There’s a great deal more history of Christian hate and violence than Christian love and healing, starting with suppression of the Gnostics and continuing through the centuries.
I think it's pretty mixed. but definitely not all good...and the bad parts (Inquisition, indigenous genocide, support for chattel slavery) are really bad!
Minor correction. Ivermectin is not a horse tranquilizer. It’s an anti-parasitic. It can be used to treat a range of nasties like river blindness, heartworm and head lice. It does nothing for Covid or cancer, but neither is it a tranquilizer.
Fucking Scott Adams can suck my nonexistent dick. Sometimes I hope there is a hell just for people like him. (I might be having a rough morning.) As you pointed out, he didn’t embrace faith, he doubled down on his already abhorrent belief.
So he was trying to convert to Catholicism? If so I think that he specifically chose Catholicism is significant. This is just a half baked theory but when you look at the conservative men who convert to Catholicism I think you see them craving legitimization of their dumb and awful worldview, something they don't seem to get out in the world even though they have amassed a ton of power. And there seem to be a lot of prominent conservatives in the US who fit the bill (JD Vance, Newt Gingrich, Ross Douthat).
And from the outside I think it's easy to see the appeal it would have to them. It's a patriarchal hierarchy where you're told your little group of men are 100% correct about all morality. Wanna feel superior to everyone else and draw on all the tradition, history, and institutional power of the church? Fuck yeah come on in! Wanna abuse women and children? Well we won't explicitly endorse it but on the down low we're all in.
But I do find it a bit odd. Don't get me wrong, I hate the catholic church. It's a literal child sa ring with a long history of other morally awful stuff. I don't think it should exist as an institution because of those things, or at the very least still enjoy any moral credibility. But while I was in the church and catholic school from K-12 (fucking high school was all boys, I don't know how I survived that nightmare) I don't remember much that diverted from simply the teachings of Jesus.
Maybe I was just young and wasn't picking up on stuff. But I don't recall any conservative screeds. And maybe things have changed in the 20 plus years I haven't been a part of it. But there can be a lot of good moral lessons the church imparts on people. Even though I've long been an atheist it's not unreasonable to think I picked on at least some of the stuff I was taught about Jesus and it influenced my lefty morality. So do these asshole conservatives just go to church and sit on twitter the whole time? Do they just ignore the good stuff and revel in all the bad stuff that you don't necessarily see while attending mass? Idk but I find the whole thing a little weird even though there's clear appeal for them.
"So he was trying to convert to Catholicism? If so I think that he specifically chose Catholicism is significant."
I'm reminded of a chapter in I, CLAUDIUS (and a scene in the television series) where Livia, who has schemed and killed her way to the top of the early Roman Empire all her life, finally stops insulting Claudius long enough to tell him she wants to be made a God, so she'll be forgiven all her horrible, horrible acts. Claudius, who's a historian, agrees to do what he can if and when he becomes Emperor, which he doubts will ever happen, if she'll tell him the straight story on a lot of deaths and uprisings.
That's why I think a lot of powerful conservatives (mostly but not all men) convert to Roman Catholicism later in life. They are, to quote my kid brother, "trying to buy their way into Heaven." And to be honest, Roman Catholicism has traditionally ENCOURAGED that belief among the powerful—it's one reason Martin Luther wrote his Ninety-Five Theses in the first place!
Milkshake Duck - Pixelated Boat on June 12, 2016 posted an opinion [per know your meme] about the internet’s love for “Milkshake Duck,” followed by the revelation “we regret to inform you * 5 seconds later * the duck is racist”.
Racist, or fill-in-the-blank.
Like Heinlein? I gobbled everything for decades. Wonderful science. But misogyny, racism, child sex. Never soaked in until I went back to read it much later.
Orson Scott Card I treated the same. 25 books on my shelf [3 of Ender's Game]. Bookmarked Hatrack River his website. Then the-fill-in-the-blank. Suddenly I had more shelf space.
Neil Gaiman inspired me. I followed him on tumblr and he was constant fun. I got Coraline. I subscribed to Prime to watch Good Omens 1 & 2. Then suddenly the stories about little girls in bathtubs flooded tumblr. More shelf space.
Then there's JK Rowling, she actively went to the Dark Side.
Dilbert was always "shared pain is lessened" [Spider Robinson], but Ratbert was always there to twist the knife.
Prior comment mentions Pascal's Wager. "Hey, God. I'm gonna claim to be a christian now, can I go to the Good Place?"
...A learning story I heard:
Lawyer spends his whole career busting lives and enjoys it.
Then one day he's feeling good and tosses a quarter to a beggar.
Dies. Pearly Gates, etc.
St Peter is like, dude, this is not looking good.
Lawyer pleads, but I gave a quarter to a beggar.
Big voice interrupts, give him his 2 bits back and tell him to go to hell.
"Milkshake Duck - Pixelated Boat on June 12, 2016 posted an opinion [per know your meme] about the internet’s love for “Milkshake Duck,” followed by the revelation “we regret to inform you * 5 seconds later * the duck is racist”."
I always kind of knew Heinlein was a bigot with some creepy views on sex, even though I've read him since I was a teenager. A middle-aged Black SF fan I knew when I was in my Thirties (so about thirty years ago) categorically refused to even entertain talking about Heinlein, cutting any conversation off with "He hates me because I'm Black, and I hate him because of of that."
Orson Scott Card and J.K. Rowling passed me by as a reader—I never got why either was so popular.
OTOH, Neil Gaiman? That one hurt, finding out he was a sadistic sexual predator—though I suppose A GAME OF YOU should have warned me about his views on transpersons.
Same goes with Harlan Ellison, though I'd known for decades that he was an asshole and a sexual predator—my former wife had a friend who's spent some time in Ellison Wonderland, and who was a basket case about the experience....
I will say this for Scott Adams, back when he was still funny and not a Nazi—he fairly accurately presented Jesus as a peaceful, slightly-hippie type who cared about nature and people (and was rejected by the kind of people who called themselves "Christians"!), and Satan as a slick mid-level corporate hipster.
There’s a great deal more history of Christian hate and violence than Christian love and healing, starting with suppression of the Gnostics and continuing through the centuries.
I think it's pretty mixed. but definitely not all good...and the bad parts (Inquisition, indigenous genocide, support for chattel slavery) are really bad!
Minor correction. Ivermectin is not a horse tranquilizer. It’s an anti-parasitic. It can be used to treat a range of nasties like river blindness, heartworm and head lice. It does nothing for Covid or cancer, but neither is it a tranquilizer.
ah, thank you!
He declared his real motivation: to "win." What a total (definitely christofascist) piece of shit.
Fucking Scott Adams can suck my nonexistent dick. Sometimes I hope there is a hell just for people like him. (I might be having a rough morning.) As you pointed out, he didn’t embrace faith, he doubled down on his already abhorrent belief.
So he was trying to convert to Catholicism? If so I think that he specifically chose Catholicism is significant. This is just a half baked theory but when you look at the conservative men who convert to Catholicism I think you see them craving legitimization of their dumb and awful worldview, something they don't seem to get out in the world even though they have amassed a ton of power. And there seem to be a lot of prominent conservatives in the US who fit the bill (JD Vance, Newt Gingrich, Ross Douthat).
And from the outside I think it's easy to see the appeal it would have to them. It's a patriarchal hierarchy where you're told your little group of men are 100% correct about all morality. Wanna feel superior to everyone else and draw on all the tradition, history, and institutional power of the church? Fuck yeah come on in! Wanna abuse women and children? Well we won't explicitly endorse it but on the down low we're all in.
But I do find it a bit odd. Don't get me wrong, I hate the catholic church. It's a literal child sa ring with a long history of other morally awful stuff. I don't think it should exist as an institution because of those things, or at the very least still enjoy any moral credibility. But while I was in the church and catholic school from K-12 (fucking high school was all boys, I don't know how I survived that nightmare) I don't remember much that diverted from simply the teachings of Jesus.
Maybe I was just young and wasn't picking up on stuff. But I don't recall any conservative screeds. And maybe things have changed in the 20 plus years I haven't been a part of it. But there can be a lot of good moral lessons the church imparts on people. Even though I've long been an atheist it's not unreasonable to think I picked on at least some of the stuff I was taught about Jesus and it influenced my lefty morality. So do these asshole conservatives just go to church and sit on twitter the whole time? Do they just ignore the good stuff and revel in all the bad stuff that you don't necessarily see while attending mass? Idk but I find the whole thing a little weird even though there's clear appeal for them.
not at all clear what denomination he was thinking of converting to; I don't think he said one way or the other.
"So he was trying to convert to Catholicism? If so I think that he specifically chose Catholicism is significant."
I'm reminded of a chapter in I, CLAUDIUS (and a scene in the television series) where Livia, who has schemed and killed her way to the top of the early Roman Empire all her life, finally stops insulting Claudius long enough to tell him she wants to be made a God, so she'll be forgiven all her horrible, horrible acts. Claudius, who's a historian, agrees to do what he can if and when he becomes Emperor, which he doubts will ever happen, if she'll tell him the straight story on a lot of deaths and uprisings.
That's why I think a lot of powerful conservatives (mostly but not all men) convert to Roman Catholicism later in life. They are, to quote my kid brother, "trying to buy their way into Heaven." And to be honest, Roman Catholicism has traditionally ENCOURAGED that belief among the powerful—it's one reason Martin Luther wrote his Ninety-Five Theses in the first place!
Milkshake Duck - Pixelated Boat on June 12, 2016 posted an opinion [per know your meme] about the internet’s love for “Milkshake Duck,” followed by the revelation “we regret to inform you * 5 seconds later * the duck is racist”.
Racist, or fill-in-the-blank.
Like Heinlein? I gobbled everything for decades. Wonderful science. But misogyny, racism, child sex. Never soaked in until I went back to read it much later.
Orson Scott Card I treated the same. 25 books on my shelf [3 of Ender's Game]. Bookmarked Hatrack River his website. Then the-fill-in-the-blank. Suddenly I had more shelf space.
Neil Gaiman inspired me. I followed him on tumblr and he was constant fun. I got Coraline. I subscribed to Prime to watch Good Omens 1 & 2. Then suddenly the stories about little girls in bathtubs flooded tumblr. More shelf space.
Then there's JK Rowling, she actively went to the Dark Side.
Dilbert was always "shared pain is lessened" [Spider Robinson], but Ratbert was always there to twist the knife.
Prior comment mentions Pascal's Wager. "Hey, God. I'm gonna claim to be a christian now, can I go to the Good Place?"
...A learning story I heard:
Lawyer spends his whole career busting lives and enjoys it.
Then one day he's feeling good and tosses a quarter to a beggar.
Dies. Pearly Gates, etc.
St Peter is like, dude, this is not looking good.
Lawyer pleads, but I gave a quarter to a beggar.
Big voice interrupts, give him his 2 bits back and tell him to go to hell.
"Milkshake Duck - Pixelated Boat on June 12, 2016 posted an opinion [per know your meme] about the internet’s love for “Milkshake Duck,” followed by the revelation “we regret to inform you * 5 seconds later * the duck is racist”."
I always kind of knew Heinlein was a bigot with some creepy views on sex, even though I've read him since I was a teenager. A middle-aged Black SF fan I knew when I was in my Thirties (so about thirty years ago) categorically refused to even entertain talking about Heinlein, cutting any conversation off with "He hates me because I'm Black, and I hate him because of of that."
Orson Scott Card and J.K. Rowling passed me by as a reader—I never got why either was so popular.
OTOH, Neil Gaiman? That one hurt, finding out he was a sadistic sexual predator—though I suppose A GAME OF YOU should have warned me about his views on transpersons.
Same goes with Harlan Ellison, though I'd known for decades that he was an asshole and a sexual predator—my former wife had a friend who's spent some time in Ellison Wonderland, and who was a basket case about the experience....
By chance, Peter Adamson’s latest “History of Philosophy without any Gaps” episode is on Pascal’s Wager: https://historyofphilosophy.net/pascals-wager
He did the most Christian thing ever. He doubled down on hate right up to the end.
And nothing of value was lost that day.
Jesus, Protect Me from Your Followers!
I will say this for Scott Adams, back when he was still funny and not a Nazi—he fairly accurately presented Jesus as a peaceful, slightly-hippie type who cared about nature and people (and was rejected by the kind of people who called themselves "Christians"!), and Satan as a slick mid-level corporate hipster.