culture

Death of Christianity

A woman running the Young Christian Activity Group is every bit as incompatible with Christianity as an openly gay bishop, and like gay bishops, results in most of the boys and all of the manly boys dropping out of their religion. People may tell themselves that Christianity can be compatible with progressivism, but each step to reconcile them empties the churches.

If you accept the progressive position on “marital rape”, that sex requires the continuing consent of both parties, and reject the Christian position that consent to sex is given once and forever, and that for a married couple to abstain from sex requires continuing mutual consent or physical inability, then you pretty much have to accept the position that divorce is at a woman’s whim, which is the end of marriage as traditionally understood.

Since the Church is the family writ large, an echo of the family between the earthly family headed by the father, and the divine fatherhood of god, abolishing marriage as traditionally understood ends Christianity. So, if Christians deviate from the New Testament on male authority and irrevocable consent to sex, Christianity ends, and it is apparent that it is ending.

Pagan morality differs from Christian morality because it is egoist. Attempts to revive paganism are fatally flawed in that they attempt to revive paganism with a universalist morality, a morality compatible with progressivism. The true pagan treats the loser as though he has an infectious disease. The pagan concept of virtue is barely distinguishable from the pagan concepts of strength in men, manliness in men, and femininity in women, if it can be distinguished at all.

Around 390 BC, Brennus, King of the Sennones, was negotiating with the Romans over their Etruscan intervention, an intervention suspiciously resembling conquest. The Romans murdered a Sennone diplomat sent by King Brennus. King Brennus sent some more diplomants. The Romans cut out their eyes.

The Sennones under King Brennus then marched on Rome. During the march his army purchased food supplies from the locals, rather than looting, raping, burning, and killing. The Romans fought the Sennones a short distance outside Rome. Their army was defeated and scattered, and the Sennones marched into the now undefended city. The Romans reformed on the Capitoline Hile, the oldest part of Rome, a wall within a wall. The Sennones looted and burned the rest of Rome. King Brennus demanded one thousand pounds of gold to leave Rome.

The Romans agreed, and Brennus set up a steelyard scale to weigh the gold. When they Romans arrived, they noticed that the weights were heavier than they should be, and complained the Sennones were cheating, to which King Brennus famously replied by throwing his sword on the scales and shouting, “Vae Victis!” which means, “Woe to the vanquished”. So the Romans, having given King Brennus a thousand pounds of gold, had to go back to the Capitol for more gold. A steelyard scale has arms of unequal length, so they had to provide many times the weight of King Brennus’ sword in gold.

Darwin, and Darwinian theory, predicts that social animals will evolve certain moral characteristics, to facilitate cooperation and avoid killing each other too often. Those conspecifics that Darwin thinks we should kill, and that Darwinian theory predicts that we will be inclined to kill, we call evil, and those that Darwin thinks we should prefer to associate with, and that Darwinian theory predicts that we will be inclined to prefer to associate with, we call good.

The resulting moral system has a fair resemblance to Randian enlightened egoism, Aristotlean ethics, and the moral principles expressed by Xenophon when justifying the conduct of the ten thousand.

Xenophon was an economist and a mercenary.  He was one of a group of mercenaries assisting a Persian King, far from Greece.  Their employer was killed.  The officers of the Greeks were invited to a parley, to which they went hoping for further employment.  Their officers were treacherously murdered.  Xenophon then announced he had received  a message from the Gods that they should elect new officers and get the hell out.  The ten thousand slaughtered,looted and burned their way from Asia to Greece.  Getting close to Greece, Xenophon was criticized for the trail of corpses the ten thousand had left across Asia.

To which Xenophon replied that they only slaughtered and looted when the locals tried to stop them from passing through, or denied them supplies, that when the locals provided a market, the ten thousand paid for their supplies.

A Darwinian should care about his offspring, and their offspring, and generally does, and therefore cares about the collapse of civilization.

Traditional Christianity would, and did, lead to the kind of society I advocate, in particular Restoration England. But traditional Christianity is dead, save for a remnant small as mustard seed, and shows no obvious signs of being more capable of revival than Greek paganism, though a Christian might reply that coming back from the dead is their specialty. Today’s Christianity is progressive, at most trailing behind the official and orthodox progressivism by a few years.

It is probably true that a society needs religious or quasi religious underpinnings, needs a theocracy, or something functionally similar. I am a big admirer of Restoration England, which founded the scientific revolution and the industrial revolution. But the Established Christianity of restoration England can no more be revived than the official paganism of republican Rome. Julian the apostate tried and failed to revive the old paganism, and got an undead religion.

Christianity contains the seeds of the leftism that devoured it, in its universalism, and in its sympathy for losers.  The old paganism inherently had less tendency to head left.

181 comments Death of Christianity

Opioidus says:

Religion has a limited power over society, we know a lot of so called Christian and Muslim nations that were Darwinian. The principals are there to make you feel better, how you behave is determent by economic forces affecting your life not by what priests have to say. When religion fails to make people feel better, it loses to a new form of religion. It’s function is to make you feel superior, justified and united. Guess which religious expression does this for modern men?

Economic forces influence familial structure, and religious resistance is futile. Christianity put up a marvelous fight before surrendering, but it was inevitable. Islam is now fighting back, and traditional Muslims are losing ground to progressives as we speak.

Ansible says:

“Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, “Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be itself good—” At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality. But as things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And there is a war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, gradually and inevitably, today, tomorrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark.”

“On the height of that ancient empire and that international experience humanity had a vision. It has not had another; but only quarrels about that one. Paganism was the largest thing in the world and Christianity was larger; and everything else has been comparatively small.”
-G. K. Chesterton

“Do not call up that which you can not put down”
-H. P. Lovecraft

Sure, give up Christianity in favor of “old paganism” a paganism which never truly existed except in the fantasies of disgruntled Europeans and Atheists. Do you think pagans had a lot of moral clarity? Before answering that remember that the Greeks sentenced the classical world’s greatest proponent of natural law to death. Socrates was sacrificed on the altar of democracy.

What is the one thing that has disappeared wherever Christianity is practiced? The worship of demons and the human sacrifice they command. You are one of the crowd that would knock down the lamp post if only because you thought it not enough of a lamp-post. There are those in the orthosphere who have claimed that NRx has a demonic element. When you seriously consider the merits of “old paganism” I can see why. Old paganism is like old iron, sure it’s iron but what good is rusty pitted iron? Not much more than a dull club to douse in blood to match the color of its pitted skin. Wherever Christianity is abandoned the demons spring back up, returning to “old paganism” isn’t going to change that, rather it will enslave you to the whims of the demons.

Look at what has happened in America since the country turned its back on Christianity in favor of that false god called Progress, 3,600 babies are sacrificed on its altar a day. Nearly double that, 6,700 marriages are sacrificed in the name of Progress a day. To a Christian a marriage joins the husband and wife as one flesh, divorce is quite literally murder. The survivors fight over the scraps and take the children as hostage. Perhaps that explains the swiftly mounting panic in America’s culture. The best explanation I can think of as to why every civilization ends up in a leftist singularity is that if you’ve decided you’re already damned it can’t hurt to hurtle faster into hell.

I understand that you are a materialist and a good many of my fellow neoreactionaries find the concept of demons laughable. If you are still reading I am aware that I sound like a rambling kook, but I take civilization seriously. The language of Christianity is the simplest way to get across that sincerity. Civilization is perhaps the most serious and sacred thing we engage in during our life.

Perhaps demons really don’t exist; although their worshippers certainly do. Our fight with progressivism is a battle with cultists. Human sacrifice has been largely unknown since the Christian men of Europe conquered the world. While the world wasn’t perfect, it was certainly better when Europeans were better Christians. At the very least they do not suffer the likes of civilization-destroying cultists. Christianity makes civilization, the kind of civilization you admire possible. You cannot get a civilization like Restoration England when you are fouling altars with human blood.

To conclude, I urge you that rather than play with something which is dead and should remain dead help that mustard seed grow. Much easier to practice gardening than to practice necromancy. Much saner too. You’re a good man and I’d like to see you stay sane.

Ansible says:

Rereading that last line, I did not mean it in a condescending manner. Das ist nicht meine Muttersprache.

Joe says:

I don’t think Jim is advocating paganism. I think he’s just observing that Christianity is dead and can’t be revived. He is noting that a religion is probably necessary for civilization. But we don’t seem to have a workable religion available.

Adolf the anti-White says:

Jim seems to want a synthetic religion, with bits and pieces of Christianity, paganism, Confucianism, et cetera.

Just sayin' says:

So what are you going to do about the progressives who are now wearing the mantle of Christianity and using it to turn people who are naturally inclined towards traditionalism into leftists?

It’s a bizarre situation, far from being a force for traditionalism, much of actual, existing Christianity seems to be a sort of non-academic cultural Marxism, taking people’s traditionalist impulses and channeling them into growing Africa’s population, encouraging dysgenic immigration and race mixing, bizarre doctrines about sexual equality, etc.

My dad used to be a whole lot more right wing when he was a borderline agnostic “Cultural Christian” instead of an Evangelical.

Adolf the anti-White says:

Evangelicals are not Christian.

They would not be able to receive communion at any Christian church prior to 1500 AD.

The line between Christian and non-Christian is not especially clear. Traditional Lutherans may be in. But evangelicals are certainly not.

meh says:

“What is the one thing that has disappeared wherever Christianity is practiced? The worship of demons and the human sacrifice they command.”

Human sacrifice was banned in plenty of pagan religions long before Christianity existed.

In contrast, Christianity demanded the killing of heretics and other non-believers, in order to appease their God. How is this any different from “the worship of demons and the human sacrifice they command”?

By their fruits you will know them. Christianity doesn’t have a monopoly on truth and it isn’t the only way to build a civilization, and it isn’t always the same thing in all times and all places.

VXXC says:

They killed Heretics to prevent what we have now.

No they didn’t demand the killing of heretics to appease God, they reluctantly killed them from time to time [if they insisted on being martyrs] to defend the social order, of which even in Tyranny religion is the glue. Religion=Religio which means Bonds.

And every religion puts down heresy and as with all authority the threat of death is behind it. Every Religion does this, if it’s the State Religion or the Civilization’s religion death is behind the suppression.

Progress has killed many millions over 100 million for Heresies by other names.

rae9582 says:

It’s frequently asserted that Christianity is ‘universalist’, but I disagree. A religion that says ‘many are called, few are chosen’ or ‘strait is the gate, and narrow the way, and few there be that find it’ does not fit the definition of ‘universalist’, if ‘universalilsm’ means that it is for every person on earth.

It’s worth noting that the apostle Paul was forbidden to take the gospel to Asia when he intended to go there. The apostles were sent to Europe and the Mediterranean countries, not every corner of the earth.

And if ‘universalism’ is latent in Christianity from its origins as you imply, why did it take so long to manifest itself? For most of its history, until the last couple of decades, the faith was not interpreted as meaning that everyone would be saved, nor was it meant in a secular sense, if that’s what you mean. I am saying that Christianity never taught that nations should not exist, or that borders should be wide open, and boundaries should be erased, as the Catholic Church and liberal Protestant Churches are now insisting. I suppose to the liberal ”Christians”, all the earlier generations of Christians were getting it wrong, and they have had some new revelation that justifies creating a borderless world where everyone blends together.

There are plenty of Scriptures that contradict that idea, though I won’t attempt to quote them here. Read H. Scott Trask for some examples; he has made good arguments against the secular ‘universalist’ fallacies.

The ‘Church’ has lost its way in our generation; this was predicted in the Bible — the ‘falling away’ or apostasy. Today’s Christians, sadly, are not good examples of the faith.

Adolf the anti-White says:

There are two senses of the term “universalist”. One, is that all men will be saved. Two, is that all men can be saved. Christianity is the second. Liberalism is the first.

Most right-wing neopagans fail to notice this, but their ancestors also practiced a universalist religion. Anybody could worship Zeus or Thor. In fact, after conquering a tribe, you made them worship your gods.

If you want a religion that is not universalist in either sense, go to India. Also, I think Zoroastrianism is non-universalist, too.

Adolf the anti-White says:

In this vein, you’ll notice that the Romans hated Christians and Jews because neither was universalist. Romans wanted them to worship the Emperor, as an act of loyalty. But both were exclusive religions.

Beowald says:

This essay takes on a major problem. I do not see Christianity renewing the West. It either holds to its principles and watches adherents drift away or it placates modernity and becomes what it rightly despises. I suspect both futures will come about, but for different denominations of the faith.

Actual historical paganism was a program for securing divine information and assistance through divination and offerings. Its return would not violate the laws of physics, but it seems unlikely. Some form of neo-paganism might find adherents, as Wicca seems to have done, but from what I understand Wicca lacks the moral rigor that gives religion its social utility. As between a Leftist Presbyterian and a Wiccan there is not much to choose, and indeed the two are busy merging as Unitarians.

The real religion of modernity is hedonistic materialism. It is a matter of doubt whether it can corrupt and enervate Islam before Islam beheads the hedonists.

Whether real or metaphorical, demons abound.

Korth says:

“By living in a spirit of forgiveness we not only uphold the core value of citizenship but also find the path to social membership that we need. Happiness does not come from the pursuit of pleasure, nor is it guaranteed by freedom, it comes from sacrifice. That is the message of the christian religion and it is the message that is conveyed by all the memorable works of our culture. It is the message that has been lost in the noise of repudiation, but which it seems to me can be heard once again if we devote our energies to retrieving it. And in the christian tradition the primary act of sacrifice is forgiveness. The one who forgives sacrifices vengeance and renounces thereby a part of himself for the sake of another.” – Roger Scruton

If we understand moral systems as emergent equilibria in cooperation games, these can be modeled using a societal iterated prisoner’s dilemma.

http://amirrorclear.net/academic/ideas/dilemma/index.html

An eye for an eye makes the world cooperative, so tit-for-tat is the solution that most moral systems come up with spontaneously. But Jesus realized that an eye for an eye also made the world a kaleidoscope of clannish, suspicious, low-trust societies. So he deemphasized absolute reciprocity and instead placed the doctrines of mercy and forgiveness at the core of the moral system. By proclaiming that men could gain holiness by being the first to withdraw from a blood feud, he changed the way the game was played.

This tiny local change in the rules changed the optimal equilibria for the entire system, giving christian societies the public trust and social cohesion that they needed to thrive and nurture proper virtue and personal freedom in an utterly broken world. This is how the tribes dissolved themselves, this is how the West was born.

This is what is at stake. If Islam, progressivism or neopaganism replace Christianity, true civilization will die.

Joe says:

I don’t understand the “forgiveness and sacrifice” thing. How do you apply this to real world situations like the fact that I currently have to share a society with Shaniqua and her eight babydaddies, who continue consuming my tax dollars and destroying my neighborhood and schools with their shiftless spawn. Please explain how me “forgiving and sacrificing” for Shaniqua and her kind accomplishes anything positive that I am supposed to feel makes my life worth living?

The whole Christian ethos of turning the other cheek, forgiveness, etc just doesn’t speak to me. My focus is on excellence and flourishing and how to create beauty and value. Christianity seems to say exactly nothing about that. It seems to say nothing to the Shaniquas and their babydaddies, either. There’s nothing I can see in Jesus’ words about taking responsibility, behaving with excellence, and so on. It’s all about getting warm-hearted and tolerant towards losers.

Yes, it’s good to have compassion for those who are struggling, and to lend them a hand if they are deserving of it. But that’s far from the highest value in life nor is it what makes a society great.

Adolf the anti-White says:

Shaniqua isn’t doing anything to you. She’s a proxy for the people who run the government. Black people lived in the US 100 years ago, before progressives made her into a welfare slut mother of gangsters.

Now, if you don’t “turn the other cheek” to progressives, they will kill you. Check out the various right-wing people who have used terrorism to combat progressivism. Never turns out well.

Also, I think forgiveness only applies to repentant people. God does not forgive unrepentant sinners. He does forgive repentant sinners. Although I’ve never sorted out the details of this theology.

R7_Rocket says:

“Now, if you don’t “turn the other cheek” to progressives, they will kill you. Check out the various right-wing people who have used terrorism to combat progressivism. Never turns out well.”

That’s because they haven’t used canned sunshine, at least not yet.

(1) nuke the cities

(2) ???

(3) a reactionary society free from Jews

R7_Rocket says:

“peppermint says:
December 7, 2014 at 12:44 am
(1) nuke the cities

(2) ???

(3) a reactionary society free from Jews”

Let’s play compare Hiroshima 1945-2014 with Detroit 1945-2014.

And no, the Jews weren’t the ones who put you in debt.

Orthodox says:

It sounds like you are comically ignorant of Christianity, almost to the point of complete ignorance. Definitely ignorant of Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity if you think they don’t talk about beauty.

I suggest reading the Gospels as a start. Introduction to Christianity by Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) is good (even if you’re not Catholic). You can also watch the Gospels. The Gospel of John is on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIi2uVcW9WE

Alan J. Perrick says:

Roman Catholics are about as Christian as a Jewish man is white, that is to say, only if you squint your eyes really hard after taking a few blows to your head with a hammer.

Roman Catholics, when you ask them if they might be Christian, will look at you and say, “I’m Catholic.”

The time for ecumenism is over and even the white non-Christians like the purveyor of this blog can see it.

A.J.P.

Adolf the anti-White says:

>Roman Catholics, when you ask them if they might be Christian, will look at you and say, “I’m Catholic.”
To be fair, that’s their way of denying that they are Baptist. Which is what “I’m a Christian” has come to mean. If you don’t feel a need to clarify what type of Christian you are, you are probably an ecumenist.

Roman Catholicism is Christian to the extent that they believe in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. Which means Pope Francis and Pope John Paul II were not Christian. Benedict XVI is questionable. Archbishop Lefebvre was Christian.

Alan J. Perrick says:

Don’t forget that Roman Catholics are anti-white. Bp. Benedict, the former pope, may have tried to orient that church more toward tradition, but the overall situation forced him out of office. That particular denomination doesn’t want their parishoners to be distracted from the goal of flooding ONLY the white countries with hundreds of millions of third-world immigrants until only a blended population is left where we used to be.

The new Bishop of Rome has busily applied himself with the devlish purpose of White Genocide as he screams “racist” and “xenophobe” at white Americans from across the Atlantic ocean.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/07/15/Pope-Welcome-Them

Adolf the anti-White says:

No doubt. Are you proposing that Episcopalians or Lutherans are better? They’re worse.

You seem to admire Anglicanism. That does not mean you ought to admire modern Protestantism.

Anglicans threw away some Catholic dogmas, which meant that they could throw away dogmas, which mean they had to throw away dogmas about wyshyps and consecrating gaymarriages.

Catholics still say that marriage and sex are for the purpose of procreation and that sex acts that are not procreative or outside of marriage are mortal sins, the kind that must be absolved before receiving Communion. Absolution requires a recognition on the part of the penitent that his behavior is considered to be wrong and a good faith promise not to continue in that behavior. This is not theoretical, absolution is withheld from people.

Adolf the anti-White says:

Civilization seemed to exist prior to Christianity. Progressivism is incompatible with Christianity.

Islam can be manipulated into whatever set of ideas you like. Neopaganism too.

Korth says:

I don’t know about paganism, but you can’t simply manipulate Islam into accepting the doctrine of forgiveness. The Qur’an promotes forgiveness among Muslims while explicitly discouraging forgiving infidels.

The kind of civilisation that existed before Christianity could only enforce intergroup cooperation by undertaking expensive coercitive measures that more often than not contributed to the deepening of divisions among clans and tribes. A civilisation that weakens its own social fabric every time it solves a minor coordination problem won’t accumulate much social capital, and will be doomed to stay one misstep away from barbarism forever.

A proper civilisation has achieved antifragile equilibrium: cooperation encourages further cooperation, and unilateral defection encounters increasing marginal opportunity costs. But this is only sustainable if forgiving repentant defectors is encouraged and rewarded.

Progressivism is indeed incompatible with proper civilisation, and is also suicidal, as it encourages and rewards those who forgive remorseless defectors.

Adolf the anti-White says:

>you can’t simply manipulate Islam
Yes you can. Muslims don’t believe in half of the stuff in the Koran. It’s filled with blatant contradictions, and Islam itself has a million rationalizations for a million areas where they defy the Koran.

VXXC says:

Progressivism is incompatible with Civilization. It’s incompatible with peace, order, stability or even wars that can be won. It’s goals are not sane.

jim says:

We are getting a low trust society due to unilateral disarmament by white males. In the streets, blacks and women act like aristocrats, white males act servile, like peasants. Blacks take up a lot more space than they did twenty five years ago, and are louder. Women casually interrupt anyone, including their boss, and talk right over him.

When the boss talks to a male executive, he tells him what he wants to tell him, and asks him what he wants to know. When he talks to a female executive, acts terrified. His words to his supposed subordinate are flattery, appeasement, and endless peace offerings, for which he receives no peace.

The Chinese government gives Chinese visiting America the following advice:

11. Show Humility to Ladies—They’re In Charge

In public, the Americans show particular respect for women. Everywhere is “Ladies First.” In social situations, men must show humility to ladies. Men must walk on the outside of the sidewalk, let the woman sit first, open the door for a woman, move out of the way on the stairs or in the elevator to let the woman advance, let women order first at a meal, and let the woman get up to leave first. And when you greet a woman, you must stand up.

VXXC says:

“We are getting a low trust society due to unilateral disarmament by white males. ”

Yes. Let’s try and be MEN before we go galloping off to Hitler, Zeus, Zoroaster et al shall we? As if you’ll keep ANYTHING if you aren’t Men.

timothy says:

Was Julian’s failure so much that paganism couldn’t be revived or that he died so early into his reign that he didn’t have time for his revival to take root?

jim says:

Possibly poor tactics. His paganism was top down, lacked natural roots, while Shintoism gave the cooperating priests private and hereditary ownership of their official holiness and their shrines. Shintoism was a revival of ancient paganism that was deader than Roman paganism. Spandrel argues it is not really alive, but it was live enough to force the Buddhists into line.

meh says:

Paganism was still very much alive when Julian was emperor; it was probably still the majority religion within the empire. But it wasn’t organized and so was not capable of resisting Christianity when Christianity seized power. Julian was trying to organize pagans into a unified “pagan Church” capable of fighting back; it was that effort which died with Julian, not paganism itself. Pagans continued to exist for centuries in spite of Christian persecutions; in fact there were noticeable pockets of middle eastern pagans in Baalbek in Lebanon and Harran in Syria, and in other places, well into the Islamic period, almost a thousand years after Julian.

This is an important point, because it means that what died with Julian (or not long after him) was not only an effort to unify Roman pagans, but the very conception of belief and ritual that ancient religion–that is, ‘paganism’–was based upon: the view that God, or the gods, are translatable. In other words, the gods are universally present, but names, images, rites, and so on will naturally differ from place to place.

This is a view that allows for ‘tolerance’ of cultural difference without anything like the self-effacing morality which is promoted under the name of ‘tolerance’ today.

There was no ‘true’ religion and no ‘false’ religion–but at the same time, nothing was called ‘secular’ as opposed to ‘religious’. There was simply nothing that could be called ‘religious war’ in the ancient world–with the exception of what occurs in the Old Testament, of course. There was plenty of conquering and killing, but it didn’t happen in the name of a ‘true’ god against a ‘false’ god; that distinction comes with Moses, as Jan Assmann points out.

If Julian were revived and put in charge of America, there’d be shrines to the Founding Fathers at voting booths and to chthonic gods at gas stations. Mormons would be tolerated, and Hinduism, Buddhism, and the Latin Mass would all probably see a growth in popularity. ‘Religion’ wouldn’t be an ‘extra’ category of private life, but a real and regular part of one’s daily affairs. This is a view that the medieval structure of Europe made unnecessary, and when the Church lost Her seat of supreme authority, we’d largely forgotten how to get back to it. This is why everyone goes around thinking they’re ‘not religious’ now.

jim says:

The Pagan Romans dealt with religions of human sacrifice and sexually immoral religions (which tended to be one and the same) in the usual way, with fire and steel. There were limits to their tolerance.

Human sacrifice religions are often difficult to suppress, so fire and steel is a reasonable response.

Secondly, they imposed some unification of rites, both progressive style, through soft power, and coercively. Thus, while the Greeks complete tolerance of differing rites meant that every people was its own people, and it was right for barbarians to worship the gods in their silly, barbarous, and inferior way, the Roman approach meant that every people was its own people, but also Roman.

Shinto is a revival of a religion that (just as anglo saxon paganism has survived only to the extent that it has been absorbed into Christianity as pagan festivals such as Christmas and pagan saints such as Saint George) had survived only to the extent that it had been absorbed into Buddhism as shrines, rituals, and saints.

I think Shinto works very well, but Spandrell, who knows a lot more about Japan than I do, disagrees. He says Shinto failed. He thinks no one really believes in Shinto, they just go through the rituals.

To which I say, you don’t need to believe in a state religion, you just need to go through the rituals.

Alan J. Perrick says:

It’s wrong, but I can’t hardly be bothered to write up a rebuttal of what I strongly suspect to be a troll post more than anything else.

A.J.P.

Barnabas says:

“A Darwinian should care about his offspring, and their offspring, and generally does, and therefore cares about the collapse of civilization.”
I suppose you could chose to define a Darwinian as such in a true Scotsman sense but the people I know in real life who would identify as Darwinian have between 0-1 kids and have absolutely no concern about the collapse of civilization.

jim says:

I suspect that you will find that they don’t like Darwin and do not refer to themselves as Darwinians, but rather “evolutionists”, treating evolution as a non Christian creation myth, something that happened far far away and long long ago.

I know some biologists, mathematicians, and mathematical biologists. They love to talk about game theory and evolution. And they all truly believe that race doesn’t exist. The reasen they truly believe that race doesn’t exist is, like Scott Alexander, they are too privileged to have been forced to truly engage with diversity, or to be interested in rocking the boat by pursuing questions that they know there is no point in pursuing.

They don’t think about the Civil Rights Act or being fired for saying something politically incorrect. They just… don’t think about it.

R7_Rocket says:

“I know some biologists, mathematicians, and mathematical biologists”

Based on your previous posts, I doubt that this is true.

Peppermint says:

Based on your posting history, I conclude that you’re an elephant with a touchscreen. But you’re right, I’m not interested in jeopardizing my career and professional contacts with heebs, rare high-IQ negroes, riceniggers, curryniggers, sandniggers, and so forth, to satisfy another anonymous commenter on an anonymous blog.

Well, I guess treating the truth as a private hobby is my White privilege.

R7_Rocket says:

Based on peppermint’s posts, he has a piss poor understanding of the significance of nuclear deterrence, especially for smaller states. Nor does he understand that low IQ populations are far more deadly to the future of civilization than the use of nuclear weapons/nuclear deterrence. Hence the comparison between Hiroshima and Detroit.

If the “ricenigger” Kim Family of North Korea followed peppermint’s advice, they would of ended up like Colonel Qaddafi.

jim says:

Seems to me that fish biologists quite routinely get away with stuff that if they were studying mammals, would result in a visit by several large black pol sci students wielding baseball bats.

If, perhaps you were speaking to mammalian biologists, their avowed beliefs when sober are unlikely to match their avowed beliefs when drunk.

R7_Rocket says:

In Vino Veritas indeed.

Barnabas says:

I’m rereading your post I see that you are using Darwinian in a more philosophical sense but I can’t imaging many such people exist. People I know who work in the sciences and in some cases paleontology and comparative anatomy, people who identify as “skeptics” and view Darwinianism as a magic bullet that killed religion, those are the people I know and have known in real life with sub-replacement fertility and who wouldn’t know what in world you were referring to if you brought up the collapse of civilization.

Dave says:

Your date’s wrong. It was 390 BC, not 390 AD.

jim says:

Thank you, typo, fixed it.

Fine, if we can’t have Christianity, it’s not like we can have Paganism either. We’re probably stuck with LessWrongism, or something like it. That would be fine if only it would recognize the importance of virtue and not go crazy with the utilitarianism. Currently, LessWrongism is a stupid questions involving totally unhinged moral scenarios and different flavors of utilitarianism club, but it doesn’t have to be. But not being that would mean that they need to think about stuff they apparently would rather not.

Anyway, I think Whites can be trusted to pursue the truth if it’s given to them as an option. But there are laws against truth-telling and by now the words have been twisted almost beyond recognition. How do we fight those laws? Anonymity is good enough for us, but isn’t good enough for our friends with IQs of 115 who can’t not say what they think.

jim says:

Less Wrongism is at least as evil and unhinged as actually existent Christianity, and while actually existent Christianity has reasonably healthy ancient Christianity to look back on, Less Wrong has nothing.

it’s also the closest thing to a philosophical cult we have today. There’s a reason the words ‘epicure’ and ‘cynic’ mean the things they do, perhaps the future will add ‘lesswrong’ to them.

Maybe some neo-Stoics can break off from them, with a message of virtue based on game theory. Of course, Marcus Aurelius, philosopher-king of Rome, couldn’t save Rome through philosophy alone. Then there was Constantine…

Steve Johnson says:

peppermint says:
December 6, 2014 at 7:09 pm

“Fine, if we can’t have Christianity, it’s not like we can have Paganism either. We’re probably stuck with LessWrongism, or something like it. That would be fine if only it would recognize the importance of virtue and not go crazy with the utilitarianism.”

Go read the comment section on Slate Star Codex for a week and report back if you think LessWrongism is acceptable.

It’s a place for broken people to be shielded from ever hearing that they’re broken and for developing better and better rationalizations for why they’re not broken and shouldn’t do the work needed to fix themselves.

… and SSC is miles better than lesswrong itself which is a weird cult centered around gnome in charge Eliezer Yudkowski.

Just read the post where Scott let ozymandius post about all the ways that Roissy is wrong. The information there permanently disqualifies anyone associated with it from from having anything to do with building a functioning society.

Nyan Sandwich says:

Lesswrong is dead. Social Justice hollowed it out and is wearing “rationality” as a skinsuit just convincing enough to lure in and consume hapless nerds.

Stay away from it. I got out. Lesswrong is dead, and yet it walks. Stay out.

Nyan Sandwich, I am very interested in your thoughts regarding LessWrong. I am curious about what specifically led you to leave it behind. Maybe you could write a couple of blog posts about it: one post about what led you away from LessWrong and another about how Social Justice killed it.

Nyan Sandwich says:

The former I may address. The latter is complex and still open question, afaik, but I might be able to make a few comments.

Nyan Sandwich says:

Shit Peppermint, you should know better. ESY should immediately trip all your alarms and put you into suspicion mode, at which point you should notice that Lesswrong is a front for:

a) Some interesting esoteric mathematical theology
b) a sex cult
c) UNDERMINING WESTERN CIVILIZATION WITH RACE MIXING, OPEN BORDERS, INCEST, POLYAMORY, AND GENDER DENIAL

/pol/ is always right

Adolf the anti-White says:

>Pagan morality differs from Christian morality because it is egoist.
>The true pagan treats the loser as though he has an infectious disease.
There is certainly something egoist about Christianity.

>Matthew 16:26 For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul? Or what exchange shall a man give for his soul?
However, it is other-worldly, not this-worldly. In Christianity, man pursues eternal self-interest, not temporal self-interest.

Modern Protestantism engages in complicated explanations of why salvation doesn’t actually involve anything. Because if salvation involved sacraments, works, faith, et cetera, then we should pursue these things above all. So salvation is by faith alone, and faith becomes undefined, rather than clear doctrine one must believe to be saved.

>Today’s Christianity is a progressive, at most trailing behind the official and orthodox progressivism by a few years.
You are confusing Protestantism and Christianity. Christianity is often defined by the Nicene creed. Which includes the following statement:

>In One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church; we acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins
You will not find any Protestant claiming that he is part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. Protestants claim to be part of a denomination, which is “following Jesus their own way”. They do not contain the full truth, and are not the only true faith. And they admit this. In other words, relativism. Gay Bishops are just a recent fetish.

At most, some high-Church Protestants will claim to be “catholic”, but usually in a different sense than the writers of the Nicene creed meant it. Note the lower-case “catholic”, not “Catholic”. (Not to mention, few Protestants believe Baptism remits sin)

Rome used to claim to be the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. Since about 1900, they have been denying this. Even Pope Pius X’s catechism denied extra ecclesiam nulla sallus.

>Vatican II, Lumen gentium 16: But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first place amongst these there are the Mohamedans, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind.

In other words, Muslims are Christians. One would think Jesus Christ is God, and Muslims don’t worship Jesus. But as any Unitarian (or Pope Francis) can tell you, Jesus was a social worker, not God.

>a Christian might reply that coming back from the dead is their specialty.
I loled.

jim says:

If you are a Roman Catholic, then you accept the pope. If you accept Pope Francis you accept progressivism.

And so, the Roman Catholic church hollows out, and empties.

Adolf the anti-White says:

I am Orthodox, and the Pope is a heretic. Has been for about a thousand years. His style of heresy has shifted over the years.

He’s stopped claiming to be the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. Of course, we knew that all along.

By Rome’s definition, the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church” is the union of progressive churches. Rome hates the Russian Orthodox church, because it is not ecumenical or leftist. Rome is friendly with Episcopalians, because they are leftists.

Red says:

Yet the Orthodox church doesn’t seem to be interested in recruiting Christians away from their failing churches. Why is that?

Adolf the anti-White says:

They are interested. Most Americans are not.

Orthodox Christianity is about the sacred. Church is liturgy, and the gifts of the sacraments.

Leftist theology, and low-church Protestant theology denies the existence of the sacred. American is dominated by leftists and low-church Protestants.

Following this, church has become a ceremony of leftism and/or entertainment. Most Christian music has become very similar to pop music. See the following youtube video, which is not a Christian song, but sounds like an evangelical song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELOe3f-hihc

Sermons are primarily for entertainment, and not for teaching. You will not hear a normal evangelical teach about how dissolving marriage is always a sin. You might not even hear him mention sin.

I don’t have to explain how modern Protestants and Catholics have rejected the sacraments.

>recruiting Christians away from their failing churches
Because there are few Christians, and few churches. There are leftists. There are entertainers. I can only name a few large Christian groups outside of Orthodoxy. WELS, SSPX, et cetera. Maybe the LCMS, but probably not.

Red says:

There’s a local eastern orthodox church near by where I live, what would happen if I walked in one Sunday morning? What would be the respectful way to enter such a place as a non believer?

>Sermons are primarily for entertainment, and not for teaching. You will not hear a normal evangelical teach about how dissolving marriage is always a sin. You might not even hear him mention sin.

In my experience most christian sermons are about making women feel holier than thou and bashing men. And the primary sin is the male penis becoming erect for any reason(slight exaggeration).

Adolf the anti-White says:

>what would happen if I walked in one Sunday morning? What would be the respectful way to enter such a place as a non believer?
Observers can come to the Divine Liturgy, but I would advise you to only do so for a spiritually good reason. You cannot receive communion, because you are not in communion with Christ. Dress well, and act reverently. If you’ve been to a very Traditional Catholic/Lutheran/Anglican church, the experience will be similar.

You probably won’t know the liturgy, so sit in the back. There will be a handbook you can read from.

>In my experience most christian sermons are about making women feel holier than thou and bashing men. And the primary sin is the male penis becoming erect for any reason(slight exaggeration).
Mine too. My old Protestant church, the Pastor even condemned a man having sexual desire for his wife.

Alan J. Perrick says:

“Rome is friendly with Episcopalians, because they are leftists.”

Yet, strangely, or not so strangely if you come at the issue from the proper view-point, there is not a single Episcopalian on the Supreme Court when there used to be many. There are however, six Roman Catholics and three Jewish individuals. With the percentage of Protestants in the U.S. being what it is, S.C.O.T.U.S. is easily seen an effort to exclude, or more chillingly, to destroy.

This is not embracing the U.S.’s system of government “Adolph the Anti-White,” but merely a quick and easy demonstration of the wrongness of your claim.

The Roman Church is anti-white, as are you…

A.J.P.

Adolf the anti-White says:

>there is not a single Episcopalian on the Supreme Court when there used to be many
1.5% of the US is Episcopalian. A low birth-rate is a bitch.

And Rome is not much behind Episcopalians in their leftism. If leftists are excluding Protestants, it’s going to be members of the LCMS, Southern Baptists, or something.

Alan J. Perrick says:

Are you using “low birth-rate” to justify White Genocide?

That is very sick…After all, Japan has a low birthrate and nobody’s flooding Japan with hundreds of millions of Japanese, and telling them to blend together and create a brown population where once there were Japanese.

White Genocide is a crime pushed by psychopaths, “Adolph the Anti-White.”

Alan J. Perrick says:

*hundreds of millions of non-Japanese

Adolf the anti-White says:

>Are you using “low birth-rate” to justify White Genocide?
The Amish and Old Believers do not have a low birth-rate. Highest in the US. The Episcopalians chose their destiny. They are the root of Progressivism.

>nobody’s flooding Japan with hundreds of millions of Japanese, and telling them to blend together and create a brown population where once there were Japanese.
And who is telling White America to do this? Jews? The Illuminati?

Based on which churches are most actively campaigning for leftism, the Episcopalians are the root of it. Which is not a particularly surprising conclusion. You’ve read Moldbug, I assume.

Orthodox says:

Rome is friendly with Episcopalians rejecting Progressivism. The Anglican/Episcopal church is very close to Rome because it left for political reasons, not doctrinal reasons. Protestantism is a leftward swim, those who went first, such as Lutherans, end up closer to Rome because they stopped swimming left. Episcopalians are just the first to begin returning to Rome.

Adolf the anti-White says:

@Orthodox

>Rome is friendly with Episcopalians rejecting Progressivism
Not true. There are no Episcopalians who reject Progressivism.

Rome is friendly with Episcopalians who are on the conservative wing of the Episcopalian church. And that’s only because the liberal wing of the Episcopalian church spends most of it’s time bashing Christianity, and attacking Rome for being insufficiently supportive of contraception. Rome cannot be friendly with them, without formally abandoning Christianity as the Episcopal church has done.

(By “formally abandoning Christianity” I mean rejecting the idea that Jesus is the Christ)

>The Anglican/Episcopal church is very close to Rome because it left for political reasons
Anglicans are a weird hybrid of many flavors of Protestantism. The near-Catholic branch is the conservative wing of the Anglican/Episcopal church. The far-from-Catholic branch is the progressive wing of the Anglican/Episcopal church.

Red says:

>That is very sick…After all, Japan has a low birthrate and nobody’s flooding Japan with hundreds of millions of Japanese, and telling them to blend together and create a brown population where once there were Japanese.

Funny I see people advocating Japan do this almost every time Japan’s birthrate comes up in reddit. So far Japan’s been smart enough not to take their advice.

Peppermint says:

Seriously? The reason for Catholics on the Court is abortion as an issue, Clarence Thomas wanting to look like a normal American, and Sotomayor being a spic.

Kennedy has been too leftist to remain loyal regarding abortion.

septimine says:

I think the issue of modern Christianity is exactly this. It’s not that you can be saved without faith, but that the modern definition of faith is essentially a FEELING. The rot, IMO really set in with the once saved always saved dogma. What’s the logical outgrowth of that? Essentially, it makes Salvation an EVENT. And how do you know if you’ve had this “life-changing event?” it’s a FEELING. You were prompted to come forward on an altar call, you feel lead by the spirit, you felt lead to say the special prayer. Problem being that you can feel anything. Want to feel a “burning in your soul” — that could be the habeneros on your Chipotle.

But even worse is that since almost all denominations are no longer writing and publishing Catechisms of any sort, there’s not even a standard definition of what makes you a real Christian rather than a fake one. There’s no teaching on who Jesus really is and what he really taught. In most modern churches, the question is barely asked, and it certainly isn’t answered as far as his teachings on social and political stuff, personal conduct, or the place or religion in their life. Jesus, in the modern church is more of a feeling than a person.

But in my opinion, if you’re going to do that, you might as well worship a fictional diety. You’re making it all up either way. It’s about a feeling, not truth, it’s about believing what you decide to believe in rather than what the religion teaches. I think if we’re really going that way, be a Jedi. At least then you’re not pretending to follow a person you don’t bother to learn about.

Is your religion real when it costs you nothing and carries no risk? Is your religion real when you fatten upon it? Is your religion real when you commit atrocities in its name? Whence comes your downward degeneration from the original revelation?
Paul Atreides

Red says:

Christianity has a remarkably good track record as a civilization building religion. Most empires last 200-300 years but christian civilization has been continuous since 800AD or so. For a religion with a fatal flaw, it’s done very well.

I think hijacking churches and building a better ones would be far more effective than building a brand new religion.

spandrell says:

Buddhism is retarded, and has lasted 2600 years.

Religions and Empires are different things, can’t compare their longevity.

jim says:

Buddhism is many things and has been many more things.

Empires generally have a state religion. When the state religion dies, so does the empire.

Dr. Faust says:

Why is Buddhism retard?

Sam says:

“that sex requires the continuing consent of both parties,”

Women will be greatly encouraged to enter marriage, even to undesirable, unattractive men, and will do it of their own free will, if the very idea of “consent” to sex is abolished.

To be more precise: consent should be given by the father, not the woman. And fathers should be encouraged to give away their daughters to men who can provide for them. But! If a woman has relinquished the authority of her father, then she is like a harlot. Harlots cannot be “raped”. So the modern single woman, who is under no authority but her own illegitimate authority, should not be asked for any “permission” to have sex with her, since having sex with her does not violate anyone’s (any man’s) rights to her body. If she belongs neither to her father, nor to her husband, then she doesn’t belong to anyone, or rather, belongs to everyone.

*That’s* how you incentivize women to marry. Though of course, arranged marriages between 10 year old women (yes, once they are given in marriage, they are women) and 15 year old men who should be working/providing instead of warming school chairs, are still preferrable. To have that, the modern culture of infantilization (by parents who love love love it when their kids are “cute and innocent”, and by the media) and mandatory schooling have to collapse.

Adolf the anti-White says:

We are not trying to create a perverse legal code where marriage is weirdly and unnaturally incentivized.

The standard system works well. Rape of a virgin is stealing something really valuable. Same for rape of a man’s wife. Rape of a slut is stealing something not-very-valuable. Rape of a hooker is equivalent to stealing the amount of money she would charge for sex. Punish accordingly.

Sam says:

It’s the “weirdly and unnaturally” part that you get wrong. There is nothing weird or unnatural about taking what doesn’t belong to any particular person, much like picking an apple off a tree that has no owner but Nature. Virginity is only relevant insofar as it symbolizes being given to a man in marriage. A slut or a lesbian or a token “virgin” that refuses the yoke of marriage and is not under the authority of her father, or at least some male relative, is the aforementioned apple. Treat accordingly.

Adolf the anti-White says:

Self-ownership is a fairly organic human concept. If someone tries to rape a slut, she will likely resist. Perhaps less than a virgin, though.

Sam says:

Society doesn’t have to recognize or approve of that “self ownership”. She can resist all she wants. But living under such conditions, when horny men constantly try to “rape” her, will incentivize a slut, an “asexual”, and a lesbian to marry men, even with absolutely no natural inclination to do so. Cruel measures are sometimes the kindest.

Adolf the anti-White says:

And what about nuns? Should they get married, too?

>Society doesn’t have to recognize or approve of that “self ownership”
Ah. Can someone cart her off to my farm, and keep her as a concubine/slave? Or does self-ownership apply to this, too?

jim says:

Actually, yes. Monasteries and nunneries are bad for society, hence the dissolution of the monasteries in England and Japan.

Being a chaste woman indefinitely, i.e. “spinster” should be a tolerated but low status role. Being an unchaste woman, which is to say slut, should not be tolerated. The slut should wind up forced to be always sexually available to one man, and never to any other.

Adolf the anti-White says:

Last sentence should be
>Or does self-ownership prevent kidnapping?

Sam says:

I see, so the girl next door belongs to God? If she does, then surely what I have outlined above doesn’t apply to her. Except real nuns are rare enough, and non-existent in some cultures. Unlike women who choose to shun marriage, who are an international & historically-recurrent phenomena that occurs due to innate female nature.

“Ah. Can someone cart her off to my farm, and keep her as a concubine/slave? Or does self-ownership apply to this, too?”

Slavery and concubinage are just as organic as nunhood and priesthood, if not more so. Of course, slaves and concubines should have their own sets of specific rights. But I see no ground to oppose these institutions altogether.

Adolf the anti-White says:

So then why your preoccupation with rape? If a all sluts could be enslaved or raped at will, they’d all be enslaved pretty quickly. And there would be no more legal rape – since having sex with a man’s slave without his consent is theft.

Sam says:

That’s exactly my point, Adolf. If they ‘could be enslaved or raped at will’, they’d be so incentivized to avoid that fate, that they would choose marriage virtually every time.

Q.E.D

Adolf the anti-White says:

You didn’t read my post.

Sam says:

Why do you assume that a slut (or a strongindependent lesbian) would “be enslaved pretty quickly”? She’s get raped quickly, yes, and then would reconsider her life choices and decide to get married to a man at all costs, even if he’s a basement-dwelling Omega sperg, but as regards enslavement, well, just as rape victims may resist, as you’ve suggested, so also a person kidnapped to slavery may escape. Remember that slavery can also be consensual, though it doesn’t have to be, of course. Either way, even the staunchest stronindependent lesbian would rather be married to a man who may turn out to be okay after all, than accept formal, not to say informal, slavery.

Then, it’s not just up to her to decide alone whether daily rape / enslavement is better to marriage: society itself would ensure she understands what is good for her. And if she doesn’t? She’d have to live with the consequences.

jim says:

Coercion that creates uncertain paternity, undermines the family, diminishes a man’s capability to keep control of his children is bad for women and bad for society. Hence, raping sluts and leaving them should be illegal. However, applying coercion to ensure certainty of paternity, to enforce the family, to ensure a man’s capability to keep control of his children, to propertize sex, to shut down sperm competition and other forms of destructive male conflict over women, is good for women and good for society and should be encouraged. So sluts should be propertized, rather than raped. Whoever takes her, is stuck with supporting her and protecting her for the rest of her days. If a woman sleeps with a man, she can insist on support and protection forever, whether he likes it or not, and he can insist that she obeys him and has sex with him and only him and bears his children forever, whether she likes it or not.

Suppose a woman sleeps with men who cannot or will not reasonably be expected to look after her, protect her, and raise their children by her. Then she is making bad sexual choices, and someone else should make those choices for her – should assign her to some man willing and and able to do those things, without her consent.

We don’t want the alpha males hogging all the pussy. We want, as far as possible, every male that is willing and able to be productive and defend order, to support and defend himself, his family and society, to get some pussy. We want every male that is valiant and productive to get some pussy. So we should assign any badly behaved pussy to any left over valiant and productive males who are not getting any and will have that pussy.

Sluts should be imprisoned in a shelter that functions like a no kill abandoned pet shelter – the shelter operators try to find good homes for them, without necessarily consulting the pets. On the other hand, maybe not such a good idea, since a government institution or private charity doing good to other people is likely to do bad. Maybe something closer to Sam’s solution: You are allowed to abduct sluts. It is letting them go afterwards, or otherwise mistreating them, that is illegal.

Adolf the anti-White says:

>Why do you assume that a slut (or a strongindependent lesbian) would “be enslaved pretty quickly”?
Because slaves are worth money. If nobody else did it, professionals would spend their type hunting and kidnapping sluts for money.

>a person kidnapped to slavery may escape
So could blacks in 1850 America. And what percentage of them escaped? Even if she managed to escape, she’d be re-enslaved pretty quickly.

Sam says:

I should add that although we’ve veered off to discussing slavery, that’s a seperate issue. My point is more about how the ubiquitous threat of rape would incentivize virtually every woman to get married, even if she finds her husband unattractive.

Sam says:

Slavery is a long-term business and slaves, under some legal systems, can get released. See: Old Testament statutes about the topic. Rape is something pretty immediate. There’s no point comparing “rape” to slavery, and one’s stance about the former doesn’t have to connect with one’s stance about the latter. As I said, these are separate topics. Suffice it to say that by abolishing the modern notion of “consent”, there wouldn’t be any woman to enslave OR “rape”, since they’d find themselves husbands as if their life depends on it.

Sam says:

Jim,

If the slut decides, after being raped, that she’d rather keep the child, keep living the slut lifestyle, and keep getting coerced and impregnated over and over again, then she’s bat-shit irrational and disposable. The family is not undermined any more under such an arrangement than under current conditions, and eventually the problem will solve itself because the sluts will cease being sluts, sooner rather than later.

Under the system I suggest, considering most men would rather have one woman who indeed has to have sex with them than run after sluts in order to “rape” them (most men don’t want to coerce women to sex, and many would refuse to do so even if they legally could), what you describe: “sperm competition and other forms of destructive male conflict over women” would not exist to any significant extent, as both sexes would be incentivized to get married, and parents would be incentivized to find spouses for their children.

Within not more than two generations, the family will be restored, because women would naturally choose what is good for themselves and for society – marriage rather than rape – and would stick to it for fear of being coerced to sex with strange men.

monasteries are great for putting people with IQs below 85 or people who habitually make bad decisions like alcoholics or people with HIV and any other incurable diseases that need to be permanently quarantined. Or putting widows or old men who can’t work and don’t have a family.

jim says:

Absolutely. They are indeed.

What we don’t want is large numbers of able, high status people in monasteries and nunneries, where they are, like students, apt to become dangerous.

so how do monks manage to be high status anyway? They literally take a vow of chastity, that should be low status. They can’t even own stuff, that should be even lower status. Abbots should be slightly higher status.

Among the Yanomami people of the Amazon (people means race, just like with the Jewish people), a man who wants to be a shaman has to take a vow of chastity for a year. That works to limit the supply of shamen.

Red says:

>Women will be greatly encouraged to enter marriage, even to undesirable, unattractive men, and will do it of their own free will, if the very idea of “consent” to sex is abolished.

Too much force, not enough using innate female attractions systems to shape the outcomes that you want. A far better solution is just to elevate men in status far beyond that of women and women will naturally desire any man above them no mater their looks or status. Forcing entire groups to do things entirely against their will doesn’t work on a mass scale.

Sam says:

My insight into female sexuality is that the Manosphere gets it wrong. It’s not (just) a desire to have males who are higher status than the female. It’s a desire to be with a male who is higher status than other males. Which means that by playing the Women’s Game, by relying on “innate female attractions systems” as you call it, you will always have men whom women will find unattractive, regardless of their status vis-a-vis women, and regardless of objective measures of looks, confidance, etc. To avoid that, it is better to marry people “against their will” (as was and is common in many societies) and teach them to get along or get in trouble.

Adolf the anti-White says:

Also, women who had lots of babies used to be high-status.

If you wanted babies, find a good man, and make babies. If not a good man, any man can work.

Today, other things are high-status for women. So they spend their 20’s on careers, or other things that are not baby-making.

jim says:

True, and untrue. A woman wants to have the highest status male around. But she also wants a male who is higher in status than her. It is like height. Girls prefer tall guys, but they particularly insist on guys taller than they themselves are.

The reason the rapist murderer cannibal on death row gets hot letter from hot chicks he has never met, while the CEO cannot get his dick wet is obvious when you see the CEO interacting with a female executive. As I said earlier, when the boss talks to a male executive, he tells him what he wants to tell him, and asks him what he wants to know. When he talks to a female executive, acts terrified. His words to his supposed subordinate are flattery, appeasement, and endless peace offerings, for which he receives no peace. She interrupts him and talks over him to chatter inanely.

Sam says:

Then imagine this hypothetical scenario: in universe A, all men and women are the same height. In universe B, all women are the same height, and all men are the same height, but men are taller than women. Knowing nothing else about either universe, according to Manosphere teachings, the women in universe B would be more attracted to their men than would the women in universe A to theirs. And this is exactly where the Manosphere is wrong: female sexuality is completely, totally, *comparative*. Of course, evolution has decreed which traits, compared to others, are more attractive – so women (generally) prefer taller, not shorter, men. But it’s always as opposed to other men.

So trying to appease female sexuality by making all men taller, more confidant, more symmetric, richer, with higher status, etc, will achieve absolutely nothing, since women will keep comparing men, and will feel zero attraction for the lesser men, as female sexuality is 100% comparative, unlike male sexuality, which is essential (if all women were more or less pretty, men would be generally attracted to all women). That’s just chasing your own tail, it’s futile. Better disregard female preferences altogether.

jim says:

Well that is exactly where the manosphere is right. A five foot ten inch girl will turn up her nose at a five foot ten inch man. A five foot nine inch girl will have no problems.

Sam says:

I don’t think you understand my hypothetical scenario.

“A five foot ten inch girl will turn up her nose at a five foot ten inch man.”

In a parallel universe where all men are exactly five foot ten inch, and so are the women, she wouldn’t. And in a different parallel universe, where all women are exactly five foot nine inch, and all men are exactly five foot ten inch, the attraction of women to men, *within that universe*, would not be stronger than the attraction of women to men *within the former universe*, because in both, height would be irrelevant.

In the real world, where people have different heights, height is relevant. My point here is to illustrate that female sexuality is always comparative, and if there’s nothing to compare, then a trait becomes irrelevant.

In a world where all people are symmetric, the women (of that world, not ours) would not be attracted to their men any more than the women of a world where everyone’s asymmetric will be to their own asymmetric men, as in both worlds, symmetry/asymmetry would be irrelevant. Our women, of course, would say that the men in the former world are more attractive.

So saying “all we should do is raise the collective status of men vis-a-vis women, and then women would generally be more attracted to men” (which is basically what commenter Red suggested doing) is wrong, though it’s expected if you’ve been to the Manosphere for too long. It’s wrong because women would keep comparing, and would adjust their standards and tastes in men accordingly, so nothing will change about women’s inner desire toward the male sex in that hypothetical new world.

Which is why abiding by the law of female sexuality will always, no matter what, leave some men unattractive to women, for whatever reason. Therefore, the solution is to disregard female sexuality.

jim says:

“A five foot ten inch girl will turn up her nose at a five foot ten inch man.”

In a parallel universe where all men are exactly five foot ten inch, and so are the women, she wouldn’t.

Well if women were psychologically adapted to that scenario, having evolved to meet it, yes. But if you abducted ten thousand nine year old girls and ten thousand nine year old boys from our universe to this new one, and they all grew up to be exactly five foot ten, there would very few children in the next generation. The girls, for the most part, just would not want to have sex with the boys.

Sam says:

To put it succinctly: on a lone island with two people, man and woman, there’s no problem. On a lone island with four people, two men and two women, one man will always be attractive, and the other won’t (or will be considerably less attractive), regardless of the status of the men vis-a-vis the women. Because female sexuality is always comparative.

jim says:

Let us suppose the island is somehow set up so that all the women are more powerful than any of the men. All the women have rape button, that they can silently and anonymously press to have any man punished.

Surprise, surprise, now none of the men are attractive.

If female attraction was strictly comparative, CEOs would be swimming in pussy. Because the CEO has to kiss the ass of the incompetent female executive that he was forced to hire, it is the guy in prison for rape, abduction, torture and cannibalism that is swimming in pussy.

If you raise the status of all of the men relative to all the women, all of the men become attractive. All the women want to have sex with any of the men, even though they much prefer to have sex with the most attractive man. But if prevented from having sex with the most attractive man, perhaps by the threat of being publicly whipped and getting a brand “S”for slut on their forhead, they will gladly have sex with whomever they allowed to have sex with – the guy who is single and able to support a woman.

If you lower the status of all the men relative to all of the women, all of the men become less attractive. A woman will then only want to have sex with the most attractive man – if him.

Hidden Author says:

You guys are so shallow and vain. My brother’s wife is taller than him; it works out because my brother and his wife are *likeminded*. Generally people are attracted to others based on common interests where the differences that do exist are based on one partner providing what another lacks and needs (e.g. to have intercourse requires a dick and a pussy so one provides what the other lacks). Of course, even superficiality can work to some degree–after all, it too can be a common trait that makes people likeminded in the sense of having a common interest!

scientism says:

We need a turn to religious praxis. We need to emphasise what people do, how they conduct themselves, in the rituals of daily life. These should, as far as possible, be taught through demonstration. So a child will learn to respect his or her parents in the context of family life, learn to respect authority in the context of school life, etc. Sex-segregated schooling will ensure respect for gender roles. There should be different expectations for how a child interacts with others depending on age, gender, position, etc. We also need to bring back formality in dress and behaviour, depending on context. Schools need uniforms, ceremony, clear separation of class-time and free-time, etc, so children can learn these things. Formality needs to be brought back into important life ceremonies like marriage, funerals, etc. The ceremonies of the state are another place to exercise religious praxis. Ideally, you need monarchy and aristocracy to provide high-status examplars of ritualised family life. Fame should be inherited.

Christianity was brought down because more emphasis was placed on the metaphysical content and the subjective relationship with God than on praxis. It turns out that ritual is more important than metaphysical content. Ritual, not belief, is what binds a civilisation together. Once the ritual is in place, then we can emphasise sincerity. It’s important that the rituals be something that we can practice sincerely, but establishing ritual takes precedence over establishing sincerity.

Rollory says:

The story of Xenophon and the Anabasis is one of the most awesome and inspiring stories ever, all the better because it is completely true. It’s on Gutenberg. If anyone here hasn’t read it, they should.

kreitzer says:

If we could just make that Cambria Will Not Yield guy a bishop of a new church or something, we might be able to solve this thing right quick.

CuiPertinebit says:

Of course, your view is rooted in the assumption that the supernatural does not exist, and should not be taken seriously. Religion is just an evolutionary mechanism, a utilitarian fiction.

I seriously believe in the supernatural. The Christian Tradition is explicit, as explained in the 24th chapter of Matthew: the Church will begin and endure persecution; after this, false teachers will start many sects and sever people from the Church with increasing frequency as the end approaches; iniquity will begin to multiply and charity will grow cold in society. Just before the end, the Gospel will have been preached to all nations. Then, giving the standard indication that the Lord is about to speak in veiled terms, the Evangelist inserts: “let him that reads understand.” Then, he has the Lord warn of the “abomination of desolation in the holy place.” At this point, He warns the faithful that they should forsake their homes and not go back for anything; people will point to false Christs and a delusion that will deceive “if possible, even the elect,” when “the Sun shall be darkened and the moon shall not give her light and the stars shall fall from heaven.” Then the last calamities come upon the Earth, after which the sign of the Son of Man is seen, and Christ is upon us once again.

The Fathers, in commenting on this passage, point out that such signs (eclipses, shooting stars, etc.) have certainly preceded and followed the Lord’s coming many times, and to be nothing remarkable in themselves, so that we must understand our Lord to still be speaking mysteriously here. They agree that the sun, moon and stars refer to the Church’s supreme authority (the sun), the episcopate that reflects this light in its ordinary teaching (the moon) and the priests (the stars). Elsewhere (in Luke’s Gospel), Christ asks whether, when He returns, He shall find faith upon the earth. The Church, beginning in the Scriptures, has always taught the “Great Apostasy,” when, after the defection of many sects away from the Church, even the Church Herself will suffer a massive, internal defection. From this dual devastation of the Church, and the pressures upon the Church int he last days, the Fathers understood that the “Sun, Moon and Stars” of the Church would be dim towards the end. Over the past three centuries, the Blessed Virgin has appeared repeatedly, warning that the growing moral degradation and apostasy of Western culture was moving towards an immense chastisement, a catastrophic failure even in the papacy, and a suicidal defection of the Church in her liturgy and theological teaching. The most impressive of these apparitions was at Fatima in 1917, when the Virgin warned of the Second World War, the expansion of Communism and Social Marxism, and a huge judgment upon the Church with an apostasy that would begin at the top. The most devastating part of the Virgin’s message was to be published in 1960, as per the Virgin’s instructions to the last surviving seer of the apparition, Sister Lucia. But when John XXIII opened the message, just days after announcing plans to convoke Vatican II, he was visibly upset and closed the letter, returning it under seal. The Holy Office put out an inexplicably brief and disappointing message, since the whole Catholic world had been eagerly awaiting the publication of this message for some 15 years at that point. The Holy Office said that the third portion of the prophecy would remain unpublished and under seal, “probably forever.” An abortive attempt to publish it in 2000 resulted in an huge scandal, since it became clear that JPII, Cardinal Ratzinger, Cardinal Bertone and Cardinal Sodano were all involved in some very outrageous lies about the issue: what about the message was so important, that it required such a publicly mismanaged cover-up?

In any case, shortly after John XXIII refused to publish the prophecy, he died and the Second Vatican Council commenced, and the miserable apostasy and wreckage of Christianity in these last days would proceed with all haste. There is little doubt that the prophecy had to do precisely with these events, that occurred just after the date when the Virgin wanted the message to be published. Just 25 years prior to this, Pius XII (while he was still Cardinal Pacelli, Secretary of State under Pius XI), after investigating the message of the Virgin to Lucy at Fatima, said:

“I am worried by the Blessed Virgin’s messages to Lucy of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith, in Her liturgy, Her theology and Her soul. … I hear all around me innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the Church, reject Her ornaments and make Her feel remorse for Her historical past. A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God. In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them. Like Mary Magdalene, weeping before the empty tomb, they will ask, ‘Where have they taken Him?'”

To any believing Catholic, these words were precisely prophetic of what has happened in the Church since then, and they were clearly based upon reflection on the message of Fatima, and the private conversations Lucy had with official personages sent to document the matter. Sister Lucy reported words of the Virgin that bore striking resemblance to the Scriptural account, above, of the Church ceasing to give light from Sun or Moon: “The Church will be in eclipse.” Those who have read the Secret of Fatima, including JPII and Ben. XVI, especially in their homilies at the shrine of Fatima, have made reference to the dragon knocking stars out of the sky, saying that this is the apostasy of the priests of the Church (just as the Fathers did in commenting on Matthew’s Gospel, above). In the opinion of many, the “abomination of desolation” is the banal pop-rock Mass, which has now infested practically every Catholic temple on earth. The “great delusion,” and the many false Christs or false versions of Christ, has deceived many even of the elect in the Catholic Church, being as even Paul VI, JPII and Francis have proffered or tolerated so many anti-Christian falsehoods. Most Catholics these days have no idea that they no longer hold anything resembling the Catholic faith, because they have been taught a liberalized version of Christianity which they uncritically accept, being as it (presumably) comes to them on “authority of the Church.”

All of which is to say: none of this has come upon the Church in an unexpected fashion – as Christ said in Matthew’s Gospel, above: “Behold, I have predicted it to you beforehand.” No Christian is surprised that the Protestant revolt destroyed the salt of the Gospel in Western society, causing its increasing secularization, the loss of charity, etc; nobody is surprised that the Church is now “in eclipse,” that she no longer gives light, that tens of thousands of priests left the Church in the wake of Vatican II, and that tens of thousands who remained for the paycheck no longer believe the faith; nobody is surprised that even the popes now suffer the religion of anti-Christ to be presented as though it were approved by the Church; nobody is surprised that charity has grown cold and that there is a great delusion upon the earth; nobody is surprised that the temples are places of blasphemy and desecration. None of us are surprised; this is not unexpected.

Those who see this from an human perspective simply see Christianity ceasing to be a viable religion for social cohesion due to various historical reasons; they will cast about for another option (good luck). But those of us who see it from a supernatural perspective, see what has been promised. We know what else has been promised, too. We are a small remnant, and we call those who will listen to join us. We still hold the old-time religion. We still believe it can and does save. We believe it is our best hope in the long-run (i.e., eternally speaking). But we don’t hold out much hope at all for the secular situation. The short-term diagnostic for the world is pretty bad – terminal, one might say. Despite that, we are still very encouraging of the development of neo-reactionary thought, counter-modernist revolution, etc. Prudence demands that we not completely give up hope for tomorrow, since Christians have been disappointed in apocalyptic expectations before. This time truly does seem different, however, and I think it’s simply prudent to be aware of the signs of the times. Don’t give up on the Faith; the Faith has told us to expect this day. And this day is not the end of the story.

Sorry for the long post.

jim says:

Excellent post. I appreciate the free content.

CuiPertinebit says:

Kind of you to say; I seem incapable of speaking briefly, so I’m glad I could provide such a lengthy bit of text for you.

Peppermint says:

The ordinance of the Lord may be the efficient cause of all this, but I think the fine folks gathered here have been wondering about formal causes for why now, in terms of the history of ideas and practice.

In our US past, heretical Christian revivalists promoted circumcision to prevent masturbation. Today’s heretics are a mewling rabble of frightened lemmings.

Around 200 years ago, the players of the Great Game took hush money from Jews to suppress knowledge of Jewish ritual murder, and squabbled over the right to liberate Constantinople. Now bags of gold seem less important and immigration is more popular than wars of conquest (to liberate Constantinople, get people to move there while using soft power to prevent any response by the Turks. This should be possible in 50 years if Europeans still live then and Jesus hasn’t returned yet).

Why did we need to have this civil rights experiment? The efficient cause is Jewish subversion, the formal cause is the finality of all men are created equal, the material cause is probably broadcast media. Why were all Englishmen created equal, why was it extended – this is probably the socialist phenomenon.

At any rate, both the Church and the US were changed in the ‘60s. Perhaps from the perspective of 200 years hence, or from the Beatific Vision, the Lord’s.ordinance could be the most salient cause, but here and now, and especially from a practical politics perspective, I want to better understand the formal causes.

Adolf the anti-White says:

Catholics split with Orthodoxy over the Papacy. And when the Papacy endorses modernism, they are in a rather deep quagmire.

Catholic dogma will tell you that the Magisterium is part of the church’s infallibility, and no one can remove the Pope from his office. Sedevacantists deny both. The SSPX deny the Magisterium.

But if you submit to the Pope, you are a modernist.

The solution is simple. Orthodoxy was always right. The East-West debate over who was the true church might have been a serious debate in 1400 AD. But it is not a serious debate in 2014 AD.

peppermint says:

> if you submit to the Pope, you are a modernist

Tell that to Fr. Z or the guys at reddit’s /r/catholicism. Regular anti-modernist rants, due in no small part to incompatibility between modern attitudes and Humanae Vitae.

Adolf the anti-White says:

Those guys are significantly modernist. And they avoid the most serious forms of modernism by following the Pope in the most minimalistic way possible.

The Pope gives communion to the Eastern Orthodox, and in many circumstances, Protestants. So, by any pre-1900 version of Catholicism, he is giving the Eucharist to heretics.

So what does Father Z do when a nice Eastern Orthodox guy asks for the cup?

Does /r/catholicism believe religious liberty is a god-given natural right?

As I said, modernists. And they avoid the serious forms of modernism by practicing obscure rites (the TLM in 2014 is rare) and “interpreting” Vatican II and Papal statements in ways that aren’t very credible.

peppermint says:

the Orthodox have Apostolic succession and come to Communion understanding that they should go to Confession to receive absolution first.

No one has ever suggested giving Communion to Protestants. They would need to take classes to make sure they understand the sacraments, then go to Confession, then they can get Communion.

The neat thing about the Catholic church is that there’s a catechism and a code of canon law, and these are authoritative.

Adolf the anti-White says:

>the Orthodox have Apostolic succession
Therefore … they aren’t heretics? Catholic dogma says they are. Does Father Z commune heretics?

>No one has ever suggested giving Communion to Protestants
They’ve been doing it since 1983.

http://www.novusordowatch.org/wire/rome-communion-protestants.htm

>a code of canon law, and these are authoritative.
And who wrote the 1983 code of canon law? Oh, that’s right, a modernist.

CuiPertinebit says:

Sadly, Adolf is right to recognize that most “trads” in the mainstream Church are Modernists. I don’t think you know, perhaps, what Modernism means. It’s not just “modern silly ideas.” It is a definite heresy with a real set of principles. Read the Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX. Fr. Z and plenty of other priests in the FSSP, “conservative” Catholics who watch EWTN and Michael Vorhis, etc., actually really do subscribe to many tenants of the Modernist heresy without knowing it. Anybody who supports Freedom of Speech or Religion, for example, is believing an heresy condemned by the Church. Many “conservative, traditional” priests nowadays subscribe to one or more elements of the modernist heresy not only without knowing it, but even believing that the Church approves of it.

CuiPertinebit says:

I’m ex-Orthodox, and the Orthodox Church, despite maintaining liturgical and folk-customs intact, has sold out the Fathers and their dogmata far more completely: Papal Primacy, Original Sin, the Immaculate Conception, the transmission of Concupiscence/Corruption via sexual procreation, the Filioque, the absolute prohibition on remarrying and on the use of contraception, etc., etc., are all taught by the Greek Fathers. Not to mention the Orthodox twice reunited with the Catholics, so it’s tough to buy that the “True Church” sold out twice… and if one questions whether these councils were “truly Ecumenical,” one can question every council on similar grounds (especially the 4th and 5th). The Orthodox don’t know where ecclesiastical authority and infallibility lie, and even the nature of the primacy is hotly debated by the Patriarchs of Moscow and Constantinople. The whole thing is a joke.

The Magisterium of the Church does teach that the Magisterium has infallibly in certain circumstances – namely, when it exercises the “ordinary, universal magisterium.” This is explicitly defined as the “ordinary teaching of the bishops, when they uphold the Tradition of the Church in their preaching, addresses, letters, seminaries, printing presses and other official organs of instruction.” Innovation is thus explicitly excluded from the ordinary Magisterium, and the simple fact that a majority of bishops innovate, does not make their majority opinion to be the Magisterium.

As to the pope, the Magisterium teaches that nobody has the authority to remove the pope from office, but it does teach that the Church has the right by Divine Law to be preserved from a pope who is an heretic or manifest destroyer of the Church. It teaches that such a pope, when he exists, severs himself from the Church by the very fact of heresy or public apostasy; in normal circumstances, the Church should acknowledge the fact with an official proclamation, and the pope retains administrative jurisdiction until that decree comes. But when that proclamation comes, it does not “remove” the pope, it simply recognizes the already-accomplished fact, that the pope has not been a member of the Church (let alone its head) for some time. Indeed, every person who commits the deliberate sin of heresy is ipso facto severed from the Church and has destroyed the virtue of Faith in himself. Paul VI, JPII and Francis have actually engaged in numerous self-excommunicating acts. This is the teaching of the Magisterium, confirmed by Ss. Robert Bellarmine and Alphonse Liguori, Bd. Pope Pius IX, and all the normative moral theologians (Cajetan, Suarez, John of St. Thomas, etc., etc.).

The Magisterium teaches that Tradition is the primary norm of faith, and the Magisterium is the secondary norm. The Magisterium teaches that apostate bishops, even if they retain the jurisdiction of their office until they are officially deposed, cease to be members of the Church and the Magisterium through heresy and apostasy. We are living in the Great Apostasy, when the apostasy has become so extensive that the Church is not capable even of organizing itself in an efficient way to depose the heretics, because such large percentages of the episcopacy are heretical. Similar things have happened before, as in the Arian crisis.

I deeply misunderstood what Catholics believe about the papacy when I was Orthodox; when I converted to Catholicism, I realized that even most Catholics no longer understand just how willing the Magisterium has been to recognize the possibility of corrupt and heretical, apostate popes, going so far as to work out what would happen in such a case, and why, and explicitly spelling out that the pope must be disobeyed, as any other ruler, when his commands are contrary to faith or morals. The Code of Canon Law itself, shields clergy from punishment whenever there is a grave crisis in the Church, bestowing jurisdiction and nullifying penalties against clerics who honestly believe themselves to be acting in response to a crisis situation (whether the crisis exists objectively or not). The fact of the matter, is that those who scrutinize the Catholic Magisterium will realize that the Magisterium leaves us with the undeniable conclusion: the mainstream Church today is apostate, the popes are almost certainly anti-popes, but even if not, most of their commands and laws now have to be disobeyed. The Code of Canon Law protects Catholic clergy who resist the apostasy from ecclesiastical censure or penalty, so Catholics should cling to them without fear.

Adolf the anti-White says:

>Original Sin, the transmission of Concupiscence/Corruption via sexual procreation,
I’m wondering whether you could recommend some reading material on Augustinian ideas prior to Augustine. (presumably from a Catholic perspective)

>the absolute prohibition on remarrying and on the use of contraception
Economia is an aspect of ecclesiastical law, not a moral position. No Orthodox denies that divorce is a sin. You can legitimately criticize them for being lenient, but not for changing moral teaching.

>Not to mention the Orthodox twice reunited with the Catholics, so it’s tough to buy that the “True Church” sold out twice
Really? Peter sold out once. The Orthodox don’t maintain the same sort of absolute faith in our ecclesiastical leaders that Catholicism does.

>the Immaculate Conception
Really flows from original sin, don’t you think?

>if one questions whether these councils were “truly Ecumenical,” one can question every council on similar grounds
Orthodoxy does not maintain that councils are infallible (at least not in the same sense that the Pope is supposedly infallible). And a valid council is not purely a matter of the legal office of the people who call a council. Christ did not promise that the gates of hell would not prevail against the leaders of the church. He promised it to the church as a whole. So if the leaders subscribe to something, and the people reject it…

>The Orthodox don’t know where ecclesiastical authority and infallibility lie,
Not in any precise manner, at least. Which brings up the obvious question – is spiritual authority a strict and precise (almost legal) sort of authority, or is it blurry and unclear?

>ordinary teaching of the bishops, when they uphold the Tradition of the Church
>Innovation is thus explicitly excluded from the ordinary Magisterium, and the simple fact that a majority of bishops innovate, does not make their majority opinion to be the Magisterium
But what is innovation and what is Tradition? If we let the Bishops decide what is innovation and what is Tradition, then we’re modernists, because the majority of them are telling us the church has always believed modernist things. If we decide what is innovation and what is Tradition, then we really don’t believe in the authority of bishops. An authority that only exists when we agree with it isn’t really an authority.

CuiPertinebit says:

What can one say to such points in a brief manner? They merit a long reply, and perhaps Jim won’t want it cluttering the site, which I would entirely understand. I’ll answer you here, but understand that Jim may not approve the post, or may delete it. C’est la vie.

As to “Pre-Augustinian” writings with Augustinian ideas, that would be difficult; and you are aware that he lived in the 4th-5th centuries, when many of the Church’s teachings were being thoroughly exposited (in public) for the first time in their fine points. That fact that explicit endorsements of his thought may not exist, does not preclude the fact that the principles in general were understood – and it would take a full-length paper to demonstrate all the witnesses to “Augustinian” ideas before this, common as they were. Certainly St. Ambrose, St. Hilary, St. Athanasius, St. Basil the Great, etc. all taught the doctrine before St. Augustine. Even more important, St. Cyprian of Carthage and a large synod of bishops condemned the heresy of the Pelagians, defending especially the idea that infants must be baptized so that the Original Sin of Adam be remitted to them, lest they suffer damnation or loss on account of dying before being baptized; this was a century before St. Augustine. The same line of thought motivated bishop Aurelius of Milan to anathematize the Pelagians some years before St. Augustine involved himself in the controversy, and near contemporaries of St. Augustine, such as popes Ss. Celestine, Innocent, Zosimas and Leo the Great, as well as St. Jerome, 126 bishops in Africa and even more in Italy, all condemned the heresy as soon as it showed up in their regions and hardly relied upon the thought of St. Augustine as an “authority” on the matter (since they lived before him, or shortly after him, and thus before a lone man’s innovations could become so swiftly accepted as the norm of orthodoxy, unless they were already considered traditional).

The only two synods that ever exonerated Pelagius were held in the East, and, though the Orthodox often latch onto this as proof that their doctrine was different from the Latins, the actual fact is that the man sent to represent the decisions already passed upon Pelagius, Orosius, was not capable of arguing in Greek at the first synod, and the Latins were detained from appearing at the second. But pope St. Zosimas was a Greek, and he condemned Pelagius. Also, the thought of St. Augustine was vigorously defended by later, Greek theologians, most especially St. Maximos the Confessor, but also St. Theodore the Studite, St. John Damascene, and even – shock of shocks! – Gregory Palamas, who quotes St. Augustine at length in some of his works specifically when dealing with Original Sin and related ideas. Rome had a network of Greek monks about at all times, usually including some of the most eminent personages of the age, such as Ss. Theodore the Studite and Theodore of Canterbury, St. Maximos the Confessor, Anastasius Bibliothecarius, etc., who translated and represented Rome’s position to the East (as St. Maximos did with the Filioque); during this time the East explicitly affirmed the teaching of St. Augustine and the condemnation of Pelagianism (an heresy having everything to do with the complete doctrine of Original Sin) at two Ecumenical Synods, with the West. The Ecumenical Synods also endorsed the Filioque (not its addition to the Creed, but its orthodoxy as a doctrine, by asserting that it followed Leo, Agatho, Augustine, Hilary, Basil, Jerome, etc., in all their teachings – all these men taught the Filioque very clearly.

The more usual terminology in the East, of the Ancestral Curse, makes a distinction between the “Natural Passions,” which are the merely natural (and therefore not intrinsically evil) effects of Original Sin upon our nature: death, hunger, thirst, etc., number amongst these passions. The unnatural (or “vitiated”) passions arise from the reign of “corruption” (concupiscence, in Latin terminology) producing ἡδονή (the term St. Maximos uses to abbreviate his thought of “pleasure not ruled by the nous and dianoia, which would become authoritative in the Greek Churches and which corresponds to “inordinate desire” in St. Augustine and the Latin Fathers). St. Maximos, following the other Fathers, explitily teaches that sexual procreation as man now knows it is always permeated with this principle of corruption, which in turn produces ἡδονή, which is now the predicating principle of human life, subjecting it to the same principles of corruption and death and sinful disorder, from which it arises. For St. Maximos and the Greek Fathers, just as much as St. Augustine, sexual procreation is always “sinful” insofar as it is shot through with a sinful and evil force of corruption, even though it is not “a sin” to procreate. This is one reason why the Fathers viewed sex for any purpose other than procreation as unacceptable for a Christian (hence the Patristic ban on contraception), and it is why the Church always recognized that only those who renounce sexual activity can attain to dispassion and deification while yet in the body (though, of course, those who sexually procreate may progress in virtues and sanctity). In fact, St. Maximos teaches explicitly that Christ was able to assume human nature without inheriting this sinful force of corruption and concupiscence precisely by having a Virgin Birth which did not involve sex and corruption (as you sing in the Axion Estin: “without corruption you gave birth to God the Word, True Theotokos, we magnify thee”), and he categorically states that the Christian life consists of being divorced from the sinful predication of one’s existence upon sexual procreation inherited from Adam, and being predicated rather upon the Virgin Birth of Christ, being incorporated into Christ through Baptism, and thus making the same translation of sin and death, changing it from a due penalty into an instrument for condemning the system of sin and death itself through shared innocence with Christ. Thus, the doctrine of Original Sin is intimately linked to the doctrine on the Incarnation, the Efficacy of the Cross, Baptism and the Christian life. One must not tinker with any part of it, for in destroying one part of the chain he damages essential elements of the Apostolic Faith in its vitals.

So many Orthodox folk are taking the phyletist, anti-Latin sentiment of modern-day Hellenists as the authentic “Orthodox view,” priding themselves on their more “holistic, organic, mystical, etc.” approach to theology, that they don’t realize they are throwing even the Greek Fathers, who agreed with St. Augustine, under the bus. Here’s a fun quote from Gregory Palamas: “the flesh’s impulse to reproduce is not subject to our intellects, which God has appointed to govern us, and so is not entirely without sin. That is why David said, ‘I was shapen in iniquities, and in sins did my mother conceive me’” (from his homily on the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple). You couldn’t ask for a more “Augustinian” formulation of the doctrine of Original Sin! Even St. Augustine’s teachings on freedom of the will were affirmed in every aspect by St. Maximos the Confessor, whose teachings on gnomic vs. natural will exactly parallel St. Augustine’s teaching on “posse non peccare” vs. “non posse peccare.” St. Augustine’s teachings were endorsed by two Ecumenical Councils, and St. Maximos’ Greek re-iteration of his teaching on the will was endorsed as the official doctrine of the Church at the 6th Ecumenical Synod.

So, my advice would be not to wonder whether there are “pre-Augustinian Augustinian thinkers,” but to make a real investigation into the topic amongst all the Latin and Greek Fathers, and to see that the usually-ballyhooed elements of “Augustinianism,” are in fact an Apostolic Tradition of East and West, which modern Orthodox thinkers ignore and denigrate because it makes for a more groovy, mystical, “hipster” theology, and because it allows them to affirm people in their negative prejudices about Christianity’s less popular doctrines while allowing them to posture as pseudo-intellectual aesthetes and mystics amongst all the incense and iconography. Even the core elements of Immaculate Conception were developed in their most explicit and clear forms by Ss. John Damascene and Andrew of Crete, as well as by Gennadios Scholarios, Mark of Ephesus (mirabile dictu!), Gregory Palamas and Nicholas Cabasilas. These speak of the Virgin as sinless from “before her conception,” as “alone making her truce before the general reconciiliation, and, indeed, of needing no reconciliation, since she existed from the first as leader of the friends of God” of being a “return to the first formed state,” of having eaten “fruit of paradise in the temple, of which, if Adam had been granted a taste, he too would have been unable to fall as she was,” etc., etc. This is a woman confirmed in theosis to the point of impeccability, beyond the state of Adam and Even in paradise, while still a toddler in the Temple, before Christ was even conceived. The Immaculate Conception is, indeed, a preeminently Greek doctrine; the Greeks taught it more explicitly than the West, until the West defined it solemnly. So much of what passes for Orthodox “theology” now, is simply a quest to differentiate the East from the West at almost any price. If the price to be free of “Latin influence,” is to throw even the Greek Fathers under the bus, so be it. Read the Philokalia, too; the ascetic authors therein are Augustinian to the core.

Sorry that took so long; as to the other things you say, the authority of the Church exists to administer the Church, and to faithfully expound doctrine; however, it has always been held that the primary rule of faith is the Apostolic Tradition. When there is no reason to suspect a bishop of heresy or of apostasy, and when he is commanding nothing contrary to faith or morals, his authority should be respected and obeyed. When he seems to overthrow tradition, he may be scrutinized, to see if he is self-condemned as an heretic; when he commands something evil, he not only may be disobeyed, but very often must be disobeyed. The Church has always believed that, when the bishops are gathered in an Ecumenical Synod, the definitions proposed as definitive are infallibly true. The Church has also always believed that any true bishop of Rome (again, when no heresy or apostasy is suspected), after due consultation, has the charism and authority to issue such decrees, which are to be received as authoritative; it has always believed that such decrees would be free of heresy. A real wake-up call came for me, when I read the acts of the Ecumenical Synods in detail, and the letters before and after them; it is quite clear that the pope was perceived to be in charge, and that the council’s chief job was to receive and enact the decree of Rome and, if necessary, to provide deliberation before this decree was pronounced. In fact, this was the belief of St. Theodore the Studite and other saints of the East, who from time to time wrote the Emperor of Constantinople and told him that he should command a synod be gathered and the holy decree be received from the pope of elder Rome, even telling him that he could do this without the presence of the Eastern Patriarchs, if necessary.

The attempt to regard these acts of the Church’s highest authority as somehow ambiguous, is a late development in Orthodoxy, that only exists to give them an “out” from the disastrous implications for their communion. The fact is that the Church always considered both the solemn decree of an orthodox Roman Pontiff, and the Ecumenical Synod eliciting and enacting this, to be Infallible. In fact, pope Vigilius neither attended the 6th Ecumenical Council nor sent legates; he issued a separate decree on his papal authority, which the 6th Council took as confirmation of their deliberations. If the Orthodox want to say that “the whole Church” is the guardian of the truth, then we are forced to admit that 1) no council has been ecumenical and 2) in very many instances, we have no way of knowing what the real truth may be until centuries have passed and the “mind of the Church” has been settled; this certainly doesn’t help us in overcoming the East-West divide, since you could say that the Church has no official doctrine on which side is right or wrong until both sides agree! Every council but the 2nd and 7th involved huge numbers of dissenters, just as Florence and Lyons did. If Florence and Lyons are uncertain, then so are five of the seven early Ecumenical Synods. The fact is that a large synod presided over by the pope or his legates, and concurring with their judgment, has always been regarded as Infallible in its dogmatic pronouncements, and the Orthodox knew this and said as much up until the 1800s when, slowly but surely, things began to change. The new position has resulted in hopeless contradictions that not only disqualify the Orthodox Church from holding the Apostolic Faith, but even from having any mechanism for knowing what it is. Though I say all this, I freely grant that what passes for Catholicism since the pontificate of Paul VI, is not the Catholic Church: it is “the great delusion” of the Great Apostasy. Paul VI gave every indication of being an heretic by his words and deeds, and of being self-excommunicated by brazenly wearing Freemasonic insignia on his person (as he did in Yankee Stadium). When he changed the rites of the Church, he fell under the anathema of the Council of Trent and Pope St. Pius V. The subsequent “popes,” for concurring in this and promoting other heresies already condemned authoritatively, have been at worst antipopes, and at best feckless and inept men, whose insobriety merits firm resistance and not obedience. Because of the apostasy in the Church at large, the solemn recognition of this fact has not been forthcoming.

Finally, “Economy” is the other great heresy of Orthodoxy in modern times, and a major reason I came to see that she had departed from the Apostolic Tradition. “Oikonomia” is a principle of *Canon Law.* It leaves the application of the Church’s discretionary norms for prescribing penance, etc., in the hands of the proper authority. Most importantly, the purpose of oikonomia is to attain the same result that the Church’s canons aim to achieve – the saving of souls by neither trivializing their sins nor inducing the faithful to despair over them – by modifying the application of discretionary norms to best achieve this result in particular cases, using the norms as a guide.

Oikonomia thus has no power to actually negate morality or change the Church’s moral teaching on points. Our Lord and the Scriptures teach clearly and objectively: the man who divorces and remarries *is in adultery.* He is fornicating in an adulterous relationship with a woman who is not his wife, and cannot ever be his wife, unless his first wife dies. Only death breaks the sacramental bond of marriage. Fornication is a reason to separate, but is not a reason to remarry. Because the Church’s moral teaching on the nature of divorce and adultery are not mere matters of Canon Law, the principle of “oikonomia” can do nothing to permit them. You may as well say that the Church could permit “gay marriage” or sodomy, or even abortion, “by oikonomia.” The Church has no power to re-write morals via oikonomia.

The principle of oikonomia *would* allow the Church to lessen or eliminate the penance or canonical impediments that sodomites normally incur, if they repented and forsook their sins. It *would* allow the Church to lighten a woman’s penance from 10 years’ fasting and prostrations for running around on her husband and precipitating a divorce, if she were repentant and gave up her sin. But it cannot say that we “permit” sodomy, adultery or divorce “by oikonomia.” Most importantly, it means that if a woman has dared to “divorce ” and remarry while her husband is still living, then, because the Church has no power to simply legalize repeated, ongoing acts of adultery (it can only lighten or increase the penance when the person comes to confession and is prepared to forsake their sins), there is no way to “permit” the “re-marriage” on grounds of “economy.” And the early Greek Fathers taught the same. The abuse of economy comes late, and only expanded to such proportions after the Orthodox fell away from the Church.

I think I’ve droned on for long enough, now…

jim says:

The New Testament provides a scriptural basis for sexual abstinence, but also a scriptural basis, and a considerably stronger scriptural basis, for a married, fertile, and semi hereditary clergy.

To be eligible to be a bishop, a man should have one, and only one, wife, should have children, and his children should be well behaved – See 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1.

Paul was an exception, but exceptions should be rare and only happen in extraordinary circumstances. That a man is naturally chaste is an extraordinary circumstance – and an improbable circumstance.

That the church has moved to an increasingly anti sex, anti reproduction position, is subversive, undermines the social order, and is indicative of Pharisaical competition to be holier than thou.

A man without children has no interest in the future of this world, so should not be in a position of influence or authority.

Hidden Author says:

Jim, you’re arguing that the Church should actually serve earthly interests while rhetorically supporting spiritual interests. But the Biblical verse “And if Christ be not raised , your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins” suggests that spiritual interests are the proper interests of the Church and that their overshadowing by earthly interests are a form of corruption.

jim says:

The Church has a duty to earth and to heaven. If it sacrifices earth to heaven, which tends to happen when people in religious organizations compete for superior holiness, it is not performing its duty to either one.

I am a cynical materialist who values religion for utilitarian and civilization building reasons, but the Church should not be, and cannot be, cynical materialists. Fortunately hypocrisy dies out in a single generation, because the next generation does not get the joke. Thus, for example, the doctrine that God is three and God is one was cynically imposed at swordpoint for pragmatic reasons, and is now sincerely believed by every Christian everywhere.

Similarly Shinto was invented by a bunch of cynical eighteenth century intellectuals. Possibly very few Japanese really believe it, but they all sincerely perform the rituals, and if that continues, pretty soon they will all believe it. And maybe they do believe it. They really were willing to die for the emperor. No other military literally fought to the end.

Alan J. Perrick says:

“Jim, you’re arguing that the Church should actually serve earthly interests while rhetorically supporting spiritual interests.”

No, he doesn’t.

A.J.P.

Adolf the anti-White says:

(Advise taken on the Augustinian issue – my knowledge of the Greek Fathers is very limited)

>When there is no reason to suspect a bishop of heresy or of apostasy, and when he is commanding nothing contrary to faith or morals, his authority should be respected and obeyed.
But how do we know when to suspect a bishop of heresy or of apostasy? Either that involves personal judgement, or no judgement. Is Apostolic Tradition so perspicuous that judgement is not really necessary? Ultimately, we must combine trust in an external authority, with trust in our own judgement of Apostolic Tradition. I don’t see any way around this. Most heretics are slippery. They don’t openly admit their reject apostolic teaching. At least not when taking over Rome.

>when I read the acts of the Ecumenical Synods in detail, and the letters before and after them; it is quite clear that the pope was perceived to be in charge
The Roman Pontiff was the most important office in the church. For the modern Orthodox church, it would be as if the Russian Patriarch and Ecumenical Patriarch were combined.

>The Church has also always believed that any true bishop of Rome (again, when no heresy or apostasy is suspected), after due consultation, has the charism and authority to issue such decrees, which are to be received as authoritative; it has always believed that such decrees would be free of heresy
Even if I acknowledge this, the Orthodox have a easy, cheap response. The Filioque (or some other issue) makes the Roman Pontiff a heretic.

>The attempt to regard these acts of the Church’s highest authority as somehow ambiguous, is a late development in Orthodoxy
But even in your approach, the councils are somewhat ambiguous. What about Vatican II? Lots of Roman Catholics, including a bunch who are just uneducated in the faith, don’t see a clear reason it’s heretical. Even you must wait a couple centuries for the church to finally make up it’s mind.

>In fact, pope Vigilius neither attended the 6th Ecumenical Council nor sent legates; he issued a separate decree on his papal authority, which the 6th Council took as confirmation of their deliberations.
In order for a council to be ecumenical, it must include the Western half of the church. Rome was the western half of the church. If Rome didn’t approve it…

>Every council but the 2nd and 7th involved huge numbers of dissenters, just as Florence and Lyons did. If Florence and Lyons are uncertain, then so are five of the seven early Ecumenical Synods.
All were uncertain until they had been accepted by the whole church over a period of time. If the church were still split over Nicene, then I would not call it an infallible ecumenical council.

>The fact is that a large synod presided over by the pope or his legates, and concurring with their judgment, has always been regarded as Infallible in its dogmatic pronouncements,
So long as we judge the Pope to be non-heretical, right? And as you judge the past 50~ years of Popes, so the Orthodox judge the past 1000~ years of Popes.

>You may as well say that the Church could permit “gay marriage” or sodomy, or even abortion, “by oikonomia.”
It could not declare that those things are not sins. It could not recognize the concept of gay marriage. It could lessen the penance

>But it cannot say that we “permit” sodomy, adultery or divorce “by oikonomia.”
It can permit them by ecclesiastical law. It cannot morally permit them.

The issue of divorce is simply whether one can (factually) end a sacramental marriage. If one cannot, then Roman Catholicism is correct. If one can, then Orthodoxy is correct. It really isn’t a question of moral ideals, but spiritual reality.

I am not familiar with much of the Greek Fathers. But I know St. John Chrysostom permitted divorce. (“better to break the covenant than to lose one’s soul”)

John 4:18 “for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”

jay says:

Evil Protestants wanting to go back to the original teachings of the apostle and Jesus Christ free of manmade tradition is the cause of the fall of Christianity

Adolf the anti-White says:

It would be better to not use Protestant propaganda.

The Protestants were rationalists. That is, interpret Scripture through public debate, reason, et cetera, rather than Tradition and authority.

As Protestantism has gotten more and more rationalistic, they now develop concepts outside of Scripture and quote Bible verses that sound a little like they support the concepts. They promote socialism, then quote Jesus on rich people. They promote tolerance, then quote Jesus on love. At least Luther worked with concepts that actually existed in Scripture (i.e. “faith”).

Red says:

> Christianity contains the seeds of the leftism that devoured it, in its universalism, and in its sympathy for losers. The old paganism inherently had less tendency to head left.

How can you believe this? Roman paganism produced female empowerment, dysfunctional families, and an inability for the average roman to fight for their empire after a period of 300 years of great success. All human systems eventually break down and such systems should be judged on their total success and longevity, not that they failed.

Odin worship produced amazing raiders, strong fighting men, and death and destruction. Christianity produced unity, far better military organization, and the wonders of western civilization that lasted some 1,200 years. Sure Christianity is almost dead, but to believe that paganism was less likely to head leftward doesn’t make much sense.

All civilizations head leftward and eventually die. It was said that Etruscan noble women would have orgies in the streets with any man who passed by before the Romans conquered them(Somewhat of an exaggeration, I’m sure but the general point is still true). They were once stronger than the Romans & conquered them and then they become left wing and decadent. Such is way of civilization. Rome in turn followed their route and died for it, except for the eastern empire where Christianity and the Greeks preserved civilization despite being attacked on all sides.

If anything here we should be studying the ways that Christianity promoted civilization so that the next religion, or a resurgence of the existing one can learn from the past and avoid the mistakes of the present. When the fall comes there needs to be a body knowledge that the new rulers can draw on.

Look at Putin flail around in Russia. He should have re-instituted the patriarchal family and established strong private property rights with intensives towards Russian industries. Instead he runs a gangster empire where one is never certain that your business won’t be stolen and has a falling birth rate despite large cash incentives for mothers to have children. He knows that the west is dying, but he doesn’t know which part to copy and which part to reject. He’s brought religion back into public life, but he’s done it without rebuilding the patriarchal family. All is doomed to failure because he doesn’t know real history.

jim says:

Rome went left, we are going left, Bronze age Egypt went left, and the Canaanites went crazy, so cannot blame everything on Christianity.

On the other hand, Bronze age Egyptians never became fans of illegal immigration, whereas shortly before Attila the Hun sacked Rome, we see Roman Christians going very twenty first century progressive about the barbarians enriching Roman culture.

Christianity was great in supporting the patriarchal family, but in other respects, problematic until Charles the Hammer made it a more martial religion. Good on families, bad on nationalism and patriotism.

Adolf the anti-White says:

Protestantism went left. Orthodoxy stayed the same (while Russia went left). Catholicism didn’t move very far left until about 1900.

I think we can blame Protestantism. In fact, any religion that openly attacks tradition and authority is likely a leftist religion.

jay says:

Protestants do not oppose tradition unless it contradicted sacred writ. Which is supreme not that tradition is deleted per se.

CuiPertinebit says:

“Contradicted Holy Writ” according to whom? I’m a learned man with plenty of Scriptural, Patristic and Philosophical studies under my belt, and I find nothing in the Catholic Faith that contradicts Holy Writ. I can understand why superficial thinkers would find places that “contradict,” but why should their opinion matter? Where is authority?

Above, you spoke of Evil Protestants “returning to the original teachings.” You mean, evil Protestants who advanced an entirely new understanding of Christianity, believing the incomprehensibly stupid idea that Christianity is a “Bible-Based” religion (when the Church managed to conduct regular business for four centuries without even knowing, for sure, what the Bible was), despite the fact that the Bible has never been the “sole rule of faith,” an idea that did not even exist until ca. 1500 AD. This is chiefly because the Bible itself nowhere claims to be the sole rule of faith (making the “Sola Scriptura” principle to seem especially silly), but this inconvenient fact is also accompanied by other facts, like the Bible being: a) not completely written for 60-70 years after Jesus founded the Church; b) not being officially recognized and approved – by the authority of the Catholic Church, one might add! – until ca. 400AD; c) so expensive to produce that most Churches didn’t even have a copy; d) not able to be read because widespread illiteracy was very common until relatively modern times. The idea that Christians sat around in the morning, having a chat with JC, “spending some time in the Word” while they spilled coffee on their “Prayer of Jabez Extreme Prosperity Study Bible,” is an idea that could only exist in the modern age. Widespread “literacy” and Solipsism are features of modern society, and they wouldn’t have made much sense before the Reformation. The Apostles would have found this approach effeminate and ludicrous.

Protestantism is a set of modernist, gnostic assumptions, read back into time and superimposed upon a motley assortment of Apostolic writings. Just because you are reading a Bible, doesn’t mean you are “returning to the original Christianity.” It just means that you are bringing your hysterical ideas and reading them into an ancient text. The Bible says that “the Church is the Pillar and Bulwark of the Truth,” and that “if they will not listen to the Church, let them be as the heathen and the tax collector.” Christ says “I have come to build my Church.” The Scriptures speak of being Baptized into Christ, of being nourished on the Body and Blood of Christ, of “abiding in Christ,” Who is the Vine, and the True Bread Who came down from Heaven. Christ said He would build His Church on Peter, and gave him the keys, and gave the apostles power to forgive sins, etc. Christianity, as the Bible presents it, is all about being incorporated into the Body of Christ, which is ruled by Christ’s authority, which He vested in the Apostles and those whom the Apostles would appoint after them, and which nourishes its members on the Sacraments, chiefly that of the Eucharist. Nowhere is there talk of “accepting Jesus as your personal savior” and being “saved by faith alone,” as though Christianity were a body of gnosis to be devised from ancient texts. Indeed, the only verse in the Bible where “faith and alone” occur together, is in the epistle of James: “So you see that a man is not saved by faith alone.” Paul teaches that you are saved by grace, through faith, and this is not the same thing as “by faith alone.” Even the demons believe, and tremble. That’s what a Catholic believes.

So don’t tell me that you’ve “returned to the original Christianity.” All you find in the Bible, are the ideas that you bring to the Bible. You have no claim to ancient, Christian authenticity, and you read the Bible in a sense that the Apostles and early Christians would never have recognized. It is absolutely true that the Protestant Reformation was the beginning of the end of Western civilization, because it was the Protestant Reformation that made every individual man the final arbiter of universal truth. This is relativism, and relativism is the defining principle of the Modern crisis. There is no doubt, that Protestantism was the beginning of latter-day Apostasy, and contained all the seeds of secularist relativism.

jim says:

, like the Bible being: a) not completely written for 60-70 years after Jesus founded the Church;

The bible nowhere mentions the fall of Jerusalem, nor the execution of James, therefore the books included in the bible, with the probable exception of revelations, were completely written within forty years of the death of Jesus.

Also, if these books were written, or significantly edited, after the fall of Jerusalem, the prophecies of Jesus would have been recalled to be a lot more specific. Jesus fails to prophesy anything falsifiable that anyone paying attention could not predict. His prophecies suck. The later the books were written, the better the prophecies would have been.

The only accurate non trivial prophecy is the fall of the temple, and that is safely undated, so if the temple was still around today, people would just say it is yet to come, or interpret it as a parable, they way they interpret all his prophecies that failed to come true.

People want to interpret the New Testament as written late, so that they get away from the inconvenient bits – mainly male supremacy, female submission, and severe restrictions on divorce.

Adolf the anti-White says:

> This is chiefly because the Bible itself nowhere claims to be the sole rule of faith
“The Bible” didn’t even exist until Luther’s day. The idea that a single document contains all the Apostolic writings is not believed by Orthodoxy. (and not Catholicism prior to the Council of Trent)

The book of Hebrews and the gospel of Luke were not written by the Apostles. There is not clear distinction between them and the Didache or the epistle of Clement. The Greek church has a list of books it reads. Russia has a slightly different list. Some church fathers thought the book of Enoch was inspired. Some didn’t. There is no “Bible” in the way Protestants imagine it.

Adolf the anti-White says:

When I said “apostolic writings” I should have said “inspired writings”

Adolf the anti-White says:

@Jim
>The bible nowhere mentions the fall of Jerusalem, nor the execution of James
Are you excluding Acts 12:2?

jim says:

I refer to the execution of James the Just by the high priest in 68AD, not the execution of James brother of John by Herod.

Therefore the Gospels were written before 68AD.

Adolf the anti-White says:

Examine two properties of a religion.

1) Universalism (how much they try to get converts)

2) Violence (how much they use coercion to get converts and enforce holiness)

The combination of these two produces totalitarianism. Orthodox Christianity is very universalist, but pacifist. Hinduism is not universalist, but violent.

Progressivism is both. Thus totalitarianism. Everything must be bent to the will of progress, and progress has few moral prohibitions on violent tactics.

Leftist forms of Christianity were nearly all violent. The leaders of the new version of Christianity claimed to be holier than everyone else, and that holiness promoted their violent politics (MLK) or outright revolution (Cromwell).

Adolf the anti-White says:

And this would only be coercion. Self-defense wouldn’t count.

Mike in Boston says:

Maybe all civilizations head leftward and eventually die; but you can make a good case for Russia having died in ’17; perhaps it is being reborn.

And Putin seems to learn from his mistakes, a rare thing in general but especially amongst politicians. If Putin is doomed to failure it’s only because, like Stolypin, one guy can only do so much.

Meanwhile Patriarch Kirill told the Union of Orthodox Women that “I consider this phenomenon called feminism very dangerous, because feminist organizations proclaim the pseudo-freedom of women, which must appear firstly outside of marriage and outside of family…”, while a woman must be primarily “a guardian of the family fire and centre of the family life,… always gazing inwards, where her children are, where her home is. If this incredibly important function of a woman is destroyed, then everything will be destroyed – the family and, if you wish, the motherland.”

I won’t count Russia out yet.

jim says:

Odin worship produced amazing raiders, strong fighting men, and death and destruction.

The time has come for some death and destruction. We are bending over and getting screwed. Rotherham is what you would expect if Mohammed’s army was passing through England to rape, enslave, and pillage. I want our army to pass through and do some raping, slaving, and pillaging.

R7_Rocket says:

“The time has come for some death and destruction. We are bending over and getting screwed.”

Indeed. Look at Detroit and realize that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were rebuilt.

These two Japanese cities are grander than they were before WWII.

And Detroit will never be rebuilt as long as it has its current demographics.

peppermint says:

I dunno, Leopoldville seemed to be doing pretty well

jim says:

People who worry about demographics, believe in democracy and equality before the law.

Without equal votes and equal laws, no problem.

Just sayin' says:

Demographics matter because of hybridization.

Not even the Jews can avoid it, and we don’t practice endogamy anywhere near as strictly as they do.

“Despite their isolation from the rest of the Jewish diaspora, the Jews of Kaifeng preserved Jewish traditions and customs for many centuries. In the 17th century, assimilation began to erode these traditions. The rate of intermarriage between Jews and other ethnic groups, such as the Han Chinese, and the Hui and Manchu minorities in China, increased. The destruction of the synagogue in the 1860s led to the community’s demise.”

Of course, we’ll be assimilating into the mud hordes, not the Han.

gaikokumaniakku says:

[quote]
Rotherham is what you would expect if Mohammed’s army was passing through England to rape, enslave, and pillage. I want our army to pass through and do some raping, slaving, and pillaging.
[end quote]

If the recent CIA report is accurate, your side has been doing lots of raping. However, the CIA mostly abducts Muslim males and rapes them anally.

I don’t understand how advocacy of war crimes advances your cause, but I expect Mencius Moldbug has written a 50,000-word treatise on how rape is justified when a neoreactionary does it.

Peppermint says:

I don’t know the difference between a liberal and a progressive, so I guess it’s okay that you don’t know the difference between a neoconservative and s neoreactionary

gaikokumaniakku says:

Well, Jim is a neoreactionary, and he has just called for “his side” to commit rape as an act of war.

Conversely, other Yankees (and Israelis) are neocons and have actually carried out rape as an act of war.

So the difference between a neoreactionary and a neoconservative is that neoconservatives actually have a taxpayer-funded budget to fund war crimes.

peppermint says:

this is the success of the MRA movement: that people no longer notice the difference between rape of women and rape of men

peppermint says:

By the way…

Back at the beginning of the 20th century some Jews were concerned that claiming that race doesn’t exist would lead to Jewish assimilation, a concern that has been borne out not just by outmarrying Jews but more worryingly by intellectuals like Auster and Moldbug.

Neoconservatism was a Jewish intellectual movement in reaction to the success of cultural marxism to try to recognize and preserve the Jewish religion and Jewish peoplehood, preserving Jewish families and promoting Israel. It was sold to the goyim on jingoistic grounds by babbling about freedom and human rights while giving them lists of enemies of Israel to bomb, while telling them to give freedom and human rights to anyone who showed up in their countries.

Neoreaction was supposed to be a Jewish intellectual movement in reaction to the success of neoconservatism in browning the formerly White nations. It was supposed to justify a more direct Jewish rule, on the grounds that Whites were acting like niggers, and someone has to be in charge (Fnargl argument), and who better than an existing elite with IQs of 115 to rule, considering that Whites turned into communists? After all, the Jews would only be doing what Lord Cromer did to the Egyptian Arabs.

Unfortunately, neoreaction was not being discussed in the proper forum, which is the mass media under the strict censorship of getting fired for being the guy with the worst attitude towards the Jews, or in full books in which an entire argument is lain out and then pulped for being too anti-Semitic in implications, or in Jewish newspapers and magazines as cultural marxism was, and as a result it has been partly hijacked.

Dr. Faust says:

The theory of declining male status reducing the female sex drive helps to explain why women were once considered the lusty sex and yet somehow switched. It seems logical to say that women have a survival instinct tied to having sex. If something is scary then have sex with it so it won’t hurt you, says the female hind brain. It’s the most rational explanation for why women love abusive men and flee from betas.

Just sayin' says:

The traditionalist Christian arguments here seem pretty weak.

If it was possible for traditionalist Christians to defeat the left-Christians by arguing theology with them, you guys would have done it already.

But the left-Christians just keep winning; pwning more and more formerly traditionalist Christian institutions. You couldn’t stop them, you couldn’t even contain the infection.

As such, it doesn’t really make sense for a agnostic like me who was born with no religion to convert to left-Christian dominated sects and try to fix the problem from within. It has already been established that left Christians cannot be defeated by theological debate.

It’s better to look for other ways to defeat them, without the need to engage them in theological debate. Other strategies may or may not be successful in defeating them, but at least they won’t fall to the same old tricks.

IE: You have to acknowledge left-Christians as fellow Christians and it limits your ability to act against them. To me, they’re just enemies. Which allows for a wider variety of tactics.

If anything, the trad-Christian remnant should probably be praying for some outside force to deliver them from the left-Christians. Because there is no indication that trad-Christians are able to get rid of the infection on their own.

R7_Rocket says:

A cursory reading of the Dalrock blog shows the truth of your statement.

Adolf the anti-White says:

>If it was possible for traditionalist Christians to defeat the left-Christians by arguing theology with them, you guys would have done it already.
In a direct conflict, the sword is mightier than the pen. Although it’s best to have both. We have the pen. They have the sword and the pen.

The Orthodox are not rationalists. We don’t think debate will necessarily produce truth.

>to convert to left-Christian dominated sects and try to fix the problem from within
I don’t think anyone is advising this. If you are Catholic, join the SSPX or something. If you are Orthodox, join the ROCOR. Let the Episcopal church collapse. They were heretics anyway.

Just sayin' says:

I’m a WASP, with the P mostly devolved to “no religion”.

Modern Catholicism is left-Christianity.

Orthodoxy may not be left-Christianity, but it is a foreign Eastern religion for foreign people. Seems like a weird thing to join. Taking your pick of foreign Eastern religions is a very modern attitude towards religion.

Adolf the anti-White says:

The SSPX is not left-Christianity. Google it.

And Orthodoxy’s cultural distance does not make it an “Eastern religion” in that sense. Eastern religions have certain characteristics, and Orthodoxy generally doesn’t share those. I.e. many eastern religions claim that the spiritual is better than the material.

Just sayin' says:

I know what SSPX is, but it is a pretty small remnant indeed.

jdsaunders03 says:

The SSPX _WAS NOT_ Left-Christianity. It is now.

It has reconciled with and rejoined the Church, a Church now ruled by Francis Primus Antipapa.

Anonymous says:

“We don’t want the alpha males hogging all the pussy. We want, as far as possible, every male that is willing and able to be productive and defend order, to support and defend himself, his family and society, to get some pussy.”

Amazing. This is something I’ve long-suspected of the manosphere community (and why it makes sense that there is such a large overlap between the MRA, PUA, and NRx communities within the larger umbrella of “the manosphere”): you’re all a bunch of betas whining about not getting laid. I have as much a distaste for progressivism / feminism / social justice as the next red-blooded man, but it’s hilarious to me to sit and watch a bunch of undesirable and unattractive sexual benchwarmers call for a reinstitution of millennia-old religious woo just because they are asshurt about getting shot down at the local bar. Bringing back Christianity won’t change the fact that you are a slave to your germ-plasm, and perhaps a little reflection about why you feel the need to even procreate at all (and continue the unquestioned treadmill even further is in order). If not, then kindly continue sitting in the corner where you belong and ticking your anus with a crucifix dildo while us “aplhas” reap the benefits of a train gone off the rails. You’re not going to stop it.

jim says:

I paired up with the woman who was to become my wife at age seventeen, married her at age twenty one. She is still with me. I think this is fairly common for reactionaries, possibly because patriarchy seems more plausible if one is already patriarchal.

In the intervening years, I have spent every night with her, except when separated for reasons of business. I was always sexually available to her, and she to me. Although I have had other women, I never spent a night with them if my wife was around.

I think everyone should live the way I lived, and everyone should be compelled to live the way I lived, because it is so obviously the correct way to live. Even Heartiste would rather live that way than the way he does live.

Anonymous says:

Before we move on I’d like to specify that my comment wasn’t directed at you in particular Jim, but rather toward some of your commenters and the manosphere in general. I can sort of sympathize with wanting to return to a more traditional and patriarchal family unit, but when the conversation turns toward unironically proposing the rape and enslavement of all women, I can’t interpret that in any other way than being a bitter diatribe from a disillusioned beta-boy, regardless of my personal views on women.

And while I won’t necessarily defend Heartiste, at the same time I don’t buy into your “correct way to live” nonsense. I’m counting down the minutes until someone accuses me of “cultural Marxism”, but I can still manage to shit on modern feminism and acknowledge that my personal preferences are just that: personal preferences. I know you know better than to trot out the old religious dogma line of “God says it should be thus” under anything other than a proposition to utilize all the positive, ritualistic, and fairly secular parts about religion (hence your interesting discussion of Shinto), which is why it’s mind-boggling to read people in the comment section seriously attempt to argue the finer points of religious dogma as if we’re not all adults. I had to double-check I wasn’t on Dalrock’s blog for a second.

I hear and sympathize with your account about your wife, and wish you two the best. I can only hope that I meet a responsible woman, but until then it’s a long trek into the slut-grinder, and even then I probably won’t be too upset if I don’t manage to get shackled to another human being for the rest of my life at the behest of the government. I am not interested in procreation either for ethical and moral reasons, which if I had to take a guess would be the reason why so many NRx arguments for society-shaping fall flat to me. At the end of the day we’re all sitting with a shotgun held to our heads by our genes, so whether or not some degenerate is doing whatever with his free time in our society is such a far-removed concern to me that it barely even registers. I know some people here would disagree but that’s the way I see it.

Replacement reproduction rate is a recurring topic of the commentariat here. Perhaps let’s take society’s ills to their logical conclusion: that the gene sacrifices the individual for its own interests, and your children will suffer all the same ills you suffer, if not more. Is opting out not the only sane choice?

jim says:

but when the conversation turns toward unironically proposing the rape and enslavement of all women, I can’t interpret that in any other way than being a bitter diatribe from a disillusioned beta-boy,

You will recall that I disagreed with him on that topic, replying to him that “coercion that ensures paternal certainty and that men can raise their own children is good for women and good for society, and coercion that obscures paternity and interferes with men raising their own children is bad for women and bad for society” – which implies that “marital rape” is the opposite of actual rape.

but I can still manage to shit on modern feminism and acknowledge that my personal preferences are just that: personal preferences.

No you cannot, because it takes two to tango.

Unless everyone sticks to masturbating to porn and reading fifty shades of alpha male, we cannot have everyone choosing their own rules and living their own way.

If the marital contract is not enforceable, men and women cannot cooperate to produce children. And for the marital contract to work, a ship has to have one captain, and women, in practice, will not endure the captain’s role, so marriage has to be contractually patriachal, and that contract has to be enforced coercively.

If no freedom of contract, hard to make a family, which is a huge intrusion on people’s freedom.

If freedom of contract, to contract to form a family, the entire coercive Pauline program of male supremacy necessarily follows.

Anonymous says:

Like I said, I wasn’t accusing you specifically of making that argument, but rather just talking out loud. I probably should have replied under Sam.

The distinction between marital rape and actual rape is an interesting one though, and I think I agree with you but I also think the situation of my (as of yet nonexistent wife) ever not being on the same sexual wavelength as me is again very far-removed from any actual experience. I wouldn’t even consider something like that happening because it’s just not something I would think of outside conversation (and by “that” I mean the male partner demanding sex in a particular instance where the female partner isn’t feeling it or isn’t up to it, which is what I assume is meant by “marital rape”).

However you are married so perhaps you can provide some insight. Is there any circumstance under which you or your wife would identify you of having raped her? If yes or no, why?

jim says:

It is the nature of women that if they perceive sex as their duty, as their husband’s right, they can, so long as they are in good physical and mental health, be easily persuaded to do their duty with enthusiasm. Even if profoundly unenthusiastic at first and just reluctantly enduring it, pretty quickly they get right into it. She is, after all, descended from a long line of women all of whom had sex with a man. Sex with a man increases the female appetite for sex with that man. So reluctant endurance soon gives way the affection and pleasure. The more you have sex with a girl, the more she likes it. (Your mileage may vary with the time of the month.)

Anonymous says:

“No you cannot, because it takes two to tango.

Unless everyone sticks to masturbating to porn and reading fifty shades of alpha male, we cannot have everyone choosing their own rules and living their own way.”

This is actually one area where I will defend Heartiste. My lifestyle is a reaction to the fact that the kind of patriarchal nuclear family unit you are talking about does not exist, and thus it’s foolish for me to expend any energy trying to make a system that is not in my benefit work. This is where we differ. You’re an outlier; you are extremely lucky to have found a wife who doesn’t sit her fat pregnant ass on the couch all day being effectively paid to be a baby factory who threatens her husband with divorce every time he doesn’t wait hand and foot on her every whim, and I’ve seen it happen to too many of my friends to ever go down that road myself. Even being 100% sure she’s The One is no guarantee, as how many divorcees do you know who all thought they locked rings with The One?

So slut-grinder it is.

jim says:

My lifestyle is a reaction to the fact that the kind of patriarchal nuclear family unit you are talking about does not exist, and thus it’s foolish for me to expend any energy trying to make a system that is not in my benefit work.

But, if the marital contract was socially and legally enforceable and enforced, that is not what you would want, and not what most women would want.

But, for the marital contract to be socially and legally enforceable and enforced, you need something very like the entire Pauline program.

Dave says:

Anonymous has never experienced a woman “not being on the same sexual wavelength as me” because all his relationships ended long before they got to that stage. When you have kids it’s a different story, and what are you going to do then? Walk out on a frigid wife and leave your children to be molested by her next boyfriend?

Anonymous says:

@Dave

I asked for clarification on this earlier but didn’t receive any. Do you believe that the marriage contact either 1) does, or 2) should entitle you to sexual activity with your wife without her consent? Or to put it in alternative terms, that the bonds of marriage dissolve the entire concept of consent between you and your wife?

I’m the last person to argue for women on the internet but I feel like you’re backing me into a corner in which I have to defend common decency. What if she’s sick and doesn’t feel up for a dicking one night? As her husband are you allowed to dick her anyway? Do you force your dog to play fetch with you when he’s in the middle of a nap as well?

As for your frigid woman example, the only sympathy I can manage to drum up is that you shouldn’t ghave married a frigid woman. It’s like people who complain about how their children are brats. Solution: don’t have children. The fault is entirely your own.

jim says:

Consent is given once and forever. The husband commits to be always available to the wife, the wife commits to be always available to the husband. That is what marriage is: See Saint Paul.

Otherwise it just does not work. Marriage means that people commit to stick together even in the event of bad times, even if they temporarily do not like it, so that they can confidently raise children. Refusing sex is refusing to stick together, that being human nature. If either party can refuse the other at will, it makes it profoundly difficult to have children, and having children, makes it profoundly difficult for those children to have fathers, because neither party can trust the other to be around.

Human nature is that if you don’t get it at home, you will get it somewhere else, and vice versa. If you are refusing it at home, you are surely getting it somewhere else. If a woman refuses her husband, it is because there is someone hotter in her heart, and her husband will surely find someone who does not refuse him.

If it is socially acceptable to be unavailable to the other, if it is legal to be unavailable to the other, then civilization ends, for failure to reproduce physically and culturally, for lack of children, and lack of fathers, for fathers who lose their children, and fathers who never knew their children.

1 Corinthians 7

3 Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband.
4 The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife.
5 Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.

Colossians 3

18 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord.
19 Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them.

1 Peter 3

1 Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives;
2 While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.
3 Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel;
4 But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.
5 For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands:
6 Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement.
7 Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.
8 Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous:

peppermint says:

consent to each and every sex act is total hearsay, and can not be the basis for legal charges. However, if a wife chooses not to cohabitate with her husband, then she can accuse him of rape if he breaks into her house and rapes her.

Furthermore, female consent is meaningless because women are mindless. You don’t appreciate this because you live in a world where you see men acting like animals all the time on TV.

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