An amusing thought I had ~ Why how right you think you are is irrelevant.

[Jaecp]

@all,

Agency is a good concept to keep in mind when it comes to progressive politics as the general trend has been to give a broader and broader cross section of the populace agency

The goal, from my perspective anyway, is to only restrict agency when there is some greater good that can be accomplished (pre-2008 campaign restrictions is a good example of this)

[Darth Executor]

What definition of "might makes right" are you operating under, and how might it apply to honor-shame shadowboxing? I view it as imposing one's will due to one's ability to do so unfettered, which doesn't seem to fit these examples at all. Consider 1 Peter's oft-debated-on-here "be nice" injunctions. They seem like clear instructions to the letter's recipients for how to be most persuasive when one had limited agency.

I would replace might with power since it more accurately describes the principle. Your view of it works too, though because the early Christians under the guidance of the apostles sought tactical positions from which they could impose their will unfettered. If you fight back against oppression you give the opponent an excuse to stomp you out. But if you embarrass him by carrying out his orders to extreme lengths he has no honorable recourse through which to punish you and ends up looking bad (losing honor). Fabius would have made a great apostle.

[Paprika]

I don't know where your from, but my grandmother was beaten half to death on a regular basis living a part of the US where she had no legal standing to leave her abuser while also being completely economically dependent on him.

You don't need no-fault divorce to get out of that situation because clearly there is a lot of fault on the side of the husband.

Think what you will about people over using the damn things, but don't think for a minute that you can speak so broadly without making you look like an ass in front of those who've seen photos of women beaten black and blue.

Ah, the feels.

Legalizing gay marriage is largely because they want to do it slowly and methodically wipe out the remaining Christian influence

Fixed.

[Darth Executor]

Some of these could be seen in the history of the US. (The Know Nothing Party and other bouts of anti-immigration fervor). And people smuggling is even more obvious.

(I'd argue this just is evidence the US never was a Christian nation.)

Opposition to mass immigration is as Christian as apple pie. Multicultural movements both today and in the past (IE: trans-Atlantic slave trade) have traditionally been virulently anti-Christian. I suspect it's because of the high status "love your neighbor" has in Christian morality, and while you are obligated to be good to foreigners, at the end of the day your obligation to your neighbor takes precedent.

[Paprika]

Agency is a good concept to keep in mind when it comes to progressive politics as the general trend has been to give a broader and broader cross section of the populace agency

Yes, we know you worship the great goddess Liberté, sacrificing millions of lives upon her altar.

[Darth Executor]

They don't even worship her all that much since they will fine you a hundred and thirty grand (then ban you from raising that money) if you won't participate in a gay wedding. Satan is called the Prince of Lies for a reason and liberals are his most devout children yet.

[Tassman]

How parochial.

No! “Parochial” in the sense of having a limited or narrow outlook is precisely what it isn't; parochialism among denominations is what’s brought this state of affairs about.

And why has that happened? The main reason is that Christianity in the US has kept ceding ground, continually trying to assimilate with the "progressing" culture, which is killing it and the society.

Jaecp is correct, the main reason is that Christianity is more than ever fragmented and lacks the concerted influence it one had. Plus, in a better educated environment with easy access to the internet, more people can see the foolishness of religion for what it is.

I didn't know you were that butthurt.

Ah the old “bitter twisted fool” rationalization. My favourite!

[Jaecp]

It's all good Tass,

After the whole "millions dead" thing, after the non-US guy trying to speak with authority about the need for no fault divorces to help deal with spousal abuse, I just put him on ignore. I'm not going to do like I used to and try to patiently deal with people like that when I can talk to people like KG. Hell, I even felt like responding to nearly half of what DE had to say, which frankly surprised me

[Darth Ovious]

Essentially what is happening in the west already happened before under communist Russia. We are talking about social engineering principles. They may not be the exact same tenants but in the end it is a belief that the basic things which make up a society need to be changed. A lot of the time this is in reference to marriage, the family, etc, etc. In the end communist Russia fell apart in the very early 90's. So it took 70 odd years for this to all come about so it's not like it happens instantaneously either. In terms of the west I am not stating that it will take a similar time but it will happen at some point. Now look at Russia today. Largely Christian population who now rigorously defend their traditions and heritage from before the advent of communism and do it to an extreme level in which they show hatred to those they perceive as a threat to their social harmony. Adding in the fact that it is now considered the norm again for women to be housewives and many women considering working to be a man's position will show you just how far a step Russia has taken back from this social collapse from the 90's.

In terms of higher divorce rates this was caused by feminist principles which is an arm of the progressive thinking that was started in the 60's and 70's. Ideas from radical feminists' fettered their way through to those who maintained that they were not so radical. All you have to do is look at Patriarchy Theory. This was a tenant that was made up by the radicals who hated men and even stated it in their writings yet this theory is still used universally within the feminist movement. You can see through quotes from these radical feminists that they have no respect for the institution of marriage.

"The nuclear family must be destroyed... Whatever its ultimate meaning, the break-up of families now is an objectively revolutionary process." -- Linda Gordon

We can't destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage." -- Robin Morgan

The above two quotes are two examples of this. Please note that Robin Morgan was editor of Ms Magazine which is a very influential magazine forwarding the feminist cause.

In the west we are now looking at a culture which is unsustainable. The UK's pro-immigration policy is no longer a progressive idea, it is a must have since our education system does not produce the specialists required in order to hold up our system. It was cited in a recent political debate from one party member that 1/4 of NHS staff are immigrants from other countries, she was replying to a member of UKIP in what she saw as being a racist statement by that member. However this is actually a tacit admission that we don't produce enough Doctors and Nurses from our education system in order to fulfil what we need in the NHS for it to function properly in the first place. Couple this with the fact that David Cameron recently stated that we have a shortage of Engineers then you can see why Britain has a lot to worry about. Being pro-immigration is one thing but immigration is a two way street and people are going to have to want to come to your country. If for some reason this changes and immigrants have other better options then the UK will be in deep trouble as it cannot patch the holes in it's education system by filling it with professionals from other countries.

The reason for this is the UK's refusal to tackle of the issue of boys and kids in general underperforming in schools, but mainly it is boys who are suffering the most. Boys are continuing to receive lower and lower marks in schools and thus a lower number of boys going into higher education at Universities. This has been linked to social issues such as parental alienation and also the high divorce rate.

http://www.parental-alienation.info/...fparalisyn.htm

Educational problems. Children who are surrounded by the pressure of having to reject one parent having been less brain washed frequently suffer from school dysfunctions. They may become disruptive as well as aggressive within that system.

If you look at the most progressive country in Europe, which is Sweden, then you will see that Sweden is in big trouble. Their justice system is a shambles which was shown by the Thomas Quick scandal and their social harmony is at an all time low which was shown by the riots back in 2013.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_St...riots#Analysis

The justice minister, Beatrice Ask, said "Social segregation is a very serious cause of many problems."[37] Reports suggested that the unrest had been fed by substandard schools and an undercurrent of racism,[38] unemployment, a failure to integrate minorities,[39] and rising social inequality.[40] Some cited the riots as evidence of the failure of Sweden’s immigration policy.[39] Others referred to the recent OECD report that showed a rapidly widening gap between Sweden's rich and poor.[40]

After "Aftonbladet" published figures indicating that 13 of the 16 youths arrested had police records, the Swedish criminologist Jerzy Sarnecki stated that he was not surprised.[41] Sarnecki believes that the disturbances had not been caused by one single incident, but that the rioters were expressing a general dissatisfaction with unemployment levels, standards of education and the police service, and drew parallels with the 2011 England riots.[41] A local political group, Megafonen, had claimed at the start of the disturbances that they were cause by the recent shooting by police of a 69-year-old man in Husby who had allegedly threatened to kill the officers with a machete.[29][42] Sarnecki dismissed this idea, saying that it was mostly an excuse.[41] Psychologist Arnulf Kolstad argued that the disturbances were an understandable and necessary reaction to social segregation. He suggested that they should be welcomed like most Nordic people welcomed the Arab spring.[43]

So in essence, this is the future that America has to look forward to. I disagree with the assessment that the USA can watch us and wait to see what happens because in essence you are already in the throes of this system and you have progressives a lot more radical than we do. It's only a matter of time before the system resets itself but of course the question is what will be learned afterwards? Will it be an analysis of what actually happened or will it be a shock knee jerk reaction like Russia and a swift change back to traditional values with hateful attitudes to those who are perceived as the enemy.

[Paprika]

They don't even worship her all that much since they will fine you a hundred and thirty grand (then ban you from raising that money) if you won't participate in a gay wedding.

Well yeah, as I pointed out elsewhere it inevitably leads to contradictions.

Satan is called the Prince of Lies for a reason and liberals are his most devout children yet.

[Paprika]

Will it be an analysis of what actually happened or will it be a shock knee jerk reaction like Russia and a swift change back to traditional values with hateful attitudes to those who are perceived as the enemy.

Given that the Germanics form the largest group of whites I think a pretty good guess can be made.

[shunyadragon]

The 10 year anniversary of my military enlistment happened recently and anyone who remembers me from the old times knows that I did most of my heavy posting while active duty. Argument kept my mind sharp among the mundane day to day. Not so much lately. Better job, yadda yadda. I get paid to argue with people.

However, I had an amusing thought of late when discussing long term demographic changes occurring here in the US with a friend on another forum.

75 years ago, nearly 3 quarters of the population here was protestant and nearly a quarter were catholic. Sum of ~90%

Now, while the percentage of Catholics hasn't really changed, the number of people within most Protestant denominations is about half it was when my grandfather was a young man. One in ten American's identify as non-denominational Christian and of the major denominations of protestant most are about half as large as they were 20 years ago. This is due to a wide variety of factors and I don't intend to get into it here, but suffice to say that even as decentralized as religious belief in America has been throughout it's history, the times we live in now may very well be the single most decentralized they ever have been.

So, why does that matter?

The funny thing about how religions influence a society overall has a lot to do with the majority acting as the majority does. 75 years ago, American religious belief was largely centralized, but now it isn't. Factor in the regional concentrations of Catholicism in New England and the country had a relatively even amount of "religious pressures" on the way everyone led their lives in most other places.

Now though? Now we don't have that. Last I checked Pew put the largest denomination of the largest relgious block in the US at under 10% and that block is "other baptist" (differentiating from southern baptists at 4%) and its not like thats an especially unified sounding group. So its safe to say that no more than 5-6% of the country is in a single protestant denomination (plus, roughly a quarter of the US falls under other, none, or undesignated)

Put simply, the level of social conformity in the US is at an all time low

So, what does that mean?

It means that, as far as it extends to Christianity, as a block, to influence how everyone else leads their lives is at an all time low, and losing ground every year. 38 states where gay people can get married. Pot legalization is on the rise. Acceptance of trans individuals is rising. Abortion remains legal. Fun stuff, all in all, for the most of the under 50 crowd.

What it means to me is that, for all the talk about correct metaphysics, for whether this or that theodicy is appropriate, for whether or not moral or teleological arguments prove god exists, for all of that, right now, it matters a hell of a lot less in the day to day lives of those who don't belong to the majority.

Christianity simply can't throw its weight around anymore. That classic, fragmentation and schizm, has finally reached a point where no one denomination can exert that much control nationwide and the number of states that can resist modern progress by clinging to religion are smaller than they've been, well, ever.

My Amusing Thought

How right you think you are is irrelevant. You've lost the ability to influence, meaningfully, how people acting in ways that aren't congruent with Christian morality, but are congruent with secular morality, live their lives.

How right you think you are is irrelevant.

I couldn't be happier,

-J

I wish I could be happier and more positive about the figures you cite above, but I cannot. Even though there is an increased diversity of religious beliefs and cultural identities, there are distinct and ominous problems in western society, and in the rest of the world that are more real.

(1) Even though there is a more diverse selection of churches in the USA today, religion has grown more polarized with the middle ground frayed leaving the right and left extremes dominant. The right wing evangelical Christians are most united politically active group in the USA. The rest of the religious and political spectrum is highly divided and more apathetic politically.

(2) The polls concerning science and belief in evolution are very discouraging reflecting the strength of right wing evangelical churches as a group is stronger then your numbers indicate. About ~40% to ~50% of the Christians today reject the science of evolution. When the poll figures include believers of all the diversity of beliefs taken into consideration, fundamentalist Christianity dominates the religion in the USA.

(3) Legislation reflecting the strength of right wing evangelicals is at an all time high at the local, state and national level promoting their religious agenda is at an all time high leaving the courts as the last stand to maintain the separation of church and state.

(4) If you believe in free choice concerning abortion and reproduction rights of women the picture is not encouraging. Violence against clinics and doctors has reduced the services available in many parts of the country, and legislation restricting and controlling access continues at strong pace.

(5) Radical Islamic movements are growing at an alarming pace world wide. This is actually largely due to Western efforts to control and manipulate the countries of the Islamic world since the colonial era. The colonial empire boundaries were drawn by western interests dividing and separating ethnic and religious groups, and not allowing them to have their own national identity, like the Kurds. This continued after independence of these countries with supporting corrupt dictators, and military governments, and oppressing and eliminating moderate democratic Islamic movements. The problem of the historical one sided support of the State of Israel also has contributed to the hostility toward the west and the rise of radical Islamic movements.

(6) The progressive deterioration of climate change impacts the poor, displaced and weak countries most, and the food supply of the world, and further destabilizing the political and religious situation of the world.

The above is the tip of the iceberg underlying the problems that do not present an encouraging picture of our future.

[lilpixieofterror]

The 10 year anniversary of my military enlistment happened recently and anyone who remembers me from the old times knows that I did most of my heavy posting while active duty. Argument kept my mind sharp among the mundane day to day. Not so much lately. Better job, yadda yadda. I get paid to argue with people.

However, I had an amusing thought of late when discussing long term demographic changes occurring here in the US with a friend on another forum.

75 years ago, nearly 3 quarters of the population here was protestant and nearly a quarter were catholic. Sum of ~90%

Now, while the percentage of Catholics hasn't really changed, the number of people within most Protestant denominations is about half it was when my grandfather was a young man. One in ten American's identify as non-denominational Christian and of the major denominations of protestant most are about half as large as they were 20 years ago. This is due to a wide variety of factors and I don't intend to get into it here, but suffice to say that even as decentralized as religious belief in America has been throughout it's history, the times we live in now may very well be the single most decentralized they ever have been.

So, why does that matter?

The funny thing about how religions influence a society overall has a lot to do with the majority acting as the majority does. 75 years ago, American religious belief was largely centralized, but now it isn't. Factor in the regional concentrations of Catholicism in New England and the country had a relatively even amount of "religious pressures" on the way everyone led their lives in most other places.

Now though? Now we don't have that. Last I checked Pew put the largest denomination of the largest relgious block in the US at under 10% and that block is "other baptist" (differentiating from southern baptists at 4%) and its not like thats an especially unified sounding group. So its safe to say that no more than 5-6% of the country is in a single protestant denomination (plus, roughly a quarter of the US falls under other, none, or undesignated)

Put simply, the level of social conformity in the US is at an all time low

So, what does that mean?

It means that, as far as it extends to Christianity, as a block, to influence how everyone else leads their lives is at an all time low, and losing ground every year. 38 states where gay people can get married. Pot legalization is on the rise. Acceptance of trans individuals is rising. Abortion remains legal. Fun stuff, all in all, for the most of the under 50 crowd.

What it means to me is that, for all the talk about correct metaphysics, for whether this or that theodicy is appropriate, for whether or not moral or teleological arguments prove god exists, for all of that, right now, it matters a hell of a lot less in the day to day lives of those who don't belong to the majority.

Christianity simply can't throw its weight around anymore. That classic, fragmentation and schizm, has finally reached a point where no one denomination can exert that much control nationwide and the number of states that can resist modern progress by clinging to religion are smaller than they've been, well, ever.

My Amusing Thought

How right you think you are is irrelevant. You've lost the ability to influence, meaningfully, how people acting in ways that aren't congruent with Christian morality, but are congruent with secular morality, live their lives.

How right you think you are is irrelevant.

I couldn't be happier,

-J

Several years later and you still make basic mistakes.

1. The truth of Christianity does not rest upon the amount of believers, but rest upon if Jesus died and rose again. Too bad for you that you are stuck on your illogical thinking and can't see beyond your argument from popularity to understand this.
2. Why are you celebrating loosing links of commonality? If anything, those sort of links kind of help draw us together. As these links become less common, we end up with what we have today. In which our society is being driven further and further apart (as indicated in increased social tensions). Doesn't really look like anything to embrace to me, unless of course, you are all for anarchy.

Anyway, just to make my point, let me get into your 'arguments' about divorce:

I don't know where your from, but my grandmother was beaten half to death on a regular basis living a part of the US where she had no legal standing to leave her abuser while also being completely economically dependent on him.

Think what you will about people over using the damn things, but don't think for a minute that you can speak so broadly without making you look like an ass in front of those who've seen photos of women beaten black and blue.

Legalizing gay marriage is largely because they want to do it and there are no good legal arguments why they shouldn't. 38 states and counting

3. If no fault divorce helped abused spouses get away, why are there still abused spouses? See, I actually do know several former abused spouses and even helped one get away. They don't tend to leave for a lot longer than you might think is logical because the abuser uses manipulation to get their way. Stockholm Syndrome can result among women who are abused by their husbands as they often come up with excuses for their husbands behavior. It can take awhile to deal with these problems and I know this because I've worked with enough to know. In reality, no fault divorce doesn't actually do much for the people you claim it is helping and yes, they could get away because I do know a former abused spouse that was able to get away from her abused husband, despite the non existence of no fault divorce (in fact, even her pastor encouraged her to get away and helped in this matter). which leads to this post:

No,

Progressive politics encouraged the legalization of, among other things, no fault divorces to allow people to leave what is not a sustainable relationship. Particularly when situations like spousal abuse (a situation my mother grew up with) and other domestic terrors.

Now, people are not trapped in something unhealthy and are free to try to find happiness and companionship with others. Why stay with someone who isnt right for you?

4. You try to argue about 'compatibility' and happiness, but show the aspects that you don't know much about marriage. As I already showed above, your spouse abuse argument isn't very good because I'm pretty sure laws against assault, attempted murder, and murder have been around long before no fault divorce. Anyway even a good marriage is going to run into some moments that test your patience's and resolve. My husband and I have opposites in many areas. I'm far more organized and far more prone to planning things out while he would lose his head if it wasn't attached and tends to act before thinking. Could these lead to tension? Of course, but see the key to making your marriage work is to deal with these issues and put your spouse before yourself. As a result, this has helped us out quite a bit. My husband has become a bit more organized and I've learned that not everything has to be in a perfect place. He's also learned to put more thought into his actions and I've learned that improvisation isn't always a bad thing. See a healthy marriage is good for both husband and wife and leads to the two of them learning to work together not only for their own good, but for the good of their children as well. Marriage is work and with the selfishness that is become more and more common in our society, is it any wonder that divorces (with the broken families and people they create) become more common?

In conclusion, you seem to be happy about a lot of silly things (the divorce issue is just one of many).

[Jaecp]

1. The truth of Christianity

And you're back to the same basic mistakes.

Assuming the rules are the same as they were on the old forum, get out of my thread.

[Jaecp]

I wish I could be happier and more positive about the figures you cite above, but I cannot. Even though there is an increased diversity of religious beliefs and cultural identities, there are distinct and ominous problems in western society, and in the rest of the world that are more real.

Absolutely Shuny, and I agree with you on a number of those points,

(1) Even though there is a more diverse selection of churches in the USA today, religion has grown more polarized with the middle ground frayed leaving the right and left extremes dominant. The right wing evangelical Christians are most united politically active group in the USA. The rest of the religious and political spectrum is highly divided and more apathetic politically.

Indeed.

Thankfully, what we are seeing is that a lot of the over reach by these groups ends up (however slowly and annoyingly) to be overturned at the SCOTUS level. It was my job last year to try to motivate apathetic voters and my own county had a 51% turn out, which is pretty standard, but compared to the abysmal 36 nation wide it was a damn good feat.

My personal thoughts are that as time goes onward that the evangelical parts aren't going to be able to hold together as strongly when young people grow up seeing things like gay marriage and the like as normal because they can meet and talk to people different from themselves. Meeting "the other" is a great thing!

(2) The polls concerning science and belief in evolution are very discouraging reflecting the strength of right wing evangelical churches as a group is stronger then your numbers indicate. About ~40% to ~50% of the Christians today reject the science of evolution. When the poll figures include believers of all the diversity of beliefs taken into consideration, fundamentalist Christianity dominates the religion in the USA.

This is definitely a problem, although I'm unsure how accurate the data is. Pew found that unaffiliated secularists were slightly below buddhists and hindus at evolution acceptance. Certainly evangelicals, at 23%, are most troubling as a major group, but I'm confident that this will pass over time and, at least as far as the US is concerned, we are no longer so religious that creationism has an easy time confusing schoolchildren in public schools. Definately something we need to work on though.

(3) Legislation reflecting the strength of right wing evangelicals is at an all time high at the local, state and national level promoting their religious agenda is at an all time high leaving the courts as the last stand to maintain the separation of church and state.

In some parts of the country, yes, these bastions of right wing religiousness can play havoc. At the national level not so much, but in states and localities there are still issues.

(4) If you believe in free choice concerning abortion and reproduction rights of women the picture is not encouraging. Violence against clinics and doctors has reduced the services available in many parts of the country, and legislation restricting and controlling access continues at strong pace.

I do, I'm a member of the local Planned Parenthood Legislative Action Team. I've testified before state senate subcommittees, written LTE's, phone banked, recruited volunteers, trained volunteers, worked fairs, and other activities all to help ensure a womans right to choose.

States are doing a veritable gish gallup to try to stop it, but we're fighting back in other ways.

Incidentally, half of my post is about projections. These fights are certainly not won, but the numbers are promising going forward.

(5) Radical Islamic movements are growing at an alarming pace world wide. This is actually largely due to Western efforts to control and manipulate the countries of the Islamic world since the colonial era. The colonial empire boundaries were drawn by western interests dividing and separating ethnic and religious groups, and not allowing them to have their own national identity, like the Kurds. This continued after independence of these countries with supporting corrupt dictators, and military governments, and oppressing and eliminating moderate democratic Islamic movements. The problem of the historical one sided support of the State of Israel also has contributed to the hostility toward the west and the rise of radical Islamic movements.

Global issues are outside the purview of my OP, I didn't address them since I was focusing on the US.

(6) The progressive deterioration of climate change impacts the poor, displaced and weak countries most, and the food supply of the world, and further destabilizing the political and religious situation of the world.

Yep

Unfortunately its business interests, less so than social ones, that motivates the votes on climate change :(

The above is the tip of the iceberg underlying the problems that do not present an encouraging picture of our future.

Perhaps I'm looking on the brighter side :P

Or, well, my focus was intentionally narrow