site banner
PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   25760 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

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.

11
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Unlike Christianity, there is a confluence of significant factors that lead to Islam retaining strict behavioral and cultural rules. Mosques and scholars are funded by wealthy Arabs who have a monetary, political, and genetic influence in the spread of the religion; imams have children, the more strict the imam the more children, and dynastic imam families are not uncommon; the center of the religion is the Middle East where there is a constant threat of violence if leaders stray far enough from orthodoxy; the practice of excluding women from decision-making means that feminine-coded tolerance is sidelined; the religion itself highly emphasizes the following of strict tradition and punishments for “innovation”.

This all describes Christianity a couple centuries ago. How did that turn out?

Some of the listed elements describe Protestant Christianity, but certainly not (3) and (5), and I would argue not (1). Because Islam requires knowledge of Arabic and because the required pilgrimage is Mecca, the growth of Islam aids the growth of Arabs in a way that doesn’t apply to Protestant missionaries. The center of Protestant Christianity was never an area plagued by religious terrorism, although it has a history of political terrorism, because the center has been a singular church or a collection of hands-off church collectives. Protestant Christianity is a faith-based religion that promotes orthodoxy about perhaps one dozen facets of faith, whereas Islam is mainly orthopraxic with most of a person’s focus being the correct prayer routine at correct hours in correct language, fasting at correct times, etc, although it also possesses amuch stricter orthodoxy as well. Islam has significantly less leeway about interpreting rules than Christianity because it eschews parables and exaggerations. It is legalistic.

There are plainly substantial reasons why what happened to Christianity may not happen to Islam. And let’s not forget the racial angle: Islam began as an Arab supremacist religion; artifacts of that still exist today. For Arabs in America, their religion is the whole celebration of their racial achievement, which does not apply to Christian Protestants.

There's plenty of overlap with Orthodox Christianity, more than Protestantism, but much of its sphere of influence was forcibly conquered by Islam, then ground down over centuries.

So Muslims are more warlike, sure. I guess complicated by all the equally warlike Slavs taking up "Third Rome" rhetoric and putting a pretty hard stop to expansion Northward. It does seem probable that, ultimately, any civilization that doesn't want to be ruled by Islam has to physically fight it off.

Catholicism functioned, for a long time, as an effective spreader of Romance languages, which - insofar as I've heard - often differ from each other approximately similarly to Arabic dialects differing from each other.

Catholicism spread knowledge of Latin among the elite, but didn’t really spread non-Iberian Romance languages.

Of course late Medieval Latin national dialects weren’t necessarily mutually intelligible, but that’s strictly an elite thing.

My understanding is that adoption of Catholicism and Spanish went pretty much hand in hand during the Latin American colonization, and the Jesuit missions spread both.

Hence I said non-Iberian(so not Spanish and Portuguese)- and even for Spanish the situation is complicated; full-bloodedly indigenous Catholics mostly spoke indigenous languages up until independence, but mixed people and whites spoke the colonial language. Actually Latin America has plenty of mostly-indigenous speaking areas still to this day in a way the US doesn't, and that's after nominally-secular post independence governments tried their best to get Quechua and Maya speakers to switch to Spanish exclusively.

I'm less familiar with Brazilian history, but at least in the Spanish colonies- speaking mostly Spanish was a sign of having at least some Spanish ancestry and turned into a national identity marker that would be expected of everyone regardless of their place in the racial hierarchy in the 19th century. Catholicism often resulted in learning Spanish but during the colonial period the church wasn't particularly interested in replacing indigenous dialects, and sometimes inconsistently tried to provide services in Guarani and Quechua.

sometimes inconsistently tried to provide services in Guarani and Quechua.

What sort of services are you thinking of? It can’t be the mass, surely, since that wasn’t permitted to be celebrated in the vernacular until post-Vatican II. Or were exceptions made for Latin America?

Preaching and catechism in Quechua was obligatory for priests in Peru immediately after the counter-reformation- in fact, the modern dialect of southern Quechua descends from the form standardized to be taught to missionaries. Nahuatl was the standard vernacular in Spanish missions from Mexico until the very late 17th century, even when the sacraments were performed in Latin.

And, it should be noted- Catholic missionaries to animist peoples, both today in Africa and New Guinea and in the renaissance to Indians, typically try to push mass attendance but emphasize confession as a draw to new converts. Providing priests fluent in indigenous languages is obviously important to this endeavor, and early missionary accounts note Indians walking for hundreds of miles to go to confession and returning to their home villages.

It’s rather fascinating to me that confession is seen as a draw to converts, given the strong resistance to it among many members of my own church body. When the denomination was organized, congregations were initially required to introduce private confession wherever possible, but that provision was dropped within a decade or so due to massive pushback from the laity. I wonder if the difference is just that private confession seems “too Catholic” to many Protestants, while pagans have no such hang-ups, or if there are other factors at play.

More comments

Because Islam requires knowledge of Arabic and because the required pilgrimage is Mecca, the growth of Islam aids the growth of Arabs in a way that doesn’t apply to Protestant missionaries.

It empirically isn't doing much for the growth of the Arab population right now. Most Muslims are not Arabs.

The center of Protestant Christianity was never an area plagued by religious terrorism, although it has a history of political terrorism, because the center has been a singular church or a collection of hands-off church collectives.

Northwestern Europe was ravage by religious warfare for hundreds of years. A lot of people died over this. At that time, "political" and "religious" was not a very firm distinction.

Protestant Christianity is a faith-based religion that promotes orthodoxy about perhaps one dozen facets of faith

De jure yes, but de facto Protestantism was extremely orthorpraxic. Calvinists insist that good works do not purchase salvation but are instead a product of salvation, but in practice this is a purely semantic distinction. There's a reason 'puritanical' is shorthand for 'rigid scrupulosity.'

There are plainly substantial reasons why what happened to Christianity may not happen to Islam.

It's already happening. Even Saudi Arabia, the financial powerhouse behind the spread of Wahabbism, is liberalizing rapidly. The Iranian mullahs can't even keep their country from periodically exploding into anti-regime protests. MENA fertility rates have more than halved in the past half-century.

Most Muslims are not Arab, and also empirically the Arab population grows. The population of the Arab world grows at the same time that they export Arabs overseas and despite its increasing development which is significant.

Religious warfare which involved political claims occurred. That’s like the Shia vs Sunni proxy war in Syria and Iraq, which is as political as it is religious. But there was nothing like your typical Muslim “because your congregation is liberalizing I will commit an attack” ideology. That’s novel to Islam. Protestants didn’t blow up a building when someone started teaching girls how to read.

Calvinists insist that good works do not purchase salvation but are instead a product of salvation, but in practice this is a purely semantic distinction

I don’t think you understand how orthopraxic Islam is. Calvinists don’t define hierarchies of good works versus bad works with their commensurate rewards in heaven. Calvinists don’t cling to authoritative transmissions of Jesus which make mandatory thousands of small actions and make commendable certain other actions. As an example, in Islam they legislate the direction of your pointer finger in prayer, every syllable of the Quranic reading, the upkeep of your beard. You are comparing apples to orangutans. In Calvinism, the question is “do you believe and do you behave morally according to my view”. In Islam, it’s “do you believe according to this long list and do you do these long lists of actions.” The five obligatory prayers where every syllable and movement must be precise is an example of this sort of legalism. The Muslims who do not follow legalism are called Quranists and they are not even a percent of global Islam. There’s no Muslim sola scriptura movement of note, which secularization used to desacralize.

also empirically the Arab population grows

More and more slowly, as they become more prosperous, like other ethnic groups:

https://www.prb.org/resources/fertility-declining-in-the-middle-east-and-north-africa/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/806110/fertility-rate-in-the-arab-world/

Primarily, Arab birth rates are high because most Arabs are still poor. They are about half that of the DRC, where most people are even poorer than most Arabs.

But there was nothing like your typical Muslim “because your congregation is liberalizing I will commit an attack” ideology. That’s novel to Islam. Protestants didn’t blow up a building when someone started teaching girls how to read.

They didn't have suicide belts yet but angry mobs of Catholics/Protestants going around attacking each other and destroying buildings for religious reasons were extremely common during the Wars of Religion.

Catholicism is even more legalistic than Protestantism and it isn't doing much better. So is your argument that Islam is just far enough on the hyper-legalism spectrum that it will manage to endure?

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