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roronoa79
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10 Jun 2021, 6:47 pm

Christianity became a haven for conservatism when it began to be adopted by nation-states--as is the case with many religions. Christianity became a weapon for the state to give itself legitimacy and to rationalize that whatever the king/emperor/whoever did was okay because they worshiped God. Christian theology was twisted over the centuries to justify the socio-political status quo of a given time. Slavery, sexism, autocracy, genocide--these things could be made acceptable if those who benefited from them could invoke God's name as justification. You think southern christians in America had any issue with slavery at the time? Nope, slavery was just God's will. Lynchings were just true Christians meteing out divine justice. Segregation was a barrier to protect the God-anointed white race from those He supposedly deemed as inferior.
This pattern of rationalization of the status quo (however immoral and unjust) is not exclusive to Christianity, obviously.

I have to imagine Christianity could have been more of a vehicle for positive change if it hadn't been hijacked by autocrats and clerics corrupted by temporal power.
Honestly, modern conservatives should hate a modern Jesus since he was such a radical egalitarian, rich-critical, proto-anarchist, unpatriotic (wrt Rome), Jew who encouraged people to doubt that their nation was divinely chosen and whose extremist followers caused social and political upheaval.

Modern conservatives would also be very unhappy with Jesus for not staging a more peaceful protest concerning the actions of the money changers : (
And those Jesus-worshipping cannibals claim to love peace and non-violence... We need to get our children back to worshipping Jupiter like good Romans.

Religion is not inherently bad or evil. If you mix religion and government, well. It's like religion is ice cream and government is manure. Certain Christians think their religion will make government better. Adding ice cream to manure isn't going to fix the manure. But it'll definitely ruin your ice cream.


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Δυνατὰ δὲ οἱ προύχοντες πράσσουσι καὶ οἱ ἀσθενεῖς ξυγχωροῦσιν.
Those with power do what their power permits, and the weak can only acquiesce.

- Thucydides


The_Znof
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10 Jun 2021, 10:11 pm

thinkinginpictures wrote:


Which makes me wonder how/why Christianity has been hijacked by conservatives?

...


While the neo cons did not start the hijack, they were key players.

Quote:
At the same time in the United States, a group of disillusioned liberals, including Irving Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz, look to the political thinking of Leo Strauss after the perceived failure of President Johnson's "Great Society". They conclude that an emphasis on individual liberty was the undoing of Johnson's plans. They envisioned restructuring America by uniting the American people against a common evil, and set about creating a mythical enemy. These factions, the neoconservatives, came to power during the 1980s under the Reagan administration, with their allies Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. They alleged that the Soviet Union was not following the terms of a disarmament treaty between the two countries, and together with the outcomes of "Team B", they built a case using dubious evidence and methods to prove it to Ronald Reagan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares




HacKING
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11 Jun 2021, 7:25 pm

No political ideology should "hikack" a religion period. Religion and political factions is a perfect recipe for tyranny.



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13 Jun 2021, 1:28 am

Institutional Christianity, like anything else, automatically becomes conservative once it's been coopeted by the establishment.


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13 Jun 2021, 8:55 pm

When has christianity ever NOT been a conservative ideology? I don't mean "conservative" as a political buzzword that merely exists as the opposite to "liberal". I mean the formal definition that describes the ideology of conservatism in any context, whether religious political moral or otherwise.

Conservatism, in any form, typically has certain fundamental ideas. Follow the rules. Do as you're told. Don't question authority. Don't change things. Do the same thing, but more. These things are good. Those things are bad. Stick to what you know. Play it safe. Don't look behind the curtain. Don't question the magic. To conserve in application means to keep held back, to use or do little or less.

As opposed to the formal definition of being "liberal". Question things. Change things. Try new things. Try to find better things. What makes things "good" or "bad"? Explore what you don't know. Take risks. Peek behind the curtain. Learn how the magic trick works. To be liberal in application means not holding back, to use or do more.

Both ideologies have their uses. Neither is a catch-all solution. Neither is inherently "better" than the other on it's own. Both may be necessary for survival depending on circumstance. Cementing a person's identity as a "liberal" or a "conservative" completely ignores the fact that most people are a mix of both, and it varies depending on the issue. Looking at "liberalism" and "conservatism" in purely political terms ignores the fact that any behavior can be "liberal" or "conservative". Deciding how much of your income to allocate to what expenses can be "liberal" or "conservative".

Both ideologies are capable of offering solutions. But the nature of the solutions tend to be fundamentally different. The more the "new" idea differs from "the old way", the more "liberal" of an idea it is.

If your microwave breaks, and you get a replacement, you can be "conservative" with money and buy a used or cheap one, or you can be "liberal" with money and buy a brand new fancy one. When you're waxing a car, you can use a "conservative" amount of wax and effort, and get an ok result, or you can use a "liberal" amount of wax and effort, and get a much better result. Or, you can be "conservative" with effort and "liberal" with money and pay someone else to do it. Or "liberal" with effort and "conservative" with money, and do it yourself. Whatever method becomes prioritized becomes codified. Once that happens, any variation that sufficiently deviates from that norm is considered a "liberal" notion, by definition. And as a result, the traditional stance is the "conservative" stance, simply by relative comparison, in the same way that if one thing is "bigger" than another, the other must be "smaller" in relation.

Christianity is an ideology that largely follows the tenets of conservatism. As such, it is inherently an ideology that would appeal to conservative natures, as it is itself a conservative ideology. People who are conservative, and ideologies that are conservative, go together well? Who could have guessed?!

Buddhism OTOH is rather liberal in it's expectations. You can question it. It can change. It embraces openness. It embraces giving and exploring. You can deviate from it. There's isn't "one true right way" that must be adhered to. Being a more liberal ideology, it's going to inherently appeal to more liberal people. Who could have guessed?!

Neither have hijacked the other. That is merely the area of the venn diagram where people who are conservative, and religions that are conservative, overlap. And in america, the country was founded primarily by those who were so religiously conservative, they didn't like king james messing about with the bible for his own benefit. The reason we even got "separation of church and state" was so than no one branch of christianty could attain power, and make things work THEIR way. Freedom of religion originally meant you can be whatever kind of CHRISTIAN you want. That way a jehovas witness couldn't become mayor and make it illegal to be a protestant in their village.

Every player on the team serves a purpose. Some players mistakenly believe their position to be more important than others. Occupying a "special" position often leads one to overestimate their importance. Every attractive or wealthy or powerful person feels slighted the first time their looks money or power fail to entice bribe or coerce another. Christianity used to be attractive, wealthy, AND powerful. Things like science and education are threats, since they undermine those attributes, and the ability of christianity to attract buy or coerce followers. If a religion has no followers, it's a dead religion.

Those who hold power often fear losing it - especially when they fear it being used against them in the same manner they've used it against others.

There really is no such thing as a "neutral" view. There aren't many acts or actions that can't be reduced down to either a more liberal or conservative leaning. Replacing the ideologies with the terms "left" and "right" lends itself to the mental image of the idea of merely "being in the middle" - but realistically "liberal" and "conservative" are relative opposites like light and dark, fast and slow, big and small. "The Middle" can be wherever you want it to be, depending on what endpoints you set. The idea that all opposing ideologies have a middle ground of truth is how you get Thanos killing exactly half of everyone in the universe. "I think EVERYONE should live! I think EVERYONE should die! We'll compromise! *SNAP!*"

Quibbling over at what point something changes from "conservative" to "liberal" is like trying to decide at exactly what decibel level something goes from "quiet" to "loud". The preferred volume level is going to be different for each person. And when you want the volume changed, you say "make it louder" or "make it quieter". If someone said "hey, can you make the volume more middle?" you'd have NO idea what they meant

Inventing and occupying a "middle" and claiming it to be the truth is as easy as making a math problem where the answer is the number you want it to be, and anything outside the scope of that exact "problem" of their own creation "doesn't count".



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13 Jun 2021, 9:00 pm

Fnord wrote:
[color=black]Come to think of it, Jesus did propose some radical leftist ideas like supporting the poor and the widows, paying taxes, and placing one's faith in something other than human government.


Jesus would have been locked up by Joe Macarthy as a communist if he chose 1952 for his second coming.

For that matter better check political prisoners in US prisoners who have long flowing beards and a white robe :lol:



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13 Jun 2021, 9:05 pm

thinkinginpictures wrote:
"You may be aware that "big tech" has been aggressively censoring conservatives on Twitter, Facebook, Google, Instagram, YouTube and other social media platforms. This is tyrannical and suppressive towards Christians and conservatives."[/i]

In general I feel like if Conservatives has hijacked Christianity, making the Conservative literal Bible-fundamentalism the standard Christianity and everything isn't even Christian, it is just "blasphemy" and "liberal censorship"...


Liberal censorship? freedom of religion is a pillarstone of progressive politics.



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17 Jun 2021, 1:38 pm

uncommondenominator wrote:


Conservatism, in any form, typically has certain fundamental ideas. Follow the rules. Do as you're told. Don't question authority. Don't change things. Do the same thing, but more. These things are good. Those things are bad. Stick to what you know. Play it safe. Don't look behind the curtain. Don't question the magic. To conserve in application means to keep held back, to use or do little or less.


arise Peter! - kill and eat..

https://www.blueletterbible.org/kjv/1co ... nc_1068012



uncommondenominator
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17 Jun 2021, 2:13 pm

The_Znof wrote:
uncommondenominator wrote:


Conservatism, in any form, typically has certain fundamental ideas. Follow the rules. Do as you're told. Don't question authority. Don't change things. Do the same thing, but more. These things are good. Those things are bad. Stick to what you know. Play it safe. Don't look behind the curtain. Don't question the magic. To conserve in application means to keep held back, to use or do little or less.


arise Peter! - kill and eat..

https://www.blueletterbible.org/kjv/1co ... nc_1068012


Yes, the bible is a perfect example. "Here's the story, do not ever doubt it. Here are the rules, obey them or else."



The_Znof
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17 Jun 2021, 3:48 pm

can you read my Son? 8)

Image



uncommondenominator
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17 Jun 2021, 9:11 pm

The_Znof wrote:
can you read my Son? 8)

Image


I've read about as much of the bible as I have harry potter. I'm not into that particular brand of fantasy.

Can I read "my Son"? Probably, as long as it's in english. Is "my Son" part of the bible? How does it relate?

:wink:

I'm kidding of course. Bad grammar aside, I know what you meant, just as surely as I know there's no "right" answer - you're just being smug and slightly condescending, without having to explain yourself in any way. Far easier to just dump a nugget and walk away, and imply that people should know what it means.

Weird flex tho - asking someone else about their reading ability, while using grammar skills that significantly interfere with one's ability to read it.

Based on the text you felt was important enough to link to, but not important enough to actually quote yourself, which reads as follows:

"All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any."

I'm guessing you're using "All things are lawful unto me / all things are lawful for me" to somehow undercut the nature of conservatism and restriction, by implying that since the text reads "All things are lawful unto me" it means "I can do anything", and therefore there aren't all these "restrictions" - which it may very well mean, but THAT rule is only for God himself. Not the rest of us mortals. WE are supposed to do as He says, or else. Also, the things an imaginary characters says they can or can't do in a fantasy book has no correlation to reality.

If anything, at best, it's a fine example of "do as I say, not as I do".

If I am mistaken, how about posting more than a tiny little excerpt and a smarmy "gotcha", and use some big-boy words to actually explain yourself.

Conservatism is taught not to question. As such, they're not very good at handling being questioned. They're not used to the experience.



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17 Jun 2021, 11:25 pm

uncommondenominator wrote:
Conservatism is taught not to question. As such, they're not very good at handling being questioned. They're not used to the experience.


They don't want their beliefs scrutinised.



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18 Jun 2021, 1:23 am

cyberdad wrote:
uncommondenominator wrote:
Conservatism is taught not to question. As such, they're not very good at handling being questioned. They're not used to the experience.


They don't want their beliefs scrutinised.


If you ask them questions they've been forbidden to ask, they will respond with the same hostility towards inquisitiveness they received upon their asking. And since the only answer they've received was "do not question! this is just how it is!", the only answer they know how to give is "this is just the way it is!".

To dig deeper is to upset the delicate balance of their deeply held but shallowly understood beliefs. Their world comes toppling down as a result.



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18 Jun 2021, 1:48 am

uncommondenominator wrote:
cyberdad wrote:
uncommondenominator wrote:
Conservatism is taught not to question. As such, they're not very good at handling being questioned. They're not used to the experience.


They don't want their beliefs scrutinised.


If you ask them questions they've been forbidden to ask, they will respond with the same hostility towards inquisitiveness they received upon their asking. And since the only answer they've received was "do not question! this is just how it is!", the only answer they know how to give is "this is just the way it is!".

To dig deeper is to upset the delicate balance of their deeply held but shallowly understood beliefs. Their world comes toppling down as a result.


I also find with conservative NTs is that they cover up or straight out lie to conceal their true beliefs and personal preferences. Comedian Dave Chapelle jokes about this.



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18 Jun 2021, 1:50 am

cyberdad wrote:
uncommondenominator wrote:
cyberdad wrote:
uncommondenominator wrote:
Conservatism is taught not to question. As such, they're not very good at handling being questioned. They're not used to the experience.


They don't want their beliefs scrutinised.


If you ask them questions they've been forbidden to ask, they will respond with the same hostility towards inquisitiveness they received upon their asking. And since the only answer they've received was "do not question! this is just how it is!", the only answer they know how to give is "this is just the way it is!".

To dig deeper is to upset the delicate balance of their deeply held but shallowly understood beliefs. Their world comes toppling down as a result.


I also find with conservative NTs is that they cover up or straight out lie to conceal their true beliefs and personal preferences. Comedian Dave Chapelle jokes about this.


Especially regarding race.


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18 Jun 2021, 3:06 am

cyberdad wrote:
thinkinginpictures wrote:
"You may be aware that "big tech" has been aggressively censoring conservatives on Twitter, Facebook, Google, Instagram, YouTube and other social media platforms. This is tyrannical and suppressive towards Christians and conservatives."[/i]

In general I feel like if Conservatives has hijacked Christianity, making the Conservative literal Bible-fundamentalism the standard Christianity and everything isn't even Christian, it is just "blasphemy" and "liberal censorship"...


Liberal censorship? freedom of religion is a pillarstone of progressive politics.

Silly liberal! Don't you know that 'religious freedom' just exists so Christians can discriminate against whoever they want? Liberals have these weird ideas where religious freedom means that non-christians deserve the same dignity and rights as christians, and that using religion to justify discrimination is wrong bc anyone can just unconsciously twist their religious beliefs into whatever they have to be to rationalize their pre-existing desire to discriminate.

For example, the gubermint for the last half century has forced segregationist Christians to violate their beliefs by offering goods and services to people who aren't part of the holy American white race. Sadly these days they have to settle for discriminating against queers, bc advocating segregation for Christian reasons gets you even more cancelled than discriminating against queers, but even that sacred right to discriminate is slowly being ripped away from them. They'll have to console themselves by using Christianity to justify their hatred of trans ppl, until those sick liberals take that away from them too.


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Δυνατὰ δὲ οἱ προύχοντες πράσσουσι καὶ οἱ ἀσθενεῖς ξυγχωροῦσιν.
Those with power do what their power permits, and the weak can only acquiesce.

- Thucydides