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Richard Hanania's avatar

High fertility Christians all love Trump now, which makes me think we can win them over to paganism at least, if not atheism.

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William “David" Pleasance's avatar

Can you tell? I have a real beef with all these people placing their faith in their rationality. Your rationality will become your executioner...you need to put something else in charge, to keep your rationality under right authority, so that it does not lead you blindly to your own destruction. I speak from experience on this.

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Thomas L. Hutcheson's avatar

You don't have to win them over. They are already pagan, but more Druid than Lucretius.

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TGGP's avatar

I would bet large amounts you are wrong. Even as Christianity declines, actual paganism will be the domain of marginal weirdos.

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Richard Hanania's avatar

I’m thinking, or hoping, for Chad Jesus, not literal Paganism. That’s to a large extent the conservative movement now.

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Megatherion's avatar

"Chad Jesus" is just most of historical Christianity.

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The Futurist Right's avatar

But Chad Jesus, at least of the papist sort (see SCOTUS and weep), is arguably still anti-eugenics, anti-abortion of undesirables, and anti-euthanasia. I don't see this changing easily because, unlike yielding to Chad Trump, support for actual scientific progress is entirely outside the instinctual framework of Christian women.

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Oct 27, 2023
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David T's avatar

At the risk of sounding oblivious, please explain?

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Nate's avatar

The meek and merciful Jesus is a modern invention . Though Jesus did have these qualities, he also expressed fierceness at times;"I come not bearing peace but a sword" is a favorite. Jesus also justifies capital punishment in Luke 17: Temptations to Sin

And he said to his disciples, “Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin."

The poster above you may be incorrectly attributing the current revisionist approach to cuddly Jesus to the second Vatican Council, though. This council did cut out a lot of traditional concepts from Catholicism in order to reconcile with the modern secular world in the 60s. It may have been a factor in revisionist Jesus, but not the sole source of blame; Protestant evangelicals in the US are also at fault. I think the above poster is using "Chad Jesus" to refer to the more severe Christ outlined in the plain text of the New Testament that is sometimes overshadowed by the contemporary invention of "Jesus just wants to hug you!"

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Thomas L. Hutcheson's avatar

Don't forget the Capitalist Jesus, all those parables about Owners of vineyards collecting their rent. :)

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Spouting Thomas's avatar

There's a long-running debate within conservative Christianity about the causes of the feminization of the church. The High Middle Ages and scholasticism are given some blame. As are developments in the Victorian Era.

Aaron Renn offers a good discussion here:

https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/newsletter-3-the-history-of-the-church

Of course, besides the NT accounts that you note, Jesus, being God, sent the Flood, destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, commanded the destruction of the Amalekites, etc.

Jesus is a complex figure, and it's been aptly observed that all Christian heresies, from the very beginning, have shared a common tendency to simplify Jesus and erase characteristics that they find inconvenient for their ideas, instead of the orthodox effort to harmonize and embrace the complexity.

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Oct 29, 2023
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TGGP's avatar

Abstraction is not paganism.

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William “David" Pleasance's avatar

We’re trying to win you over to the truth.

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Harry Bergeron's avatar

Then stop doing it like an overbearing kindergarten teacher or HR lady eager to chastise everyone around her, it’s exactly this annoying moralizing that makes Christianity supremely unattractive to the young men you’re supposedly trying to win over, I don’t need yet other menopausal woman I’m not related to unsolicitedly yapping at me

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William “David" Pleasance's avatar

I am not trying to attract you. I am trying to demoralize the pride out of you. When you’re drafted (I hope not, but damn it sure seems we’re going this route), and killing, and seeing others killed, you’re gonna see all the intellectual bullshit for what it is. It you’re going to vomit it out in disgust. And then you’re going to remember all us crazy Christians who were prattling on about Jesus. And if it’s not war, it’ll be disease. And if not that, someone very close to you will deeply betray you. In that moment your ideas will die and the seeds I’ve planted will have room to grow.

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Harry Bergeron's avatar

If I’m going to get *my* pride demoralized out of me, it’s not going to from someone replying to people in a consistently grandiose, self-aggrandizing manner who just challenged someone to a head to head IQ test. As an adult. I like Christians and respect Christianity, you’re rambling to an imaginary person who’s not me. Like the Bible says, “don’t point out the sawdust in your brothers eye when you have a plank that’s too hypocritically narcissistic to lecture people on humility in the other”

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William “David" Pleasance's avatar

So you admit your pride?

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