Interesting Links for 25-02-2025

[andrewducker]

1. Trump the Redeemer (on the Christian support for the right in the USA)

(tags:religion Christianity politics USA )

2. How to change your settings to make yourself less valuable to Facebook/Instagram

(tags:facebook advertising surveillance )

Comments

[channelpenguin]

1. Gah! I believe they believe, I just have never ever figured out why or how. I'm more than half convinced there's something genetic about having genuine religious belief, some brain development path that takes one fork or another. Maybe same for the ability to inflict deliberate cruelty on those weaker than you.

I've said before that I think racism, sexism, nationalism, feudalism etc are all one thing at root a bit like the article touches on with it's concept of "external rules". In my view it's belief in essential qualities that you can only be born with and can never be taken away.

Maybe I'm falling into my own hole here! Thinking that I'm somehow born immune to being a vicious bigoted asshole and for my weary belief that such people cannot be "saved".

[cmcmck]

Although not all of us who believe are like these.

I'm Quaker and we do it differently! :o)

[andrewducker]

Yes. I know a fair number of perfectly nice religious people.

[channelpenguin]

Oh yes. Of course. As is also mentioned in the article.

I'm not trying to lump all religious believers together in what they believe or do. Sorry if it seemed that way.

[spiralsheep]

I suspect people who choose authoritarian politics also choose authoritarian religion.

[bens_dad]

1. I haven't been confused by the connection between MAGA and the American Christian Right; my problem has always been the connection between the ACR and Jesus.

The article does have a small section on Jesus and slaves, but it doesn't persude me that the ACR understand and follow Jesus' teaching.

Whilst still wrong, my understanding of Roman slavery is much more like medieval English serfdom than the American plantations, and in both stories* of Roman slaves that I know, slavery was a temporary thing - many slaves were freed and slavedom wasn't inherited.

* The Eagle of the Ninth, Rosemary Sutcliffe;
The Course of Honour Lindsey Davies.

[chickenfeet]

Roman slavery varied quite a bit. One could be a slave and hold a responsible position in an elite household and have a very decent chance at being manumitted. Or one could be one of the tens of thousands who worked as labourers on large estates or in mines which is not so different from the American south or the Caribbean or Peru etc etc.

[bens_dad]

Yes, of course.

Not sure how I forgot that Falco spent time in the Cornish tin mines whilst tracing the silver ingots.