tragabigzanda wrote:BurtReynolds wrote:McParadigm wrote:BurtReynolds wrote:McParadigm wrote:4/5 wrote:tragabigzanda wrote:Burt I am genuinely unclear on the logic of that meme. Is it arguing that the leftist Christian elite are hypocritical because their reading of the Bible, to drive deployment of Federally subsidized wealth into things like Medicaid, international aid, and (admittedly bloated) Federal institutions makes them just as bad as the conservative Christians who do the same towards their own techno-nationalist goals? Or that they are somehow worse than the conservative techno-nationalists because they fail to disclose their leftist bias at the top of the article?
It's mocking the non-religious leftist who uses the Bible when convenient to tell Christian conservatives that they should hold such and such position because of Jesus/the Bible despite the fact that they don't believe in Jesus/the Bible.
Yes. Burt’s approach is always to portray an argument as not deserving to exist, and never to debate the substance or merit. He is saying that this argument can be ignored, because of who said it.
I was responding to the quoted bit specifically, but yes, I find the article rather meritless.
Then by all means, debate its merits. I thought that’s what we were here to do.
What's interesting about it?
That Christian (or nominally Christian) groups are trying to influence some segment of society or another? That's what they do.
That there is some vague anxiety about living in a Godless world that may be causing some people to rethink religion?
That powerful people may be exploiting religion to control the masses?
I dunno, none of that strikes me as terribly novel.
Though admittedly I tuned out about 75% of the way through. maybe it was getting to the point.
The point I take away -- not explicitly stated in the article, but informed by other experiences -- is that unlike economic views or political positions, religious beliefs are incredibly sticky; and tend to blind people to rational thinking.
This becomes problematic when, say, you're an individual in a position to deploy capital through a fund or a government contract, and you have the
belief that there's a pre-ordained righteousness granted to one recipient over another; it becomes an existential threat when the belief is so widely shared by the ruling class that
all individuals in similar positions must tow the line or get out.
I would imagine Burt's argument here would be something to the effect of "How is it different from Democrats awarding contracts or investment dollars to DEI-anchored initiatives or ESG moonshots?" And philosophically speaking, that would be fair.
But practically speaking, the key difference is how these belief systems operate in practice. Both involve ideological filtering, sure, but religious frameworks tend to carry an absolutism that makes them immune to challenge. When someone believes they have divine backing, there’s no room for negotiation — faith isn’t about evidence, it’s about certainty.
DEI and ESG initiatives, for all their flaws, at least try to justify themselves with data. You can argue about whether that data is cherry-picked or ideologically motivated, but the structure at least acknowledges external validation. Religion doesn’t play by those rules.
So the real problem isn’t just bias in funding — that happens everywhere. It’s that once faith-based decision-making gets entrenched, disagreement isn’t just dismissed, it’s framed as immoral or even dangerous. That’s when the system stops being a political tug-of-war and starts functioning like a theological hierarchy, where the only way to participate is to align with the dominant belief.
