Why I don't view any form of Christianity as worth following

 So, part of the reason I retreaded Christianity lately is because I also had an argument with a friend about of this. With that said, I'm not posting this to be petty or anything, but because I really do believe in my views and I do think they should be discussed as they are the kind of views that I would normally express on this blog.

As I see it, Noebel's big pitch to me about it really resonates. Either young earth creationism is true, the world is 6000 years old, adam and eve were real people who committed real sins, everything wrong with the world is because of sin, and as such, we need a redeemer to set things right, with that redeemer being Jesus, or the entire worldview falls flat on its face. I don't believe in compromise, in reinterpreting scripture, what have you. If you wanna do that, that's fine, but I personally don't think any version of the religion is worth following. It just seems philosophically inconsistent, and while some people can make it work, as I said, I see such christians as outliers from the trend. They dont fit in any category, they just exist. And that's fine. But it's not for me. 

A lot of this argument happened because he was discussing some book talking about leaving christianity and it pushed some weird argument about how just because christianity is morally flawed at times doesn't mean that people should just LEAVE it, after all, other moral systems are flawed to.

But...to me, this is just this weird christian apologetics thing. Like, as we can tell from the noebel book in dissecting it, their entire pitch comes from presuppositionalism. They come at the subject from a position of faith, and selectively interpret the rest of reality around their faith. And honestly? A lot of christians who approach these subjects come at the subject similarly, they have SOMETHING that drives them to be christian, it's often beyond reason, and then they interpret reality around that belief. And people struggle sometimes to see past it. And that's where apologists try to get you. If you're questioning, they'll try to do damage control to get you to leave entirely. perhaps not all of them will be as rigid as noebel where it's all or nothing. They might suggest you adopt another version of the religion that reinterprets things to meet their super special version of it or something.

I just view such rationalizations as an exercise in futility. if you're having an existential crisis, what you need to do is calmly and objectively EVALUATE EVERYTHING. I questioned EVERY ASPECT OF MY WORLDVIEW and I reached atheism at the time through an objective analysis of the entirety of the evidence. The fact is, people who leave christianity don't really have a moment where they actively leave. They have a period of questioning where eventually, they just realize they have no further reason to believe, and they accept it. Christians will try to avoid reaching this point at all costs. The entire religion is based around this idea that above all else, you BELIEVE. And if anything is unforgivable in the religion, it's apostasy. There are entire sects of religion that will disown you if you leave. In the past, you'd even be tortured and killed for it. in many christian sects, those who leave apparently have eternal hellfire waiting for them at the end of their life, and many ex-christians still suffer religious trauma from those views. 

But to me, I actually think that something happens to a person when they reach that point. It's a lot like that moment when Goku watches Krillin be killed by Frieza in DBZ. Or Gohan watching Cell stomp on android 16's head. You snap. You suddenly experience a radical transformation that changes you as a person. The veil is gone. You no longer have any blinders on. Again, to go back to dero's 1984 video, i find it amusing how he sees the bible as "the truth", while society puts everyone in VR headsets and tells them what to do. I dont deny society has many layers of indoctrination to it, but what really pushed ME to take the headset off was...leaving religion. That's why this blog is named what it is. Because I left the cave, and I'm not going back. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 13:11: " When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." For me, leaving religion was putting away such childish things. There's no value in it. There's no reason to hold onto harmful views that hold you back. Let go, and become an intellectual super saiyan.

 Once you conquer a worldview that tells you that if you dont believe it, you're going to hell, you'll be able to see through everything, if only you put in the effort. Not all ex-christians do. A lot of them get lazy and leave religion but somehow end up with a lifetime of societal indoctrination unchallenged. But my deconversion will always remain with me, even believing in some level of spirituality again. Because at that moment I snapped, the veil lifted, and I was finally able to see the world for what it truly is. 

As such, screw Christianity. Again, not trying to insult anyone who seriously believes in it. I find christians often confuse attacks against their belief system as attacks on their identity. This is not intended to do that. But yeah. it's not for me. I'm never going back to it. I literally don't see any value in holding Christian views, and while I'm not about to take away anyone's freedom to believe in that stuff as each person's journey is their own and people deserve the intellectual liberty to believe whatever they want to believe, but I see the belief system as authoritarian, restrictive, regressive, and harmful to humanity. Above all, it isn't even intellectually valid or true. Delving back into it recently for the recent blog posts makes me realize how much of it seems to be about selectively and dishonestly pushing evidence that supports such a perspective, while ignoring and downplaying that which doesn't. I have no use for it. And at this point, given I don't believe in the core narrative, I have zero reason to EVER go back.  

Understanding the Christian worldview

 So...in light of the current zeitgeist that is upon us, I feel that we need to "understand the times." For that, I'm going to take a page from "Understanding the times" by David E Noebel, a book that has been influential on me in the past, and actually explain the Christian worldview to you as he tells it. I feel this is important to do because we really need to understand this crap in the current political climate. We need to understand how crazy these Christian nationalists are, and how they think. And given I don't feel like the left truly understand what we've been dealing with until now, I figured I would explain it. 

I've discussed the book before, but long story short, it discusses six worldviews that it sees as in competition with each other. Well, really, its 5 worldviews it sees in competition with Christianity. Those being secular humanism (atheism), cosmic humanism (new age), marxism-leninism (leftism/socialism), postmodernism (basically "wokeism"), and islam (speaks for itself). The goal is this book was to inform christian teenagers of these other worldviews, in order to stop them from losing their way when they move on to college and the like, as a shocking number of young adults actually do lose their faith in Christianity.

I myself am part of those statistics at this point. Despite the book's guidance, I also shifted my worldview and my ideology as I got older, and now bat for the other team. While my worldview is not 100% consistent with secular humanism, it does make up the bulk of my positions, especially in the realm of politics. As such, I would kind of like to tilt the whole game on its head and dissect the fundamentalist Christian worldview for you guys, so you understand its BS, and how crazy it really is. 

David E Noebel splits worldviews up into ten parts: theology, philosophy, ethics, biology, psychology, sociology, law, politics, economics, and history. As such the Christian worldview is a cohesive way to see the world that starts from the big existential questions like how did we get here and does god really exist, to specific questions like how we view history, and what our law, politics, and economics should look like. As such, this stuff is REALLY relevant to the modern culture war, and really, it's the blueprint for a lot of Christian nationalist BS that the right is pushing these days. Without further ado, I'll briefly sum up all 10 aspects of the Christian worldview and give some thoughts on them.

Theology

Christian theology is rooted in theism. They derive their belief in God from two sources: natural revelation and special revelation. Natural revelation is what we can deduce from the universe about God. This is why fundie Christians lean hard into arguments from design. They believe that the universe speaks to the fact that it is created. However, they recognize that natural revelation is insufficient for finding the character of God, so for that, they lean into the Bible, as if God spoke its words to humans themselves. 

It should be noted that in the Christian worldview, they start with theology, rather than philosophy. Whereas a secular worldview might start with philosophy as the way to deduce things about the world, the Christian worldview sees God as preceding the world that he created, and that the proper starting point for understanding the universe is from God. I would argue that this leads to a lot of circular reasoning, because the Bible's claims don't mean much if it can't be verified in reality. But for them, God exists, because the Bible says that God exists, and the Bible is special revelation from God, and so on and so forth. If one does not accept this starting point, I'm sure the rest of it doesn't make much sense either (heck the fact that I later shifted my philosophy to trying to find god through evidence found in the universe is actually why I was willing and able to reject this entire worldview).

 When I really think about this, basically, the Christian worldview is based on presuppositionalism. They just assume that God exists and that the Bible is real, therefore God exists and the Bible is real and if you dont accept that, nanana, you can't really know anything.

 Philosophy

 So, the book basically claims that reason and faith can be reconciled. They'll argue that the Christian worldview does not reject reason and evidence, but that their view of the world is justified through the evidence. And yet, in my experience, any time science comes to a conclusion that they do not like, the Christian worldview will reject it. They'll reject evolution and talk about how the scientists behind it are frauds looking to prop up a naturalistic worldview. They'll reject climate change by making weird arguments from design about how that can't be true. And the thing is, they can talk all day and night about accepting science, and they often will, assuming it does not conflict with their faith. However, when it does conflict with their faith, they'll reject it. This is because their worldview is functionally based on presuppositionalism. If the evidence conflicts with their faith, they'll just reject and cast doubt on the evidence, claiming that can't be right, because that means their entire worldview is wrong. As an ex-believer...yeah....no crap. For me, I deconverted explicitly because I found that the evidence does NOT align with their worldview, and understanding the science properly, I kinda realized that either I had to reject the evidence in front of me in order to accept something based on faith, or I had to reject this faith based worldview that came more and more in question.

 Still, when the facts go into their favor, or they can twist them into their favor, they'll often use that against naturalists. For example, understanding the times explicitly mentioned the mind body problem as proof of a consciousness beyond the mind. From a secular perspective, the answer to that claim is that just because we don't understand how something works doesn't mean that the Christian perspective is correct, but Christians will just spin everything in their favor. Christians will argue not just in favor of dualism, but a specific version consistent with their philosophy, while rejecting the secular position that just because we dont understand something doesnt mean we should make assumptions, or even an alternative perspective. They just shoehorn their faith into literally everything to make it sound more convincing than it really is.

Ethics

 Christians will argue that some level of morality is found in nature, citing the same functionalist basis of morality that I would in that some rules seem universal to all cultures. However, why is this? Well, in the Christian worldview it's because of God. It can't be because of, say, evolution and survival instincts or anything like that, no. They just shoehorn their religion into everything like a bull through a china shop. And then they turn around and say that without some authority to set the standard of all morality, we're left with only subjectivism. So basically, the fact that humans agree on things has to come from God. They later go on to argue special revelation from the Bible in favor of specific moral codes. 

Ironically, despite accepting that humans sometimes come up with moral standards on their own, they also accept that humans are sinful and subject to "wickedness" as well. They point out that everyone will make up their own moral code, and that only God's moral code is the correct one. 

This leads to the sin dynamic where everyone's morality leads to us falling short of God's standards, and how because God's law is perfect, that we need to be judged for our sins redeemed by Jesus, who is the only person who never ever broke the code in their worldview (they did mention some character aspects of god in theology, like him being a judge and a redeemer all in one). Of course, it's kinda funny they say everyone else makes up their own moral codes that people dont break, but everyone break's God's...except...god. So why is God's better than anyone else's? Because he knows better? because he is the creator of the universe? Because might makes right? 

Meanwhile when I deconverted i kinda realized not even all Christians follows the same exact set of morals and people disagree widely in interpretations and implementations of the code. They deal with conflicting principles which they claim don't exist because if they admit their code has flaws they might have to admit it's not as perfect as they say it is. Like, take homosexuality. The Bible is clear that it's a sin. but then you got some christians who say it isn't because blah blah blah interpretation. And then you had me who going by the spirit of the law realized that the anti homosexuality culture of modern christianity was leading to hatred and bigotry that Jesus would not want.

At the end of the day, we're all back to just following our own morals whether we realize it or not. It's just that some of these guys think they speak for god and that the bible has special truth for....reasons. Again, the entire thing seems based on presuppositionalism and not evidence push comes to shove. 

Biology

 You know, it seems strange that in the Christian worldview biology comes AFTER ethics, given, you know, my own understanding of ethics actually goes back to biology for me, but again, God centered worldview so to them if your moral code is a bunch of absolutism that comes from God it doesn't matter, but yeah for them biology comes AFTER ethics. 

And here we get spicy Christian infighting. You see, Noebel is a creationist. His worldview stems from creationism. He literally accept's the Bible's account of creation, and that the universe is young earth creationist in origins. Theistic evolutionists, on the other hand, try to compromise and recognize evolution exists and that God guided it. However, Noebel does not seem to think that such a view is consistent with God's character (since it relies on the "survival of fittest", which seems cruel to him), and that it seems inefficient as it would require constant meddling with the process to get the result god wants.

Even more so, Noebel rejects evolution because it would mean that the Adam and Eve story in Genesis didn't happen, which weakens the Christian worldview significantly. I mean, there are massive cosmic downsides to accepting evolution from a Christian perspective. Without original sin, the entire Christian worldview doesn't make sense. It means that we didn't sin originally, that the world didnt start out perfect and become flawed through the corruption of sin later on, and that maybe we dont need Jesus and redemption. Without genesis, the entire Christian worldview collapses like a house of cards, because that one card is load bearing for the entire philosophy.

Instead, fundamentalist Christians would rather cast doubt on evolution itself, poking holes in it, questioning the motivation and character of those who pushed such theories in the first place, and acting like they're frauds. I remember learning about how the so called cave men who were bridges between apes and humans were like frauds from scientists who wanted to make a name for themselves.

They also split evolution into "microevolution and "macroevolution", claiming that yes, microevolution, ie, the mutations that we can see happen, but that doesnt mean we can just go from one species to another over time. In reality, microevolution and macroevolution are the same thing, just on different time scales, but again, fundamentalist Christians just reject the time scales altogether.

 Beyond that, again, Christians just end up poking holes in evolution by making claims of "blind watchmakers" and talking of "irreducible complexity", as if evolution cant explain certain mechanisms in nature such as how eyes developed, or flagellums in some microscopic species. 

All in all, I could go on about all the arguments they use, but they seem to conform to a pattern. They'll ignore any evidence that challenges their worldview, while pushing evidence that appears to support it, and casting doubt on the entire thing because basically it doesn't fit their preconceptions for how the universe works, because if it turns out evolution is real, then the Christian worldview probably is false. 

For me, this is like a "no crap" moment of "yeah, christianity is false", but these guys are literally presuppositionalists who appear to just deny reality whenever it conflicts with their worldview, so they'll just continue to be skeptical of evolution while promoting their perspective. 

For all the flaws they point out in everyone else's views, they tend to have this entire thing be built like a house of cards on a bunch of assumptions that rely on faith. 

 Psychology

 Hoo boy, if you thought this was bad so far, it gets even worse here.

Here, they start talking about mind body dualism again, which isn't that bad in and of itself, but the they start going into human nature, and how humans are naturally alienated from God because of sin, and goes on to say that humans feel guilt for this sin.

In doing so, they seem to fundamentally reject the concept of mental illness. They see psychologists as trying to overly treat people for mental conditions when in reality all they need is good old Christianity. They need to be reunited with God and form a relationship with them, and that will solve the guilt that they feel, which will resolve their mental problems. I wish I was making this up, but this seems to be the gist of their worldview. 

 They also go on to discuss "the problem of suffering" and how reducing suffering isn't really a goal for human, because suffering is used by God to bring us to him and to guide us in our lives. As such, we should bear suffering with a smile on our face and embrace it. 

 They then go on to discuss how people are happier as Christians and how religion allows them to be happy even when suffering exists, and that religion helps them bear suffering. While I don't deny this myself, I also kind of see it from more of an "opium of the masses" thing where instead of, you know, fixing the problem, we just accept that the world sucks and passively refuse to do anything to improve it.

Really, this whole section makes me really realize how F-ed up this entire worldview is.

Beyond that, they also take a jab at sociology, rejecting the concept by suggesting that people are responsible for their own decisions and situations, and denying the idea that society determines anything, and consider blaming the system a "cop out." This is because, as we get into the next section, if we admit that society might be at fault for things, that denies the doctrine of free will, which removes responsibility from people for their sins. This also causes the Christian worldview to fall apart, as free will is paramount to the worldview to function.

Didn't I tell you that basically they'll just selectively deny anything that conflicts with their presupposed worldview? Yeah. And this is why it seems so hard for Christians and conservatives to be willing to accept the social sciences as valid. 

Sociology

 I kinda got ahead of myself here, but once again, they seem to emphasize personal responsibility and free will over society determining anything, because once again, conceding ground here throws their entire core worldview going back to the Bible into question. Still, they're not extremists and focus on so called "Christian pluralism", which rejects both an extreme individualistic and extreme collectivistic view of the world, and that "both individual and societal groups are accountable to God." This later becomes the groundwork for why all of society must abide by Christian ethics and is functionally where Christian nationalism comes from. 

Beyond that, they seem more focused on focusing on "biblically prescribed institutions" that make up society like "marriage and the family", church, the state, and labor. Yes, work is biblically prescribed as well. As we'll be able to see later, and as I have never shut up about since leaving Christianity, work is quite central to the Christian's worldview. 

I mean, between this and psychology, we're starting to see the direction that this is going where it's going to turn into Christian nationalism. We got ethics that come from God and are absolute, we got the idea that society is responsible to God, and we're starting to see these institutions that have religious origin falling into place.

With that said, things are going to get much clearer since the next few topics are, functionally, political.

 Law

 So this is where Christian nationalism really dials itself up to a ten. It basically says that human made sources of law are doomed to fail and that we are all subject to God's laws. They point out two versions of law, natural law and biblical law. Natural law are god's laws that we can deduce from the world around us. While I do acknowledge that there are some universal standards that we humans all end up falling into out of structural functionalism, I think it's a lot more subjective than Christians think it is. In the christian worldview, most humans know of natural law, but they choose to disobey because they are sinful and in rebellion against god. This is how they thread the needle between natural law existing and humans constantly doing bad things.

Beyond that though is biblical law and that's more special revelation from God. They point out that governments should "encourage people to obey divine law." They also take a jab at how those darned judicial activists "make law themselves" with their 1960s+ era rulings that legalize things like abortion and gay marriage. Yeah, so basically pushing judicial conservatism there...

Beyond that they talk of duties and rights, and how God gave us certain rights that come from the Bible, although then briefly discusses the founding fathers a little bit. In terms of duties, we have a duty to "live for god." Beyond that, they give a warning about how "god's justice cannot sleep forever" and that God might eventually punish the US for transgressions against his law.

Again, this is where we really get into the basis of christian nationalism. In the christian worldview, all legitimate law comes from God, human made law is doomed to fail, it's up to society to follow God's laws, and if we don't, eventually we will face consequences for this. You get a lot of the old testamentish stuff that happened with israel here, you know, if society obeys god, they will be rewarded, but if not, they'll be punished. 

 Still, they do acknowledge at the end that not all christian morals can explicitly be enforced in the law, and that we should only ensure that "order is maintained and human rights are protected." So they do end up going in a small government conservative direction toward the end there. You do realize this christian nationalist perspective is intertwined with the republican party and has been so since the 1980s or so, right?

 Politics

"The Christian worldview sees government as an institution established by God", is how the chapter starts. And it sums up the view. God put authority into place all of us, and lawmakers are to be consistent with his laws. They have a strong law and order orientation; both here and in the law section there's heavy emphasis on earthly authorities protecting "innocent" people from "the lawless" and promoting "justice" as they see it.

A strong natural rights orientation should be noted here, with the book explicitly supporting natural rights theory, and arguing that those rights come from God directly. They advocate for limited government, believing that power is a corrupting influence and is best spread out across the institutions in society (quick, someone inform donald trump, who is now to the point of floating being a monarch). They also argue that government primarily exists in order to protect peoples' natural rights.

They also explicitly endorse a christian nationalist perspective for the US, quoting a bunch of founding fathers and claiming that they got their inspiration from Christianity. An actual secular political science course will actually refute much of this, but once again, Christians selectively interpret things in their favor when they can while denying reality when it conflicts with their presuppositions.

Beyond that, they seem to condemn other worldviews, claiming that "human governments almost wind up overstepping their god-ordained role.", and that they tend to abuse their power. They also caution against "utopianism" from worldviews like humanism and marxism-leninism, in which in trying to make the world a better place, humans end up making it hell on earth instead. Only God should have power, and America should functionally have limited government....unless enforcing God's law of course.

Which is where we get a lot of the small government mentality within the fundamentalist Christian perspective and its marriage with the modern republican party. Of course, this book was written 20-30 years ago depending on which edition you read. Obviously, this part needs to be revised to justify the trump cult, although I do have some thoughts on that myself that I may express in a future post.

Also, if God's law conflicts with human law, Christians are expected to side with God over humans. Once again, I wonder how this works with fricking Donald Trump trying to seize power for himself as if he were some sort of king. 

Economics

Here, they explicitly argue that the Bible supports capitalism in the modern world because it supports property rights and encourages work ethic. While they admit that Christianity is split between capitalism and socialism, and we see some Christian infighting on behalf of the author in advocating for the capitalist point of view, they do acknowledge that there are a lot of socialist christians. However, much like with the christians who support "theistic evolution", they seem to think the socialist christians are quite frankly wrong and misguided.

The thing is, just like with politics, they fear large government and economic centralization, fearing that humans will abuse their power. While I can't disagree with them, hell, even I advocate for some form of capitalism even after deconverting, even knowing extensively of its laws, I can't really be in favor of free market economics.

They seem to admit that capitalism is imperfect, and that no economic system truly delivers justice, but they still let their fear of socialism going wrong push them toward capitalism. Again, I don't fully disagree with this analysis myself. 

However, what I will disagree with is their fetishization of property. Again, these guys see property as a natural right, and see the commandment against theft as being an explicit endorsement of a property system. Due to their small government approach, they believe in mere stewardship of legitimate property, supported by a "duty to work." Whereas my own moral system will view these institutions for that which they bring to serve humanity, yeah, again, we see strong lockean/protestant work ethic vibes here. They see an inherent moral rightness in the idea that hard workers be rewarded, while those who are lazy shall suffer. After all, the Bible demands it in their view. 

Beyond that a lot of their arguments are framed from relatively structuralist perspectives. They dont embrace a hardcore MORAL stance on capitalism outside of the work ethic it seems, as they, again, try to acknowledge that a large contingent of christians fundamentally disagree on this one and prioritize their ethics differently. 

They also argue a lot of "rich people in capitalism create wealth" style arguments, as well as deflect from the idea that poverty comes from economic exploitation by pointing out that sometimes it comes from hardship too. I mean...WHAT?! 

Either way, they seem to really be all die hard on the whole "we need work to create wealth" mentality and seem to advocate a point of view that is very much in line with the modern republican party. They seem to think that if we did not abide by these principles, that we would risk scarcity and not having enough to go around. 

They even start going into victim blaming in which they go on about poverty being a worldview problem and how a lot of poor people breed out of wedlock and that that is their source of poverty. While I don't disagree, to some extent that only happens because they force their stupid work happy worldview on us without caring about what it does for people. The system can't fail, it can only be failed and if sin is involved the poor deserve their fate I guess. 

Toward the end of they talk about how capitalism leads to freedom, while socialism puts power in the hands of the government instead. Again, I dont fully disagree with this, but I do think they oversimplify.

Which is where I'll come down on this one. While there is a lot of wisdom in this chapter that even as a humanist (or human centered capitalist) i partially agree with, there's also a great deal I don't agree with. I mean, at the end of the day, we can see how we get this system in which poverty happens because of capitalism and then the poor are blames for being too lazy and reproducing irresponsibly. And again, when sin is involved, they seem okay with it. You know, reap what you sow, what have you.

Meanwhile I dont put much moral judgment into peoples' behavior in my worldview. I tend to be a lot more critical of work and property, even if I would likely partially agree with them on functionalist grounds. Still it should be noted that using their definitions, my "humanistic capitalism" is a whole lot more socialistic than their laissez faire system is, and I do think that my economic system may be attractive to some Christians. Hell, I recently saw the pope calling for UBI AGAIN so yeah, maybe I can work with some christians after all here, even if i hate how elements of this christian worldview keep us all slaves to work and jobs because they see it as some BS divine duty to god and the justification of the property rights system. No, that stuff is a human creation, it doesnt come from God. 

Heck, I do find that whenever I agree with christians like in the realm of natural law, or natural rights, it's always from a functionalist perspective. I reject their morals, but I occasionally agree with them as far as the natural side of morality and institutions go. 

History

 This is a very weird section to have now. If I were to present my worldview in a similar 10 second way, history would be discussed much earlier, probably around discussing biology and ethics and before we start getting into the nitty gritty of social sciences. This is because for me, history is important in informing my worldview. It's important to understand how the world really works before we can start getting into the nitty gritty the details for how we should structure institutions and what the problems are. Like, in my own project, in the current draft I have, I basically discuss history immediately after discussing the rest of my worldview. I do this to set up a narrative for the greater arc of history behind capitalism, which I then use to define its problems and discuss attempted solutions at fixing it.

As such, seeing this at the end of the book is weird. Either way, maybe it is a fitting ending because it ties the whole worldview together for christians. In their words: "Either Christ is a historical figure and the Bible is a historical document that describes God's communications with humanity and records events in the life of Christ or the Christian faith is bankrupt." I mean, that's really what it comes down to. Either the Bible is actually true, or the Christian faith is false. We already know my own stance on this. That's why I left. Because I recognize it as being as bankrupt as it is. The Christian worldview is false, the history is false, the cosmology is false. 

Here, they argue that most critics of the Bible rely on flawed or outdated philosophical assumptions that aren't aligned with reality, and they basically claim the gospels were written by eyewitnesses. This is false btw. They were written 30-70 years later after a long game of telephone. They argue about the nitty gritty of how it was written and copied, trying to refute the idea that errors were made in copying and all. I mean, again, I took a Bible class in college, I understand how it all fits together, we actually have an idea of how the thing evolved and all fit together. I see nothing to view it as legitimately the word of god. After leaving those bible classes, my faith was struck a mortal blow as I basically started interpreting the bible less literally and with more loose and liberal interpretations. This is because a literal interpretation of the thing goes against reality. But again, they're trying to die on this hill of biblical literalism, while setting up the ultimatum that it's either their way or it's all BS...and here I am accepting it as all BS.

They start citing random references in roman and jewish records that jesus was a real person, but these references are also from decades later and even if the person was real, it doesnt mean the stories about him were true. 

I could go on, but I wanna focus on why they're going into this. It's because of this. Their entire perspective relies on "creation, fall, and redemption." Basically, the Bible was created in a young earth creationist sense, humans had fallen into sin, and need to be redeemed, with Jesus Christ being their human sacrifice to make it so, being the only human who lived well enough to be sinless in their view, because he was also the son of god, and god himself, because trinity. Again, this really is their entire perspective. This entire book is them distorting reality to push this idea, and ultimately, as I got more educated and started asking more questions, I started pushing back and recognizing that they were right, either the biblical worldview is true or it's all BS, and I accept it as all BS.

Conclusion

 And with that, we see what the Christian worldview is based on. It starts out as a presupposition that God is real, created the universe, and that the Bible is a reliable document, and then it distorts reality around that. It will claim to be reasonable and cite evidence when it fits its perspective, while casting doubt on it or rejecting it when it conflicts with their views.

 This would almost be laughable if it wasn't so scary. This worldview, or at least variations thereof, influence the majority of the American population. 37% of people, last I looked, are young earth creationists, which, given the modern age of scientific literacy and the overwhelming support of evolution, is indicative of this worldview. Because let's face it, no one in modern society should question evolution unless they're fronting a fundamentalist christian agenda. It's not that ideas are above dispute on a principled level, but they are on a practical one when the evidence is so overwhelming.

But it doesnt stop there. These Christians deny psychology and mental illness when it goes against their perspective. We can see this most clearly with LGBT+ issues where they just reject naturalistic explanations for homosexuality and gender dysphoria and just claim it's some major sin issue. Still, it does influence other mental illness too, and it actually plays into a guilt complex that actually does screw people up mentally itself. There's a reason I have trauma from this worldview, and I also know christians who suffer severe mental illness and its frustrating to watch them flounder around and not accept that their guilt based worldview is causing them severe mental harm and anguish. I mean, religion doesnt always solve mental illnesses, despite what this book says, sometimes it contributes to them. 

In sociology, they similarly deny sociological impacts that lead to the world being the way it is. Because their emphasis on the sin, guilt, and redemption dynamic is so acute, they will just flat out deny and downplay sociological effects that influence the world being as it is. They think that blaming the system is a cop out and that people are responsible for their own reality, only allowing for society to be judged in accordance with its conformity to gods laws.

We also see this at work in economics as, at least the author goes in a hardcore conservative direction supporting property rights and work ethic. They believe property is a right from god justified by work, and that there is cosmic morality to the principle that those who work are rewarded and those who dont are punished. This idea is very much relevant to the world today and does come from Christianity. Moreover, to go back to sociology, they'll flat out say the reason many people are poor is because they are lazy and irresponsibly reproduce outside of marriage. Once again, blaming people for their conditions if it goes against their super special moral laws.

beyond that, they really do have an authoritarian concept of morality and laws. They reject individual morality as mere opinion while putting god's law above everyone else's as the ultimate arbiter of morality itself. Even more so, they view societies as obligated to conform with god's law, threatening ruin and punishment toward anyone who denies the rightness of such laws. They dont trust human nature, they believe government is to be limited, and that sometimes the law shouldnt even legislate morality, although in a lot of ways they seem fine with it, especially with sexual sins against their religion. Despite claiming to be for small government, however, this seems mostly a product of the times, as in the years since the book was written, the republican party has become more authoritarian, more nationalist, and at this point, openly in favor of just making trump a king or dictator. 

It is possible that this is because christian nationalism isn't the entire right wing worldview. Just as this book will note that most competing worldviews make up a multi headed hydra of "the left", with secular humanism, cosmic humanism, marxist leninism, and postmodernism being various flavors of left wing political thoughts, it's possible that the right is the same way. Christianity might be the analogue to say secular humanism. But then you might have various flavors of hardcore capitalist taught opposing marxism-leninism. You might have white supremacy, nazism, and nationalism being the counter to postmodernism. You have a lot of weird dark enlightenment alt right stuff that seems to be the grease that melds these worldviews into one, with it having christian nationalist, fascist, monarchist, and anarcho capitalist ideas all melding into one. 

Or maybe authoritarianism always was in the christian worldview and that the worldview as it is written is just a product of the conservative movement at the time and no longer relevant as it mutates. After all, if God is the ultimate authority, and puts all authorities in place, perhaps we can just go back to divine rights of kings. You know, the christian worldview used to justify that BS at one time, and perhaps it will so again. It's a mutation. A "microevolution" if you will. 

Either way. I did want to write this, because I do want to remind people of how crazy christian nationalists are. And they are nuts, and dangerous, and highly relevant to the times. They are, at the very least, one head of a multi headed conservative hydra that makes up the current trump administration and MAGA, and are possibly one of the most influential...influences (it's 2 AM, im not at my most eloquent) in the republican party today.

Either way, this is what our enemy is, and this is what we need to push back against in the country as we know it. This entire perspective, again, is at minimum one head of a multi headed hydra, if it doesn't make up the bulk of the hydra itself. I just thought people should know, to realize that there is no negotiating with these guys, no compromises. They want a world in which we're all subject to god's law. And they wanna legislate it into reality, while claiming that's just how reality works and how we're wrong and the delusional ones. Yeah. 

My honest thoughts on Christianity these days

 So...with all of the talk of Dero Goi, and the fundamentalist christian worldview being one head of the project 2025 fascist hydra, I did want to discuss Christianity a bit. I also want to discuss this because, well, I had an argument with someone recently in which I bashed Christianity and the guy took offense to it because he was a christian, and he thought I was lying or dishonest and just being mean or something. No, I wasn't. 

Honestly? I have a strong, visceral, dislike of the religion. I just do. I am an ex christian. I have religious trauma from my days as a Christian. And in the modern political context, I think christianity is much of what's wrong with society. I admit, it's more complex than just christianity. There are other worldviews and ideologies in these, but Christianity is what justifies and drives this evil conservative ideology for the masses. MAGA is driven in large part by religious fundamentalist Christians. The entire worldview is driving a lot of ignorance in our society. It leads to climate change denial under the logic that "god would never make a world that we could destroy" (literal quote/paraphrase from rush limbaugh). It leads to culture wars where the right wants to flood our educational system with religion. The right wants to undo the entire social revolution from the 1960s onward, in large part...because of religion. Because those "secular, liberal activist" judges on SCOTUS "took god out of schools." The current conservative, activist supreme court is a muti generational goal of the republican party. They want to undo abortion, and gay marriage, and separation of church and state. They dont want us to have nice things and freedoms. They want us to live according to their laws and to spend all of our days serving their dictator of a god. 

In economics. Christianity intersects specifically with economics. Much of the beliefs behind modern capitalism are repackaged christianity. We have the idea that humans are lazy and evil and need to be told what to do with their lives all the time, so we need to beat this protestant work ethic into people to make them productive. These people dont think that humans have the wherewithal to live life without being told what to do by some "benevolent authoritarian" like a boss, and that we would fall into sin if we didn't. And this is in large part why our society is so obsessed with jobs and work, even in an age where that stuff is going to become increasingly not needed by society. 

Religion is, as Karl Marx put it, the opium of the masses. It is the justification for a bunch of bad crap in our society. It keeps people dumbed down and stops them from questioning things while the rich and powerful plunder society for their own benefit and at our expense. And religion is, once again, behind the justification of these views. The christian work ethic underlies meritocracy and the right of property; the wealthy "earned" their wealth through their hard work and we are wrong for questioning it, for wanting a new system, or for wanting to redistribute wealth. WE are the bad guys. WE are the ones lacking virtue. WE are the ones who are supposed to change, to adapt to this system. 

We are wasting our lives by serving religion, and religiously inspired principles. It should be noted, I'm not against all spirituality. I have my own very personal spiritual views. I'm also not even as opposed to all Christians. There are different strains of christianity and I mostly was focusing on religious fundamentalist common in a certain strain of modern protestant christianity. Still, I don't really think ANY christianity is worth believing it. I think there are far better belief systems than adopting the views of some ascetic jew from 2000 years ago and worshipping him as the son of god who died for our sins...whatever that means (since many of these other camps dont accept the weird scapegoat blood sacrifice logic of fundamentalist christianity). And honestly? Even if other brands christianity aren't as harmful as modern fundamentalist protestant christianity, i still see harm there and dont see it as worth following. 

Like, some moderate christians wont like me saying this, but I do see it as a spectrum. And I do think moderate christians are just that...they're moderates. They adopt some aspects of chrstianity, but then they dont tend to adopt the more extreme elements...and I dont see a point in following that stuff....because I see it as a compromise with reality. Why should you adapt half of this one philosophical system and its worldview, while rejecting the other half? Fundamentalism kinda got to me where its like "either your hot or youre cold, but if you're lukewarm I'll spit you out of your mouth." I see liberal christianity, or moderate christianity, as lukewarm. it's all over the place. Like, I tend to have a mostly naturalist approach to the world and philosophy, and any spirituality i get has to come through that in some way. If God cannot communicate on those terms, well...they're not worth believing in. And trust me, if "god" wants to speak to you...they'll find a way. Trust me. You might not be able to prove it to others, but you'll know, and you'll find yourself wondering if you're crazy and questioning your entire concept of reality. 

That said, why should we accept christianity? For most people, its merely baby's first belief system. It's microsoft edge to my firefox with like 10 extensions installed and customized to my liking. It's what people are raised in, but I dont find it very philosophically appealing. I mean, if god exists, and again, I do have a concept there, it's gonna work monumentally different than this belief system written by ancient peoples who lived thousands of years ago. I look at it the way I look at the ancient greeks and their religions, except people actually take those stories literally today. And they do so in causing much harm on society.

Which is where the big hatred of it comes from for me. The fact is, I believe that if we didn't have Christianity as a guiding force for our society, society may very well be better. I won't guarantee that, because let's face it, Ive kind of outgrown the whole "religion is the core problem with everything in society" from my new atheist days. I kind of realize that ideological brainrot exists all over the political spectrum. That stupid people exist and often arent even religious. So again, it's not the entire problem. As I said, it's one head of a multiheaded hydra that we're dealing with these days. it's a very potent one, and I believe it's the one that justifies a lot of this bad stuff to the masses. Like, Dero Goi's 1984 video had everyone with VR headsets on....RELIGION IS THE HEADSET. It's how the masses view society. It's the matrix, it's plato's cave (hence this sub's name). It contains justification for why the world is as it is, it is the blinder that keeps people dumb and submissive. And I really do think if people took that headset off, that the world would be a better place. Would it solve all problems? No. Again, the hydra is multi headed at this point. But without the blinders most people currently have, if people were forced to suddenly reevaluate things like I did, perhaps they would reach conclusions like I did.

There's a reason evangelical christianity is one of the most right wing factions in the US, while the nonreligious are some of the most left wing ones, with the moderate christians being moderates...in the middle....on the whole. 

And again, none of this is to really mean any disrespect to any moderate christians in my life. If you have/had a place in my life, I do respect you on some level. I might not agree with you. I might express my views when discussion come up push comes to shove. I'm not gonna apologize for my views, as they're what i legitimately believe, and if you find it offensive, well, tough. But again, I am a nuanced person who recognizes that people can be unique, defy the overall trend or whatever, and have unique views that dont fit in any predetermined box. I would argue that statistically and on the whole with trends i am correct in how I view the problem. It's just that such people are outliers. And you know what? I LIKE outliers like that. I dont agree with them on everything, but we probably agree on more than we don't despite the obvious worldview difference. 

So yeah. I just wanted to make that clear. 

So what will we never know?

 So..I came across this disturbing interview where Elon was interviewed by Tucker Carlson and his kid was there. You know, Elon's kid, the one who emasculated the president right to his face live on national television. I've tried to track down the full version of this, but I've had trouble finding it. Apparently elon has been scrubbing it from where he can. 

Anyway, in this one, his kid started saying strange crap...AGAIN. First he says his dad owns spaceX and that they can do whatever they want. Not that bad in and of itself. But then Elon is asked whether Trump will win the election and it starts getting CRYPTO. The kid is 100% confident trump will win and keeps repeating "and they will never know." Uh....what will we never know? Anyway, Elon starts going into stuff about how the polling data out of PA and blah blah blah and the kid just repeats "AND THEY WILL NEVER KNOW!" And then Elon just...ends the interview right there. 

So...what will we never know? The reason I bring this up is because on inauguration day, Trump also had strange comments about how Elon knew about the voting machines in PA or something and credited him with the win. And there's been a conspiracy theory floating about where Elon used starlink to manipulate the machines.

So far, this is unsubstantiated and is purely conspiracy theory, and I do wanna point out, i dont wanna lean into election denialism. I think that can be dangerous as trump himself pointed out to us by engaging in it himself and encouraging a mob to attack the capitol. And for the record, I believe that the results are credible enough that there's no reason to lean into fraud, I fully believe Trump could have won the election legitimately, and that there wasn't even any NEED for it to win. The national trend, and the polling, which I had been following all election cycle, was so consistent with the peoples' preference for Trump, that yeah, I don't believe that Trump NEEDED to engage in fraud to win. Also, the democrats' internal polling was WAY worse than public polling, so yeah. All the evidence tells me that trump is a winner and a winner legitimately.

HOWEVER, I'm also seeing multiple points of evidence that suggests that Elon MAY have been involved in some funny business here. Had we had a credible democracy NOT under assault by this guy, we would probably start seeing probes into this to see if there's anything to these allegations. 

However, with project 2025 filling the bureaucracy with loyalists, and him trying to impeach any judge who rules against him, and even doxing the judge's own daughter, this will never happen.

 Makes you wonder why he's digging around the social security administration and the IRS for everyone's data. Dude is gonna use that to blackmail anyone who goes against him.

Guys, this is a coup. These guys are literally pulling a hitler 1933 on us. And we're not doing jack crap to stop it. This is BAD. This is REALLY BAD. Our democracy is literally under assault by this guy, and we dont know how deep this rabbit hole goes. 

So....Dero Goi's art mightve been more triggering than I thought...

 So...as I said yeaterday, I checked out a lot of Dero Goi's solo work since he went all nuts and fundie christian. And it did give me some insight into the right wing mindset. And it was triggering. I mean, in some ways, I actually have religious trauma syndrome from Christianity. And being exposed to that worldview again....is kinda bringing back flashbacks. 

Why do I bring this up? Because here's the thing. I kinda can get into these peoples' heads and understand them. When I dissect this right wing art, I mean, to the uninitiated, it just sounds crazy, but Im familiar with their underlying worldview, and I'm kind of connecting some dots and making some disturbing connections that relate to our current political environment.

Honestly, Ill say it. The situation we are in is worse than I thought. We might be witnessing the destruction of the modern left and backsliding into right wing extremism as a society. I know Dero is german, but these attitudes are INSANELY common in the US. And if these works are indicative of how a lot of people think, we are in trouble. 

I think COVID broke everyone's brains. The lockdowns and all of the guidance the left has engaged in has led to a right wing resurgeance. Just as the 2008 recession drove us left, the 2020 COVID thing is driving us back to the right. 

People dont trust experts. They dont trust science. THey dont trust vaccines, and masks, and medical guidance. THey think it's literally 1984, as Dero has made perfectly clear. And this stuff is leaning into a lot of religious extremism too. ANd let me tell you something about these extremists. They have a MASSIVE persecution complex. Like if you look into dero's recent videos, one is called Saturday and is about him being in front of a judge being judged and he's basically like, think what you want of me while pushing bible verses. Like, these guys, are radicals. Like, the thing about christianity. It was literally forged in the face of intense persecution. The romans used to feed these people to lions. The bible has a lot of really encouraging books and verses that suggest you should be willing to die for the faith. They wont take up arms against you per se, but they will joyfully, gleefully, accept whatever persecution you throw at them. 

And the left...in the past decade, has gone itself in this weird illiberal direction. We keep trying to police what these people can say and believe. We do it to stop their ideology from sprading,, but because these guys have this persecution complex, they dont care, they literally are that extreme. You can't just trying to regulate what they say by cracking down on fake news. You cant tell them they;re bigots for opposing LGBT+. They will double, triple, and quadruple down.

And the left, since the 2016 election, has been shifting toward trying to control what people say and think. For these guys, that's LITERALLY 1984. Once again, hence the video. Like from our perspective we're trying to stop dangerous extremist ideologies but for them, we're the thought police trying to control what they think, and they will fight you like they're resisting tyranny in response. And because everything for the right is culture war, a war between worldviews, they will happily endure whatever they throw at you.

And in this modern age, it seems like the left's war on misinformation and "hate" is just leading to the right winning. Like Ive known this for a while, I pointed out trevor's axiom as early as back in 2016 and how the left are really unpopular and hit the wrong notes. But yeah. heres the thing. I listen to people on the right once in a while. I try to listen to what they think. We ask them if they're regretting trump, they'll say, "why do we regret trump? he's doing what we voted for". They LIKE this guy. They LIKE him cutting government. They like his war on "woke" and "DEI". THey LIKE him deporting immigrants. They LIKE him allowing COVID skepticism and denialism. 

And that's the thing. Keep in mind the biggest third party challenge this past election cycle. It as RFK. The COVID denial guy, the anti vaccine guy, the "we live in a society that makes everyone sick and stuff being natural is better" guy. People LIKE him. And going back to dero's videos...I was getting some of that in his 1984 video. How big brother government is making people get sick by taking the vaccine and how we need to go back to nature...which...also includes....the bible? Yeah. But yeah, you see how this covid skepticism movement is starting to merge with the biblical crazies? Like, it is. We're seeing a realignment, but it's a realignment from HELL. On the one side are the experts who know what they're doing and try to control what people think and say, and on the other are all the stupid people acting like they're persecuted for the former group trying to crack down on their delusions.

What's the answer to this? Well, I don't have a full answer. Ultimately, we DO need to fight them in a culture war manner similar to them. I dont think we should concede to them, to meet them half way. Thats the worst thing we can do. I dont wanna be them, no one on the left does. We need an alternative vision.

But what we have to do, we have to drop the wokeness, for one. Those guys wanna persecute anyone who expresses any form of "hatred or bigotry" and that involves homophobia and transphobia that exists within christianity. And again, if we die on this hill, the right will die on theirs, because persecution complex. And they will win. Because they are more popular than we are. Trying to force cultural supremacy vs censorship isn't gonna work. The same applies with combatting anti vax nonsense. We cannot win the culture war by brute force. We have to win the hearts and minds of people.

I've known this for a while. Because again, I used to be a right winger. Hell, it's why the new atheist movement was always for freedom of speech and thought. The last thing we wanted to do was to trigger these guys stupid persecution complexes. Because they thrive on fighting imaginary enemies. If we give them a REASON to think they're being persecuted, which wokeness and various wars on misinformation do, we're gonna lose! And we ARE losing! WE ARE LOSING THE CULTURE WAR! It''s not that our ideas are bad. It's that our strategy sucks. We need to regroup and retool. We need to invent a new left, or go back to an old one. Maybe a combination of the two. We need to respect their rights and liberties, the last thing we should do is to make them feel persecuted as it just makes them even stronger. And we need to fight on our own terms.

It's as I always said it, whoever comes off as authoritarian loses these wars. During the obama years, the religious right were starting to look full on crazy and their worldview was starting to collapse. But because the left keeps fumbling the ball, now WE look crazy and unhinged. I keep saying it, ditch the wokeness, embrace libertarianism. We're in a chinese finger trap. The more you fight it, the worse it gets. You kinda gotta relax it a bit, not panic, and then it will come off. 

And as someone who wishes nothing more than for the right's worldview to enter the dustbin of history, we DO need to fight them. But we need to fight them on our terms, and make our arguments for our own views. We gotta convince the public that THEYRE the crazy authoritarians and that they're the ones out of touch. We do that by letting them come off as crazy. So let them lead the assault on the culture war and mess it up. We just need to sit back and say we want everyone to be able to do what they want and what persecution are you talking about and you;re the crazy ones who wanna force your views on everyone. THAT'S how we win. 

The left IS the right side of history, make no mistake. But in a democracy, we need to reach people somewhat on their terms. We need to isolate the these people and make them come off as the fringe extremists they are. But to do that, we need the public on our side. And our current strategy is backfiring majorly. 

Um....you do realize religion is part of "the matrix" right?

Okay, so I ended up finding something about Dero Goi and his descent into right wing christian extremism in recent years. Well, I decided to look up what he was up to musically. I always liked oomph somewhat, but his extremism caused him to break up with the band and go his own way. I found out he did some solo stuff, and came across this music video called "1984", which tries to portray society in a dystopian fashion where everyone has to obey. Now, I've previously likened modern society and its belief system as "the matrix", an illusory reality (similar to "Plato's Cave") in which most people just blindly go with the flow and don't realize how brainwashed they really are. I kinda touched on this today with my rant about being intelligent in a society where...most aren't. 

Dero has the same idea here, but his dystopia is a bit different. He sees a society where people have to "consume" and "obey" and the like, but he approaches it from the right. Given his political trajectory, I think he buys into a lot of delusions about the COVID thing being a dystopian coup to control people, and how being asked to *checks notes* wear masks and not work for a year is the equivalent of...well....1984. 

He also seems to portray religion as the solution to the problem, with christian themes underlying it, and the little girl at the end being in a field holding a bible. Kinda makes me wanna throw up as it gives me RFK supporter vibes, you know, right wing and thinking big pharma and society bad and "natural" stuff good? yeah. 

Anyway. I'll bite. 

Look, given my own ideological journey, and how i CAME FROM religion and left it...trust me when I say it, religion isn't the solution to everything. Religion IS the matrix. It is the belief system that keeps people dumbed down. It's, as Karl Marx would say, the opium of the masses. What dulls their pain and makes them complicit in the face of great injustice, as many would prefer to overlook the obvious problems with this world to get people focused on the next. Leaving religion actually FREED me. And is the basis of my own modern ideology, including my views on capitalism and consumerism. I admit, that stuff is like a prison, BUT...let's face it, it isn't religion that is the solution to that. if anything, christian extremism of the kind that dero is involved in is one of the greatest sources of evil in modern western industrial society today. It drives people to the same batcrap insane ideology that goi is promoting here. 

Look, I'm gonna be real with you. Vaccines are not about control. They are not some mark of the beast or something. They are literally scientific breakthroughs which prevent diseases. The reason society pushed them was so people wouldnt get as sick from covid and could return to work. Our society is work obsessed. As much as the right acted like us trying to stop people working was some dystopian communist plot (as the literal anti work guy I can assure you that it wasn't), really, the ONLY reason they allowed us to stop temporarily was because YEAH, the disease really was that bad. THese weird persecution fantasies the right comes up with are pure delusion. I'm not going to deny that there are powerful forces that keep society the way it is, and that some elements of modern society are evil, BUT....let's face it, the evil comes from the same wealthy elites who afterwards wanted to send people back to work, and are trying to claw back work from home schemes. They're the same people who were saying in 2020 when sane people closed everything down that we shouldnt be afraid of sacrificing the elderly and the sick for the sake of the economy. THOSE are the real evil psychopaths. And those guys wield religion as a tool to brainwash, quite frankly, ignorant people, into their worldview. 

The likes of dero goi are NOT enlightened. They are insane. They dont seem to realize that they are the ones plugged into the matrix with the VR headsets on, not us. It's baffling to see how right wingers view the world sometimes, but as an ex right winger, i also kinda understand it. it is kind of interesting, if only for opposition researtch, and i dont think these weird beliefs are that uncommon. If anything, I think they're one of the reasons the dems lost in 2024. A lot of people are actually convinced that the experts who believe in vaccines, in masks, in shutdowns, that we're the bad guys. We're not. We're literally just following the science. You know, that thing you guys reject because you're religious nutjobs. I know it was a long time ago now, like 20 years, but uh....i learned about vaccines...in CHRISTIAN school back then. And now people dont even believe in that crap. We're becoming idiocracy. It's baffling to me. It was bad back then but we've gotten so much dumber since then. It baffles me. 

EDIT: And now I'm onto "Clickbait", which is about tiktok. IN one part of the song he says "idiocracy is real."

Look, I'm not gonna say tiktok is good and great, but it's not as harmful as people act like it is. It's just entertainment. And when it meets politics, a lot of tiktok is informative. Like a lot of the free palestine people got their views from tiktok and saw actual news events unfold in real time involving the IDF massacuring civilians. And while we can question the chinese ownership and associated algorithms pushing content for selective outrage, let's be honest, it's like old people ALWAYS crap on young peoples' media, no matter what it is. 20 years ago, it was harry potter being demonic, pokemon cards teaching evolution, and violent video games corrupting the youth, and myspace and facebook having the same effects that tiktok has today.

Before that it was all that dumb tv dumbing down gen X. And rock music dumbing down the boomers. it's a tale as old as time. You get older than say, 45-50 and suddenly youre so out of touch with the youth that you crap on their media. 

And sadly, a lot of this stuff seems to come most from religious extremists. And here's why. They are literally in an ideological, cultural, and information war with the world. They literally think they are fighting satan himself with attacking this crap. if they had their way, we would only be allowed christian sources of media that explicitly promote that view. They literally think anything else is delusion and a mental trick by satan that has been played on the world. I'm NOT kidding. I WAS indoctrinated into this stuff at one point. I LEFT it. These guys are NUTS and delusional. They are the deceived telling everyone else that they're really the deceived ones. Again, this is crazy crap. I'm not kidding, I'm not making it up. These people actually believe this stuff. These are the guys who will say the dinosaur bones were put there by satan.  And yes, some Christians really believe that. Not all of them. I really dont wanna act like ALL christians are insane. They're not. But the fundies absolutely are. Dero Goi is in those traditions now, and his work is pushing this extremist worldview.

The curse of intelligence and the temptation of doing away with democracy

 So, I watched this video today about the curses of being highly intelligent, and yeah, this is my life in a nutshell. And it kinda sucks, being governed by people who are my intellectual inferiors. I mean, we basically elected trump because half the country is too dumb to see through his grift, although, admittedly Harris was kind of a turd too. Still, at least she was competent...

Honestly, some men, like me, just want to see the world learn. We want people to become more intelligent and well informed on issues. Democracy, to actually function properly, needs its participants to know what the frick they are doing with their votes. American voters have no idea, they elected Trump, despite obvious warnings of how dangerous he was. I could explain away 2016, but in 2020 I started worrying after seeing how close he came to winning, and in 2024, I'm terrified by the state of democracy. We literally have wheatley in charge...again. After putting glados in charge...again. After wheatley got elected the first time. After glados was kicked out the first time. 

Heck it goes back further. George W. Bush was also extremely dumb by the standards of the time, although infinitely preferable to the current administration. It's like we're living in the movie idiocracy. And people really are that dumb that they keep electing these guys over and over again. 

Again, ideally, the answer is education. If people were more informed, had a higher baseline of intelligence, then the democrats would basically become the bare minimum and then the real adults in the room can finally talk. But it seems unclear if we'll ever reach this point. I feel cursed, like I stick out like a sore thumb in this society. I know so much more than your average person, at least on political affairs (I'm pretty dumb on a lot of other subjects), and I just keep watching them make the same mistakes over and over again.

 It's no wonder the intelligent class of society that's actually in charge has this mentality that "well the people are dumb and that's why I have to be in charge." It's a tempting proposition. We all think it, us intelligent thinkers of politics. I even have my own fricking ideal economic vision if I were in charge. But, at the same time, we gotta resist this temptation.

I mean, in a way, we're living through that moment right now. Despite much of the trump administration, including trump himself, being sycophantic morons who toe the line and are dangerously unqualified for their jobs, you also got megalomanial  masterminds like elon musk in charge. Musk is, a lot like me. High IQ, pretty well informed, at least on subjects related to his expertise, think he knows how to run the country better than everyone else and that he's a mastermind...but really, and this is where you gotta follow me on this one, just because someone is generally smart doesn't mean they're informed ON POLITICS, nor do they necessarily have good ethics. Like I kinda try do a philosopher king thing, and despite talking a lot about issues, i dont wanna be in charge, because i know i would screw it up. part of it really is being in a democracy with separation of powers and knowing I can't do what i wanna do how I wanna do it, but I also know that power is a corrupting influence. And that's kind of a problem. Those who should rule...often dont want to because they know their limitations, while we get governed by overconfident blowhards who dont know what they're doing but think they know everything. 

And Elon Musk? He's using his power FOR EVIL. He's cutting "government waste" as he sees it, sometimes not knowing what he's cutting (see: him randomly laying off the people overseeing our nukes, only to realize, OH CRAP WE NEED THOSE PEOPLE!). He's doing the republican "cut all government" thing and doing it with sociopathic efficiency. He's literally governing the government like he would a corporation, and using the top down authority of a corporation to do it. Heck, we all know my stances on corporate rule. CEOs are functionally tyrants, and people are functionally their slaves. Even if they can, in theory, walk away, most won't because of the economic relationships involved and how most peoples' state of "being there" is based on NEED. Of course, if you notice, my answer to this ins't "socialism", in part because, quite frankly, I dont trust the masses on anything, rather, I support a form of individual independence where every worker has the freedom as the power to say no. Instead of having to rely on others, i want individuals to be able to make their own calls, and this is my answer, as an intelligent person, the way to solve economic tyranny. I dont trust the rule by many much more than i trust the rule of the few or the one. I dont want to be ruled. So I assert a system of economic rights to give me my freedom and autonomy. 

In some ways this mirrors the constitutional government with separation of powers and rights that we have. Our founders did kind of have elitist tendencies for better or for worse and did seek to put checks on pure democracy. We have the bill of rights that we have to ensure that government oversteps bounds, understanding that liberty should not be abridged simply because the masses will it. Of course, this has been corrupted, with the elites using such functions to exert control over elections and in practice, our government is an oligarchy that is more receptive to political donors and money than the people. 

And that is probably the greatest evil of our time. You see, if you dont let the masses govern, you end up with oligarchies or autocracies instead. America is an oligarchy. It is the rule by the few, and the indirect rule by the rich (although it's more direct with the trump administration). The people don't matter much. it's the wealthy. They control the political parties, and they control the media infrastructure to control the narratives. They keep the people in various information bubbles to keep them dumb and uninformed, and when a smart person like me stands up to them, nothing happens because we're a minority, and no one cares what we think. 

But in a way, before we get delusions of "If i were in charge again"...well...that's how the billionaire class thinks, and they DO think they're superior than everyone else. That their ideas are better, that they're smarter, that they're morally better due to their work ethic, and that they EARNED their right to rule. And that's the worst part. Like, a lot of what I argue against, like being forced to work, the protestant work ethic, meritocracy, etc., it's a massive ego boost to the wealthy. They have this idea of entitlement, as they adopt the morals of the society that they created to justify their wealth and power, and they believe they are the superiors and that everyone else is just too dumb and lazy and that they're only fit to be beasts of burden or whatever, while THEYRE the smart ones.

And heck, if you go further, with the dark enlightenment a la elon musk, they think that democracy is just an inconvenience. That checks and balances are inefficient. And that they are just such fricking geniuses and no one else will ever understand. So they try to break the democracy we have so they can rule directly.

In a lot of ways, i think that elon musk, the dark enlightenment, and a lot of the ego that these guys have should put a pause on these delusions for the rest of us "smart people". Because we're not a ton better. I mean, we think we are, and as I say it I'm totally thinking "nah, I AM better", but really, what justifies me being better? Well, the fact that I come from a different social standing with different socialization factors that dont make me an entitled sociopathic d-bag. However, despite that, let's face it, if i had power, others, including many smart people, would have issues with my governance. And at the end of the day, I really come back around to the whole "yeah this is why checks and balances, rights, and democracy exist". They're guardrails against tyranny. And the will of the people, as flawed as the people are, just ends up being the lesser evil.

And this is something I really keep coming around to. Everyone imagines that if THEY were in charge the world would be perfect, but each of our visions are different, they all have pros and cons, and many of us, dont even know what we're talking about in the first place. Like with me, at least im high enough on the dunning kruger spectrum to actually recognize the limitations of my own expertise and intelligence, and while i'd love to implement UBI and humanistic capitalism....well...let's face it, do i even have administrative experience? not really. Do i wanna deal with mundane administrative matters that an actual president has to deal with? Not really. Nor do I wanna pull a musk and say "we dont need all that" and try to fire them all to meet some insane ideal of "small government." So yeah. 

Honestly, here's the thing, and this is where our founders were smart. They understood the very obvious problems with people just having unchecked power. They saw the problems with the likes of "factions." Their entire political system was designed to limit any individual's power and to distribute it across all three branches of government. And while, right now, that system is facing a stress test like it has never endured in the entire 250 years of its existence, I still support the system and hope it holds. Because let's face it. This system is the best we got. And it's GOOD it is as constraining as it is, it is only because of that, that maybe, hopefully, we'll survive this horrible, horrible administration. 

Here's the thing. People are dumb, but a constitutional republic/democracy is still the best system that has ever been tried, for better or for worse. It maintains some level of stability. It stops us from just getting taken over. And while right now we kinda gotta be afraid because trump's faction, the republican party, controls ALL THREE branches of government, it doesn't do so by overwhelming margins. Still, the damage that trump can do to it is substantial, and that's why i've been squirming through this entire thing. Like, it's baffling that for all the guardrails we have, all of them have failed to contain this guy. And part of me has to blame the democrats for being so complacent and incompetent. We should've worked harder and moved faster to prosecute the guy post january 6th.

 But...that's the thing, of everything i said, our system DOES have one GLARING oversight that's responsible for this entire mess, and that is the fact that the politicians are all beholden to those with money. And the billionaires control everything from behind the scenes. They control the republicans, they control the democrats. They control the media. And if anything, we need MORE checks and balances, against the wealthy and their ability to influence people and subvert democracy's rule. We need to overturn citizen's united. We need to publicly fund elections. We need to remove the corrupting influence of capital from our democracy. I'm not necessarily opposed to people having money, but in our system, when money is speech, some people have a bullhorn while others have virtually no voice. I'm just a mere feudal serf on wealthy corporations' servers like reddit and blogger. I exist on virtual property that THEY own. And while I can bring my ideas into the real world, I need money to actually do this meaningfully, and I have none. So, here's the screaming into the void I guess.

Yeah, I know this is depressing, but this is what I actually think about these things right now. 

Honestly though, we need more democracy, and more checks and balances, and not less. And heck, maybe if we had that, we could improve our education system so people wouldn't be so fricking dumb in the first place.