13
Aug
2020
BMS ep. 138: Why the Left Hates Christianity
Perhaps more provocative than you’re used to, coming from the friendly neighborhood economist.
Perhaps more provocative than you’re used to, coming from the friendly neighborhood economist.
The left is evil. And I mean that word – it is evil.
From abortion to euthanasia they promote death. Everything they do, whether it is murder, destruction of society (BLM, e.g.), theft, rape, sexual perversion including LGBTXYZ crap, etc., they are following the bidding of their father – a murderer from the beginning and the father of lies. While not all leftists even believe the devil exists, as you mentioned, they are doing his bidding. Read John 8 from verse 39 to the end of the chapter. That is why the left hates Christ – not Christianity, but Jesus Himself.
I’m not talking about the average democrat that has been duped by political slogans (and the republicans are no better), I’m talking about the people like Hillary Clinton. I could rattle off a bunch of names (lots in the news lately), but you get the idea – those that manipulate people to achieve domination over them and their ultimate destruction. Those that would manipulate others to doing their evil bidding as their father has done to them. Whether they are outright Satan worshipers or just believe what has been whispered into their ears, they are evil people and we shouldn’t be afraid to say it.
There seem to be more really committed muslims prepared to die for the cause these days. On this basis the left should hate muslims more.
You say that no Christian sect has it correct. Why is this? Why could not God have made it clearer? Many Christian sects believe contradictory things.
If Christianity were true, it would surely be more rather than less widely accepted? Why would God make himself so obscure that even those ernestly seeking his word cannot find him?
On the garden of eden, I don’t understand how Adam and Eve knew they were sinning before they ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. without this knowledge, how could they know? I am sure this will be an easy one forthe Christians as is an obvious question, but i have not seen the answer.
“father forgive them…” That is only in Luke. Why should the accounts differ? If Luke is right the others are wrong.
Lucifer is not necessarily the devil.
Postmodernism is a straw man because even your interlocutor Russel recognised that almost everyone thinks he is a nut for believing in it. Postmodernism is a way-out, hardly recognised philosophy. Equating the left to postmodernism is a straw man. If you meant to say why do postmodernists hate Christianity I suggest you change the title. Almost nobody on the left suggests that 2+2 does not equal 4. Ask Bernie.
Because your source of knowledge is a book it is unreliable. This is why scientists do not use the bible as a source. We saw it is unreliable in the conflicting accounts of the crucifiction.
Mind your own business. They were told they would go to hell for their perversions. You say that is not Christianity, although some may think it is. How do you know? Maybe they have it right. More to the point, how am I supposed to know? Should I listen to the Catholics? They have some pretty sophisticated justifications. Keshav has presentd a document here which he believes proves objectively that Hunduism is correct.
Carbon emissions as a anti-Christian message. You are really stretching it here. If one is causing harm to others by ones actions then surely the Christian message is that one should stop doing that action. You say you don’t feel bad about what you did 5 years ago because you have been forgiven, but crucially you are trying to live a better liffe now. You can view the environmentalist position in the same way. Forget what you have done but try to live a better life now.
The right wing evangelists you seem to disagree with are Christian. Maybe the left is just against them since they have significant political power..
In conclusion, I don’t think you have made the case that the left does hate christianity, maybe postmodernists do, but they are not the left, and I don’t think you have made the case that they hate Christianity particularly.
(I’ve only listened to a tiny bit of this episode at the beginning.)
“In conclusion, I don’t think you have made the case that the left does hate christianity …”
As a religion that promotes the nuclear family, private poperty, and individual rights, it smacks squarely against the socialist agenda of equality in everything for all.
(Which makes no logical sense when you try to flesh it out – which is why socialists only try to criticize free markets rather than tell you what socialism will generally look like and why.)
Here’s a helpful article:
Why Marxism Shifted from Economics to Culture
[www]https://mises.org/wire/why-marxism-shifted-economics-culture
“In his recent Reason magazine article, senior editor Brian Doherty assures readers that “cultural Marxism” is nothing but mere “paranoia” conjured up by the “conspiratorial right” to provide cover for their hate of “multiculturalism and gay rights and radical feminism.”
“He openly mocks the idea that the unmistakable uptick in identity politics these last few decades has anything to do with “sinister machinations of commies striving to enslave us.” …”
“… Doherty’s stance is especially puzzling, however, given the fact that socialist leaders have openly written about this strategy for decades. …”
“… Doherty is either ignorant or naïve to spurn those who recognize today’s identity politics as a tool in the modern socialist movement. Prominent socialist theorists like Laclau and Mouffe have openly divulged this exact strategy for decades. It’s not foolish conspiracy mongering or mere “clever rhetorical deck-stacking” to accurately identify the identity politics of ‘cultural Marxism’ as the preferred strategy of modern day socialists.”
—
“Postmodernism is a straw man because even your interlocutor Russel recognised that almost everyone thinks he is a nut for believing in it.”
Just wanted to mention two things, briefly about that (I did listen to that one).
The first is that he criticized Bob for invoking God as a source of knowledge and said you can’t have an argument based on that. But his post-modernism doesn’t require him to define his terms because “everybody gets to decide for themselves what things mean” (my words not his), and how do you have an argument about anything without defined terms.
The second is that that episode was not nearly as fun to listen to as the viciously contentious debate between Stephen Kinsella and Robert Wenzel over Intellectual Property. Heh.
So. Many. Ringtones. (By which I mean clips that can be used as ringtones.)
Again, I like both of those guys.
Hey guest, thanks for that mises.org article on cultural Marxism; I’m going to use it in something else I’m doing.
Nice.
You are welcome, sir.
As I was looking for something else, I realized where you’re going with this, and thank you for doing it.
It needs to be exposed that all this effort at trying to paint the principles of free markets as fundamentally opressive to the increasingly discovered victim groups is not because these groups are legitimate victims, but because painting it so serves the socialist agenda.
This other article I found might help, too, because it cites Engels’ reasons why thinks the nuclear family is so antithetical to the socialist agenda:
Why Marxist Organizations Like BLM Seek to Dismantle the “Western Nuclear Family”
[www]https://mises.org/wire/why-marxist-organizations-blm-seek-dismantle-western-nuclear-family
“This idea isn’t unique to BLM, of course. “Disrupting” the “nuclear family” is a commonly stated goal among Maxist organizations. …”
“… But where does this hostility toward the family originate? Partly, it comes from the theories of Marx and Engels themselves, and their views that an earlier, matriarchal version of the family rejected private property as an organizing principle of society. It was only later that this older tribal model of the family gave way to the modern “patriarchal” family, which promotes and sustains private property. …”
“… In reconstructing the origins of the family within a Marxian framework, Engels traces back to the “savage” primeval stage of humanity that, according to his research, revealed a condition in which “unrestricted sexual intercourse existed within a tribe, so that every woman belonged to every man, and vice versa.” …”
“… Because mothers were the only parents who could be determined with certainty, and the smaller gentes were arranged around the mother’s relatives, early family units were very maternal in nature and maternal law regarding rights and duties for childrearing and inheritance were the custom. …”
“… In the Marxian view, therefore, the modern nuclear family runs counter to the ancient “communistic” household Engels had earlier described. It is patriarchal and centered on private property.“
Christianity is the largest religion on Earth at the moment … ahead of Islam, Hinduism and “no religion”. Not sure what you were expecting.
Admittedly, those kind of worldwide statistics tend not to regard “leftism” as a religion, but that would confuse the situation.
All books are unreliable?!?
Therefore if I consider some historic fact (e.g. Napoleon was real) and I see that written in a book … it becomes unreliable … right? Because book.
“If Christianity were true, it would surely be more rather than less widely accepted?”
I was typing as I was listening, so that was not clear. Bob said he believes Christianity is true, but that we would expect that secular, not religious aspects of society it seems like things that are Christian are constantly under assault and that is exactly how the world would look if Christianity were true.
My thought was that if Christianity were true, then the more we discover about the world, the more the Bible would be supported. We would be discovering more and more that supports it because it is true, not seeming to assault it.
I don’t know what Bob has in mind when he says it appears under assault. Lots of things have been discovered that absolutely do not fit with the Bible as a true literal account, either historically or scientifically. Lots of societal changes have occurred, for the better in my view, that precludes the bible being a perfect moral guide.
“All books are unreliable?!?”
Indeed. All current textbooks will be superseded. History books will be revised with new findings. Even current books are not necessarily reliable – they need to cite sources and be backed up with other sources. Adherence to a single text in an unreliable way to ascertain truth.
“Therefore if I consider some historic fact (e.g. Napoleon was real) and I see that written in a book … it becomes unreliable … right? Because book.”
If I see it it only one book that cites no sources, that would be supporting evidence but I would not consider it reliable. If I see it in lots of books with sources given, then my confidence grows.
There is lots of historical evidence from multiple sources that Napoleon was real, so I accept that with high confidence. King Arthur, not so much, although he does feature in a lot of books.
If I see it it only one book that cites no sources, that would be supporting evidence but I would not consider it reliable. If I see it in lots of books with sources given, then my confidence grows.
How is your confidence a meter of reliability and not merely a measure of your bias? You could have any number of books with any number of faulty sources. This seems especially true where the distant past is concerned and it seems odd to think accuracy would increase with the passage of time.
For now if we think only of history rather than science. The more independent sources leads to greater confidence. Official records tend to be strong evidence. I am not a historian so i have to rely on these experts for my information. Where almost all historians agree and express a high confidence i am content to be confident myself. Did Washington exist? A am confident he did and that he was involved in the revolutionary war and was president. Did he chop down a che rry tree? I am not very confident about that. In the context of this discussion , did jesus exist? Probably. Did Moses exist? Probably not but i have not really looked into that.
On the passage of time a very general rule would be that older less certain. However it really depends on the records kept. We know more about tje Roman era than the so called dark ages in Europe because there are mor records.
“On the passage of time a very general rule would be that older less certain.”
How would you propose to pass on truth to the next generations in such a way that it does not become older, less certain truth?
I am fairly sure that the understanding of events today will be less certain in 200 years than the events that happen 190 years from now. We document things pretty well but it is probably always going to be the case that recent events will have more surviving records and eyewitness testimony than older events.
They will probably be more certain about King Trump IX than they are about the current president.
It is not necessarily a problem. It is inevitable that information gets lost, but we don’t need to know as much about old stuff. All the major things will probably be documented, but if I want to kow about living conditions in Manhattan in 2020 I can go and see for myself. I can find out who lives in Apartment 2b. In 200 years they will have to rely on whatever records have been kept, but it won’t matter so much what the living conditions in Manhattan in 2020 were or who lived in Apartment 2b.
Adressing the question, we are at risk of losing lots of stuff due to incompatible data storage formats and volatile storage. Paper records may survive much better than electronic ones. It is possible that newspaper archives become inaccessible. It is something we should be aware of.
“We document things pretty well but it is probably always going to be the case that recent events will have more surviving records and eyewitness testimony than older events.”
Ok, that’s fair.
I was under the impression that *because* of the age of the information, older stuff was less certain, in your view.
“They will probably be more certain about King Trump IX than they are about the current president.”
Well, those *are* left-wing policies that Trump is imposing, so … yeah.
He thinks printing money allows him to keep spending without consequences, which is exactly what Obama’s so-called “recovery” consisted of, it’s just way more printing.
Surely, you can see by now that the only reason the stock market is doing well is because of printed money? Well, that’s what happened under Obama, and Austrians were critical of Obama then, *and* when Trump did it, later.
I saw a clip of Bill Maher interviewing Steve Bannon, and just to show how clueless the Right is with regard to their Trump Cult, he pointed out that Trump bailed out farmers, something that Obama did, also.
Maher approvingly calls it socialism (which it is), and Bannon somehow still supports it – probably because Trump did it.
*Obviously* Trump does *far* more left-wing stuff than the Left is willing to admit.
And you can’t blame the absolute economic destruction that’s about to take place on free market ideology, because it was left-wing printing and regulations that caused it.
The only way to kick the can farther (contrary to Peter Sdhiff, I believe it’s possible), is to attempt to force all countries under a global one-currency fiat system so that no individual on earth can escape the theft of inflation – which is actually something the Left is planning.
(If you’re not aware, this was, basically, Keynes’ ultimate goal.)
And then, when that doesn’t work, the left will further imprison and slaughter people until it does work (which it logically can’t).
“*because* of the age of the information, older stuff was less certain, in your view.”
That was the point of the Romans vs dark ages comment. The dark ages are more recent but we know less about them because record keeping was relatively poor compared to the Roman period.
Re Trump, – my comment was of course a joke, but there is truth in humour. I too am surprised that the people who decried policies under Obama seem to support the same policies under Trump. That seems to be the cult of personality at work.
The Political Compass is a more useful way than just left/right. It uses left right and authoritarian/libertarian axes. I came out as left libertarian. I was surprised how libertarian I was. Trump is very much right authoritarian, based largely on his recent actions.
It is obviously a bit approximate, but the left/right scale is simply inadequate and this does offer an improvement.
Find out where you lie here, it takes about 5 minutes.
https://www.politicalcompass.org/test
(I did ultimately finish the test, just for fun.)
“Find out where you lie here, it takes about 5 minutes.”
I started to take the test, and I made it to page two before I had to stop, unfortunately.
As I suspected the test appears, to me, to suffer from the same vulnerability as the Meyers-Briggs test, in that a lot of the questions are so wide open to interpretation as to be useless (in my opinion).
For example, one of the statements reads:
“If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations.”
And since, to me, there is no difference between humanity and trans-national interests (depending on how even *that* is interpreted)), my written answer would be in the middle of agree/disagree.
Here’s another example, one to which I could have opposite answers for depending on how it’s interpreted:
“Controlling inflation is more important than controlling unemployment.”
Ignoring the fact that thePhillip’s Curve has been discredited, I could either
1) “Strongly Agree” that inflation needs to be kept in check and unemployment ignored because employment is a trade agreement between two people and no one is entitled to a job or to force someone into an employment relationship they don’t want to enter into.
or
2) “Strongly Disagree” that inflation concerns need to be managed at all because I believe that prices, when left alone, provide information about what goods are profitable to produce or not, and there’s nothing that needs to be managed about that.
Ok, I saw this other one that I want to comment on:
“The rich are too highly taxed.”
I strongly agree with that, but somehow I don’t expect to find a statement saying that the *poor* are too highly taxed, to which I would also strongly agree.
My score ended up being far on the right, but more toward the middle on the vertical line (but still below the center).
It would be interesting to learn how the designer of the test interpreted some of the statements, since I believe it would differ from my own assessment.
If I were to design the test using the same statements, I’m sure the same answers would result in different scores.
The two questions you highlighted were also ones I had some difficulty with.
“there is no difference between humanity and trans-national interests ”
The question did not say “interests” but “corporations”. But if you think there is no distinction between corporations and humanity, but you think that ultimately humanity should be the priority, I see no option but to agree, even if you thinkthat humanity is best served through corporations.
Ithink the questions are seeking a “first thought that comes into your head” type response.
I am not surprised you were to the right of me, but somewhat that I was more libertarian than you. I was quite low down on that one.
As you say, these things are imperfect tools, but I do think that a two dimensional representation is much better than the simple right/left divide.
“The question did not say “interests” but “corporations”.”
Right. I messed up, there.
I do mean that I see no distinction between humanity and trans-national corporations.
The reason is that, to the extent that they are not the beneficiaries of subsidies or that their would-be competitors are not legally prohibited from competing with them for market share, the fact that they are able to make a profit proves that their customers believe the corporation is providing them a good product.
The fact that their trans-national nature allows them to leverage a vastly larger pool of resources than their would-be competitors does not make their operation any less pro-humanity.
Also, I view the term “humanity” in this context to be too vague to be useful (like the word “society”), so I’m using the closest interpretation I can think of to assess the statement, which comes from the concept of Pareto efficiency.
You’ll no doubt be relieved to learn that, although I don’t like being around same-sex-oriented males, and I would consider adoption of children by these people to be unhealthy and destructive, and even abusive, I do not see it as any of the government’s business, and so I would support their right to adopt.
I did, at one time, think that abortion should be illegal because it’s murder, but Ron Paul’s great argument in support of a legal right to abortion is that, in order to enforce what would otherwise be a great prohibition consistent with liberty – protecting people from being murdered – the government would have to vastly increase it’s intrusion into our daily lives such that the cure would be worse than the ill.
That makes sense. I’m now pro-legal-right to abortion, even though I consider it to be murder, but only because I realize that governments can do far worse with power than women killing their own children.
They had Paul (in 2012) at the right and just below the Y axis. Is that where you were? Looking at their explanation page, they label the right extreme “libertarianism.” The extreme bottom of the Y axis is “anarchism”.
So anarchism is the opposite of fascism (on the social axis) while libertarianism is the opposite of communism (on the economic axis.)
Back to the original topic, which quadrant of the left hates Christianity? Is the autoritarian or libertarian left, or both? The example from the authoritarian left is Stalin. In the bottom left we have Chomsky, Thomas Paine and Bernie Sanders.
Harold wrote: “In conclusion, I don’t think you have made the case that the left does hate christianity…”
Harold, I explicitly said in (I believe) the first 3 minutes that I am *not* trying to prove that the Left hates Christianity, and that if you don’t already agree with me on that, then this episode isn’t for you. The point of the episode is to explain WHY the Left hates Christianity, taking it as a stipulated fact that they do.
” I explicitly said in (I believe) the first 3 minutes that I am *not* trying to prove that the Left hates Christianity, ”
Then perhaps a title other than “Why the left hates Christianity” would be appropriate?
The first minute or so does indeed say that this is not aimed at anyone who does not already agree that the left hates Christianity. That is a bit of a cop-out. You say that we are just on such different wavelenghts this is not aimed at you.
Fair enough. If this is only aimed at those that already agree with you I will withdraw. I had not realised this was just a begging the question exercise.
“Fair enough. If this is only aimed at those that already agree with you I will withdraw. I had not realised this was just [an in-house matter].”
There, I fixed it for you.
Harold in a completely different conversation:
“This is a made up example, and we “know” things about it because we have defined it that way. We “know” that you both prefer the baked bread state because we have defined it so.”
Clearly, you understand the concept of “for argument’s sake”.
Yes, he believes it’s true that the Left hates Christianity, but establishing that was not his concern, at the moment.
—
By the way, Arther was also in a movie about anthrax.
(Wonder no more.)
There is a difference. My hypothetical was stated as such. In this case, the situation is stated as fact in the real world, not a hypothetical.
Harold you are being really goofy here.
Let’s change the context. This Scientific American article is titled, “No one can explain why planes stay in the air.”
And would you believe it, Harold? They don’t spend 5 paragraphs convincing the reader that planes actually DO stay in the air. They take it for granted, and try to explain WHY.
Do you think it’s a poorly titled article? A whole question-begging exercise?
Planes can fly??? Anyway, they don’t stay in the air – sometimes they are on the ground. So yah boo sucks to Scientific American.
Do you think that the left hating Christianity is as widely accepted as the fact that planes fly?
I just didn’t think the left hates Christianity in particular and was expecting more of a justification. I thought it was a lot more debatable than that planes can fly.
Some think the Catholic Church has some pretty left policies. Wikipedia has an article on The Christian Left. who presumably don’t hate Christians.
But I am fine with not arguing that point if you want to take it as read. However, if you are taking as fact that the left does hate Christianity the title is fine.
If I titled an article “why planes can fly” I am begging the question that they can in fact fly. That would be a reasonable question to beg.
If I asked “why does the right hate poor people?” I think I would get some responses that the right does not hate poor people. The premise is sufficiently controversial to warrant some justification.
I mean, “the Left” is an abstract concept anyway, so really its “Why [people Bob Murphy abstractly identifies as “the Left”] hate Christianity”.
Or perhaps its “Why [Leftist ideology as conceptualized by Bob Murphy, even if some people whom Bob Murphy might abstractly identify as more or less Leftist don’t 100% agree with all of said Leftist ideology as conceptualized by Bob Murphy] hates Christianity.
Abstract concepts are confusing. “The Left” is too vague an abstract concept to assume that everyone we might abstractly identify as “The Left” can agree on any particular topic, nevertheless, it seems likely that at least some portion of people who might be abstractly identified as “the Left” do indeed hate Christianity, and depending on an individuals abstract conception of “the Left”, the overlap might be rather large, in that individual’s view.
Harold, do you gauge truth based on your perception of how widely a thing is accepted?
Speaking as someone who puts little weight to the reality of the Christian god I find it unlikely that god has made himself obscure rather than those of us who do not believe wouldn’t recognize him if he was staring us in the face, so to speak. Meaning that if we do not disregard his existence out of hand then what separates us is degree of evidence and it might be delusional in our part to expect to rub a magic lamp and have god manifest before us to do tricks
“Harold, do you gauge truth based on your perception of how widely a thing is accepted?”
Certainly not, but it is a way to judge how controversial something is. Something that is almost universally accepted my be wrong, but it will probably be accepted almost universally as not requiring justification. I can understand such a premise being offered without justification. Of course, it still does actually require justification, which needs evidence.
A true thing is likely to have evidence to support it, but not always.
” I find it unlikely that god has made himself obscure …” Yet this is what he seems to have done. Given that he is all powerful and all knowing it is surprising that most of the people who have ever lived have scarcely given Him consideration.
The argument from divine hiddenness is quite a powerful argument, similar to the argument from evil, but more convincing in my opinion. It is not conclusive – it is not a sound argument when expressed as a syllogism, because some of the premises can be disputed – we can think of reasons why God might hide, or just dismiss it as a question beyond our ability to know. However, it takes a lot of wriggling to avoid the conclusion,. which many, including myself, find unconvincing. I would not expect the argument to convince a believer, but it is part of the mix.