Mass Shooting in Plymouth UK.
- Thread starter Dwarvenhobble
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Ah yes, one of the central tenets of atheism is its belief in the Christian god, as we know.
He did some lip service and a half-hearted and futile attempt to take over and transform the Protestant church.
Nazism is fundamentally atheist thing. And that so many Nazis were on paper protestants is not much different from how most of the Russion revolutionairies were on paper orthodox. Didn't hinder them to establish a religion-hostile regime in service of an atheist ideology and didn't hinder the Nazis to try the same.
The idea of Protestantism is "we like the gist of what you're doing, but some of the dogma is off". People who maintain basically all the Christian values but just aren't into the actual God part fit that mold pretty neatly, especially when a lot of these "atheists" still believe in other supernatural concepts. Actual materialist atheists are comparatively rare.
So, this is one part misrepresentation and one part bad science.
There is no such thing as a male and female brain. There just isn't. That's not how human bodies work. There are aggregate differences in the brains of people with different sex hormone profiles (for example, men and women) but those differences are neither determinate nor are they sufficient to explain differences in gendered behaviour. There will be scientists who disagree with that, just as there are scientists who disagree with man made global warming or the effectiveness of vaccines, but they are a small minority. No form of feminism has ever argued that humans possess identical brains, or that aggregate differences do not exist in the brains of men and women, what they have generally argued, and what the scientific consensus has overwhelmingly revealed, is that these differences do not appear to matter. Neurosexism, the idea that men and women are fundamentally different and have differing abilities because of their brains, has been around for a long time, it was the scientific orthodoxy for about a hundred years. It's had plenty of chances to prove its value, and it just hasn't.
I watched the video up until the bit with the monkeys, and then I had to stop because I was laughing too much. Imagine even coming up with this experiment. Imagine writing a theoretical justification for your piece of research and trying to explain that you're testing whether monkeys have evolved to play with plastic representations of human children and toy trucks. I'm not even necessarily disputing the findings, I don't think they mean anything for humans because humans aren't monkeys and because the experiment is so badly designed that the people responsible don't even seem to know what it's measuring. I just think it's incredibly funny and revealing that someone designed it that way.
Because really, this isn't about the "weird refusal" to accept that men and women could be different, it's about the weird insistence that they are. It's about the absolute desperation a lot of people seem to have to believe that the crude stereotypes they have of men and women are actually real and can be explained by biology. It's about the willingness to do anything, to bend every rule of science and knowledge, to design ludicrous experiments, to satisfy the insane, fanatical need to believe this one thing. I think it's comforting for a lot of cis people to believe that men and women are just different. The problem is, whether there's any element of truth in that at all, there's much less truth in it than people want to believe. Men and women, on average, may be slightly different, but they're far less different than you think they are.
Christina Hoff Sommers is a paid provocateur who works for a conservative family values think tank. She can claim to be a feminist all she wants, but noone has to accept her as one. She doesn't engage with feminist scholarship or activism, she's not a part of any kind of feminist movement, she doesn't believe most of the things feminists believe.
This isn't even about liking her or her views, I don't like Sheila Jeffreys or her views, and she's done far more harm to me and mine than Christina Hoff Sommers has, but Jeffreys is very much still a feminist. At the very least, she's not being paid by anti-feminists to write anti-feminist hit pieces while claiming to be a feminist.
Who is "we"?
Most of the women I know have been sexually assaulted by men, or wound up in abusive relationships with men. None of them were assaulted by, or got into relationships with Joss Whedon and Harvey Weinstein. I think we're all familiar with the trope of "profeminist man turns out to be a creep", but I don't think that's because profeminist men are more likely to be creeps, there are men like them everywhere. If you're not seeing them, it's because you're not looking, or because that behaviour blends so easily into the background of the way men behave anyway that it can be easily camouflaged.
I've seen straight men cowering in terror at gay clubs at the thought someone might look at them and have impure thoughts, so don't tell me you don't understand why it's inappropriate to whistle at someone or make unsolicited remarks about someone's appearance or body. You know why, it's just easy to ignore because you don't have to deal with it every day.
Also, let me illustrate to you the double edged sword of sexual essentialism.
If you are male, and you have a "male brain", and Harvey Weinstein is male and also has a "male brain", then you have the same brain. If your brain determines how you think and behave, then you must think and behave in the same way as Harvey Weinstein. If Harvey Weinstein's brain made him a sex offender, then your brain is also the brain of a sex offender.
There are actually a group of feminists who think this way. Fortunately for you, they spend most of their time hating trans people and are mostly too busy to think about cis men like you, but make no mistake, if the way men behave is caused by having a "male brain", then that is not a good thing. It's not a flattering characterization, and it doesn't really justify treating men equally or with any kind of respect. If anything, it justifies the idea that men have far too much power and freedom, and that this should be radically curtailed for the good of humanity.
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I'm pretty sure the idea of Protestantism is that Christianity is corrupt and must return to its fundamental principles.
It is absolutely not.
Nazism is a fundamentally spiritual thing. For some, that spirituality could be expressed through atheistic romanticism, but for the most part it was overtly (if pragmatically) religious. The Nazis developed their own spiritual/neopagan tradition based on the Volkisch movement, as well as their own form of "positive Christianity". The frequent contradictions between these two reflected religious tensions within the party itself.
While the Nazis were very hostile to some Christian denominations, particularly Catholicism, that struggle was less about Christianity and more about control. From the Nazi perspective, Catholicism was a countervailing political affiliation that functioned outside of and potentially against the state (and they weren't entirely wrong). Regardless though, the Nazi objective was religious control, not the establishment of state atheism.
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I already acknowledged that. But this neopaganism was only part of this whole "recreate pure ancient aryan culture without jewish influence" nonsense that came with the "do pseudoscience to find a history that fits our race ideology". Also of course with some dose of "create alternative festivities to replace christian ones and link them somehow to race".
Nazism is mainly fascism combined with race theory. It is as secular as it gets. Just because it is built upon bad pseudoscience instead of real science does not make it religious. And just because it was anti-intellectual does not mean it was spiritual. You would be hard pressed to find any actual Nazi neopagans that believed in Germanic/Nordic gods instead of only using that for Germanic heritage display. And this "positive Christianity" was basically the same thing as "German Math".
Sure, religion was pretty exclusively seen as a vehicle of control. They tried to either take it over and twist it to promote their hateful ideology or, if not possible or to hard, supress it completely. But that is not really how religious people treat religion. It is instead pretty much the same view on it the Soviets took, but opting for a more sinister/machiavellian approach. The same approach they used for everything else that might give them power/control. They didn't care about anything about religion aside from its political power. Just another target for the famous Gleichschaltung.
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But you haven't actually established hostility to religious belief. They were not. They actively encouraged "positive Christianity", endlessly evoked god and the holy spirit in speeches, and denounced atheism.
It's ludicrous to say that because they were hostile to the existing religious institutions they must therefore be hostile to religion. It's like describing Henry VIII as an atheist because he was hostile to the Catholic Church (while also establishing a new Christian Church).
This is perhaps the most transparently nonsensical thing you've posted in years. As if not believing in god is not the main defining feature of atheism, and can just be discounted... absolutely laughable.
I didn't say that atheists aren't atheists. I'm saying there are more aspects of Christianity than just belief in God, and many atheists in western places maintain many of those aspects. The entire idea of secular humanism is "we don't need to believe in God to maintain the same moral framework as Christians."
Obviously. Which is why Secular Humanists are not Christians.
And atheists are not "neo-Protestants" just because they might share a few values with them (most of which predated Christianity anyway).
You can get a semiautomatic rifle in this country if you don't mind it being in .22LR, you just need to be able to explain what you're going to do with it and how it will be stored, and not be an obvious hazard. Quite how this raving misogynist fascist nutcase managed to fulfil the last criteria will be the subject of some inquiry, I'm sure. The thing is that people here are generally not that interested in having firearms unless they need them for a specific purpose or have a serious interest in shooting as a hobby since shooting people is not generally considered a valid form of self defence, unlike many US States where "so anyway, I started blasting" is a perfectly reasonable response to any sort of crime.
Atheists are basically just protestants might be my favourite hot take ever.
Edit: for context I grew up Irish Catholic with northern Irish Catholic grandparents. So for most of my formative years if I was slouching in my seat I would be told to "stop sitting like a protestant" if I chewed with my mouth open I would be told "don't eat like a protestant." so honestly, discovering that some of the forum members here are time travelling, troubles era, northern Irish catholics makes some opinions make more sense.
Edit: for context I grew up Irish Catholic with northern Irish Catholic grandparents. So for most of my formative years if I was slouching in my seat I would be told to "stop sitting like a protestant" if I chewed with my mouth open I would be told "don't eat like a protestant." so honestly, discovering that some of the forum members here are time travelling, troubles era, northern Irish catholics makes some opinions make more sense.
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It's definitely bad science.
You are so right that this is a painful need some people have to prove men and women are different, and I cannot help but notice it always seems to come from the same direction, which is essentially people who believe in traditional gender roles being correct. Part of the joke is that of course even where differences in anatomy or activity have potentially been observed, it is almost never clearly associated with behavioural outputs, and certainly not the sorts of behavioural outputs they want to defend. So they just sort of pretend that information gap can be filled with whatever they imagine, and delude themselves that science is on their side.
It is not.
Naziism is a totalitarian belief system where the single most important thing is the good of the nation (the national good conveniently being whatever the fascist leadership says it is). The problem then for Nazis is that the conventional montheistic religions provided an alternative source of power and influence, because a person may choose to follow the teachings of their religion instead of those of the Nazi Party. That was Hitler's real objection to Christianity - well, that and he was disappointed that it wasn't sufficiently supportive of war and mass murder for his liking.
The Nazis had some association with paganism, hence why they are sometimes characterised as being into the occult (e.g. Wolfenstein games). This may have just been coincidence that some high ranking Nazis were also interested in ancient German religion (which was to all intents and purposes the same as Norse, except with some local variation) and spirituality. As a more far-reaching idea, they perhaps liked the idea of a "folk religion" - by Germans and for Germans without any of that ugly foreign stuff - to meet the interests of the state. But there's no real evidence that they seriously took that anywhere.
Ok, i think i have found the problem.
When I say "atheist ideology" i mean that they don't derive any of their authority or rules or ideals from gods or the like and all of it from a mundane wordview (no matter how accurate this worldview is). When it is all grounded in (their understanding of) reality and their aims are all worldly as well. Any belief system that provides a set of moral values on such a basis should be called atheist.
I don't think that "opposing religion" has to be an important part. Most atheists have better things to do than opposing religion. Being indifferent to religion when it does not conflict with the goals or even abusing religion when it is convenient is allowed.
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It doesn't matter how alike the sexes are when they're still in the cradle. When people grow up the illusion of equality is broken, and right now young men get the short end of the stick. As I mentioned before being a trad con man is hard work, but even if that hard work is valuable enough to reach one's family goals, the end result must be a synthesis of some sort. Also don't get me wrong, incels are totally wrong with the blackpill thing (that only looks matter). Yet after drawing that short stick the way up is through competition with other men and some inevitably fail. Obviously nobody listens to the failed ones if they want a change in culture -- that's just a bunch of losers whining -- and the successful can carry on worry free maybe selling self-help guides along the way.
Well so far we've not actually found an example of a non Trans individual who has a brain that shows the structural differences details in Dr Verma's research and to be clear NO it's not about grey matter density because that's the other research everyone brings up.
No feminist has outright said there are no differences. But there have been regular efforts to erase things like sex differences articles and stuff on wikipedia or claiming there are no inherent differences in strength between men and women when well Testosterone it's a hell of a drug.
Well I'd suggest you watch the rest of the video including the research of Dr Verma which still hasn't been shown to be wrong. Hell if you'd watched the full video it does explain or go into the idea of merely neurological differences not fully explaining all the differences. However as was shown by the "emotional intelligence" experiment and the "spatial reasoning" experiments show there is a difference in performance and it's worth pointing out those experiments aren't new and have been repeated again and again over the years.
In terms of the what it's meant to show well it's showing there are seemingly differences so old they might have existed since we left the trees ourselves and some of the preference stuff isn't socially constructed or if it is it was socially constructed from the time were were a society in that lived in the trees lol.
So you're saying the BBC horizon documentary faked it all or didn't do the work to look into the experiments and research? This wasn't some random BBC documentary it's Horizon the area / department seen as doing very detailed investigations into such things.
Also fun fact in years since the documentary research has been done showing the same traits and differences are apparent in Trans individuals with their brains showing structures more similar to the opposite sex than their birth assigned sex.
You can argue over how much impact these differences may have but the question has to be how much we're are King Canute standing on the shore trying to fight the tide in terms of changing some things. Even with all the effort and years of pushing and generations of pushing in some cases we're not anywhere near the 50:50 mark and while we can do our best to try and show these careers as an option that 50:50 balance may be something we're never likely to get.
Oh so she doesn't count because she's not party of the orthodoxy?
Guess that means Liana K can't count as a feminist anymore either. Nor Laci Green these days either. Feminism is a big field and it sees very "No True Scotsman" to claim some-one doesn't count as one because they don't engage with certain people who are what the gatekeeper of what is allowed to be talked about or something?
Guys sitting on the side going "Hey we're pretty sure that person is a sex pest be careful of them" only to be shouted down and told "No they're one of the good guys unlike you awful people". Only then to watch as it turns out they often weren't one of the good guys at all and all the valiant defending women was an act.
Well so far precedent is showing that the pro-feminist (at least modern 4th wave ideas) men tends to be a group a lot of abusers and harassers keep hiding in and it's been worryingly effective for them to hide there too because it makes other women highly reluctant to call out their behaviour because "They're one of the good guys and calling them out will damage our cause" or similar. There's also a big push from that crowd to cover stuff up and shift the blame. I.E. the weird bit that happened over the news of abuse at Activision when certain men in the games industry tried to frame it as equally terrible or at least equally part of the problem to suggest a female character should have bumps to indicate they have breasts as in any kind of bumps at all.
Also I'm pretty sure I said about the no whistling at people or making the comments to their faces and said in private. The Gay club analogy is pretty useful here because it would only be people acting on it I'd have a problem with. Some gay dudes saying I look hot among friends where I can't hear? Let them bask in my sexiness but no touchy.
Fun fact I've actually had to have very rude words with gay men on some dating sites who apparently lack the ability to read that I'm straight. Lord knows how they found my profile on said sites. But as much like Shrek as I man look I still get approached so I know there are some gay guys out there that apparently do find me attractive. It only become an issue when they approach. Let them find me sexy as long as I'm not having to hear about their fantasies etc I have no issue with it.