> It's very very dumb legislation, and I think derives from a very odd facet of belief found in some American Protestant belief systems - that for Jesus to come back, the State of Israel has to exist.
I remember reading Bill Clinton's biography. At some point, he mentioned that a pastor told him something along these lines, and that it was an important realisation for him. (I read that years ago, could be slightly wrong but that was the idea).
I found that extremely disturbing that archaic religious beliefs would influence foreign policies.
That being said, it's well known that our former French president got advised by an astrologer [1]
> I found that extremely disturbing that archaic religious beliefs would influence foreign policies
Why? As a former atheist, I’ve come to the realization that the alternative—at least at scale—to traditional religion isn’t people being hyper rational engineers. It’s different and less well established unprovable and illogical beliefs. Have you read some of the social “science” stuff that gets published? All the “woo” stuff? People believe that stuff and it gets executed into policy. (The reasons for the atheism being former are unrelated to that observation, my point is just that I get where your initial take is coming from.)
The belief that more rational beliefs are possible is not exactly debatable, is it? Certainly, the “woo” stuff you referenced is not the only alternative? That people have to believe in some “religion” and that common “religions” at the current point in history are at peak possible rationality… well, there’s no real reason to believe that, is there?
I'd rather the people in charge were patient, thoughtful and rational. But it is interesting to consider that a rational person may, under some circumstances, want irrational leadership.
Easy example at the moment, I think it is obvious from game theory that there are situations where a rational actor in the US would order a nuclear strike on Russia. Under such circumstances, I'd rather the person with the power to do so acted irrationally. Following this line of thought, it is reasonable to support extremely religious people with irrational ideals for high office - as long as what they actually do gets a good outcome. Eg, a strong belief in a higher power might sometimes drive the sort of people who are willing to decentralise executive authority amongst the masses.
Show me a person who is completely ‘rational’ across their entire belief system and maybe we’ll have a conversation - I haven’t seen it and I am surrounded by highly educated, highly rational people, most of whom would profess to be atheist or agnostic.
I believe it’s part of human nature. It’s exhausting being totally rational
There are at least three different claims here that I'd like to unpack:
1) "If you really have to pick a belief system to put your faith in, you can do much worse than traditional religion." Now, I'm a lifelong atheist, and atheism is one of the few things I never changed my mind on, but I came to the conclusion that this is probably true: at the very least, traditional religion is a stable belief system that won't destroy your life.
2) "A lot of people who aren't traditionally religious, actually follow some random bullshit creed that's much worse than religion." I agree with this, there is a genuine human need religion fulfills and many might want to "fill the void" with subpar alternatives.
3) "If you are an atheist, then you necessarily fall into case (2)." Which is blatantly false, as the existence of millions of perfectly well-adjusted and functioning atheists shows.
>at the very least, traditional religion is a stable belief system that won't destroy your life.
That might be true in liberal western democracies, but there are many parts of the world where your particular choice of religion may well destroy your life or straight up get you killed, if the people behind the next coup don't share your beliefs. Even in the west you might hinder your own success if you pick a non-majority system.
To be clear, I’m not asserting that (3) is the case. I’m just saying that as a practical matter it’s a small number and a lot of people that abandon traditional religion fall into your (2).
Evidence that such a correlation exists for “white evangelicals” in the US tells us nothing about whether it exists for religious people in general - including religious Americans from other racial/religious backgrounds, and non-Americans. Your observation might not be true for religion at all, only for a very specific type of it
The idea that religious people don't have bullshit creeds outside their religion is a false one.
Religious people in America act religious on Sunday and like ruthless, immoral "greed is good" capitalists on Monday, flexibly switching ideologies for their convenience.
You're describing someone with a ruthless flexible ideology. A truly religious person would apply the principles of their religion during the week too.
Mind if I ask what your path was? I called myself an agnostic starting at about age 12 (and was a doubter from age 5), but eventually worked my way around to concluding that something was going on.
These are interesting reads, thank you. I was a professed atheist until my mid 20s, but I’m not sure I ever fully believed my lack of belief. Then when I had kids the feeling became kind of undeniable. Separately, I had I come to admire Christianity. Coming from a part of the world with generational conflict I think the teaching to live like a lamb turn the other cheek is profound. Secular morality diverges quite a bit on that point.
EDIT: There is a lot of stuff in the second one that applies to me. My wife’s faith is very strong. I’m not sure whether I adapted to her beliefs, or as someone raised in an extremely secular setting she made me comfortable allowing myself to believe things that I already felt.
It seems like atheism might be correlated with false beliefs around social studies, but probably anti-correlated around false beliefs like "trump still the election".
It’s unlikely that taboos against homosexuality arise from “theology,” given that they exist across societies with starkly different religious traditions. I suspect it has more to do with the importance of biological reproduction in subsistence agriculture societies. My dad grew up in a village in Bangladesh and observed that if you didn’t have kids you died, not even when you’re old and can’t work, but even earlier because you need them for labor. When he was a kid, 1 out of 4 children died by age 5, so there wasn’t exactly a surplus to go around.
You repeatedly pass off very peculiar opinions as "obvious facts" with some quasi anecdata from Bangladesh. I understand the advantage of talking about Bangladesh as there are very few Bangladeshis here to contradict you - but you can use this trick only so many times. However, I will credit you with using the words "I suspect" here.
You are welcome to pretend being progressive is believing in "woo stuff" like civil rights, womens suffrage, gay marriage, race blind immigration etc. The fact of the matter is that - you would not be in this country without the "woo stuff" you are ridiculing.
The conservative culture you have adopted doesn't welcome race blind immigration.
Referring to an earlier discussion when you verbally attacked a legal immigrant for documenting his citizenship process
>>> As an ethnic Bangladeshi my kids and I have a right of return. I can obtain Bangladeshi citizenship any time I want.
>> Why are you treating America as some kind of science experiment?
> I try not to! My family was invited here by Americans on certain terms, and nobody has ever really complained. But I think they have every right to complain if they wanted.
Just to be clear- your family was not invited here by a majority of Americans. Just a corporation or university on restrictive terms and got approved by the US government, thanks to MLKs efforts.
A majority of Americans would not welcome you here. Half the country- liberals would not welcome you here, because you would block all progressive laws except Loving vs Virginia, and perhaps race blind immigration, though you take strongly offence when legal immigrants open their mouth, as in the referenced thread. So perhaps, you would also roll back the various 1960s civil rights acts. Half of the conservatives would not want you here because of your skin color, or as you call it - "culture".
> You repeatedly pass off very peculiar opinions as "obvious facts" with some quasi anecdata from Bangladesh.
Apart from my views on guns and legal originalism, I have quite conventional opinions for a desi raised on the east coast of the US in the 1990s.
> I understand the advantage of talking about Bangladesh as there are very few Bangladeshis here to contradict you - but you can use this trick only so many times.
I’m sure there are lots of Indians and Pakistanis on HN. I don’t think we’re so different that they wouldn’t be able to contradict me. But even progressive desis have aunts and uncles. And I don’t know about yours but mine aren’t exactly sitting around discussing Judith Butler.
> You are welcome to pretend being progressive is believing in "woo stuff" like civil rights, womens suffrage, gay marriage, race blind immigration etc.
By “woo stuff” I was referring to saging houses and healing crystals and Druid weddings. (My wife’s from Oregon.)
But as to the issues you mention, the vast majority of Americans support those things. Progressives are the small subset of those people who support those things for distinct ideological and millenarian reasons.
> The fact of the matter is that - you would not be in this country without the "woo stuff" you are ridiculing.
You can’t gaslight me, lol. I grew up in a 95% white Virginia town that voted for Bush, Dole, and then Bush again. The precinct where I live went for Trump over Clinton 58-34 (the same year we moved there). A good chunk of my wife’s family is rural white Trump voters.
There is a wellspring of acceptance for immigrants in this country that’s far broader and deeper than progressivism. Its rooted not in critical race theory, but Christianity, Constitutionalism, and the immigrant history of people who are already here.
Indeed, if minorities and immigrants were as reliant on progressives to be our champions as progressives think, we would be screwed. There’s not that many of them and they have no guns!
> The conservative culture you have adopted doesn't welcome race blind immigration.
The conservative culture my entire family comes from believes in that way less than anywhere in South Georgia or Iowa that I’ve been.
> Just a corporation or university on restrictive terms and got approved by the US government, thanks to MLKs efforts.
I’ve never met a desi (who wasn’t put on TV by white people, anyway) who thinks MLK has anything to do with immigrants. It’s a completely different issue. Much of my family moved to Australia or Canada, which never had a US style civil rights movement. But those countries are also very welcoming of immigrants.
I’m not really making a political point. But as a longtime democrat I lived through all the “the Supreme Court stole the election” and “Diebold machines” and “Putin altered vote tallies for Trump” stuff including among highly educated atheists and agnostics. Most people are largely ignorant about stuff they don’t study specifically.
> I found that extremely disturbing that archaic religious beliefs would influence foreign policies.
Ahem.
> In the winter of 2003, when George Bush and Tony Blair were frantically gathering support for their planned invasion, Professor Thomas Römer, an Old Testament expert at the university of Lausanne, was rung up by the Protestant Federation of France. [..] President Jacques Chirac wanted to know what the hell President Bush had been on about in their last conversation. Bush had then said that when he looked at the Middle East, he saw "Gog and Magog at work" and the biblical prophecies unfolding. But who the hell were Gog and Magog? Neither Chirac nor his office had any idea. But they knew Bush was an evangelical Christian, so they asked the French Federation of Protestants, who in turn asked Professor Römer. [..] He explained that Gog and Magog were, to use theological jargon, crazy talk. They appear twice in the Old Testament, once as a name, and once in a truly strange prophecy in the book of Ezekiel
This guardian article is demonstrable nonsense. Professor Römer is either ignorant, or is intentionally gaslighting Bush.
Gog and Magog are well-known figures mentioned in both the Hebrew Bible and the Quran. Playing dumb because it's not also in the Old Testament is not a good look for someone who's supposedly an expert.
This article is a silly hit piece written to fool people who are totally ignorant of religious history.
> This guardian article is demonstrable nonsense. Professor Römer is either ignorant, or is intentionally gaslighting Bush.
Surely you meant gaslighting Chirac ? (which I disagree with, anyway).
> Gog and Magog are well-known figures mentioned in both the Hebrew Bible and the Quran. Playing dumb because it's not also in the Old Testament is not a good look for someone who's supposedly an expert.
Good thing he's an old testament expert and not a Hebrew bible or quran one then. You think Bush was referring to the Gog and Magog from the Hebrew bible or from the Quran or from the old testament ? Should have called an Hebrew or an Islam expert instead of an protestand Old Testament expert ?
It's simply not possible to be an expert on the Old Testament and to be that unaware of the context from which it was derived. Especially as they are also mentioned in the parts that made it into the Old Testament.
Imagine claiming to be a LOTR expert and then feigning ignorance as to the events that took place in the Hobbit!
I'm not religious or even particularly interested and even I am aware of this history. Ridiculous.
I don't understand your point. How do you reach the conclusion that Professor Römer doesn't know about Gog and Magog ? Or that he doesn't know about the multiple interpretations of who or what they may have been ?
I would imagine President Bush was referring to the prophecy in Revelations 20:7-9. Basically in this case, it means nations who are an enemy to the people of God... not so much crazy talk imho, considering that nations really like to fight each other these days.
I'd say it's crazy talk when you are using that as an argument (among others, of course) to convince a french president (whose country has a clearer separation between state and church than the US) to go to war.
I'm not saying Bush didn't say that because I don't know, I can believe it. But it seems odd because 1) Gog and Magog are a somewhat well know part of Islamic eschatology, and 2) I pretty sure Google existed at that point in time, but without it I am sure his staff had access to dictionaries and encyclopedias which would have led them to 3) Encyclopedia or web entries on Darbyism or Dispensationalism, easily answering their questions.
France's Ministry of Foreign affairs isn't advising the President on things like this, they don't have subject matter experts? Forgive me, maybe I give governments too much credit or, but seems like an odd article.
I'd be very worried if international diplomacy fell down to a cabinet member who happened to be well versed in Islamic eschatology or worse, that cabinet members would rely on dictionaries or Wikipedia to understand words or cultural references they don't know.
Calling an expert was the right call.
> France's Ministry of Foreign affairs isn't advising the President on things like this, they don't have subject matter experts?
Seems pretty obvious to me that they wouldn't have experts on every subjects, especially on things like that.
> I'm not saying Bush didn't say that because I don't know, I can believe it. [..] Forgive me, maybe I give governments too much credit or, but seems like an odd article.
There's healthy skepticism and there's something else.
Pretty funny to call Israel an major ally of the US. Because most of the problems the US has in that part of the world are because of that alliance in the first place.
Not mention Israels extremely damaging influence on US domestic politics. Israel working together with Neocons to push the US into some of the worst foreign policy choices since Vietnam. And that's just one aspect of the problem. The list goes on and on.
If Israel is a major ally, then I think the US would be much better of with fewer allies.
Israel is the ultimate pragmatic nation? You mean the religious police state that has illegal nuclear weapons and did its best to provoke an apocalyptic conflict between the US and Iran?
The apartheid state that is dominated by far right extremist that are still living by a 19th century colonialist doctrine?
I remember reading Bill Clinton's biography. At some point, he mentioned that a pastor told him something along these lines, and that it was an important realisation for him. (I read that years ago, could be slightly wrong but that was the idea).
I found that extremely disturbing that archaic religious beliefs would influence foreign policies.
That being said, it's well known that our former French president got advised by an astrologer [1]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/jun/25/jonhenley.theo...