I wish the author was a little less over-wrought in her descriptions of the Green family's religious commitments. I've heard complaints before about the Green's artifact acquisition process, and they've had to return some manuscripts: it's a story worth investigating and telling. But it distracts from the author's main point when she's making snide comments about their faith. Yes, they're Christians who are successful at business and who take their faith seriously - so? If the author is trying to convince people she's an even-handed reporter, she'd do better to drop the sarcastic tone.
I'd hesitate to write off the severity of their difference to any Christianity you might recognize.
The Green family wields a personal antinomianist doctrine reserved for the rich and powerful. Under their brand of Creationism, God has given them literal dominion over the world (Genesis 1:26-31), and not exercising that, whether or not in defiance of conflicting secular laws, would be a denial of the mission of their faith.
I remember my first time hearing them called "Wahabbi Lobby" in the mid-2000s after the FBI had "spoken to them" about ISIL targeting early (pre-)Christian sites to plunder artifacts, knowing the Greens had a taste for them.
Consider the implications. What would have happened if your local church had sent money or took a secret mission trip to aid Al-Qaeda?
I think there is a little difference in culpability between directly sending money or traveling to a terror cell vs contacting buyers to purchase artifacts.
If my local church was attempting to support African businesses by purchasing goods but the buyer was getting good from a factory that used slave labor, I would expect the FBI to come talk to the church as well.
The article mentions the family had tens of thousands of looted artifacts (there's no legal way to acquire them) and attempted to evade detection by customs by mislabeling them. They knew what they were doing, were told to stop, and they kept doing it.
If you discovered the clergy or elders in your church wanted a supply of something so badly that they secretly used your tithe or offertory to fund a warlord who then enslaved people to acquire it for them, how would you feel? That's a closer equivalent of what Hobby Lobby did to their customers.
Unrelated, but how would you summarize the plot of Raiders of the Lost Ark?
The author's tone is...definitely not neutral and it make it hard to believe them when they put pure conjecture in: "Between the high demand and likely paying workers a subminimum wage" with footnote "...While this practice was completely legal (current federal law permits employers to pay disabled workers a fraction of minimum wage), it’s certainly questionable practice coming from a guy whose entire schtick revolves around stewardship."
I was waiting to read how it was possible that Green might have kicked a puppy or drown some kittens.
Although it sounds very bad, there’s actually a good argument for paying disabled workers below-minimum wage:
- Disabled people get paid (what is supposed to be, but not actually, a living wage) by the government, so they aren’t living on the wage.
- No company would hire them if they were forced to pay minimum wage, because companies are greedy and would always hire a more productive non-disabled worker.
- Many disabled workers want to work not for the pay, but because they enjoy the work and/or want to feel productive. As stated, they get paid by the government, so in theory they don’t have to work if they don’t want to.
With the caveat that disability payments outside of work should be raised, so that nobody (disabled or not) feels like they must work a too-boring or too-hard job to afford a decent standard of living (unless absolutely necessary for society to subsist, but that’s another discussion)…I think it’s a great practice.
Maybe there are good arguments against it, but a good argument needs to provide the full context.
Yes, there was debate about this in the UK. If a disabled person can only do one widget per hour, and an able-bodied can do 10, what is the correct wage for that disabled person?
If you think they should both be paid the same, who should pay the additional cost?
> If you think they should both be paid the same, who should pay the additional cost?
The taxpayer, in the form of a direct wage subsidy. Comes out to virtually nothing compared to the amount of corporate welfare we shovel out every day. The company still isn't compelled to hire the disabled person if they won't be effective on the job, but companies that were inclined to hire them before still will, pay the same amount as before, and we taxpayers will pay the price tag of a bomber or two to ensure that some people have some independence and dignity.
Which of course is why such a thing will never happen here.
As mentioned on this very thread, "such a thing" is exactly what happens "here", but without you impractical demand to track the productivity of a worker with government-recognized sub-par productivity.
The point is that the in theory, workers receive above living wage, even though the company pays below, because they also get paid by the government. (I'm arguing for the theory; in the US it's not true, but also in the US even minimum wage is below living).
However, tax breaks sound better.
I worry that requiring companies to hire disabled workers, instead of just making it profitable to do so, would cause more workers to be abused. Every method has some abuse from bad actors, but a requirement specifically influences companies who wouldn't hire disabled workers even if they could assign zero tasks to them and financially benefit.
It’s fine to be inexperienced with Christianity, but it skews the reporting.
For example “kingdom giver” is not someone who gives kingdoms, it’s someone who gives to Christ’s kingdom. But the widow and her mite is an example of kingdom giving as much as the Greens.
The article doesn't claim that so it seems your Christian sensitivities have skewed your reading comprehension.
It's referencing a Forbes article using the term to distinguish between thoughtless arbitrary giving vs. giving with purpose:
"Even the most generous Christian philanthropists often don't see the purpose of their giving," says Dr. Mark Rutland, the new ORU president and founder of the Global Servants evangelical ministry. "There are impulse givers, people who give to their alma mater or their church or some particular ministry with which they become familiar—but the Greens are Kingdom givers. ... They consider it an honor; they consider it a mission."
"While the total amount the Greens have made in charitable contributions has been kept private, former Oral Roberts University president Dr. Mark Rutland may have worded it best when he described the family as “kingdom givers”.
It doesn't link to the Forbes article's definition. Without more, I'd read that sentence to say "Kingdom givers" is a descriptor of the total amounts given by the Greens -- we don't know the amount, but they give kingdoms.
As I explained above, "Kingdom" is unrelated to the size of the gift, as made clear from the quote you cited.
> Have been told that I have to “drop the sarcastic tone” if I want to be “taken seriously” as a “““reporter””” but the jokes on them because that criticism implies that I’ve crossed the threshold into being a “journalist” rather than a “guy with a substack”
There are several comments here using the same logic, which I find to be rather...odd:
>It's a blog post not a news article or scholarly report. - The topic is a business run by people who ostensibly make decisions based on their faith to justify actions which cause various harm to others. Taking a critical view of those actions and the motivations is reasonable.
and the author shares the same view....
I am being asked to take a critical look at Hobby Lobby, the reasons are outlined in the linked Substack. However, if I have any questions or criticisms of the Substack article, please note that it is not a professional work it is just a guy with a microphone.
If I can't trust the source material, how can I trust the claims?
Prosperity gospel is a peculiar American brand of protestant pentecostal evangelism that is the motivating aspect of the Green family. While it has no Biblical basis, it does riff on Andrew Carnegie's Gospel of Wealth and has a number of parallels in the so-called Effective Altruism movement.
It sounds like you are intentionally leaving out the meat of the article’s criticisms, which is that the schemes involving “charity” and “giving” are essentially tax dodging.
> Less evident these charitable contributions equate to sizable tax breaks. These tax write-offs are calculated using the highest appraisals possible, which is not necessarily indicative of the actual sum of money paid out by the Green family for the land. Counterintuitive as it may seem, this practice frequently allows the Greens to save far more money than what they spend via hefty deductions.
Hobby Lobby is, according to this article, taking advantage of the nebulous valuations of artifacts to minimize tax burden in a way that is morally questionable at the least.
It goes deeper than their "faith". These are the people who took away healthcare benefits from all Americans because they didn't personally want to fund birth control and women's health. It's reductive to say that the author looks negatively on the family because of their faith alone.
These are the people who took away healthcare benefits from all Americans because they didn't personally want to fund birth control and women's health.
This is not true though.. Most Americans have these benefits. Hobby Lobby just pushed for an extension of the existing Religious exemption to also apply closely held businesses. It affected a tiny portion of the population.
> According to a 2009 research paper from NYU Stern School of Business, these corporations account for 52 percent of private employment and 51 percent of private-sector output in the country. Those percentages might be outdated now but still give a sense of just how many workers are employed at closely held corporations. Fifty-two percent of today’s private sector employees comes out to approximately 60.4 million people, based on the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Of course it’s extremely unlikely that all of those companies are about to claim a religious exemption from providing coverage of contraception. Aaron Blake at the Washington Post points to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll that found that 85 percent of large employers offered contraception coverage prior to Obamacare requiring it.
Regardless, this is nitpicking, and the grandparent claim that it blocked contraception converage for all Americans is wrong.
The rights of millions of Americans were affected. Not a tiny portion of the population.
Also the grandparent comment correctly noted that all Americans lost rights in the ruling, which is accurate. Any American could get a job at a closely held company and not be extended contraceptive coverage.
It's nice that these corporations have the noblesse oblige to provide us the healthcare benefits that morally speaking should be ours by constitutional right.
It's not wise or historically accurate to consider these unrelated projects, or their goals unknowable. If you found it important to argue for it that way in 2017 I would call it naive, for doing it now I call you complicit.
> But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.
There is no relevant contradiction. The entire New Testament is Jesus preaching love and forgiveness, Jesus practicing love and forgiveness - and not just to his followers - and explicit condemnation of wealth and instructing his followers to care for others.
Anyone who takes that message and instead lobbies to destroy healthcare and welfare and to push hate and attack anyone who doesn't agree with them - and anyone who votes for the party of politicians that has been practicing and preaching that for decades - is not a Christian regardless of how they spend their Sundays.
While I don’t want to look like I’m going to bat for the Hobby Lobby people, this seems like a very convenient way for you to argue that everyone ought to agree with your policy positions, even when those policy positions are not explicitly biblical. How do you reconcile the welfare state with Thessalonians 3:10, or Matthew 7:6? How do you address the restoration of Job? Was God mistaken in awarding Job with material wealth?
Jesus was unambiguous. "And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these." (Mark 12:30–31)
Or, even more explicit, Matthew 25:31-46.
"Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’"
Jesus is explicitly advocating welfare - providing food, drink, clothes, healthcare, and more to anyone in need.
Jesus was also unambiguous on wealth. Christians, who follow the teachings of Christ, should give greater merit to his words than to anything in the old testament which came before.
For more, consider 1 John 4:20 "Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen."
> Jesus is explicitly advocating welfare - providing food, drink, clothes, healthcare, and more to anyone in need.
There is nothing in this verse which says that property is to be expropriated for the purposes of assuring others a particular standard of living, and I don’t think you’ll be able to find one.
> Jesus was also unambiguous on wealth. Christians, who follow the teachings of Christ, should give greater merit to his words than to anything in the old testament which came before.
You’ve ignored my question. If Jesus is God, and God rewarded Job with material wealth in this world, how can Jesus be said to offer an unambiguous criticism of wealth?
You're the one who cited it, it's up to you to demonstrate that it's relevant in this context.
>There is nothing in this verse which says that property is to be expropriated for the purposes of assuring others a particular standard of living, and I don’t think you’ll be able to find one.
The verse is literally instructing that anyone in need is to be helped. It does not specify the source of the help. Anyone professing to be a Christian should be in favor of those with plenty providing for those in need.
>You’ve ignored my question. If Jesus is God, and God rewarded Job with material wealth in this world, how can Jesus be said to offer an unambiguous criticism of wealth?
Ignoring the theological debate on if "Jesus is God", Jesus' statements and commandments came later and supersede anything which came before.
Oh, and since I missed (or you later added) the Thessalonians verse, how convenient of you to leave out its context:
> We did this, *not because we do not have the right to such help*, but in order to offer ourselves as a model for you to imitate.
> Anyone professing to be a Christian should be in favor of those with plenty providing for those in need.
That isn't what you originally claimed and is not what I'm taking issue with. What you said was: "Anyone who takes that message and instead lobbies to destroy healthcare and welfare and to push hate and attack anyone who doesn't agree with them [...] is not a Christian regardless of how they spend their Sundays."
What you're saying is that anyone who does not support the welfare state as an apparatus is not a Christian, and I am contesting that, because there have been plenty of moral theories developed by Christians who opposed state welfare. Consider that the device you are using to post is likely worth more than the majority of the world's population earns in a year. Does it stand to reason that I could justifiably take it away from you and give it to someone who needed it more? What if we formed a committee you had no part in and voted on it being the right thing to do?
> Ignoring the theological debate on if "Jesus is God", Jesus' statements and commandments came later and supersede anything which came before.
Denying the divinity of Jesus undermines the entire belief system. It seems to me that you can't reconcile the treatment of Job with your reading of the New Testament, so you've decided to disregard the story entirely. There is some basis to this (e.g. the mixed fabrics issue you addressed in another comment), but it isn't as simple as saying "We can disregard everything prior to the New Testament."
> We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to offer ourselves as a model for you to imitate.
Young translates that line as authority, not "right." In the KJV (which is the version I originally read), it is translated as "power." That is, because the author has come to minister to the church, he has the authority to ask for bread without having to work for it, but he does not, because he does not want to burden those around him: "8 Neither did we eat any man's bread for nought; but wrought with labour and travail night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you:"
The passage continues after this line: "10 For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat. [...] 12 Now them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread."
> There is nothing in this verse which says that property is to be expropriated for the purposes of assuring others a particular standard of living, and I don’t think you’ll be able to find one.
You're right; we have the free will to be as miserly as we choose. But if you want to be of Christ, you'll give your 5% or 10%, at least.
Our societies also have the free will to choose to tax the rich to help the poor. A govt run by actual Christians would not let the rich trample the poor and our shared environment, our human family's inheritance and future.
Yes, everyone is free to be a selfish asshole -- "there is not compulsion in religion" is God's command, too -- but our govt should reflect the generosity of spirit we are called to manifest.
If you don't like the taxes, find another place to ply your wares.
> You’ve ignored my question. If Jesus is God, and God rewarded Job with material wealth in this world, how can Jesus be said to offer an unambiguous criticism of wealth?
If one has acquired it by cheating or abusing others or selling harmful products or without paying one's fair tax rate, then those are ill-gotten gains are bad for the person who chose to live that way and bad for the society they are parasitizing.
So, yes, God's Messengers of love can have whatever beneficience our Lord bestows upon them, but it will not be ill-gotten and it will not be for the selfish pleasure and will never be wasted, for "God does not love the wasters".
Most of all, what is important to remember is that we cannot love both God and money, i.e. we cannot serve two masters. We must be generous with others out of love for them, and be grateful to God that we have been granted God's generosity to have better circumstances.
To love someone means wanting them to be happy. Any kind of "love" that does not result in effortful action -- i.e. actual service -- for the other person is nothing but empty words, and we must live the truth of God's teachings of love.
"Love thy neighbor as your own self." Not more, not less. We are given the choice in money matters and it is a sore trial for most human beings. But God's teachings of love are clear as day to those with eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart that understands.
> but our govt should reflect the generosity of spirit we are called to manifest.
The whole notion of state welfare necessarily involves the forcible expropriation of property, resistance to which is punishable by death. If I took $20 out of your wallet and gave it to someone else who I thought needed it more, it would not be charity, it would be theft.
> i.e. we cannot serve two masters
This was never suggested. Wealth is a tool. Where it becomes fetishized as an end in and of itself, it becomes objectionable. You'll note that the device you're using to post in this thread is in all likelihood worth more than most people on earth earn in a year. Is your soul in danger because you own a laptop, or is there more nuance to this issue than you're suggesting?
If you don't want to live in that society, move somewhere else. That's your free choice, too, but I counsel against it. Are you directly choosing to help maintain roads, and hospitals, and everything else that helps society function? No, but your taxes are.
> Is your soul in danger because you own a laptop, or is there more nuance to this issue than you're suggesting?
Nuance is lost on you, my friend.
If you think that the poor should just be left to their own devices, then you're bound to learn a painful lesson or three in this life. Those with no compassion should be prepared to deal with those who have no compassion for them.
Mayhaps you won't realize this until you are left with no other options but enduring the pain of being under the power of people who have no concern for your well-being. I hope you have a kinder fate than that, but you shall reap what you sow, my friend, as we all do, in time.
I am explaining these things for your benefit, not mine. You should reach beyond your current perspective and realize that I am only here for your benefit.
Jesus does not condemn wealth. If that is what you are taking away from his interaction with the rich man, you would be wrong. Wealth itself is never condemned in the Bible (Old or New Testament). God often blessed his servants with wealth.
Jesus very explicitly condemns wealth, in a directly quoted passage that cannot be misunderstood. Jesus as quoted in Matthew 19:24 is very very blunt: "I'll say it again - it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of god!" I.e. wealthy people who don’t give it all away will go to hell.
> I.e. wealthy people who don’t give it all away will go to hell.
Did Job go to hell?
> And the LORD restored the fortunes of Job, when he had prayed for his friends; and the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before.
> [11] Then came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and ate bread with him in his house; and they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him; and each of them gave him a piece of money and a ring of gold.
> [12] And the LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she-asses.
The New Testament is unambiguous. Jesus expels the money lenders from the temple and says it is harder for a rich man to go to heaven than a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Christians are, first, and foremost, followings of Christ and his teachings. That's the point of the entire name. Jesus's words have more weight than anything that came before.
The Old Testament is where fake Christians always go to pick and choose. If you believe the experiences of Job are relevant, do you also refuse to wear clothing made of multiple fabrics (Deuteronomy 22:9–11, Leviticus 19:19)?
> The Old Testament is where fake Christians always go to pick and choose.
If you’re denying both the historicity and allegory of the Book of Job the whole religion begins to fall apart. If the Book is of allegorical value, why would Job be rewarded with wealth?
> do you also refuse to wear clothing made of multiple fabrics (Deuteronomy 22:9–11, Leviticus 19:19)
To head off typical response to that passage - the idea that "the eye of a needle" was referencing a literal gate in Jerusalem (changing the meaning of the passage from "impossible" to "you might have to squeeze a little bit") is a post-hoc justification with no basis in reality.
Animals take advantage of others, human beings care for others by helping them and protecting them from harm.
May compassion rule our hearts for the benefit of one and all and the Earth, herself. We can choose to end suffering. As the "$6 Million Man" intro said in the 70s, "We have the technology."
The world has already learned how we MUST deal with people who act like Nazis, those who choose to emulate their brutal policies. The paradox of tolerance is also a part of Jesus's teachings for He "didn't come to bring peace, but a sword."
His Divine love must be fierce in the face of cruel depradations, but must never embrace hatred or rage or cruelty.
Tonight is the "Night of Power". Send some vibrations out asking our Creator to help you be a part of fixing this Earthwide deplorable mess. Make the Bhodisattva Vow. Ask our Creator to take Its spirit back into Itself to help cleanse and purify your soul of selfish vice, to help you become consumed by the Wisdom of Love (that's the meaning of the 1st Beatitude, called Hidayet in Sufism).
All that we emanate resonates back within ourselves. The spiritual path of love is the process of tuning our vibrations towards effortful loving service and away from selfishly callous ignorance of the suffering of others.
"Lasting peace and happiness for ALL human beings." --Me
> Animals do cooperate, a lot and frequently. Including predators like lions. There are solitary animals, but cooperation is not rare.
That is just pack behavior. Animals are nearly always at war among their own for territory, and will often attack other kinds animals that compete for their food sources, unless there is mutual benefit (e.g. deers and monkeys sharing alarm calls for tigers).
> Animals do help others and try to protect them from harm.
Not their competitors, friend.
I've seen all of Sir David Attenboroughs' nature serieses multiple times, save the Antarctica one, including the "Trials of Life" where the decades-ago TV commercial here in America had the line, "the relentless pursuit to continue the bloodline".
I know what happens when a bear comes upon a wolfpack's kill. Ain't no sharing there, friend.
Lions clawing the balls off a young wandering, trespassing male is the baseline root of animal nature. Any student of history knows this lionine behavior is closer to the driving impetus for human nature than pursuits of selflessly loving peace.
"They are like the animals, only worse." That is our negative potential, each and every one of us. Only we have a mind to learn how to contemplate our potential self-evolution and our current amount of progress. And we are free to instead use our minds to just pursue worldly pleasures at the expense of anyone else's happiness. All potentials are available to us, though we cannot escape the price of karma we must each pay, and do, for better or worse, always accurately reaping what we have sown. Not a jot unaccounted for.
God's teachings of love are here to help us self-evolve ourselves out of our selfishly animalistic negative potentials towards a peaceful, harmonious universally-compassionate integrated society of equals of different paths and cultures, sans abuse or oppression of any kind.
One great example is how Guru Nanak (Sikh founding Guru) set his table where everyone sat together, not stratified by caste. That is the Way of human love, born of God's love for us.
> Animals are nearly always at war among their own for territory,
This is not true. Quite a lot of animals are neither territorial nor at war constantly.
> will often attack other kinds animals that compete for their food sources
You should know that non aggressive animals exist. They are not some kind of exception at all. That being said, people have literal wars over important resources. They are no strangers of systematically abusing half the population or more ... or even enslaving them. There are people who believe empathy is weakness and they won election, because huge amounts of electorate agrees.
> , unless there is mutual benefit (e.g. deers and monkeys sharing alarm calls for tigers).
Nice example of cooperation. It is no different then humans cooperating with each other.
> Not their competitors, friend.
What kind of new standard you are putting on in there? How do you define competitor and is it really that different then social behavior of people? Like right now, you see half of America cheering on harm done to other Americans. You see them attacking other countries and people over percieved competition ... that completely their own construction.
> What kind of new standard you are putting on in there?
We act like animals -- mammals, specifically -- when we do not seek to become more humane, a better humanitarian.
> half of America cheering on harm done to other Americans
"They are like the animals, only worse."
We are the only creatures that can consciously self-evolve ourselves toward complete compassion. That doesn't mean that 90% of us care enough about others to do it, as they obviously don't.
That is the reason this world is in the mess it's in. We could choose to compassionately care for our fellow human beings, but most people are too self-absorbed and too self-righteous to take the necessary steps.
As to what you say about animals, you're just plain wrong, but you're obviously committed to your worldview, so I wish you good luck with that.
As per what they call themselves, but to be of Christ is to follow his teachings of love. This is what they are, as per Matthew 25:40-45:
40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
A person whom Christ calls out as "you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels" cannot be called in good faith (hardy har) a true Christian, like a true Scotsman must at least be from Scotland.
The callous fools cheering for 500k deportations of people back to war-torn lands full of strife are no Christians, my friend, no matter what they say.
"You have no idea how little we care about what people say." --Rumi
Hypocrisy is one of the 19 vices of the soul, all of which act in opposition to love, the Great(est) Command(ment).
This is the framework that encompasses all of God's commands, thus all proper behavior, for the benefit of one and all:
Always love. Teach to always love.
Never hate. Teach to never hate.
We believe that Christ lived for our virtues. He didn't come here to die, but to teach us how to live.
"The greatest among you shall be the servant of all." --Christ
JDV is learning one of the fool's saddest mistakes that power is no substitute for happiness. Maybe he'll get his head out of his arse and turn himself towards God and away from that orange devil, that Harkonnen beast, but his chances grow slimmer by the day, by the act.
That article (which I read in full, ty) almost comes close to the mark, but misses the point entirely. It's just more noise. Read my comment history for the pure signal, my friend.
"There's God's side and the other side." --Katt Williams
Forms of religion are not important compared to effortful compassion that seeks to help others suffer less and enjoy more happiness.
God always looks into our heart, for the soul's heart is where our moral compass resides. That is what we must nurture, evolve, and -- above all -- question on the spiritual path. We must find our vices and transmute them into their corresponding virtues, all 19 of them.
We are all one human race, with one Creator, and one ability to manifest loving compassion, if we are adamant in our desire to become better citizens of this blessed Earth.
Rememember that that serviceful compassion is required for every human infant to survive and thrive. It is also required for successful societies and cultures of any and all sizes. That such boundaryless compassion is sorely lacking is the source of ALL this world's problems.
We will do well to focus on the commonalities of our positive potential, over our obvious differences. We are commanded to not break into separate groups, as the mammals -- our physical body's template -- do.
Most religious thinking revolves around their false belief that they are the only "chosen" path or people. That is the single biggest "tell" that they are on the destructive, selfish path of prideful ignorance, which also tends towards callous cruelty towards whichever out-groups they define.
Always love. Even one's enemies. Even as their power to harm others is stripped from them. Hope that their defeat helps them realize their grave mistakes and helps them turn towards the light. But know that our love for the oppressed must be of a different nature than that which we reserve for the oppressors. Such is the nature of the responsibility we have for this loving grace.
Isn’t the hobby lobby crew also notoriously queer bashers?
I would think the issue is not so much that they’re Christian, it’s that they’re hypocrites who use Christianity as a smokescreen for bigotry.
(The relevance being, they’re using Christianity as cover for capitalism in a way that Jesus himself, as depicted in the Bible, would certainly never have sanctioned.)
Completely agree. I think the author's tone in this article, in a nutshell, exemplifies what was a huge driving force of so many evangelical's in the US now being firmly in the MAGA camp, even though that seems paradoxical to many of us.
For a long time now, many people who's religious values are deeply important to them have felt disrespected and looked down upon by "the left" (yes, I'm obviously painting with a broad brush here). In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, the elite left essentially said "you all are backwards and silly". And look, I'm an atheist who has felt acute harms from religion in some very specific ways, so I get it - a lot of times I believe that religion is backwards and silly. But Trump and MAGA came along and essentially said "you're not backwards and silly, you're the righteous ones, the ones who are condemning you are backwards and silly". And yes, Trump has been married 3 times, had an affair with a porn star while his wife was pregnant, values displays of material wealth above all else, etc. etc., so I struggle mightily many times to understand how a community that preached "family values" so stridently for my entire youth supports him now so unconditionally. But, IMO, it's because Trump really constantly drove home this message of "you should be proud, and the only people who should be ashamed are 'the other side'".
I know that may feel like a tangent, but I've seen the general dismissive tone of this article repeated so many times (e.g. in much reporting about the Chick-fil-a family) that it now feels easy to recognize.
> For a long time now, many people who's religious values are deeply important to them have felt disrespected and looked down upon by "the left" (yes, I'm obviously painting with a broad brush here). In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, the elite left essentially said "you all are backwards and silly"
Most of the criticism that I have heard and read is not about evangelicals being "backwards and silly" but is about their hypocrisy for claiming the mantle of Jesus Christ and then saying and doing things that are antithetical to his beliefs.
I'll cop to treating them as a mix of "backward and silly" and "malevolent violent threat to the continued existence of people I love". There are a lot of reasons to disdain American Christianity, and my personal experience with the exercise of that religion makes it extremely hard to treat its practicioners with anything other than distrust and contempt.
The problem is that in the 70's when conservative/libertarian economics and the religious right had a shotgun marriage which spawned Reagan and most of the "government is the enemy" schtick, usually the former group actually was driving the agenda, using a carrot of "we'll get rid of abortion" to lead the latter.
The problem is that this almighty dollar worship is far more corrosive and destructive to society and ethics of everyone involved, and ends up eroding any sort of moral high ground that the cojoined group has.
Along with the almighty dollar worship was the super patriot worship, which some say was started by W Bush to support his war effort. Both are, from a christian view point, hypocritical. The current administration is full steam ahead on the former and busy killing the second with the tool of embarrassment.
> For a long time now, many people who's religious values are deeply important to them have felt disrespected and looked down upon by "the left" (yes, I'm obviously painting with a broad brush here). In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, the elite left essentially said "you all are backwards and silly".
A lot of them DO come off as backwards and silly. Christianity boils down to two commandments. TWO! Love God and love your neighbor. Who is your neighbor? EVERYONE! And you can't do one of those commandments without the other. And if you're calling yourself Christian, those are not OPTIONS - you can't choose not to do those. And yet, here we are...
"Silly" and "backwards" aren't the terms I'd use, though. What bothers me about a lot of it is that it is mean, even cruel, and utterly inconsistent with the character of Jesus given in the gospels.
I don't know why people are down voting you, your observations are something I've sadly noticed happening for a long time now.
The perception of Christianity among people who don't identify with any religion or people who fall into more "liberal" circles has absolutely been tainted by sects/members of Christianity that do not at all represent the teachings in the Bible. There is justifiable resentment towards these groups that spills over into unjustifiable resentment towards Christians as a whole.
I can't count the number of times I've heard, living in California, either said directly to me by someone who didn't know I was Christian, overheard in a conversation, or discussed at some event completely out of pocket claims or insults towards Christianity that most people would find absolutely inappropriate to say about other groups.
It doesn't bother me because I understand where those people saying it are coming from. But it absolutely leads to the phenomenon of otherwise moderate or formerly left leaning Christians moving towards the group that doesn't wear their not so thinly veiled hate openly on their sleeves for something deeply personal and important in their lives. You are the company you keep and shifting over like this brings you more in line mentally overtime with the kind of people you don't want to emulate.
Rational or not rational, it just doesn't feel good as a human being to receive hate and disdain for something you consider an irreplaceable part of your life and worldview.
This doesn't apply solely to Christians and is really something the left has been doing for a long time and why it's been "losing" the propaganda war to the right and seeing so many people who formerly wouldn't want to associate with the kind of rhetoric found there today at least passively accepting it. Rhetoric of the left seems to far more often embrace (at least on a smaller scale between people) snark, putdowns, wholesale "intolerance" ie making individuals feel some combination of bad/guilty/stupid/backwards for "ignorant" views instead of engaging with them openly. The right uses an approach of playing the "reasonable" man that is open to discussion, support, of all views and then slowly getting people to get on board with the more radical ones.
> But it absolutely leads to the phenomenon of otherwise moderate or formerly left leaning Christians moving towards the group that doesn't wear their not so thinly veiled hate openly on their sleeves for something deeply personal and important in their lives. You are the company you keep and shifting over like this brings you more in line mentally overtime with the kind of people you don't want to emulate.
If you're talking about Christians moving to right wing political groups because people were insulting them, then they're proving their detractors' points and actually encouraging this phenomenon.
If the goal is to truly change societal worldview and not just rack up "winning" dunks on an acceptable target that doesn't matter.
Human beings don't tend to enjoy being insulted and ostracized. Telling someone to "put up with our abuse or you're one of the bad guys" is going to make you seem unhinged and unreasonable to anyone you are trying to win over. Saying "well, we bullied them into the arms of the opposition, so they've proved our point and we can retroactively justify all the hate we gave and will continue to give them" isn't a very strong argument to bring them over to your side either. People deal with perceived threats by banding together with others they feel have their back. The left gave up an appreciable chunk of the American voting base which is fine if they really don't want to pander to them, but complaining that a voting group is acting in their perceived best interests when their two options are between a group that's verbally and culturally hostile towards them and makes no indication that they aren't going to do anything but get MORE hostile towards them (just look at some of the vitriol posted in this thread) and a group that embraces them with open arms and puts on a reasonable facade is silly. What else do people really expect?
No, but these ever-and-always-victimized-and-misunderstood MAGA chuds certainly are, especially when they try to wrap themselves in the cloak of "all Christians" for protection. D for effort.
I really don't think we can lay the responsibility for this at the feet of "the left."
I don't doubt there are those who have had uncomfortable, rude encounters with anti-religious people, but I do doubt how frequently this occurs. I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family and we openly prayed before meals at restaurants and never had a single issue. I attended a public school and had plenty of friends who were remarkably tolerant of when I got a bit weird about religion (including calling a friend's family "heathens" for not following the right type of Christianity). Yes, there was one classmate in high school who was outspoken, a bit angry and sometimes rude about her "leftist" beliefs but she was one classmate among many! And yet every week in Church I heard about how the world was against us, we were so persecuted and hated, silly comments like "oh you'd get in trouble if you brought a bible in your backpack to your public school" which wasn't true at all.
In my experience it's an identity built on being "different", on believing that others want to tear you down because of your beliefs. And a narrative that pushes this identity, by amplifying anything that could come across as disrespectful or dismissive, setting it up for someone to come in and say "you should be proud of yourself." And when this includes stupid things like Starbucks changing their cups to say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas, I really don't think "be nicer" is going to help.
Some beliefs deserve to be looked down upon and disrespected because they are backwards. I wouldn't call them "silly" because they're very serious.
I don't believe in treating religious fundamentalists with compassion and empathy anymore. That's how we got the nutjobs in power, by not deriding them enough in public and private. There can be no tolerance of hate, and the people you are talking about are motivated by hate of others.
Look, in many ways I agree with you, but I guarantee that mindset is essentially doomed to failure if you want to win elections in the US where 68% of Americans identify themselves as Christian in some way.
The problem is not so much wanting to coddle up to the fire-and-brimstone fundamentalists. It's that a lot of people who used to have what would be considered "standard", middle-of-the-road religious views have been told, again in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, that they're stupid. Whether you believe this to be true is not the point. Calling a large portion of the country stupid is a great way to push them into the arms of an extremist.
This thinking is a memetic poison created by the exact people that need to be shamed out of the public discourse. I used to agree with it, but seeing how it's been coopted by the bigots, I reject the premise entirely.
No one is calling Christians stupid. The nutjobs that want to tear down our secular society and replace it with a white Evangelical ethnostate are telling Christians that their political rivals are calling them stupid. They're the suckers for the conmen, and at this point, it's not worth attempting to rationalize debate.
They literally vote for the most insulting person available, again and again. If anything, Trumps winning twice and conservatives in general getting votes is that being polite and nice is completely failing strategy. Democrats and centrists were nice and respectful for years while conservative were increasingly insulting ... and increasingly oversensitive creating outrages over nothing.
This demand for one sided niceness that amounts to submissivity was is is contraproductive.
The meat of the article are actual bad acts. You are just using the tone to distract from the actual accusations.
>Democrats and centrists were nice and respectful for years
This is only really true on the political level, not the cultural/social level. Politicians on the left have been significantly more respectful than their counterparts for a long time now. But the same can't really be said for the sentiments of their voter base or the media/education curated towards them. For a large amount of people what they see and experience in their day to day lives does more to color their beliefs than what a politician says that they have no relation to and might see a few sound bites of here and there running up to an election.
The left has to learn that telling a prospective voter repeatedly that they are the enemy won't make anyone want to support them unless they're already believers. It'll just push them towards the side that's offering to call them an ally.
I think the biggest problem is that Christianity is a font of power for fascism in America. If we want to change that, people need to start protesting churches the same way they are Tesla. But for some reason, churches seem exempt from political responsibility in the minds of the average non-fascist American.
See my other comment, but it's true that more people are cautious about saying things about it. That's because the religion has so retarded the progress of societies it has infected that they are more likely to threaten violence against those who speak reason.
I don't really blame people for speaking more cautiously about it, but that's because of how much savagery the mind-virus demands of its followers.
Some beliefs deserve to be looked down upon and disrespected because they are backwards. I wouldn't call them "silly" because they're very serious.
I don't believe in treating religious fundamentalists with compassion and empathy anymore. That's how we got the peace trucks, by not deriding them enough in public and private. There can be no tolerance of hate, and the people you are talking about are motivated by hate of others.
I find it interesting that the Episocopal Chirch in the United States has both old conservative members and young liberal members, and they all seem to get along as far as I can tell (many of them also believe in Theistic Evolution and don't shun science like others seem to think). I think it's a flavor of conservatism that is more libertarian. The Episcopal Church also has openly-gay priests and women priests, all of which whom can marry.
The two conservative and rich Episocopal churches (annual budgets of over $1MM) that I know of are still Episcopal according to their websites. The people at those churches were very nice and not uptight ("hoity-toity") when I visited.
I did read the Wikipedia entry on "Anglican Realignment" though, thank you for that information.
> even though that seems paradoxical to many of us
I think the only people in denial about it were those who view evangelical values as something other than the standing in the schoolhouse door values they demonstrated for centuries.
This seems like a common pattern: someone writes about sociopathic excesses of MAGA, but without sufficient empathy and respect, and the writer becomes responsible for the sociopathic excesses.
The article could definitely be more professional and mature. But something seems wrong with blaming people who are horrified by bad behavior for the bad behavior.
Would you ever excused leftist, feminist or atheist from massive hypocrisy or fraud with "conservatives are talking with disdain about them, therefore they have no moral agency"? And being from conservative environment, things that were being said about left, feminists, democrats were widely insulting for years.
Plus, you mean, any criticism or anyone pointing out hypocrisy or frauds or lies? As in, we all need to pretend these people never do wrong, because otherwise they might turn berserk? The same people who scorn and mock frequently and regularly need to be treated with niceties they never awarded to own opponent? They are at MAGA camp, because their values are compatible with MAGA, because they don't mind any of what Trump does.
If a compliment is all that it takes for you to reject your claimed morals, you never had them. And to credit of democrats, but Musk and Trump tried to get power through that camp first. They tried to take progressive cloak to get power and again, to credit of progressives, their hypocrisy was noted. That Christian right embraced those people does not imply they are victims, they are perpetrators.
> For a long time now, many people who's religious values are deeply important to them have felt disrespected and looked down upon by "the left"
Imagine saying this on the thread of an article that is literally about people using their faith to justify artifact smuggling and other crimes. The disrespect was entirely brought on by their insanely shitty and sociopathic behavior. Their faith isn't what is causing them to be disrespected. It's their behavior.
Aside from what I called out in my sibling comment these two are pretty snide:
"A fortune built on the sales of sewing notions and glitter has paid for many of the country’s most influential megachurches and scriptures delivered to the most remote corners of the world. A careful calculation of potential proselytized souls drives every financial decision."
"Perhaps the Greens, in their inexperience, did not understand the magnitude of their actions. Perhaps the Greens just didn’t care. Maybe when you believe that human souls are on the line, it’s easy to unshackle yourself to the ethical and legal trade guidelines that shackle secular academics. Maybe the money saved and the ancient items procured were powerful enough to make the risk worthwhile. "
They are mild in the context of an internet flame war or rap fight sure.
There might be real discussion to be had on Hobby Lobby and their actions however it is hard to get there because you are trying to pick through pure conjecture and speculation with the style of writing makes it look more like an opinionated hit piece.
> Aside from what I called out in my sibling comment these two are pretty snide to me
- "Snide" is subjective.
- It's a blog post not a news article or scholarly report.
- The topic is a business run by people who ostensibly make decisions based on their faith to justify actions which cause various harm to others. Taking a critical view of those actions and the motivations is reasonable.
A snide comment is one that disparages or belittles another person, so I don't think it can be subjective.
Edit add:
I find this entire line of reasoning to be odd:
>It's a blog post not a news article or scholarly report. - The topic is a business run by people who ostensibly make decisions based on their faith to justify actions which cause various harm to others. Taking a critical view of those actions and the motivations is reasonable.
I am being asked to take a critical look at Hobby Lobby, the reasons are outlined in the linked Substack. However, if I have any questions or criticisms of the Substack article, please note that it is not a professional work it is just a guy with a microphone.
If I can't trust the source material, how can I trust the claims?
One person's "disparagement" is another's valid criticism. You can see this come up constantly in lawsuits.
All I'm saying is it's a random site on the internet for a person who is a "Certified Bonafide Expert of Miscellanea"—no one is asking you to "trust the source material". If you think that aspects of the post bring into question the validity of the point being made, that's your right. I just think it's a weird expectation. The author even speaks to that:
https://substack.com/@meghanboilard/note/c-102976235
> What exactly do you find "snide" or "sarcastic?"
I haven't read the article, but certainly the phrase "whose entire schtick" doesn't belong in journalism that purports not to be sarcastic or snide. That's the kind of thing that goes in a Tumblr post.
1) It's just a substack post...? Where the hell is all this "this is poor journalism" stuff coming from? This substack post is also a really bad if we judge it as a children's picture book.
2) I take it HN is not familiar with a whole major subgenre of journalism in which "whose entire schtick" would be perfectly at home?
So I am not familiar with Substack a quick look at Wikipedia says "Substack is an American online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription newsletters."
If people expect a level of quality of reporting rather than "guy with a blog" from things hosted on Substack that would explain the comments.
I will also note that the top of the thread really only said that if the author wanted to be taken as an even handed reporter than in the commenters opinion they need to change their tone. If the author doesn't want to come across as an even handed reporter, then the tone is fine.
I personally find the tone to be off putting as it seems to be not fact based at all and is often making a conclusion from the premise rather than giving me an argument to get me there.
The subject of the word "evil" hasn't been given enough importance in recent modern times, IMO. It's as if the church and almost everyone else is afraid of discussing it. It is an uncomfortable subject for sure, but to ignore evil is to suffer it's results.
It singlehandedly has held back the world for centuries, caused the suffering and death of millions if not billions.
It's completely made up, thousands of years before anyone knew anything about anything and then as science is learned the world is bent to its superstitions and not the other way around because it can never ever change because some ignorant dude said so way back when.
The only way religion survives is indoctrination, it makes ZERO sense to anyone who learns to apply the smallest amount of logic to it.
And Christianity might be the very worst of all abrahamic-rooted nonsense because it basically stole all it's practices and beliefs from every other religion at the time.
They didn't have microscopes, telescopes or even eyeglasses but yet not only do they insist on somehow knowing a specific exact god but all the rules and why such an all powerful being would give a damn about anything.
It's control, manipulation and very often a profit seeking scam.
Every time I've shopped at a Hobby Lobby, I've gotten a weird feeling that there's something else shady going on. They don't use barcodes to price any of the goods. Everything has a sticker on it, and the cashier types up everything by hand. Your receipt ends up just being a list of dollar amounts and a total, nothing identifying your purchases in any way.
I just assumed that they're doing this so they can falsify audits. Similar to how they purchase land and donate it, claiming a bigger tax write-off, I assume they're doing the same with their merchandise. How could you audit it if there's no real stock tracking system?
That doesn't disprove it at all. It just states that they owners haven't said that's the reason, and that they've given other reasons. Their actions are entirely consistent with someone having batshit crazy beliefs, but knowing that they can't tell people those beliefs.
Many upvotes here due to the political/religious aspect, but there should be some comment on the archeological issue. From what I've gathered in the past, the main points are:
1. An organization with very deep pockets sets out to collect Near Eastern antiquities.
2. Due to turmoil in the Middle East, many relics of dubious provenance are hitting the market.
3. The org decides to buy as much of this stuff as they can, knowing that some of it will be dubious.
4. The org voluntarily has their purchases inspected, knowing they will not be compensated for things that have to be returned to their rightful places.
In outline, this sounds like the buyers doing the right thing in a bad situation.
Hobby Lobby openly admitted to falsifying documents to smuggle in artifacts. I've never seen anything suggesting they take your fourth point seriously, at least not before the courts got involved.
And, as mentioned in the article, point five would be that they're effectively using this as a tax avoidance loophole.
The press report from ICE does not confirm that they "knew some would be dubious". The press report makes it clear that all the purchases were not done above board.
Unclear as to the intent of the word "Heist" in the title. Seems they are paying top dollar if not more for collections sometimes not even authenticating them.
As long as they make everything available to the public and to researchers, I don't see anything wrong with it.
Also unclear on why this is a two-part story. Is there some big shoe to drop? Trying to avoid the impression that the author is not terribly fond of the Green family.
The "heist", which presumably gets covered in part 2, is that a lot of these items were originally looted from Iraq after the US invasion in 2003. US Customs ended up seizing a lot of them, and about 15,000 items ended up having to be returned.
Well, visit British Museum, you will learn what is professional looting (a.k.a. robbery), not some amateurish second hand purchases done by those hobbyists.
Not taking any sides other than that of conservation, do you think it's possible that the Greens have already saved many artifacts from nutty religious types like ISIS, and that their efforts will continue to do so in the future?
No they did not. They are just encouraging and creating an illegal market. The US also lacked proper laws against the importation of antiquities. For all we know it could have come into the states on a military plane and ISIS would have nothing to do with it. No museum worth its salt, with professional curators and staff would have accepted such a "loot" and as a matter of fact also reputable auctioneers. In any case it is important to study artifacts in the context where they were found, stratigraphy, nearby archaeological sites etc.
I mean I’m not a conservator of ancient artifacts, but the pictures [0] of them dunking mummy masks in dish water to decompose them so they could check whether they were made with scrap bible papyrus… those did make my stomach turn a little. Felt a little closer to desecration that preservation.
To be honest and I am from Cyprus, the BM paid for a lot of archaeological expeditions at a time when Antiquity Laws were laxed and the expeditions could take 2/3 of the finds. The 19th century was another story, Cesnola for example (the, then American Ambassador to Cyprus) literally smuggled almost 30,000 objects, which formed the basis of the Metropolitan Museum.
Whataboutism aside, claiming that collecting tens of thousands of artifacts for a museum operated in Washington DC, is a hobbyist endeavor, is clearly wrong.
It isn't that they weren't authenticating the items, it's that they weren't authenticating previous ownership. A lot of the items were stolen, as you can imagine there was a bit of wildness in the Middle East at the time (after the US overthrew Saddam Hussein). Which leads to the big shoe to drop. The people they were buying from and essentially funding is the group who became ISIS.
Appreciate the informative replies and citations. So, I'm a bit of a n00b in such matters so will politely ask how this situation (how to get ill-gotten artifacts of great anthropological value back into the public domain) typically gets resolved.
The idea cited in a reply that such purchases are funding ISIS (chilling to say the least) kind of implies that ISIS (or a stooge acting on their behalf) is the seller so a trace on the transaction should lead investigators to their door where the items can be confiscated and returned to the museum or public collection from which they were plundered.
I'm probably being too naive about how all this works. But I certainly understand the article much better now thanks to the informative replies.
The complexity lies in the fact that there is rarely a bill of sale like "Priceless scroll taken from tomb under ancient church before it was demolished - ISIS". There's a lot of laundering and changing of hands before they even go up for sale by these brokers whom HobbyLobby purchase from. This is completely antithetical to the ideal process for the sake of scholarship and preservation, which is meticulous and slow, documents all of the context before even touching anything, maintaining a chain of custody so that context is preserved even after removing artifacts from the site, etc.
I think it really is a problem if they're getting artifacts without clear provenance. They've had to return some manuscripts, and I thought that they'd cleaned up their acquisition process. But perhaps not?
> The speed and volume with which Carroll and the Greens collected sounded an alarm – to good and bad actors alike – of a willingness to participate in the gray market, where the legality of goods is questionable enough that accredited institutions dare not tread. Many governments prohibit the unlicensed export of culturally significant items, and UNESCO outlawed the trafficking of cultural property back in the 1970s.
Without anything concrete, this seems more like innuendo then an explicit accusation. But finding someone to pay and claiming to make artifacts 'available to researchers' doesn't necessarily make archeological trafficking legal or ethical.
> The cuneiform texts of an ancient Mesopotamian people should, in theory, hold little interest to an arts and crafts vendor based in the midwestern United States.
Why shouldn't it? People with money buy artifacts and art of note. The rest of us buy replicas and less noteworthy stuff. People from the Midwest can take interest in ancient Mesopotamia.
When writers casts the reader as dumb so they can twist it with an upcoming reveal, it's a signal I use to stop reading. If the twist was good I wouldn't need to be made to think little of the Hobby Lobby owners.
It's a bit off topic but the drop ceilings and wall to wall carpeting in that gallery are so redolent of churches from the 1990s that I could have almost guessed this was at Bob Jones University from the photos.
The bulk of this discussion could feature prominently in a museum of Internet trolling.
An unsolved problem of Internet discussions is that, for a variety of reasons, those with poor literacy and weak background knowledge are overrepresented in the comments (and responses to them may dominate, as well, since such posts tend to act as flame bait at best, and as very-effective classical trolling at worst) and that's something HN struggles with ordinarily, but this particular thread is really something special.
The author seems to go down a dark rabbit hole describing how seemingly unrelated events are connected. They also seem to placate to any anti-Christian sentiment a reader may already have.
I’m trying to understand why this is still on the front page? It doesn’t appear on topic for tech and there’s clearly a flame war developing in the comments.
When I visit that store, I try to imagine what the store would look like with all the “made in China” products removed. My visual is the store would almost be empty.
This is the reality of things, China's manufacturing capacity and international sale is insane. There's a chain of stores in the Netherlands too called Action, full of cheap Chinese produced items. It's not even particularly bad or anything.
Is it just me or has HN as a whole become... more Christian lately? A lot more defensive comments here than I would've expected, and I've seen in other threads people actually openly recommending religion/Christianity specifically as something that solved their problems. What's the deal here? I would've thought this would be a relatively atheist/agnostic community, if not one that eschews discussion of religion entirely.
I don't know about HN in particular, but I do feel like religions have significantly boosted their online proselytizing in the last 5-10 years.
My suspicions:
* The normie barrier has continued to lower, so more traditional and progress-reluctant religious people are now connected to social media.
* Some sects may be intentionally targeting online communities, just like they target IRL communities for converts. Beliefs that don't require a devotion of forcing the belief itself upon others will naturally fade into the background. Beliefs that don't claim to solve your problems will also fade into the background.
* Social media algorithms prefer religious posts. Religious posts often invoke some sort of emotional response. Religions are some of the oldest memes after all.
All of this is just a gut feeling based on the religious material I've been exposed to on the web. I think it's fairly consistent with how religions have spread throughout history. Secularism is squashed unless you specifically fight for it, which itself may require a kind of religious fervor.
This is possibly the natural result of any human community growing large enough. There will be those who ask unanswerable questions, and there will be those who have the answers to those questions. Those who need order, and those who need to order.
Capital-A atheism is a dead fad. It was a few years of people loudly dunking on something that that was safe to dunk on. The overall culture found them grating and insufferable, even to other atheists. Over time we swung to the point where you see more discussions like these.
>What's the deal here?
Without making a jab at the bay area culture bubble, I dunno what to tell you.
I don't need religion to be bad, that was Capital-A atheism's thing. I just need it to leave me alone. And it does.
Some people are religious, and a lot of those who are would recommend it. When it comes to defending religion, as an atheist I still think bad takes are bad takes even if they're against the religion I left.
Are you proposing that now is a safer time to express oneself online than any other time? The idea that my online speech could make me the target of offline violence feels realer than ever now that AI can do the legwork of correlating my identities.
Engineering (as distinct from something like math or science) is more about applying, rather than discovering, knowledge. Some folks just treat the models and equations as mantras handed down by some all-knowing being (the professor). The equation shall be recited in the homework, at length in the project, one final time in the exam, and then we shall release it to the universe and free our minds of it.
Not sure, but the less technical a story, the more brigading and gaslighting you get in the comments it seems. It is a bit like when there is something about apple, the entire comment section is people complaining about the fanboys in the comments. Who are not there. I exaggerate a bit of course, but in general it is the same with any 'divisive' topics such as AI, crypto etc. Technical discussion is minimal.
Either it's bots, or we are all just tired and frustrated. I know I am and it doesn't help to stay civil..
Destroying mummies to see if they reused parchment while making them is nearly as egregious as the nineteenth century practice of grinding up mummies as a panacea.
It'd be like smashing Fabergé eggs just in case one had something hidden in it.
It's more of a crossover between crane and forklift. telehandlers are more useful than a forklift, but less useful than a crane while being much more mobile than a crane. all four wheels can turn/steer so it is pretty agile.
The author provided a source showing they had a factory where they paid workers with disabilities ten cents a frame, the "likely" is that they can't prove how many frames the people could make in an hour. They assume less than fourteen.
I don't know the details, but it sounds like there's a legitimate discussion to be had there. But the author's tone makes it difficult to trust that her reporting is in good faith. If there were extenuating circumstances, I wouldn't trust her to have included them.
>> Imagine having a family of ordinary children, plus God. And yes, the remainder of the article confirms the promise of this gaffe.
> Imagine not being able to parse a sentence.
It was up to the author to parse the sentence in advance of posting it. And competent writers don't invite such obvious double meanings -- they undermine the value of the essay.
>> That's not what "begging the question" actually means.
> If you're referring to the logical fallacy, as a foreign English speaker it's the first time I hear about that "begging the question" sense.
Expressions change over time, but normally by consensus. Without consensus, one is entitled to wonder whether the writer knows what the expression means.
>> What -- in 2025, no spell checker?
> The horror
Some writers don't need a spell checker. Others require it.
> It was up to the author to parse the sentence in advance of posting it. And competent writers don't invite such obvious double meanings -- they undermine the value of the essay.
The author? She can't do it for the reader; to my knowledge it's a correct sentence, just a a bit verbose.
> Expressions change over time, but normally by consensus. Without consensus, one is entitled to wonder whether the writer knows what the expression means.
Yes, you sure had trouble understanding it...
> Some writers don't need a spell checker. Others require it.
Some are trying to win a Pulitzer, others just to write a substack article.
Let's not pretend those were the reason why you didn't like the article, come on.
> The author? It can't do it for the reader; to my knowledge it's a correct sentence, just a a bit verbose.
It contains a classic beginner's error -- object ambiguity. Rather funny in this specific case.
> Yes, you sure had trouble understanding it, come on.
Not at all -- but it was abundantly clear that the author didn't take the time to unambiguously identify the sentence's object, with a humorous outcome.
> Some are trying to win a Pulitzer, others just to write a substack article.
This is called a "false choice". But I think you know that. A vast middle ground lives between those extremes.
> Let's not pretend those were the reason why you didn't like the article, come on.
I have no stake in the article's topic, only its form. For all I know, these people are acting to protect irreplaceable historical artifacts. Just for the sake of argument.
I just noticed something. The article's title -- "The great Hobby Lobby artifact heist" -- is itself a classic example of begging the question, because it presumes the truth of what it should be proving.
