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Iran & USA information wars

Brickjectivity

Turned to Stone. Now I stretch daily.
Staff member
Premium Member
When you say the churches failed, are you referring to...religion which tells oppressed people to turn the other cheek and/or submit to tyranny is only working to help facilitate tyranny and injustice.
Protestants eventually triumphed over slavery laws, but...they were easily confused. They were easily duped, and they bought the lies of the slavers. That isn't supposed to happen. There is no excuse. These are people who claim to be led by Jesus Christ, who believe that God has given them wisdom with which to lead the world out of ignorance. They did eventually turn against slavery and remade the world but not before getting involved with it.

I don't know if you're in a mood for a video but this professor goes over how the protestant Christians eventually decided slavery was wrong. They did eventually realize it and triumph over slavery, but they also were easily duped by arguments. To their credit the Christian protestants were and are the leaders against slave laws and have dragged the rest of the world along. The question is...why only now? Why did this take so long?

Yes, those were interesting times. To me, I find history fascinating, the way that events from long ago and far away can still affect life in the here and now.
Yes, like how the width of modern railroads results from the width of Roman chariot wheel ruts.

Churches have some influence, just as the media, academia, and corporate America have influence...If the church wanted to oppose this mentality, then I suppose they could, but then they'd be alienating the monied interests they need to stay afloat. It seems the church would rather feed the poor and be called saints, rather than ask why they are poor and be called communists.
Where does the buck stop? It stops not with ministry or church organizations or evangelists. It stops with all the individual Christians or others who claim to be God's. If they don't control their habits, their desires, think about how their purchases affect the world...then the world is lost. I'm not saying the Pope can make a difference or that if we got all the ministers on board they should be able to make a difference. I'm saying the church ought to have prevented things from getting to this point. It could have, and it did not. It could have, and it did not. Not the ministers, not the CEO's of the corporations, not the senators and congressmen, not the sailors in the US navy or the FBI or anybody else. Nobody else was in a position to fix this. If anybody could have anticipated the position we are in and prevented it, it was the religious people. They didn't.

I'm only vaguely familiar with what a Seldon Crisis is, but I'm talking about a more fundamental contradiction of values and principles. It's analogous to the crisis of climate change. We've grown used to certain ways of doing things which are/were destructive to the environment. Now, we're being told that we have to change those ways - and people are resisting. Some are saying that the changes we should make may not be feasible at this point. We can't just stop using cars, planes, or electronics. We can't just stop making things in factories. (And humans can't seem to stop breeding either, so the population and consumption keeps going up, up, up.) Is that what you'd call a "Seldon Crisis"?
I think the truth is that we can. We don't. We haven't.

We could switch to using public transportation. We could build using ferroconcrete with organic material in it, permanently and cheaply. We could each take an interest in what is going on in our city councils. We don't. This is a failure in religion, not in government. The government doesn't work on magical wishes. Its got to have oversight, people watching to make sure everything is done in order. They haven't been watching.

In other words, we're finding out now that everything we've been doing for the past 200-300 years has been wrong, and now we have to change everything from top to bottom if we want to survive.

Another example would be the fight over gun control. Humans invented guns, and governments eagerly demanded them in great numbers - so they could invade and conquer other lands. America has become very large, wealthy, and powerful due to guns, but now, some people are saying "No, we shouldn't have guns, since people shoot each other with them." But it's impractical. We can't just get rid of all the guns. Nor can we say that only governments should be allowed to have guns, especially if we consider it a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." In any case, people are going to have guns, since someone already invented them. You just can't put that genie back in the bottle. Would that be another Seldon Crisis?
Somebody invented chocolate milk. Credit where credit is due: there are some things that have gone very well. A lot has gone wrong I admit.

I can see your point. Many churchmen have been very staunch right-wingers and flag-wavers. Many are pro-capitalist. I can understand their opposition to the USSR because they saw them as atheist, although sometimes I think the churchmen are more concerned with the survival of their institution than they are about the principles the institution was built to uphold. This was also a problem with the Communist Party, as the party became more important to them than the actual principles they claimed to believe in.
My point is that churchmen are the ones who have to move the ball forward. Nobody else can. Will they? Other people matter, too; but I'm saying that there's something wrong in the religious department. There's a reason that we don't tax churches, but they're supposed to be doing something for society. They're supposed to keep it from going full on barbarian.

It should not have been possible, for example, that the US govt. should get us secretly involved in foreign political spats. That kind of thing is preventable.

Well, someone should have noticed the discrepancy when the Founders signed a document which proclaimed that "all men are created equal," yet founded a society which didn't practice that principle (among many others). It's as blatant as a church claiming to be Christian while openly practicing human sacrifice to appease the Devil. You'd think that somebody would have noticed something sooner.

And some people wonder why the West is so hated by many.
The West is a child, just now waking up. Not everybody understands that. Its new kind of creature.
 

Stevicus

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
Protestants eventually triumphed over slavery laws, but...they were easily confused. They were easily duped, and they bought the lies of the slavers. That isn't supposed to happen. There is no excuse. These are people who claim to be led by Jesus Christ, who believe that God has given them wisdom with which to lead the world out of ignorance. They did eventually turn against slavery and remade the world but not before getting involved with it.

I don't know if you're in a mood for a video but this professor goes over how the protestant Christians eventually decided slavery was wrong. They did eventually realize it and triumph over slavery, but they also were easily duped by arguments. To their credit the Christian protestants were and are the leaders against slave laws and have dragged the rest of the world along. The question is...why only now? Why did this take so long?

I've always given credit where credit is due in regards to the churches supporting Abolitionism - although it took a while before enough of them could mount a sufficient political force to challenge it. But there were also church people who supported slavery and also played a major role in perpetuating racism and segregation, so there were Christians on both sides of the issue. The KKK considered itself a Christian organization, and even to this day, the religious right continues to be suspect in many people's eyes. But I also recognize that Christians are a diverse group and that most do not really align with the religious right.

But political beliefs can oftentimes be as strong as (or even overshadow) religious beliefs. Or sometimes, the two can be intermeshed and intertwined, such as ideas like Manifest Destiny. The idea led to many people honestly believing that they were carrying out God's will.

That video is long, so I might look at it later. As to why it took so long for the country to end slavery, that's a long answer. One might also ask: Why did it take a bloody Civil War - a war in which more Americans died than in any other war we've fought? That war showed just how deeply entrenched both sides were over the issue, especially the pro-slavery side, which fought tooth and nail against an overwhelming force to try to preserve it.


Where does the buck stop? It stops not with ministry or church organizations or evangelists. It stops with all the individual Christians or others who claim to be God's. If they don't control their habits, their desires, think about how their purchases affect the world...then the world is lost. I'm not saying the Pope can make a difference or that if we got all the ministers on board they should be able to make a difference. I'm saying the church ought to have prevented things from getting to this point. It could have, and it did not. It could have, and it did not. Not the ministers, not the CEO's of the corporations, not the senators and congressmen, not the sailors in the US navy or the FBI or anybody else. Nobody else was in a position to fix this. If anybody could have anticipated the position we are in and prevented it, it was the religious people. They didn't.

Throughout our history, most Americans have been Christians. Americans vote, and they could have voted in better leaders. Many might look to their pastor or priest for advice, so they do have some influence over their flock. On the other hand, many of the clergy were also raised in America with an American-centric way of thinking, and many Americans still believe that America is a beacon of hope, a shining city on the hill - the bastion of freedom and democracy upon which the rest of the world depends. They firmly believe that, and even if one can point to times when America has done bad things, they see them as the exception rather than the rule.

I think the truth is that we can. We don't. We haven't.

We could switch to using public transportation. We could build using ferroconcrete with organic material in it, permanently and cheaply. We could each take an interest in what is going on in our city councils. We don't. This is a failure in religion, not in government. The government doesn't work on magical wishes. Its got to have oversight, people watching to make sure everything is done in order. They haven't been watching.

I think it could be due to a fair amount of indifference and apathy. That seems to be pretty common. All across the internet and social media, there are ordinary people with web pages dedicated to themselves and their own narcissism. People aren't watching because they're too busy admiring themselves in the mirror. That old sin of vanity, you know.

Somebody invented chocolate milk. Credit where credit is due: there are some things that have gone very well. A lot has gone wrong I admit.

Well, okay, I do like chocolate milk.

My point is that churchmen are the ones who have to move the ball forward. Nobody else can. Will they? Other people matter, too; but I'm saying that there's something wrong in the religious department. There's a reason that we don't tax churches, but they're supposed to be doing something for society. They're supposed to keep it from going full on barbarian.

It should not have been possible, for example, that the US govt. should get us secretly involved in foreign political spats. That kind of thing is preventable.

Yes, it is preventable, although for those who believed in the American crusade against the international communist conspiracy, they might say that they were doing the Lord's work. Just like the believers in Manifest Destiny.

The West is a child, just now waking up. Not everybody understands that. Its new kind of creature.

I suppose there's any number of ways one can look at it. In my opinion, "the West," as many people commonly understand it, is a direct descendant and product of the ancient Roman Empire. But we don't really think of ourselves that way, especially many here in America. We think that we're different, that we're exceptional and so forth.

Be that as it may, I don't think the West, or even America, can be considered a child - not anymore. A child can be more easily forgiven for wrongdoing, because of the assumption that a child doesn't know any better. But we knew better.

It's interesting to use a metaphor of a child, since it reminds me of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men with his famous "You can't handle the truth" dialogue. The central theme is that it's the liberals and other "do gooders," who are the ones being more childlike to the point of being dangerously naïve about America's enemies.

I've encountered this view quite often throughout my life. They would acknowledge that their religion preaches love, peace, compassion, charity, etc., but it sometimes comes off as just lip service as they then proceed to describe the enemy du jour as some kind of evil phantom or devil.

They think it's too naïve to think in terms of "love" and "peace" when it comes to some of the other leaders, governments, and political systems around the world. They fancy themselves as world experts in that they seem to know what other governments are planning and that only the U.S. has the capability of stopping them. I've even known some Christians who believe in Bible prophecy and appear to sincerely believe that the U.S. has some special role to play in God's plan. It's like they literally believe that the United States of America is God's gift to the world.
 
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