One of the objections you commonly hear among atheists and Roman Catholics regarding Christianity is the following (in one of many different permutations):
The atheist concludes that you cannot know if God is even real, while the Roman Catholic determines that you need some higher authority to interpret what is real.
But, this is not primarily an issue of knowledge or interpretation, it’s an issue of personal choice, of free will. A theological doctrine may be right or it may be wrong, but the primary difficulty is not determining its truth, it is choosing to believe it.
Let me pause here to point out one thing: one can know, with certainty, that this is correct, because it has been revealed in scripture by God himself. One doesn’t need an advanced degree to understand it, only a willingness to accept it, as millions of other perfectly normal people have. This is not an issue of interpretation, it’s an issue of personal choice, of free will. This is why people resort to making fallacious appeals, rather than making strong arguments. A doctrine in scripture may challenge one’s core beliefs, but it need not be challenging to understand. It may be right or it may be wrong, but the primary difficulty is accepting it and choosing to believe.
Let’s use a non-theological example.
I recently used the term “blankslatist” and my interlocutor responded by calling it:
The problem? Blank slate philosophy—the tabula rasa—originates with Aristotle. It isn’t particularly difficult to figure out where the idea of the blank slate originated. It’s right there in the Wikipedia article. Finding the knowledge and validating the “interpretation” is, in fact, quite trivial.
Guess what happened when I pointed out the rather obvious error?
Finding factual knowledge and true interpretations is relatively easy. What is not trivial at all is choosing to believing it. Belief, faith, and trust (all one word in the Bible) is exceedingly difficult. Jesus made faith a particular point-of-emphasis (especially in the fourth gospel). Here is an example:
And when they came to the crowd, a man came to him and knelt down before him, saying, “Lord, have mercy on my son, because he is epileptic and suffers terribly; he often falls into the fire, and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, and they were not able to cure him.” And Jesus answered and said, “O unbelieving and twisted generation, how much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him here to me.” And Jesus subdued him, and the demon came out of him. And in that moment the boy was cured. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why were we not able to cast it out?” And he said to them, “Because of your little trust. For truly I say to you, if you have trust like a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”
Unbelief is, by far, the greatest impediment to being a Christ-follower. Even the smallest amount of faith—belief; trust—is enough to do great and wondrous works, but hardly anyone can seemingly manage even the basics.
You may be familiar with this meme:
As a meme, it works because it reflects something we’ve all experienced: presenting some fact and having the other party do anything and everything in their power to NOT understand what you’ve presented. The refusal to believe truth is strong.
This is, frankly, a pretty accurate summary of what Bruce Charlton said here months ago:
I don’t debate with people who are stupid or dishonest and invertedly misrepresent my clearly expressed views (what would be the point?); but the question of “reality” (used three times!) is presumably one of science, history and the like.
That is something that Ought to be discussable and where discussion Ought to be able to lead to mutually acceptable progress…
However I know from extensive (well publicized, in its day) personal experience that this is no longer the case, even among “scientists” and “academics” where it really used to happen, as recently as forty years ago (see my 2012 book Not Even Trying).
The problem is that Extremely Few people nowadays are genuinely interested in the truth of what they are pretending to discuss – their real major priorities are quite otherwise, usually covert, and sometimes denied.
I concluded a long time (15 years?) ago, that argument nowadays is futile, as a very strong generalization; and I have always regretted it when I neglected my own advice!
I can count on one or two hands how many people that I can have fruitful discussions with on a semi-regular basis. My goal is not so much to argue for the sake of argument, but rather to find and befriend those Extremely Few.
Continuing the discussion, I mentioned the fourth gospel above. The author repeatedly contrasts sin and belief. To Jesus, the greatest of all sins is unbelief, which invariably leads to death. He hardly gives any time at all to talking about morality in general. To wit:
My renewed understanding and conviction
The following, from my post “Methodology,” also captures how facts, evidence, and interpretation hardly matter when it comes face-to-face with what people truly want of their own free will.
i still think my favorite thing that’s ever happened to me on the internet is the time a guy said…
…and I said…
…and linked TWO sources and he said…
People disagree, but this does not invalidate Sola Scriptura. Sola Scriptura is not a hermeneutic. It’s not even an aid to interpretation. The problem is with people.
Here is what one person would have you believe:
The problem has rarely ever been about interpretation, nor does authority prevent disagreement. It’s simply the case that with people involved, they will—collectively or individually—believe whatever they want to believe regardless of whether or not it is true. It is well-known that authority can—and often does—disseminate and enforce falsehood.
Translation and interpretation are really not impossible at all. There are lots of people who go to a university where they study Koine Greek. You can even buy textbooks and teach yourself. And, if you don’t want or can’t do this yourself, you can read what experts have to say (like Julius R. Mantey on the perfect).
However, if you are, per the example mentioned in “The Living Voice,” indoctrinated to think—at threat to your soul and salvation—that the perfect in Matthew 16:19, 18:18, and John 20:23 isn’t supposed to be translated as a perfect, who is there that can possibly convince you that your interpretation should be otherwise? What does it matter how many interpretations there are—from zero to a million—if you have already made up your mind what it must be?
One commentator laments:
I don’t like fighting with Christians about theology. I want to have open discussions. Why is it tough to just have honest discussions about the Bible?
The answer, of course, is that Extremely Few people are truly interested in such things. They may discuss them, yes, but the vast majority have other stated and unstated goals. Honest discussions are not in the cards.
At the end of the day, what people truly want is, quite often, simply otherwise from what is.
Finding factual knowledge and true interpretations is relatively easy. What is not trivial at all is choosing to believing it. Belief, faith, and trust (all one word in the Bible) is exceedingly difficult.
ZLOLZLZLOLZZZ
i thought Arron Renn was more intelligent than you’re typical Manosphere trolls like Matt Perkins=bgrGOPLGBTQ+ & his deviant LAWLESS & SATANIC GOPLGBTQ+ children(who also thought ST.Rollo was the inventor or originator of the ”redpill” since he was ST.DAL’S primary ”PUA” buns-kisser) but he isn’t!
https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/the-rational-male-religion
The manosphere is a collection of male-oriented blogs and discussion forums spanning several subcultures, especially pickup artists. They are linked by a shared framework of intersexual dynamics known by the shorthand of the “red pill,” taken from the film The Matrix. To “take the red pill,” in their view, is to reject society’s lies on gender in favor of the often-bitter truth about men and women.
In my Theopolis article on the manosphere and the church, I noted that the heyday of the manosphere was from around 2013 to 2016 and that most of its seminal figures had moved on. The pickup artist Roosh Valizadeh, for example, converted to Christianity and unpublished all of his books.
The main manosphere OG who is still active is Rollo Tomassi, who calls himself “the Rational Male.” Rollo was a prolific blogger back in the day but has largely pivoted to video. He’s also published a few books summarizing his beliefs. He’s a true oldtimer – I think he’s a year or two older than me – and has been active in the red pill community for around 20 years, since its very early days.
Rollo is most famous for his “sexual market value” chart that plots male and female attractiveness over time:
Again if anybody wants to know what the ”redpill” is based on here’s these links
https://hawaiianlibertarian.blogspot.com/2009/09/game-is-red-pill.html
Many men today seem to think that the legal system is set up to give all the women the power in marriage…so they’d better cede it to her to avoid upsetting her so that she doesn’t take you into divorce court hell. But the paradox is that a man who understands the reality, also understands that STANDING UP FOR HIMSELF is the ONLY WAY his wife CAN respect, admire, lust and love him.
You really shouldn’t worry about upsetting her. She’s a woman. She gets upset as surely as the sun rises in the East. What you you have to worry about, is turning into someone she doesn’t respect…and patronizing her because you are afraid of her emotional state is the fastest path to losing that respect.
When contemplating why we now have over 70% of women who initiate no fault divorces, there’s much more to it than simply because all women are greedy, slutty, or adulterous simply because that is the nature of modern, Western women. Yes, there are most certainly a segment of the female gender that is in fact materialistic gold digging manipulators. But I don’t think it’s quite a stretch to simply say that the 70+% of women that initiate their divorces do so because of a greedy, materialistic nature.
No, you HAVE to account for the social engineering of our BraveNeWorldOrder on BOTH genders into account when trying to understand just why so many women “change” for the worse by getting bitchy, nagging, fat and absolutely contemptuous of their husbands after they get married…and why men that used to be bold, assertive and confident when they were dating, fall into the relationship dynamic where they are the p@ssywhipped, cowed and beaten wimps absolutely crushed under a domineering harridan of a wife.
In short, it’s nothing more than a blue pill overdose. Taking the red pill will open your eyes to the reality of the female sex drive and how it’s basis on the principle of hypergamy dictates her behavior. It provides a solid understanding of exactly why women on an instinctual level, require men to be the dominant leaders in the relationship. Whenever a man fails to fulfill that role, the relationship begins it’s death spiral towards oblivion.
Attraction is not an intellectual vocation. This is why “marriage counseling” usually doesn’t work. No matter how many logical reasons there are for a woman to be happy in her marriage…if she has that visceral contempt for the man that turned into a “Beta” in the marriage bed and impregnated her with his inferior seed, she cannot control how she FEELS about that. Because by him “becoming” beta, she only feels disgusting contempt for him in her gut.
This epidemic of blue pill delusion that doesn’t recognize this basic understanding of female attraction is why I believe so many women turn into the proverbial psycho ex-wife.
It’s women’s basic biological nature to seek dominant genes for her offspring. Yet too many men beta-ize when they get married, submit to their wives as their authority figure, and even if she THINKS it’s perfectly fine to be the dominant one…that she is just exercising “equality,” her basic instinct is to have utter contempt for a man that she can rule.
This is precisely why so many men seem dumbfounded that the sweet loving girlfriend they married turned into an uncaring psychopath without a shred of mercy or decency in dragging him through the divorce court system and all of it’s vagaries and indignities it inflicts …THIS occurs because for the most part, because both of them failed to follow their natural gender roles, and the very nature of her sexual instinct — hypergamy — makes her regard him as a sub-human creature of utter contempt.
It is the very premise for the “game” routine that Roissy and other PUA call Marry Shag Kill
You have to understand why women have this curdled reaction to betas deep in their bones. If a man spills his seed in the wrong woman, no biggie. He can still bang other women and fulfill his genetic programming. If a woman gets her eggs polluted by the feeble seed of a beta, she’s stuck for nine months, and probably longer.
This is why there are so many cases of these women feel justified and entitled into getting the most they can from a divorce settlement…even if she’s the spouse that ended up breaking her marital vows.
Beta Contempt.
By the time you are being taken to the cleaners, she is merely carrying through with the legally accepted means of playing the very real version of marry/shag/kill…with you being the Beta Sap she “kills.”
I’ve come to realize this when I’ve thought long and hard about almost all of the failed marriages and relationships that I know of throughout my life. I can think of no exceptions in the cases where the female ended the relationship. It always happened after the man no longer fulfilled the leadership role her biological imperative requires.
The cultural indoctrination of our BraveNewWorldOrder — the blue pill culture — encourages these relationship malfunctions in every conceivable way. It’s memes and shibboleths are ceaselessly pushed by our mass media driven popular culture to try and ensnare as many men and women to fall into this devious trap as possible. It is a population control agenda at it’s most subversive.
To put it succinctly: The blue pill encourages masculine behavior in women and feminine behavior in men.
It encourages women to strive to hold all of the power in a relationship dynamic, and encourages men to cede that power to the women.
By promoting the ubiquitous culture of misandry, and making everyone strive for the unattainable goal of “equality,” they push men and women to act out in ways that are contrary to our natural gender roles, thereby effecting an epidemic of “beta-ization.”
Feminist lobbying for No-fault divorce was the mechanism for the BraveNewWorldOrder to attack the nuclear family; to re-make society by first destroying it’s foundation…but it wouldn’t have been nearly as effective if it were done without the social engineering that promotes contrary gender role behavior…empowered women and emasculated men.
&
https://web.archive.org/web/20090822144518/http://fbardamu.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/the-roissysphere-and-its-moral-and-intellectual-objectives-a-proposed-manifesto
The issue that I and other bloggers are confronting here is the sexual impoverishment of beta males in the modern West. Western civilization is uniquely superior to all other societies because it was built by and for betas, harnessing their physical and mental power to create advanced technology, stable systems of governance, and economic prosperity. No other civilization – not the Chinese, not the Africans, not the Arabs, not the Amerindians – has ever managed to reach the heights obtained by European states and their offshoots because of this crucial difference. The reason angry ladybloggers can sit on their dimpled derrieres in air conditioned buildings and write blog posts displaying their painful ignorance to the world is because of the beta males who designed and built all of those things. Without them, as Camille Paglia said, “we would still be living in grass huts.”
To benefit betas and keep them invested in society, checks were placed on the sexual behavior of women and the alpha males whom they lusted after. The configuration of marriage afforded betas a chance to procreate, while protecting the women with whom they entered into holy matrimony. In the past four decades, these checks have been annihilated. Using the power of the state, radical feminists initiated a massive redistribution of wealth from the provider beta class to women. Alimony and child support payments, along with no-fault divorce, have annihilated marriage’s value, while welfare state programs such as WIC (Women, Infants, Children) reward women who become pregnant out of wedlock. Put simply, the socialist state has reduced the value of the provider beta to nothing. If provider betas were a corporation, it would have filed for bankruptcy and had its assets sold to the highest bidder years ago. Without the opportunity to reproduce, betas will give the bird to society and drop out, leaving the world to rot.
With their value gone, betas have no choice but to learn game to have a crack at getting laid (exempting prostitution, which is illegal, costly, and isn’t as satisfying as nailing a woman who WANTS your love-wrench in her she-place). The nature of game allows any guy to apply its teachings to his life, right away and without delay. However, game is not a complete long-term solution to society’s woes. Urging betas to take on the behavior and mannerisms of alphas will get their penises wet, but it will hasten the coming collapse. A nation of badboys is a nation that will cease to exist in time.
It is important to remember that the existing system that allows women to act out their hypergamous desires is in no way a creation of nature. “Empowered” and “independent” women are dependent on the state-sanctioned transfer of wealth to themselves through welfare, alimony, child support, and also need punitive laws such as VAWA, IMBRA, and “must-arrest” domestic violence clauses that afford them disproportionate power and privilege. Removing these laws and socialist wealth transfer agencies will tear the floorboards out from under the New Girl Order. Conservatism, with its credos of small government and social reservedness, is the ideal ideological system to accomplish these goals. However, working towards uprooting the anti-male government-media complex will take time, and no conservative thinker has proposed a way to address the needs of men right now.
With this, we return to the Φ post I quoted earlier:
Likewise, an understanding of HBD recommends two different but not necessarily contradictory approaches to the problem of beta sexual impoverishment:
On the micro level, betas should learn game (the PUA community); and
On the macro level, we must reverse the social policies of the last 40 years (social conservatives).
Personally, I recommend both. I appreciate the criticism that the social conservative program is unlikely, but at least legally and socially enforced monogamy has the advantage of having worked at widely distributing sexual access and, yeah, also sustaining civilization.
Ba-ba-ba-ba-bingo.
To combine these seemingly at odds goals, we need a new strain of conservatism that acknowledges the realities of human sexuality while maintaining its ideological integrity. The current crop of conservatives writing on this topic have failed us because they don’t understand the realities of the modern sexual marketplace. There is a ray of sunshine in this thunderstorm, though – we may not need them.
Consider Steve Sailer. I imagine most of my readers know who he is and what he writes on. During the 90’s, Sailer wrote for National Review, that venerable organ of respectable conservatism. For the past few years, though, Mr. Sailer has been blacklisted from NR and other mainstream venues – the only outlets that will publish him are “disrespectable” organizations like VDARE.com, the American Conservative, and Taki’s Magazine. And yet, with the rise of the Internet and blogs, Steve Sailer’s work has inspired a legion of similar-minded bloggers collectively known as the Steveosphere. Writers like Half Sigma, Ron Guhname, Razib Khan, and the Audacious Epigone have taken Sailer’s ideas and theories and used them to develop and present ones of their own. He may be a nonperson in our egalitarian public society, but Sailer has never had more influence then he does right now.
Similarly, in the last year, I’ve witnessed a community of writers and thinkers spring up around everyone’s favorite cad blog, Roissy in DC. Roissy isn’t the first person to write on seduction and what women want, but he is the first to link it to human biodiversity, conservatism, and the decline of civilization. His writings have influenced bloggers from all walks of life, including Whiskey, Novaseeker, Half Sigma, Michael Blowhard, Dennis Mangan, Welmer, Φ, Alpha Dominance, slumlord/The Social Pathologist, OneSTDV, Chuck, Keoni Galt/Dave in Hawaii, T. aka Ricky Raw, 11minutes, Ganttsquarry, myself, and many others who can be found on my blogroll. In fact, yesterday I plugged a new blog by DGL “devoted to the cause of the beta.” And this doesn’t cover the countless commenters at these sites that have ideas and theories of their own to contribute. With two or three exceptions, I found all of the bloggers listed in my “Game/Sexual Politics” category through Roissy. And like the Steveosphere, the writers of the Roissysphere have circumvented traditional methods of information propagation in order to present their ideas to the public. And we aren’t being ignored – the ideas put forth by Roissy are being discussed in other venues. Despite having only been blogging for a month, my own posts are being quoted and discussed on forums and blogs both sympathetic and hostile. The Roissysphere’s influence grows daily.
With that in mind, I propose a list of objectives that Roissysphere bloggers and denizens should consider. I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but I believe these goals are noble and necessary:
We must mount an intellectual defense of the beta male. This includes illustrating the nature of the beta male’s role in creating, developing and maintaining civilization and the necessity of having them invested in society. Whiskey in particular has done admirable work in this department.
We must provide a means by which beta males can sate their sexual lusts. Advocating game is the most obvious means to accomplish this, and the one I chiefly endorse, but I am open to other considerations. Some sectors of the MGTOW community have suggested expatriating to other countries with more amenable womenfolk, for instance.
Outsiders regard our views as misogynistic – therefore, we must make the case as to how our proposals will benefit women as well as men. For example, liberated single women are disproportionately employed in professions that are dependent on a stable government and law and order. Should the government collapse, those women will be starving in the streets.
Most importantly, we must work towards social, political, and economic changes that will destroy the existing sexual dystopia and secure a place for the provider betas in Western society.
SEE ST.Rollo or ST.DAL mentioned in either link?