Nov 17, 2016 5:58pm
Assuming you teach Christianity as myth rather than history, by and large it’s compatible with natural law. But not Judaism. And not Islam.
QUESTION…
—“I’d enjoy it if you’d elaborate on that.”—Rex May
Well, if by Christianity we are talking about the content of the bible, and in particular of the new testament, then this is different than the doctrines of the church.
1) The ten commandments enumerate what we call natural law, or property rights, prohibiting envy,deceit,interference in others contract, theft, and murder – thereby preserving the value of cooperation.
The nuclear family is the basic unit of social production, and the costs of it must be born by all of us in every generation for the good of all.
Invest heavily in the creation of opportunity and insurance of others even in the face of offense and rejection by treating non-kin with the tolerance and care of kin, in order to increase the number of those with whom we can cooperate with us, just as we cooperate with kin.
Impulsivity, Selfishness, Arrogance and Hubris await us at every moment and it is only through constant practice at patience that we learn enough about the world to avoid impulsivity, selfishness, arrogance, and hubris.
The state – the aristocracy and our enemies – cannot be resisted by the force of the weak, but the weak can insure one another independently of the state – we are weak, but if we are many, and we treat one another as kin, we will be equally as strong in resisting the state. If we are not dependent on the state, but dependent upon one another, we create the power of a state without a state.
Regular prayer for advice to an all knowing ‘father’ will teach you to be as honest with yourself, and once honest with yourself honest with others.
Reserve regular time to contemplate this law together, and seek to apply and improve it in daily life.
There is no law higher than this. And any that says or does otherwise is not only to be mistrusted, but shunned, and if necessary, punished.
2) most of the Babylonian myths are stated in slave language, but still informative. Read in parallel to the greek myths they’re the lower class version for the weak, just as the greek myths for the strong.
3) the lives of the saints tell us about how to extend that kinship love.
4) most of the catholic encyclopedia provides an exceptional history of Europe.
5) the church dogma is reducible to “we will ostracize you if you don’t believe this nonsense as your price of insurance by the insurer of last resort: the church”. The rest is all drivel.
6) the content of a religion varies, but the method of constructing a religion through the evocation of the elation we feel from the pack response in every walk of life remains constant. All members of all religions think that it is the content that provides the elation and spirituality but it is merely the pack response produced by the rituals.
We can judge the content of the message separately. Christianity’s content tends to be compatible with natural (cooperative) law.
QUESTION…
—“Very informative. Could you add something about how Judaism and Islam don’t have the same effect? I’d like to make a blog post out of this.—Rex May
FIRST THINGS FIRST
It is not obvious, even to those who have followed me for a while, that using propertarian analysis is quite simple if you simple look for changes in the composition of capital by voluntary or involuntary, fully informed or not fully informed, truthful or untruthful, warrantied or not warrantied, transfers. So my criticisms aren’t arbitrary.
CHRISTIANITY
Christianity consists mostly of church manufactured dogma for the purpose of persisting authoritarian rule, by preserving the ignorance of the population, but suggesting, directing, and commanding them to act in accordance with natural law with one another, using readings from the text. This is, from what I understand, why prosperity increases with the distribution of Christianity: trust extension through constant repetition and virtue signaling.
BUT WHAT DO WE MEAN BY CHRISTIANITY?
However, we are often the victims of the fact that the church held a near monopoly on literacy, and just as Bede manufactured a history of England, the church manufactured a history of its own over-importance. The reason being that the church/state divide was always present – a division of houses of government. So the church’s message of submission must be retained in context of the nobility’s caprice, aggression, and violence – a constant battle between two extremes.
Once literacy arrives via the printing press, and the bible is available in the vulgate, and other books are available as competitors to the dogma, Christianity does not consist of the church falsehoods and authoritarianism, but the expansion of Christian virtues. (The so called “germanicization of Christianity”.) These virtues combine with the rise of the Hansa civilization’s gradual middle class expansion, and the expansion of the population after the decline of the plagues. The power of the church declines. And the number of educated preachers increases (my family members among them in England). We see the professionalization of the craft of teaching rather than the expansion of the church bureaucracy.
When I refer to christianity, I am referring to the german professional era rather than latin bureaucratic era. The latin era which I consider lingering only in third world countries. And moreover, that the decline of the church has largely to do with the failure to complete the transition of the role of the priesthood to professional teachers that not only retain myth and ritual, but that teach what the common people need to be taught in order to oppose the (evil) religion of the totalitarian state: fitness, virtues, friendship, marriage, parenting, household management, money, accounting, economics, natural law, history, and the conduct of WAR. And to provide banking services that have been monopolized by the state against the interest of the people. This is the reason for the failure of the church to preserve intergenerational relevance, while the state simply “manufactures skilled labor for the tax-mines”.
JUDAISM
Judaism is poly-moral. In other words, there are different moral standards for in-group and out-group members. The general strategy is to contribute nothing to the commons, nothing to the host, but to extract and hold within the clan (tribe) every calorie possible. It is perfectly acceptable to create negative externalities, to ‘cheat’, and it is part of the law that permits them to – and encourages them to.
So where Christianity tries to increase their numbers by low-cost purchase of options to build trust, Judaism tries to accumulate capital by parasitic exploitation of the commons and host.
ISLAMISM
islamism is immoral. it seeks and spreads obedience and ignorance. it asks not for christian productivity and trust expansion to all, and instead of jewish parasitism, seeks expansionary conquest and predation – the expansion of mandatory ignorance. And it does so by fascinating means: the promise of respect for submission (non-contribution) rather than contribution. Islam spreads the curse of ignorance stagnation illiteracy and impulsivity and weaponizes reproduction. it is not a primitive religion. This is the mistake we make. it is a very sophisticated means of spreading ignorance via the expansion of a lower class that is antagonistic to any competitor that falsifies its false promise by higher correspondence with reality.
So:
Once we have literacy and have escaped the church’s imposition of ignorance and submission against the population, we are left with the current state of these three Abrahamic religions:
1 – (Reformed) Christian expansion of trust and production.
2 – Jewish expansion of deceit and parasitism
3 – Islamic expansion of ignorance and predation.
If that is not a damnation of all that exists in all three then I don’t know what is. But we have largely reformed Christianity. And the only step remaining is to redirect our churches to their role as professional teachers of intertemporal knowledge that is a competitor to the predatory education of the state.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine.
