Comments on: Links 1/2014: Link, For You Know Not Whence You Came Nor Why

By: Scott Alexander

Scott Alexander — Tue, 03 Feb 2015 02:31:29 +0000

I think you misinterpreted me. See my more recent post on this for where I check the alternate hypothesis and find it to better explain the evidence. I would kind of like an apology.

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By: Nornagest

Nornagest — Fri, 30 Jan 2015 00:28:06 +0000

My understanding is that Judaism is likely to have been henotheistic at one time (when, or shortly before, its earliest surviving holy texts were written), but had been fully monotheistic for centuries by the time Christianity came around. There were also other early experiments like the Egyptian cult of Aten.

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By: jaimeastorga2000

jaimeastorga2000 — Thu, 29 Jan 2015 14:50:05 +0000

Please be more specific. In particular, how would you tell whether it’s veneration or worship?

If veneration is different from worship, I would expect there to be some difference in the practices of Catholics and polytheists, but they seem virtually identical to me. Both build little altars to their preferred saint/god using pictures or effigies and offer candles and incense and flowers and prayers and stuff in return for favor. Their language is also the same; Catholics always talk about saint so and so granting a miracle, never about saint so and so interceding before God to convince him to grant a miracle. You could say that this is just figure of speech, but I bet that if you went up to most normal Catholics and asked them about it they would not be aware of the official theological justification for how praying to saints causes miracles.

Again, I’m talking about the rank and file Catholics here. Likely most to all priests and nuns and their superiors are perfectly aware of how veneration is supposed to be different from worship. It’s like the germ theory of disease; a few highly intelligent and educated people understand the causal mechanisms for microbial pathogen transmissions and can make successful predictions and interventions based on it, but for most people washing their hands and boiling their water might as well be rituals warding off the evil spirits that cause illness.

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By: osberend

osberend — Sun, 25 Jan 2015 20:50:49 +0000

I’m not sure if I’d go as far as JE, but repression of ethnic minorities is pretty standard. There’s a reason that a lot of Alsatian and Breton nationalists collaborated with the Nazis during WWII, and just as good of a reason that Alsace attempted to secede from the German Empire as an independent state at the end of WWI.

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By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 25 Jan 2015 05:56:13 +0000

There are some groups of people that I think are vastly more relevant to this point than “nerds.” Specifically, those would be the people whom Social Security and Disability protect from poverty: old people, blind people, those with incurable or degenerative illnesses, etc..

The world is currently structured so that most of the working class in most countries fails to acquire sufficient assets to live indefinitely from capital income by the time they have to stop working.

In other words, _most_ people become “difficult” people _eventually_. It’s not some rare occurrence that only applies to freaks. Elderly poverty rates were huge before Social Security.

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By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 25 Jan 2015 05:37:08 +0000

“Since it’s the world killing you through resource deprivation, while all individual actors take no action that violates the moral code, then this is considered to have no guilty party and… is somehow rendered outside moral scope?”

Of course, it’s individual police who enforce the deprivation from resources on behalf of “the world.”

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By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 24 Jan 2015 20:14:44 +0000

Terribly late to the party here, sorry, but this is what I remember from my History of Christianity course:
Christianity succeeded initially because it was the first exclusive religion. Even Judaism at the time said “you shall place no gods before me” as in Jehovah is the chief God, not the only god. The pagan religions saw absolutely no problem in believing in bot Zeus and Aphrodite, even allowing for belief in the first place. The pagans were quite aware that the gods were anthropomorphic and would have heard “do you believe in Aphrodite?” As: “do you believe in human sexual attraction?” The likely response would have been “huh?”
Simply being exclusive gave Christianity an unfair advantage.

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By: Harry Johnston

Harry Johnston — Sat, 24 Jan 2015 00:06:36 +0000

OK, you’re using “capitalism” with a much narrower meaning than the one I’m familiar with. Perhaps what I would call “industrialization”?

(I don’t quite see the relevance to my original observation, but I don’t suppose it matters.)

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By: Nornagest

Nornagest — Fri, 23 Jan 2015 21:35:41 +0000

TACJ is probably referring to the enclosure of the commons, which has enjoyed something of a renaissance in certain circles in the last year or so.

Its actual historical context and relationship to capitalism is not straightforward.

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By: houseboatonstyx

houseboatonstyx — Fri, 23 Jan 2015 21:27:41 +0000

Capitalism was inflicted on the common people of Britain just as surely as communism was inflicted on the common people of Russia. In both cases people were forced from their homes and their lifestyles [….]

This is interesting. If you have time, could you give some more detail on what the system was in Britain previously?

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