Religious atheism vs. Catholic accelerationism | Converdiction between Samuel Loncar x Justin Murphy

justin murphy grinning because he's in the cuck chair

Quoting Tom Holland as having any value, winners writing history is a 'miracle',. These are apologetic illogical arguments that get spread and taken up because they confirm that those in power are, in fact, in power. A useless, ahistorical, and disingenuous 'debate'.

Great lineup

Great convo, Wow!

Are you religious?

Murphy not even trying to hide his anti-Semitism

For me, this "terraforming" of the globe since the time of Christ that Justin refers to is informed by the book "Escape from Rome". I don't believe that the global significance of Christianity is attributable to anything special about the religion as such. The constant warfare between European powers after the fall of Rome led to tremendous technological advances. It just so happened that this was home to Christianity. Nobody even mentioned how the Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity as the state religion perhaps harnessing this "spiritual technology" to the service of political power. And thereby turning the institution of Christianity on it's head! All this and more is foundational to the "miraculous" terraforming that Justin wants to attribute ALL to Christianity. Never mind that part of this transformation is dependent on slave labor and the white supremacy project that started up in the 16th century. * Oh no! But all the bad stuff is because of things other than Christianity and the good stuff is bc of it.
Admittedly, the narrative I've presented might be full of holes, but there does need to be some pushback against the gaping historical holes that this discussion had.
The faithful of every stripe believe that their faith holds the highest truth. And they all do - from their own point of view.
* See Gerald Horne's "The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century"

Justin Murphy looks like he hasn't been getting enough sleep, protecting the "legacy" of his proto-fascist friends really is thankless work LOL

As a layperson who only recently got into theory underground I did listen to the recent "converdiction" episode about nietzsche - which didn't end up being much about nietzsche at all I found, which is fine - and I didn't know any of these two ppl, I thought I was in for a completely different conversation but then Sam kinda cornered Justin, not in a malicious way but as it turns out (imo) Justin's belief in Catholism is not so innocent as it first seems... and maybe he's been showing his face elsewhere, contributing to certain narratives and ideologies in not so innocent ways, would make sense why he's here and not just your average christian guy you dont take too seriously

This conversation evoked a lot for me. Gonna take a Substack post to get it all out.

Justin's argument about Jesus leading to capitalism is unsatisfactory, because it is only an argument that Christianity was historically compatible with that development. It certainly wasn't sufficient for capitalism (i.e. pre-capitalist Christianity existed), nor can you really claim its necessary (maybe in a counterfactual history Islam, or Confucianism could have produced capitalism). The way history unfolds requires initally incompatible ideas to be made compatible, so its not really surprising that Christiany was made compatible with capitalism (despite things like anti-usury laws).

Wow..Ubergringo Theory is digging deep for that Peter Theil cash

interesting however there is one — but massive — missing point: both guests don’t get the history of transition from classical antiquity to Christianity in late antiquity and its religious-political background. There is nothing really mysterious in the fact that Christianity became a dominant religion in Roman Empire (and therefor shaped modernit in a longshot): it was chosen by the political elite as the most effective „glue” to keep many people of many cultures from many provinces of extremely overgrown political entity within one identity. We can see it already in time of Paul who wouldn’t achieve what he achieved without being a Roman citizen. Christianity became religious koine to make ruling more effective. what you take as universality is rather simplicity and exclusivity towards anything not fitting the established paradigm: one god, one empire, one emperor, one sacred book, one law. It is not a matter of people’s choice — it was imposed by law and military power. It is quite enlightening to read late antiquity intellectuals and see their effort to keep pagan philosophy alive against the efforts of church fathers whose apologetic strategies were aimed to rewrite ancient philosophy to fit into the Christian framework.

Taste Community

“Liberalism is the return of the philosophical root of Christianity”

The rupa and arupya heavens are real! Capitalism is Mara’s machine

FWIW early Christian authors like John climacus wrote volumes on how to truly repent. Ladder of Divine Ascent is one of those volumes.

Philokalia is a Greek Orthodox text on repentance.

Sayings of the desert fathers is also good.

“Christianity is the most beautiful most compelling [etc.]” um sir may I introduce you to the mahayana sutras? Avatamsaka sutra, lotus sutra, vimalakirti, all of these are so amazing not to mention the 84000 page Tibetan canon.

“It’s a lot like Christianity” that’s what my teacher told us and I think it’s true insofar as they both speak to universality especially with respect to love.

I enjoyed what this conversation was trying to get at but found the Catholic apologist to be very lacking in even his understanding of the Catholic world view. I am curious if the interviewer is familiar with New Polity at all? If not please check them out as they are much more philosophically vigorous and very focused on post liberalism, critiquing capitalism, nationalism and communism as well as interacting with post modernism from a Catholic perspective. I just adore Samuel Loncar and follow everything he does, I would love to see a conversation between him and Andrew Willard Jones over at New Polity.

Neither one of these two have an understanding of Christianity, especially Orthodox Christianity. Catholicism is a schismatic church and to start at this opinion is ridiculous. Loncar's line of logic from Justin Martyr to Nazism is about as ludicrous as it gets. It's also pretty obvious that Loncar has never read the Talmud.

I had to turn this off 40 mins in. Nauseating to hear two people who do not have any grasp of a topic speak as if they are experts.