take over the west, and other groups who do this, to succeed. And no it won't be an elimination of tribalism and a freer society.
Has the last decade lead to "liberal" societies becoming freer or less free under this trajectory of the tribe of liberals gaining more influence?
They became less free and more in the direction of discriminatory hateful antinativist authoritarian states which are indeed lead by people who are incapable of standing up to fanaticism if promoted by the ethnic groups they sympathize with. And this element is key for liberalism's willingness for prioritizing "rights" is applied in a wildly inconsistent manner.
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Yes, the Nazis allowed quarter-jewish people to marry Germans while many white Americans were not allowed to marry quarter-black Americans.
It's not really free speech, freedom of religion, or due process that defeated the nazis but overwhelming fire-power and millions of slavic bodies.
Modern secular liberalism does not seem capable of sustaining birthrates, so all the muslims have to do is come in and wait for the old liberals to die out for a victory by default.
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Near-group and far-group was part of it, but a larger part, IMO, was that Muslims code as POC (notwithstanding the tiny number of white converts) and thus can only be the oppressed, never the oppressors.
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"Moderate Muslims" are mostly people who are not particularly islamic; they eat turkey bacon while getting drunk the night before sleeping through morning prayer. Now I suspect that it's possible that devout Muslims in the west could be very like Christian fundamentalists, who are, reddit to the contrary, very rarely a problem, but you'll notice they're still a breed apart.
I mean Assyrians and Maronites make great citizens, but shias and sunnis from their same countries do not. Obviously we could openly discriminate but that's illegal.
There is nothing wrong with eating turkey bacon as long as the animal was slaughtered in a halal manner.
There is much that it is wrong with eating "turkey bacon", most notably that turkey is not bacon.
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Well yes, the point was that following Islam is inconsistent for these people. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t, either way it’s not really out of religious devotion.
That's what the ideal is, though. "Culturally Muslim" like "Culturally Catholic" or Methodist or what have you. Keep some of the traditions for the Exotic Old Country flavour, be steeped in the modern secular liberal Western values of the surrounding society, and have "our mosque has a female imam" service attendance for the big cultural holidays (whatever the Muslim version of Christmas-and-Easter is).
That's what meant by and understood as "moderate Muslims"; the kind who won't rock the boat and are indistinguishable, apart from skin colour and maybe names, from the people around them. The sort of "diversity" that isn't diverse ideologically. A Muslim who is orthodox and follows the teachings is tolerable, the same as with Christians, so long as they know their place: religion is a private matter and you don't get to intrude it in the public square.
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But that has nothing to do with Turkey bacon, which is fine.
The point was to include one Islamically influenced behavior in a list of haram ones. Maybe ‘breaks Ramadan with Turkey bacon’ would have been better.
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