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@Sir.Lancelot
On a more serious note:
Orthodox is still good, I mean dont get me wrong, they still need to accept Latin rule, but not bad by any means.
High Church Protestantism: Bad, but not the worse, AT LEAST they accept Apostolic succession.
Low Church Protestantism: Evil, how can ANYONE look at the 5 tenets of Calvinism and tell me that is life-giving and good.
The only reason why I am catholic is because I was raised Catholic, and I owe it up to my family to do so. If I came from a different heritage I would just as steadfast in my beliefs, but it would be different.
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@Savant
Cool but Im not interested
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You are relying on asburd hypotheticals like:
If Israel conquers Palestine and extends voting rights to Palestinians, then Israelis and Palestinians will collectively vote for a central government to decide on laws. If Palestine conquers Israel and extends voting rights to Israelis
I mean...cool for a though experiment but there is no practical use to this.
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It will always boggle my mind on how gore could have just gone silently on with his life with the understanding that if he won, maybe it wouldn't have been as much of a shit show that Bush was.
But no, he had to throw that favorability away for liberal brownie points.
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@ebuc
I am not sure how that post is relevant.
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@zedvictor4
Sorry you dont find joy in the beauty of God
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@zedvictor4
Sick of your British Protestantism zed, you know that?
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@Savant
Oh so now were switching up definitions thanks to loopholes
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@Savant
YOu dont know what regressive means
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@Savant
Ah, got it — if the person’s arguing that sales tax isn’t regressive because purchasing power is “abstract” or that inflation is what really matters, then yeah, that’s peak economic nonsense. Here’s how you can dunk on it:
- Purchasing power is only “abstract” if you’re rich enough not to feel it.
- A sales tax takes a larger percentage of income from low-income people because they spend more of what they earn. That’s regressive.
- If someone making $20k pays 10% tax on basic needs and someone making $200k only pays that much on extras, who’s feeling it more?
- A sales tax takes a larger percentage of income from low-income people because they spend more of what they earn. That’s regressive.
- Inflation affects everyone, but taxes affect people differently based on income.
- Sales tax doesn’t scale — it hits the poor harder in real terms. That’s the definition of a regressive tax.
- Inflation might eat into everyone’s wallet, but rich people have assets that grow with inflation (stocks, property). Poor people don’t.
- Sales tax doesn’t scale — it hits the poor harder in real terms. That’s the definition of a regressive tax.
- Trying to deflect from tax regressivity by rambling about inflation is a bait-and-switch.
- It’s like saying “Don’t worry about the pothole, the whole road might collapse someday.” One problem doesn’t erase another.
- It’s like saying “Don’t worry about the pothole, the whole road might collapse someday.” One problem doesn’t erase another.
If you're arguing with someone over drinks, here's your pub-style mic drop:
“Bro, I’m not saying inflation doesn’t suck — I’m saying it doesn’t change the fact that a sales tax hits a broke dude buying groceries harder than it hits a rich guy buying a boat. You can’t abstract your way out of math.”
Want to follow this up with some specific policy alternatives (like VAT exemptions or progressive offsets)?
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I'm assuming it's regressive in the sense that it's a flat tax? I mean sure mathematical proportions of purchasing power don't change, but that's still an abstract way of looking at it.
However at the end of the day, I would rather sales tax than income tax
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@RemyBrown
Im not the one with a Stephan Hawking pfp on this site and he was a lot worse
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@RemyBrown
That is why smart autistic men were nowhere near government or influential cultural positions and also given space in stem academies.
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See my issue with it is that it is emphatically and horrifically unromantic. Musk might as well be an NFL athlete or a rapper sharing baby mamas. If he was a real steppa he would be having kids outside of a genuine marriage from sheer passion and love or be a orientalist with a taste for foreign women or have hot secretaries or ANYTHING other than this shameless "would you like to have a kid with me" from a pure utilitarian standpoint
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There is corn in your soda, in your beer, in your gas, in your sweeteners, in your plastics, etc, etc.
Big Agriculture(and more specifically big hybrid-corn) is far and away the most protected class in politics that both parties like, and now we have Trump saying that are going to look at how illegal migrants work on the fields before deporting. Obama supported big agriculture, etc.
America is the corn empire. Something we inherited from the Aztecs, and just like how human sacrifices demanded rain from their gods, we demand the same but in the form of subsidies, lobbying, corporate ties, etc. Britain is not afraid to snuff at their farmers every once and again because they are beta-ass grain farmers. Maize is the fundamental crop that turns this into this.
Consume.More.Corn.
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@zedvictor4
NOOOO YOU ARENT ALLOWED TO MAKE INTERDISCIPLINARY CONNECTIONS. SCIENCE IS JUST A VACUUM OF FACTS
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@zedvictor4
The idea of laws governing the universe is the foundation for liberalism. Human rights are a direct application of the newtonian worldview. Is that also just people blabbering off?
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Thank you RemyBrown for figuring it all out and we can stop debating and join the balls and strikes party
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@zedvictor4
I don't think you understand the enlightenment if you believe that science and philosophy was not related to each other in the 18th century.
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@Sidewalker
That is an unfair characterization of Darwin’s work, there is no reason whatsoever to conclude that Darwinism said nature is inherently chaotic. Recognize that Darwin’s theory is a two-step process, only the first step in natural selection, the production of variation, is a matter of chance. The character of the second step, the actual selection, is progressive and directional. The concept of natural selection had remarkable power for explaining directional and adaptive changes, it pretty much explicitly said that evolution was not chaotic.
Im not sure you know what "chaotic" meant in the 19th century, or in a scientific term, cause thermodynamics also uses chaos in a non-intuitive way to us. These are a people who did not believe in accidents. Most Civil War Generals wrote at length how they believed in fate and that everything was out of their control.
The idea that random variations cause evolution and that we are here by chance was absolutely "chaotic" in that sense.
I don’t think that is a fair characterization of the Enlightenment either, “orderly, harmonious, and non-chaotic” certainly fits the point you are trying to make about Darwin, but it is more a characterization of the “resultant” ideas that emerged from the Enlightenment, particularly the Enlightenment’s development of the Newton’s physical sciences.
In what way is that not representative of the Enlightenment?
Darwin recognized the importance of the variations and their relationship to natural selection, but he did not know that chance mutation was the underlying mechanism. The scientific study of genetics, and the idea of random genetic mutations being the mechanism of variation came much later. He focused on the effects of natural selection and heritable variations, the idea that the underlying cause of those heritable variations was random genetic mutations didn’t really develop until the 20th century.
Darwin believed variations were random. Full stop, sure the genetics didnt come until later, but stop denying what he said.
Darwin stood squarely in the tradition of Enlightenment science of applying reason and observation while challenging traditional authority and promoting a more secular and rational worldview. Enlightenment science had developed Newton’s physics into an overly mechanistic view of the universe, but Darwin rigorously applied the scientific method to life, and the result challenged the traditional authority of Enlightenment’s Newtonian physics.
So...anti-enlightenment. lol.
Enlightenment science was at its peak of materialistic and deterministic hubris, and when Darwin applied the scientific method to life and found it did not fully conform to the mechanistic laws of matter that enlightenment science was uncompromisingly committed to.
Right...thanks for conceding.
What evolution contends about life is that life is contingent, probabilistic, and that it constitutes a unity, it says we are all interconnected to each other and to everything. In the study of life, there are no isolated systems and life is not deterministic
That is the opposite of reductionism-another core Enlightenment philosophy. You are literally proving my point over and over.
Darwin took Charles Lyell’s book with him on the Beagle, it was instrumental to Darwin’s development of the theory of evolution, especially his belief in gradual change. The two main clashes within biology were between chance or necessity, as far as biology was concerned, Darwin settled the question by demonstrating the dual nature of biological processes, it isn’t one or the other, it’s both in a two-step process, the variation step being dominated by randomness, the natural selection step by necessity.
There was no scientific/biological imperative for "randomness" until darwin and other probabilistic theories, especially in relation to ending a locus of control. Previously chance, insurance, etc was seen as something can be calculated and semi-controlled or something can be ultimately driven teleologically towards something. The darwinian revolution was that nature didnt care.
I don’t think so, I think Newton would have recognized that his physics is a predictive science of deterministic laws, and that evolutionary biology, in contrast with physics, is a historical science, it attempts to explain events and processes that have already taken place. He would have seen it as a different kind of science, one that constructs a historical narrative to explain observational evidence that the history of life was characterized by variation that progresses by the natural selection of favorable variations.
You don't understand enlightenment philosophers. This was a guy who wrote about magic more than science. If you think someone would show up and turn all enlightenment ideals on its head he would just shrug and say "ok"
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Well before we had the income tax most of our revenue came from tariffs. So yay trump
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At the end of the day it is the triumph of the female postmodernist social-issue obsessed politics over the male visionary. At least Northern Ireland held out as a place where the gun and visionary still held political control over the country, and even destroyed liberal institutions like trial by jury. Gen Z is the gender divide generation. If you were aged 18-25, you probably did not vote with your wallet, but because the democrats were gay and the republicans were sexist and you justified it by some kinky control fetish.
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@RemyBrown
Women are progressive in the streets, puritan in the sheets.
It's the opposite. It's why they have systematically crushed flirting into the ground while also wearing increasingly revealing clothes. It's the basic idea of the Calvinistic elect which is A)jewish eschatology and B)Revealed in how they treat unattractive men. For men, unattractive women are at best a nuisance but there is a certain disdain and life-denying element that women attribute to unattractive men. It's not an exaggeration to suggest that at least 70% of women actively consider 30-40% of the male population as not being a creature capable of sexuality.
Every single one of radical feminist demands are smut in disguise. Literally the protests against Musk and Trump was "hands off" evoking images of a sexual predator ready to pounce. Tim Walz called Trump and Vance creeps and weirdos. This is the real triumph of feminism. It's not even that women got the right to vote or even work because until relatively recently politics and business operated within male frameworks of reality, but now it's the opposite whereas feminine sexual impulses, desires, constructs, and mythical idealizations are now reflected in the mainstream discourse. The fact that a major party is actively saying "creeps" unironically and using language like "hands off" is the triumph of the new left over ALL previous politics. Hell you can make a connection between anti-wokeness originating as a feminist crusade to protect women to now it destroying centuries of relationships with Europe that was forged by male blood, diplomacy, technology, etc.
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@cristo71
Im not sourcing anything, look it up if you dont believe me.
The so what is in my OP
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@cristo71
Darwin did challenge dogma according to reason… and observation.
Yes but that wasn't really what the enlightenment was about.
This claim needs to be substantiated, as it sounds reductive at best.
Just look at what he originally said.
This claim also needs to be substantiated. From what I understand, you had it more correct initially— that it was about reason over dogma.I actually don’t have a cherished ideological “dog” in this particular fight, but your claims appear specious.
Just look at anatomy. Enlightenment physicians did not believe that the human body was a living organism but rather a machine. Descartes rejected Greek atomism and the ancient greeks were right in the end.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Just admit you are entirely historically ignorant and dont know what your talking about
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@Greyparrot
Interesting analysis!I was thinking about how all the Romantic poets of the industrial age thought that harmony with nature was the highest form of true reason, but Darwin postulated that Nature was the ultimate industrial machine, cold, calculating, and exact in culling the weak from the fit.Highly ironic if you think about it.
You could make the case the enlightenment guys and 19th c. romantics were two sides of the same harmonious coin and darwin was the odd nickel
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@ADreamOfLiberty
False dichotomy 1: There is a contradiction between order and random processes. Please read a book on statistical thermodynamics to understand the profound truth that is to be found in stable laws creating order (predictability) from chaos.
Second Law of Thermodynamics was post/counter-Enlightenment
False dichotomy 2: That the enlightenment (a very vague and abstract concept) can be reduced down to a single sentiment on one side of false dichotomy #1.
Enlightenment psychichians believed that the human was a machine in which emotional states had no bearing on, and medicine was thus treated as mechanical operations. Bloodletting was like releasing water from a pressure pipe to restore equilibrium. The Enlightenment was never that reasonable in the traditional sense, but had a clear agenda.
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@zedvictor4
And then along came the Doc.
Correct Zed, I am the end of evolution
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One of the more interesting myths is the idea that Darwin was the product of the Enlightenment, someone who challenged dogma according to reason.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Darwin promoted the idea that the evolution of species on earth was due to chance and probability, and thus nature is inherently chaotic.
The ENTIRE idea of the Enlightenment was to prove that the world was orderly, harmonious, and non-chaotic. Previous taxonomies tried to prove that nature just worked in perfect harmony and, if anything, was naturally positioned to progressing. For some reason, every scientist of this period was obsessed with clock analogies, so it would be like all the reductionist parts of the clock coming together for a goal. The cogs of the machine working independently.
I mean look at geology, the two main clashes within that field during the 19th century were between uniformitarianism, in which the earth's geology formed over small, incremental, reliably predictable processes and catastrophism, in which earth's geological development was dominated by large-scale random disasters.
Isaac Newton would have smacked Charles Darwin for even SUGGESTING that the natural world was probabilistic.
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@Swagnarok
Age of the middleman and contractor. If you secure some C-SUITE manager position at a big contractor you will be very wealthy in the America in the coming 20 years.
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@TheGreatSunGod
It is an entirely unique game which is why this thread is possible
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Of course there are some masonic/esoteric roots in this, particularly with the freemasonic love of the number 3 and the fact that so many of the early baseball architects and even best players were avid freemasons. Plus the intense emphasis that each ball club places on it's "opening day" is the masonic idea of renewal, which also happens in the Spring which was the traditional English/Anti-Gregorian new year. The Pitcher-Catcher relations are done using secret symbols intended to be hidden from the opponent, this is the freemasonic idea of forbidden knowledge as well as the Calvinistic obsession with only allowing a select group in on the elements of life(the elect, which I already made a thread on).
Despite that, the Puritan construction of baseball is either dead or dying. Baseball uniforms have been getting more color in them for a while now, the unwritten rules about flair have been undone thanks to the flashiness of Latin, Catholic players who have no time for British stoicism, and the traditional curses of baseball has not only been broken, but smashed to bits. The Red Sox are now more successful than the Yankees this century, a complete inverse of what the 2 traditional yankee cultures represented.
The biggest sin is the addition of the pitch clock. Everything in baseball rests on the fact that the game is not measured in seconds.
And the added rule that players are added to bases in extra innings. That is not Calvinist where players have to earn their dues via perseverance, that is why baseball never ever considered adding ties. There are no ties, no clock, it's pure, earned perseverance until the end.
Additionally, the rise of home runs and strike outs and the decline in batting average combined with middle reliever dominance means that the intense bursts of actions and grand drama seen in innings are declining in favor of steady increments in score, another deviation from baseball's original purpose. Oh, and gambling is now legal and there is no stigma.
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This is one of the most fascinating and clear-as-day construction of a sport that I have ever seen, and it really makes you appreciate how much thought has been made into this designing this culture.
The demographics are the easy part-Baseball is the Yankee game, developed between NY and New England. In fact it took Union soldiers invading to actually spread it to the South in the first place. Puritan New England banned all fighting sports and "mindless recreation", but allowed ball and bat games, and for good reason.
First we start with the fact that baseball has a narrative of being "fallen from grace". Sure we may be America's pastime, but there was better order before us. Even in post-WW2 America baseball fans believed that it was past its prime, and its the clear manifestation of the Calvinistic fall from grace, in which The Fall of Eden bears heavy. Baptism may save us from that in Catholicism, but not in Calvinism.
Similar in vain is the baseball obsession with curses, which are generational and passed on to fans. You will pay for the sins of your ancestors. Bill Buckner was always going to make that error in 1986, it was determined 70 years before.
Time is eternal in baseball(at least before 3 years ago). There is no clock and so the construction of time is measured in action. This is why Ben Franklin a born and raised New Englander said things like "time is money". Games can theoretically go on forever, and it only ends when it is earned, likening Calvinistic rhetoric about salvation via labor.
Baseball is the perfect combination of individualism and collectivism. Each individual faces the pitcher alone, like how Calvinistic God judges you and only you alone, in which no personal responsibility can be levied onto others, but you still operate as a team. The theologically charged "sacrifice fly" shows giving yourself up for the collective.
Failure is built into baseball, it is the only game where failing 70% of the time is fantastic. This represents the Calvinistic obsession with moral failure, that no matter how much you try, you will fail.
Puritans hated excess. It is the reason why New England cuisine was made especially bland or why fashion was dry, etc. Baseball's unwritten rules about flashiness or why the muted white and gray are the most-often used choices for baseball uniforms, especially in the past, shows this.
The baseball is a circular diamond representing one's spiritual journey. The bases which form a square represent the current earthly elements of work and toil but to make it back to the diamond-shaped "home" is the end goal. The batter suffers, runs, dodges trials like pick offs against to reach salvation. In fact defense is much less error-prone and efficient because the defenders can prevent runners from reaching salvation much more often then runners can make it around.
The statistics obsession of the game shows a scientific rationalism, a product of Calvinistic thought. Things can be measured and observed with human reasoning, and it triumphs over emotional and romantic fervor.
Umpires are the representative of the hierarchal(head ump, then 1st base, etc, etc) church which intends to call out and strike out runners from reaching their intended salvation. This of course means that umpires, compared to other refs, receive a very large amount of abuse from coaches and players, they are rebelling against authority like what the Puritans were doing against the Anglican hierarchy. The fiery tirade of the player/coach is like the fiery sermons of Puritan preachers. Ejection is excommunication from the Church.
In Calvinistic thought, old age is associated with wisdom, if you made it to old age it was assumed you could be one of the elect. The baseball free market treats veterans very well compared to other sports which pushes them out more easily, and the GOAT of baseball is agreed to have played over 100 years ago. Compare that to basketball where every day old heads are made fun of.
The Puritans had a very strong sense of managing strong bursts of action with reflective downtime. In their politics for example most town election years or meetings were about 50% participation rate but when contentious issues rose every now and then that number shot up above 90%. Baseball has a very strong spectrum in this as well. Some innings nothing happens whereas others show intense bursts of action.
The Little League primacy of the township over the school(opposite in football) shows the New England obsession with loyalty to one's town. There is no such thing as switching Little League districts, you must play for the town. Compared to the rest of the colonies, colonial New England showed remarkable rates of lifelong residency and of course, it made the town system, something completely unique to that region.
Stadiums are meant to be places of sacred geography in which timelessness prevails. Compared to other sports, ballparks are just not changing a whole lot. Plus, ballparks are integral parts of the city/town, in relation to a Town Hall or Church which served as the basis for municipal government.
Sports gambling was the big no no in baseball reflecting a Puritan morality about bad vices. Gambling was banned in Puritan Massachusetts but absolutely loved in Aristocratic Virginia, who preferred horse-racing.
It's fitting that Puritan Boston vs Quaker/Dutch NY is the apex of baseball rivalry. On one hand is the Puritan, gritty, curse-ridden, humble Red Sox fighting out for another day and the other one is the unabashed Capitalistic, star-driven and motivated New Yorkers. Philadelphia + New York were the richest and most commercially-savvy areas of Colonial America thanks to the Quakers love of commercialism.
And that's it. It's the puritan game plain and simply.
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Black Magic is only considered bad to Calvinists. The only region of America that burnt witches was New England(founded by Puritans)
Magic/Superstition is generally accepted in Catholic/Lutheran cultures. Sure there is bad luck and good luck, but the construction of superstition and ritual in of itself wasn't demonized.
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@WyIted
Yeah I had to emphasize it
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@WyIted
I think so too
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@Wylted (for some reason I cant tag you)
Trump is jeiwsh himself. He secretly converted. Its why he said "I love my Christians" on the campaign because he isnt one
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For all these grifters who thinks Trump is in the pocket of Jews the top 500 billionaires are 30% Jewish
He is deporting people who criticize Israel and forcing universities to stop anti-Israel protests.
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Even if we cut all discretionary spending we would still be in debt
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