Eyewitness testimony. Said eyewitnesses literally dying on that hill helps. As well as a religious movement spontaneously and uncontrollably erupting from it.

Cool. That describes most religions. So either you need to convert to basically every religion at once, or you need to raise your standards of evidence.

For a start, were the crusades really an atrocity? And the inquisitions? They were fighting against Islam.

And Judaism, and Eastern Orthodoxy, and anyone who happened to be standing in the way of valuables. How can you possibly be this deluded about history?

You don’t see a problem with the numerous times all Jews were expelled from their respective countries? Like when Jews in Spain, who had previously been tolerated under Islamic rule, were forced to convert, leave, or die, and many of them had to flee to Islamic countries for whatever refuge they could find there? Why the hell do you think there’s a diaspora?

Or the crusades, when the Byzantines asked the Church for help fighting the Muslims, and the crusaders sacked and looted Constantinople, leaving them more vulnerable?

The Bible doesn’t mandate witch burnings either.

Then you’ll be relieved to know that Marx never mandated any sort of atrocities, so that means Marxism has a totally clean record on that front.

None of these work. They all rely on humans. I don’t see a need to participate in that argument. Empires come and go. Whether they be feudal, theocratic, democratic or socialist. I’m more concerned with Christ’s eternal Kingdom. Christ didn’t preach an earthly political system, much to many people’s dismay at the time. All He did in regards to political systems was emphasising that people should submit to the authorities over them.

Long haired preachers come out every night
Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right
But if you ask them for something to eat
They will tell you in voices so sweet
"You will eat, by and by, in that glorious land up in the sky!
Work and pray, live on hay, you'll get pie in the sky, when you die" - that's a lie.

The Preacher and the Slave

Yeah, no thanks. If more people listened to your “submit to authority” bullshit, we’d still have chattel slavery. Fuck off with this bootlicking nonsense.

You don’t think I should care about politics? Well my boss and my landlord do, and every day they’re working to make my life worse. It’s long past time to start fighting back. We didn’t start the class war. We just recognize it exists.

What evidence would you need to prove it exactly?

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. What evidence would you require to believe the Buddhist sutras that describe talking animals and flying monks? Probably more than hearsay, I’d imagine.

It was on the subject of bringing religion into politics.

I swear, trying to follow your chain of reasoning is impossible. So, you brought up abortion to demonstrate to me that religion belongs in politics, by simply asserting that it does?

It’s a good example of how secularism is needed to abolish morality.

Are you really going to make me bring up all the atrocities committed in the name of Christianity, then? The crusades, the inquisitions, the witch burnings, the wars of religion - all perfectly moral, apparently, because “secularism is needed to abolish morality.” What a load of crap.

I never said we needed to stick with capitalism

Right, what you want then is even worse. A return to feudalism, perhaps? Yes, that’s how we can ensure that humanity’s sinful nature never manifests into anything bad, by giving some random asshat like the guy in your profile pic absolute power and no checks or accountability.

Better yet, maybe we can have a theocracy? Surely, nobody claiming to represent the will of God could ever be subject to that same sinful and corrupt human nature, and can be trusted implicitly to rule.

And if not capitalism, socialism, feudalism, or theocracy, then what is it exactly that you support?

The resurrected Jesus Christ was physically here on earth, so yes.

No, because this is just your belief. It isn’t something that is proven by evidence. Because it isn’t true.

I never said that, and Abortion isn’t the primary topic at hand here.

Then what the fuck was the point of bringing it up and arguing on exclusively religious lines about it??

I can imagine a Nazi saying this to Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the 1940s.

“You know who else didn’t like Christianity? Adolf Hitler.” Is this really the level of reasoning you operate at?

Marxism seems to fully depend on humanity in order to work. The issue with the human condition is that we’re sinful and corrupt.

Lol. The classic, “Marx failed to consider human nature” meme argument. “Humans are too sinful, that’s why we need to stick with systems that incentivize and reward greed and corruption, while keeping others poor and desperate.”

I swear, how am I even supposed to have a conversation with someone who’s so confidently incorrect about so many things, has zero intellectual curiosity, and just wants to mindlessly recite meme-level arguments and religious orthodoxy?

Even the UK’s healthcare system

Has nothing to do with Marxism whatsoever. You’re literally pointing to corruption under capitalism as a reason why Marxism is bad and we should keep doing capitalism.

Because we are objectively correct.

No you are not. “Objectively,” is it? Is there something physical you can point to that proves your philosophical position on personhood correct? Of course not. I can point to all kinds of physical evidence to prove to a flat-earther that the earth is round. That is what “objectively” means, which you don’t seem to understand. You are not “objectively” correct if your position relies on a bunch of faith based assumptions.

There are unhelpful strawmen as well “oh, you only want to control women”.

I literally never even said that, you are literally accusing me of strawmanning you by putting words into my mouth.

We genuinely believe that a foetus is a valuable human life.

You can believe whatever you like, doesn’t mean the law should be based around purely religious beliefs.

there are also secular pro life organisations.

But you are unwilling to make any arguments along secular terms, so that’s completely irrelevant.

If you want to participate in modern civilization without trying to take us back into the fucking dark ages, then you have to play by the rules of secular governance that prevent you from being burned at the stake for being the wrong type of Christian. And that is especially true if you expect to get through at all to anyone who is not a Christian, if you expect me to even have a modicum of respect for your beliefs and not see you as fundamentally incompatible with a functioning society. And if it’s actually true that your position is just as defensible from a secular perspective, then why are you constantly bringing religion into it?

You’re literally just adding a bunch of pointless, irrelevant, faith-based assumptions that you know I reject, and making them fundamental to your argument. And according to you, there is no reason to do this, as your position is supposedly equally defensible from a secular perspective.

Being raised around this exact bullshit is exactly why I’m a Marxist. Because I have already seen the future you would bring humanity into and it’s utterly horrifying and must be stopped at all costs.

From what I found, the pro-choice lobby is most often using feelings to justify their decisions, not reason, in order to deflect the argument. ie, “my body my choice” ideas of freedom, worries about someone’s life being hindered.

All of those are objective, rational arguments, not emotional ones.

It’s not about a basic fact over when life becomes objectively valuable and the morality of taking someone’s life.

What constitutes personhood is a philosophical argument that is very debatable. Religious people, unfortunately, are often completely uninterested in engaging with such philosophical questions, because they think their religion provides all the answers, while trying to pass off their myriad superstitions as objectively correct.

Really, the whole argument against abortion is just based on semantics, and not anything practical. Why do you get to decide the definition of personhood?

That is based from our worldview which is grounded in religion

If you are intent on both basing your beliefs on faith rather than reason and on taking those beliefs into the political sphere and forcing others to comply with them, then there is nothing left but conflict. Not only with secularists like myself, but also with each other.

Back in the day, Europe was ravaged with religious wars and persecution, if it wasn’t “Bloody” Mary going after Protestants, then it was the various Protestant rulers persecuting Catholics. Every time a ruler of a different sect came to power, they went after anyone they disagreed with.

This is an inevitable consequence of taking your random superstitions and trying to make everyone else abide by them, because there’s lots of different sects, none of whom can agree on anything, and the only thing stopping us from returning to that era is secular governance. Christians may never forgive us for it, but the fact is that you’re much safer than you ever were before.

How do you know it hasn’t?

How do I know what hasn’t?

but that doesn’t mean that such unions should be recognised as sacramentally the same by Christian Churches.

Personally, that’s fine my me - provided that sacremental unions have absolutely zero relevance to the law. If marriage did not affect things like taxes, or being with one’s significant other in the hospital, or anything like that, then I don’t care if you want to have some special exclusive ritual. There’s not really anything stopping you from doing that, as far as I’m aware, like, don’t even tell the state about it, you’ll be fine.

The problem is that Christians simultaneously want to have these sorts of rituals be formalized, legal institutions that everyone is bound by, and they want them to be exclusionary. That’s where we run into problems because it violated the legal principle of equal protection under the law. It’s not really about any of this theological stuff about whether “God just wants you to be happy.” It’s that the law is supposed to treat everyone equally and your side insists that your religious traditions must have a legal basis.

Since there was no longer scripture and people felt it hampered their ability to engage in sexual immorality, society changed it’s view. A foetus was no longer seen as human and instead as a “clump of cells” so society permitted the killing of these children

In reality, the opposite has happened. Society used to view a foetus more as a clump of cells, and abortion in no way equivalent to murder. It was pretty much exclusively a Catholic issue. This only changed when forces on the right recognized how it could be used as a wedge issue to take away women’s rights and to keep people divided.

This whole nonsense goes back to Augustine trying desperately to paper over the inherent contradictions in Christian theology. The question being whether exposure to the teachings of Jesus was necessary to avoid eternal damnation and get into heaven. If the answer is yes, then it leads to the absurd conclusion that God is maliciously torturing countless souls without ever giving them a chance to avoid it, including both fetuses that were aborted or miscarried, as well as “virtuous pagans.” On the other hand, if the answer is no, then it would undermine the Church’s authority by suggesting that there are alternate paths to salvation, as well as calling into question why Jesus’ sacrifice was even necessary, if people don’t even need to hear about it to get into heaven. The Catholic Church itself has moved away from the Augustinian position in favor of the idea that it is possible for fetuses to get into heaven and that there may be other paths to salvation.

Obviously, this is another case where if you don’t subscribe to a specifically Christian perspective, then the whole argument falls apart. I don’t believe in souls at all, and am utterly unconcerned with resolving the theological problems that once led to Christians telling women who suffered miscarriages that their baby was burning in hell. Again, we arrive at the legal question of what vested interest the people or the state have in the matter. Unless banning abortion is defensible from a secular perspective, then this is once again just you insisting that your religious views be legally formalized and imposed on others.

That doesn’t matter. The effects of colonialism lingered as we moved to neocolonialism. Many of the resources that had been seized by force remained in the hands of foreign companies, and countries that stepped out of line or attempted to reassert control of their resources, such as Iran or Guatemala, found their governments overthrown by the CIA in favor of far-right western puppets.

The fear of foreign subversion and the memory of colonial rule has meant that many organic social movements are perceived as foreign backed attempts to compromise sovereignty, or as distractions from national liberation.

How about I put it another way? Why do you think that social progress regarding LGBT rights has happened more in “white cultures?” If not because of colonialism, then what is your explanation? I’m guessing your actual perspective is that it’s just some flight of fancy, that it isn’t actually social progress at all, in any objective sense, and that LGBT rights are not actually inherent things. But I figure I might as well press you on the point to see how you weasel around admitting that.

why is it that it’s the “enlightened” west which did the colonialism is suddenly changing it’s mind on sexuality?

At the same time, suffering under the yoke of colonialism stifled social progress and the potential for the sort of organic social movements that happened in the West.

for whatever reason always affirms what the white cultures believe is right.

I assume that by this you’re trying to paint homosexuality and the acceptance of it as exclusive to white cultures. This is complete and total bullshit.

There’s plenty of history of non-white cultures that were fully accepting of homosexuality. Japan is a clear example. Samurai wrote so many gay love poems to each other that they had established literary conventions about it.

What happened, around the world, is that colonizers and missionaries went around the world destroying indigenous traditions and customs and instilling bigotry regarding homosexuality. At the same time, suffering under the yoke of colonialism stifled social progress and the potential for the sort of organic social movements that happened in the West.

Even then, we are seeing in the US a rollback of LGBT rights that we only recently managed to achieve. I don’t think it’s fair to generalize “white cultures” as believing LGBT people have rights, just as it’s not fair to generalize non-white cultures as not believing that.

So many of these people will play this little game where they pretend to be reluctant, like they care just as much as we do, but as much as it tears them up inside, they’ll make the “rational” choice for the “lesser genocide.”

Then, as soon as the leftists were out of the room, they dropped the facade and started talking about how great and wonderful Harris is and how they couldn’t think of a single reason to dislike her. This wasn’t the only post like that that got 1000+ upvotes, despite Lemmy being full of “reluctant” Harris voters.

A part of me wishes they’d just tell us straight up that they don’t give a shit.

Related, in Star Wars lore, Tarkin got promoted (in the late Republic) after landing a ship on top of a crowd of protesters where were blocking the spaceport on Ghorman.

The thing is that the rebels were (mostly) white, and removing the racial lens allowed Americans to see that a struggle like that of colonized people against their oppressors was obviously correct. But it also means they can’t connect the rebels to real world conflicts, because the oppressed people are generally not white, and so it’s understood through a racial lens.

Libs think Trump vs. Harris was like Leia vs Darth Vader when in reality it was more like Darth Vader vs Palpatine.

Finally, a grindset I can get behind.

Are we sure the Lenin one’s not real? Lenin’s plan for defeating the bourgeoisie was, famously, to work within the system to increase taxes through incremental reforms.

No, I’m simply calling out a lazy gish gallop. It’s the same in both cases.

How many sources are listed on the Wikipedia page for Christianity? If I accept your logic as valid, it seems I’ll have to convert.

Someone once put together a book titled, “One Hundred Authors Against Einstein.” Einstein dismissed the book with the quip, “Why one hundred? If I were really wrong, they’d only need one.”

Oh, I absolutely support “attempting beneficial cultural change on the other side of the world.” Go write a book, sing a song, make a movie, you can still do that, right now, nothing’s stopping you!

What I oppose is drone striking weddings halfway across the globe, kicking in doors and screaming at people in a language they don’t speak, classifying every “military aged male” as an enemy combatant even if they’re just a bystander to falsify your casualty reports, abducting innocent people indefinitely to secret torture dungeons without charge or trial, and that sort of thing. You know, things like, “forced rectal feeding without medical necessity.”

Like, have you looked into what the war actually, physically looked like for people? “Attempting beneficial cultural change,” what the hell are you talking about? Even if it wasn’t an extreme whitewashing of the situation, you don’t impose “beneficial” cultural change as an occupying force, at gunpoint! The only thing we did was make them hate us more.

By the way, do you know how we finally got bin Laden? It was by using a fake vaccination campaign to collect blood samples in Pakistan. You wanna talk about humanitarianism, do you have any idea how many people could die, how many preventable diseases we could fail to eradicate, if people in developing countries mistrust vaccination drives because the CIA uses them as cover? But you know, at least our lust for revenge was satisfied. (Speaking of, the US also promoted anti-vax conspiracy theories in the Philippines, during COVID, to keep them from relying on Chinese vaccines.)

But pulling out at that point caused the deaths of western allies and handed victory to the Taliban, causing millions to suffer eg. women can’t get jobs and single-mother families starve to death… and it was entirely foreseeable.

That’s a completely ridiculous and absurd position. They did not “hand victory to the Taliban,” the Taliban won victory over 20 years of fighting and the withdrawal merely acknowledged that fact, a fact which Americans seem to have deluded themselves into thinking was anything but inevitable, and they really didn’t like their delusions being shattered. The embargo, not the withdrawal, is what’s caused most of the suffering. As the band Flobots said in 2007, “We already lost the wars they keep waging.” Somehow, in spite of over another decade of accomplishing absolutely nothing, people seem, if anything, more willing to keep fighting the pointless, hopeless battle.

What is the alternative to the withdrawal? Please, provide an answer to that question. Do you think if we stayed there another 20 years, then we could leave and our puppet regime wouldn’t instantly collapse? Or should we have just stayed there inevitably, even sending our grandchildren to go fight in that stupid pointless war?

The only thing that you said that’s correct is that on day 1 of the war, we should not have gone in. But on day 2, we also should’ve left. On day 3 we should have left. On day 300 we should’ve left. On day, what was it even, 7000? On day 7000, we absolutely, 10000% should’ve left. What possible reason could you use to justify delaying it further? What could we do in another 300 days that we couldn’t do in 7000? At that point, you’re just arguing for making it a permanent war of conquest.

Your problem, and the problem of everyone who thinks like you, is that you’re incapable of facing reality and accepting that sometimes good decisions are painful. When an alcoholic decides to go clean, what do you think that first day is like? Is it pleasant? Of course not. They may be irritable, they may have to have awkward conversations or confrontations with their drinking buddies, they may even lose friendships over it! But it’s still the right decision, the important thing is that they stopped. This is the same way. Yes, the immediate effects of pulling out may have been unpleasant, but you have to be very short-sighted to not recognize it as an obviously correct and necessary decision. Y’all just see the unpleasantness and say, “Everything’s been shitty since I decided to quit, I should just have another drink.”

Even the government we propped up told us to leave! How can you possibly justify continuing the occupation? And how can I possibly view you as anything but a warmongering imperialist for taking that stance? You’re talking about murdering people! Do you even realize that?