Extremism as the real evil, or just Conservatives?

Good stories can have a message and they do it without preaching. When I say preaching, I am talking about hitting you over the head with something in a way that could be almost called ham-fisted. It depends on how it is handled.

Well actually, not really, the real world is not shades of moderation. As I said, if you think enslaving another person against their will is wrong, there will not come a time or situation when you think "maybe slavery is alright". If you believe that people should have the right to free speech and not be censored, you will be upset when someone is arrested because what they're saying is unpopular or the government doesn't like it. However, if you are okay with that, then you don't actually believe people should have the right to free speech. You may believe that you do in theory, but in practice it is not true.

A necessary construct of the Bible, which it asserts itself, is that 100% of it is the word of God, and that God is 100% moral. There is no clause within the Bible that says that about 90% of it is the word of God, and that sometimes God can act immorally. The only way to be a Christian is to believe that 100% of it is moral, otherwise you're not really a Christian. It is not my definition, it is the definition given by the Bible. It only exists as such in that it is 100% correct.

What leaves me most baffled is why a person would want to identify as Christian even if they doubt that the Bible is 100% the word of God, or that God himself is not 100% moral. These are the necessary constructs to Abrahamic monotheism.

It's not mathematics for these religious people anyway, it's just faith and everyone's going to be different with it. And not in the sense of more or less faith, but actual different beliefs, even within the same religion. Extremism would be people having faith in something very different from the popular belief of the religion. Protestants at one point would have been extremist Christians, rejecting the dominant Catholics' on many of their positions, including and especially tithing.

Well, in fact, no. "Extremism" is not a matter of being a minority. Protestants were no more 'extremist' in the 1520s than they'll be in 2020s. I don't want to start the Reformation all over again here, but Martin Luther taking a lawyer's view of the Bible is itself fundamentalist, but that doesn't make it 'extremist' anymore than it makes the Pope's rejection of it 'moderate'.

My point is since Christianity is such a broad, broad set of beliefs and there are so many ways to interpret it, to say that people who don't follow 100% of it's fundamental beliefs aren't actually Christian is strange. Christianity is like an umbrella religion, I'd get your point if we're comparing sects within it, but it's much too broad for a claim like that to hold true in the real world.

These people I'm talking about do not even follow the commands of their own denomination, though. There is absolutely no Christian denomination that says that a) the Bible is not the word of God, and b) God is immoral. And when talking about translations and so on, it brings the entire thing into even more conflict; if these two versions of the Bible say different things, which one was truly the word of God? If God is both supremely moral and completely infallible, how can the word and commands given change throughout history? This is the conflict faced by the absolute; if even 1% of the Bible is considered immoral or inaccurate, the entire thing falls down around your ears.

Also I never said my family was Christian, that was rather presumptuous, duder. I know you needed an example, but hey.

? You said 'some of the most hardcore Christians I know don't follow ...' If I was being presumptuous is that these hardcore Christians you know have families, and thus I referred to them, not that I was referring to you. "Your family in question only follows" as opposed to "Your family in question only follows".

edit: As a side note, I'm sure any communications or creative writing professor would probably tell you if the book you authored could be interpreted 1,000 different ways than you need to improve the clarity of your writing.

Don't worry, Infinite will poorly characterise both extreme right and extreme left ideologies.

Also at the guy talking about DmC: don't worry, I avoided that game like the plague and told all my friends to buy the HD collection.

There in fact are things that we as both a species and as post-Enlightenment human beings hold as intrinsically good. We hold that suffering, slavery and death are intrinsically bad. We hold that freedom and happiness are intrinsically good. And then there are things that have more convoluted applications, but we still are fundamentally for or opposed to; racism, free speech, science, etc. It's not a matter of 'shades of grey' it's a matter of whether people actually carry the courage of their convictions.

For instance, any discussion of free speech, especially in Canada or European countries, it's worth asking whether or not the people in the discussion would support the free speech of a hate group like the KKK or the Westboro Baptist Church. Because anyone who claims they are for free speech and then advocates changing their free speech into 'hate speech' does not believe in free speech. Even if they say they do, even if they fully believe they do, even if they pull out the 'grey areas' rhetoric, they do not believe in it because they do not defend it. If you support free speech, you support it from even people with the worst opinions in the world. I'd hate to be so trite as to quote Voltaire, but it's charming enough rhetoric. 'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it'

@thetenthdoctor said:

Either you're out of your god damn mind or you have an incredibly poor understanding of American history. The notion that any abolitionists or the Republican party of Abraham Lincoln could have possibly qualified as conservative for their time is ludicrous. Hell, they almost look like fucking radicals next to the Post-Nixon Republican Party.

Also, to address your anecdotal bullshit, I'm pretty sure any supposed "liberal" who wouldn't trust a man watching his home based the colour of his skin is hardly committed to any liberal or leftist values. I am, however, certain that there are plenty of dedicated conservatives who would do so and cite whatever nonsense statistics they pulled out of their asses to justify their racism.

My understanding of history is fine. Lincoln was a Republican, and while my personal values are more in line with the Republican party of that era than the one today, I still lean further that way than left.

A Government cannot grant rights- only take them away. Whether we're talking about slavery, segregation, women's suffrage or gay rights, we are all born equal with the ability to do as we please. Certain laws of nature dictate proper behavior be frowned upon (such as murder), but everything else is not a government granted right- it's a right granted by the universe, God or whatever else you believe in. A government that tells us who we can't marry, how big a soda we can't buy, how many bullets our gun can't hold or what type of God we can't worship should be thrown out on their asses, because that's exactly the type of Government people formed the colonies to escape from.

My point is that it's entirely possible to be nervous about the expansion of our government's power (and the ensuing reduction of our freedoms) without being racist, yet most people today link the two hand in hand.

@thetenthdoctor:

I think even the most die hard CPAC attending conservatives would agree that the bigoted belief system held by many during the turn of the century was wrong. The game isn't suggesting that this kind of mentality permeates the Republican/Libertarian parties now. For that matter, the game isn't even try to represent actual history, since, you know, they live in a floating steampunk city.

Anyways, I think the idea of toying with extremist views of yesteryear is a fascinating backdrop. Certainly more original than than the typical 'Muslims are terrorists' bit that the media has been running the last 12 years.

@hoosy: I see your point, and the more I think about it the less bothered I am. Perhaps my frustration at the modern media (and commenters on forums) constantly assuming I'm a racist bigot because I didn't vote Obama is making me see an agenda where there isn't one.

Carry on.

look all I want to do is end this war on christmas

OK, here's a thought: let's wait until the game is OUT and people have PLAYED it. Right now, the only people addressing the question in the OP are people saying "this reviewer said this" or "I've heard this."

@ekami: The liberals already lost that battle. Now the war is on Easter.

Unfortunately, a lot of people on the right use phrases like "smaller government" as coded language for policies aimed at kneecapping poor minorities. Those people are easily spotted if you let them talk long enough. Anybody who frets about the size of government but is comfortable with letting their government control what women do with their bodies, supports military adventurism abroad, supports obstacles to participation in democracy such as the requirement of photo IDs and cheers on their country's gradual slide into becoming a police state raises some serious questions about in which ways they believe "the government" needs to shrink and why.

Also, I have to disagree with you about the government only having the ability to take away rights and not "give" them. Any rights a person has in the absence of government are only theoretical, in my opinion, because there's nobody to guarantee those rights for you. Without an actively enforced system of laws, your rights are dictated by whoever's powerful enough to push you around.

Some people may mean kneecapping minorities, but I mean exactly what I said. It baffles me that I actually live in a country now where I am required by law to purchase health insurance and prohibited by law from buying a soda beyond a certain size. Now we have a CIA director who refuses to say that drone strikes won't be used on American soil, and the same government is classifying people who own multiple firearms and MREs as potential terrorists (even though many do so for hurricane or disaster preparedness).

There's also a suspicious hypocrisy in the whole photo ID issue. Democrats are against requiring it to vote in Presidential elections, yet prevent anyone without one from entering political or Union events. Even a recent NAACP event dedicated to demonizing the photo ID to vote initiative required - you guessed it - a photo ID to enter.

The expansion of the Government in the last 5 years is startling. Not many people care yet because it hasn't impacted them directly, but it's a very dubious and disturbing course we're on here in America.

Meh, the lack of government intervention ruined lots of things too. I'm not inclined to believe that Big Business knows anything more about how to run the world than Big Government.

Levine was right, either way people are talking about this game in alarming detail ! Cant wait to play it

@ares42 said:

"there is no such thing as an entrinsically good or bad thing" and "everything is good and bad"? Wait, did you really mean to type that?

As someone who is not a relativist and believe that objective morals and other truths exist, reading this just made me turn into a huge questionmark. Believing what you say here would in fact make you a "fundamentalist" in naturalism, where no objective base for morals can be found. It's okay if you believe that, but don't act like it's some obvious conclusion that "most learn sooner or later". Absolutely not, it's one of the most contested and dare I say refuted claims in philosophy.

@kohe321: Name one thing that cannot in any way be perceived as both good and bad.

Let me stop your right there. Biblical inerrancy is not and never has been an issue for anybody who has done any serious study of the Bible. The Bible is a collection of documents, all written at varying times, for varying audiences, and to varying purposes. To many serious, learned Christians, it is the word of God as focused, refined, and sometimes even altered by the minds of men. I understand that such ambiguity might sound like an effort to tear down your neat world of stark contrasts, but that's only because that's exactly what it is. If your neat, tidy worldview requires that you badly mischaracterize significant parts of it, then your worldview, neat and tidy as it may be, is flawed.

Other than your clumsy attempt at theological commentary, though, you've been doing quite well in this topic. Keep at it. Keep schooling people at basic US history and political theory.

@ares42 said:

Well here we're starting to delve into what I just spoke about - relativism and subjectivism, which is the only view one can rationally hold if one is to hold naturalism as a worldview.

Which I don't, so I guess I can answer your question. The holocaust is a perfect example. I believe that such a thing as objective morals exist, and therefore say that the holocaust was objectively evil. That's to say that it still would be evil even if the nazis won, and killed and/or brainwashed the entire remaining population of the world.

In your world view it's all relative - "for me it's evil, but for the nazis it was good. We won, so our view is the prevailing one, and that's pretty much it".

Let's finish this discussion, we're obviously not in agreement at all here, and any further discussion will not bear any fruits, but more importantly I don't want to derail this thread into a discussion about metaphysics (which is the direction this discussion is heading in). This was about Bioshock infinite, let's keep it that way.

Sorry to the OP for derailing.

I would even argue that most of the problems of big government can be easily traced to its relationship with big business.

@chrissedoff said:

that's chickens and eggs

I understand the timeline regarding the creation of the Bible (and the Koran). The Bible exists as the world's longest appeal to authority, the moral authority of a infinitely just and infallible God. All moral arguments raised in the Bible function along the lines of an authoritative instruction, not the empirical merits of reciprocity, normative prescription and proscription, social justice (though clearly, most were inspired directly by the mores of these near-tribal Bronze Age civilizations). I'm sure that many theological scholars will refer the rather fluid nature of the early Bible (and the early Koran), but I will disagree that it is not an 'issue'. If we're at the point where we're claiming that some portions of the Bible are not the word of God, are not 'divinely inspired', then it throws into question all other pieces. At what point can one tell that it's God speaking and not a person from three thousand years ago writing his opinion on the proper way to manage your slaves? If that person is not divinely inspired (but their writing is still gathered in the Bible) how does that create any authority to the supposed witness of the life of Abraham, to Moses, to Jesus of Nazareth? A law book shifts and changes to meet the mores of its people, but that's not what an infallible divine law book does. People have tried their best to interpret it to whatever best suits the social climate of the age, and I find this completely lacking in integrity.

My neat and tidy worldview only requires that if one calls themselves a follower, member, adherent to an ideology, they actually subscribe to the fundamentals of that ideology, otherwise they are not actually followers thereof. I can think of the five, maybe six ideological constructs I would invest myself as being a part of, and if you were to witness me disagreeing with their core fundaments, I would expect you to say that I did not actually adhere to it. An atheist who believes in deities some of the time, a rationalist who believes sometimes things break the laws of physics because of an invisible, unmeasurable force. I agree with a few moral lessons taught throughout the Bible on humanist grounds, but not because of the moral authority thereof, and therefore I am not a Christian, because the moral authority of God's word is a fundamental value of Christianity. To say I were a Christian while doubting or disagreeing with the fundamental values of it... I would feel extremely wrong. I don't know what to make of self-professed Christians who disagree with the core fundaments of Christian doctrine, whether publicly in words or privately in feelings and actions. And I know they exist, I know they make up the large majority of the faith because I'm friends with several.

It seems odd to get defensive about the portrayal of Conservatives in pop culture and then imply that liberals don't like the Constitution. That seems really hypocritical to me. And, as others have said, Lincoln and the Republican Party of that era were liberals. Now maybe refrain from making general insults about liberals in your thread in which you take issue with people making general insults about conservatives.

No portion of the Bible is the direct word of God. It is all divinely inspired, but it is all the words of men interpreting that divine inspiration. The Bible is not an infallible book of divine law. Your primary mistake seems to have been believing the fools who say it is and then judging an entire religion based on that sole misconception. You and I don't understand why a person would call himself or herself a Christian while doubting or disagreeing with Christianity's fundamental values, but that's only because we've never been in the position of a Christian experiencing a crisis of faith during which they're not yet ready to completely jettison their belief system and community.

To return to the subject of your neat and tidy worldview, it seems to not allow for human self-contradiction for any reason, which is troublesome, because humans are constantly contradicting themselves.

Under such a definition; the Bible is not the word of God, it is flawed and fallible and the prose within it is the whims of 3rd century men... under this definition, I wonder how anyone justifies using the Bible as a moral authority. Clearly it doesn't for me, but I have this sneaking suspicion that most Christians believe that the commands Jesus says in it are things that the actual divine representation of God on earth said, and therefore have moral authority, rather than look at them through the lens of social justice.

And I actually do understand why someone would continue calling themselves a Christian and that's exactly it; social pressure and the refusal to believe that people they like could be either lying (intentionally or in ignorance) to them their entire life. Because that was my experience. It was not rational thinking, it was childlike confusion, it was in fact self-contradiction and that is why it was a negative experience. The neat and tidy worldview in fact does not allow for self-contradiction, because why would anyone want it to? Why would anyone prefer contradictory statements that are both taken as truth, why would anyone prefer hypocrisy to integrity? Contradiction is not a positive experience and it does not lead to positive outcomes.

I mean, if you don't care to see the rest of the story if it might not turn out the way you want it, then just quit playing I would say. If you're already worried about being offended then I would assume it might not be worth it.

I feel like that dude is living in a world all his own if he thinks the modern American Republican party has been unjustly labeled and accused of being "conservatives" in the context of American politics. You can't use yourself as an example of what "conservatism" is when the general idea of "conservatism" is being publicly displayed by this year's CPAC. So much for rebranding their message.

Can you provide examples of good extremism based on 'good thing' fundamentals?

I won't pretend to be a scholar or a know it all but clearly the human race has a severe tendency to get carried away with good things and turn them into horrible regimes.. can't think of one example of keeping a good thing good in the history of this world that I know of.

For example, I recently got linked by an Indian friend to watch a movie about Islam called The Message and I realized that when the religion was first bestowed, it really was a simple doctrine of ethics and justice that turned the foul jungle that was the Arab peninsula into a fair and orderly region, and now that part of the world has some really crazy shit in the name of Islam. I'm not an expert on that religion nor am I hating on it, all religions get fucked up and oppressive I'm not singling out moslems, I'm just giving the latest example from my observations.

Pulling directly from Sam Harris' example, he mentioned how religious fundamentalism does not directly correspond to violence, _unless violence is a part of the core fundaments of that religion_. As in, violence is not the result of Christian/Islamic/Jewish fundamentalism, but the fundamentals of the Abrahamic faiths. In comparison, Sam Harris mentions the Jains, an Indian faith whose core fundamental values are of non-violence towards all living things. There are Jains who literally drink water through cheesecloth for fear of accidentally swallowing and killing a bug. As in, the more fundamentalist and extreme a Jain becomes, the less dangerous they are to anyone else in the world. This where I disdain the idea of 'moderates'. What is a moderate Jain? One who doesn't follow the tenets of Jainism? At such a point when we have a violent Jain when Jainism is fundamentally non-violent can it be said they are a Jain at all?

As I said, consider a fundamentalist atheist. Atheism in its fundamentals does not prescribe or proscribe violence or any attitude beyond "there exists no deities". Somebody abiding by the core fundamentals of atheism believes in no deities. Atheists may also hold to violence or non-violence, because it doesn't conflict with the fundamentals of atheism. But if they were to believe in deities briefly of when it's socially convenient, would they be an "atheist moderate" or not an atheist at all?

The term 'fundamentalist' and it's modern conception as violent and dangerous actually exist from a secular moral standpoint. "Fundamentalism" in the incorrect popular sense only applies in cases where the belief in question violates secular mores. In this same case, 'moderation' means dropping or violating the fundamentals of that belief system when they violate secular mores. "Christian moderates" and "Muslim moderates" and "socialist moderates" and whatever else you want, is applied to people who do not actually follow the fundamentals of those philosophies in order to fit into secular mores. At such a point, when do they qualify as that group at all? A Christian who doesn't believe the Bible's commands when they conflict with secular morals, at what point are they a "Christian moderate" or not a Christian at all? An egalitarian who agrees with inequality when social trends deem it to be acceptable, thereby breaking the fundamental rules of egalitarianism, are they a 'moderate' or not an egalitarian at all?

You assume 2 things that I think are hardly set in stone, or at least you haven't been able to establish them as such.

1: the bible provides definitive, specific 'rules' (fundamentals you'd call em, but correct me if I'm wrong)

2: real and current 'situations' are simple (ie. they occur in a vacuum)

I believe both to be untrue. Let's take lying as an example. Although one might assume that the bible is clear on a subject like this, it actually isn't. There's plenty of stories condemning lying and deceit, but there's also plenty of stories where lying and withholding the truth are applauded. Whether or not it's a rule/fundamental for christians to never lie is very much up for debate.

But let's assume this particular fundamental is actually true and someone has told a lie. Has he sinned? Yes... if the telling of the lie was the only thing going on. But one might've told a lie to prevent some other evil (which he deems greater) from happening. The fundamental of not lying might at some point be directly opposed to the fundamental of not killing or whatever.

At the end of the day things are almost never as simple as your neat and tidy worldview would require them to be. Both in dogma and in everyday practice. You call it hypocrisy, I'd call it reality. This lack of nuance or critical thinking about what one believes to be a fundamental is what I believe fundamentalism to be, and I try hard as I can to not be a fundamentalist in that sense. Yet I have no problem calling myself a christian.

What, exactly, it means to be a christian to me is all but clear cut. I'm 28, I've actively studied the bible for the better part of my life and I still have no idea what the fuck I'm doing :D

That's not to say christianity doesnt offer any fundamentals, but these are never specific and always appeal to personal motivation and morality more than specific actions.

Well, actually, 1 is explicit in the nature of the Bible. It literally gives commands from God's own mouth, all of the words contained within act as authority only under the pretense that they are all God's words. And 2 is not relevant, especially 'current'. A command given by a being who wields absolute moral authority and who exists at all points in space and time simultaneously does not change depending on the social mores of that era, or the moral ambiguity of a lived situation. The Bible is not a morally relativistic document. It's authority does not come from its 'appeal to personal motivation', it comes from it directly being the word and law that an omnipotent and omniscient desert ghost gave to a group of illiterate sheepherders three thousand years ago. A book that does not allow you to pick a la carte the social prescriptions you find tolerable at this point in time.

Using an example of where the Bible is completely contradictory does not somehow refute the argument that to believe in something, you must believe in its core fundaments. Generally, people may claim admission to an ideology and then act in a contradictory manner, this is them not actually following the ideology, or only doing so when its convenient. Explaining and giving examples how the Bible is inherently contradictory only reveals Christianity to be contradictory, it doesn't change the nature of how we interact with ideology, it only reveals that ideology to be inherently contradictory.

There is in fact no 'lack of critical thinking', the critical thinking has actually been done and this is an application of critical thinking. That in order to call yourself X you actually need to believe the things that are conditional to being X and act in such a manner to follow them. Your version of 'reality' is in fact, complete conscious hypocrisy. It's a conscious refusal to live by the 3rd century rules Christianity chose for itself, and a simultaneous refusal to leave an ideology whose fundamentals you apparently find rather odious. I would never call myself by any ideology that I didn't want to follow to the letter; I don't want to start violence with any innocent person, but I'm not a pacifist, because I don't want to actually follow the fundamentals of pacifism. But here's the thing, I can still hold my feelings on non-violence as my own without being a pacifist. The inclusion into the 'pacifist' ideology is not more important to me than the actual meaning of the ideology. So why do people want to be included as Christians and then balk at following the rules that defines Christianity?

Just play the game you hippie.

I'm pretty sure you can see yourself how ridiculous and, in fact, contradictory that sounds. If you cant, well then nevermind me. Maybe this'll help you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking

Anyway, I merely wanted to point out that your neat and tidy worldview, if not plain wrong, at least isn't common ground. If your only reaction to that are demeaning remarks about my religion an nonsensical statements like the above: more power to you. Though I'd hope that you'd actually think about what arguments I brought forward and come up with some of your own, that would, in fact, require critical thinking on your part so it might be a tall order.

Thanks for staying classy, and have fun ignoring everything I've said. It's obviously the only rational thing to do.

@thetenthdoctor: If one listens to the various interviews with Ken Levine it is clear he is a dystopian. That is, someone who believes any attempt at founding a utopian society will break down into dysfunction and tyranny of those who define the ideal around which the utopian is built. In Bioshock and Bioshock 2 the utopian ideal was the Objectivism of Ayn Rand which was prominent in the 1950s, hence the setting. In BI the ideal that is being attack is the imperial exceptionalism ( that is the believe that American Exceptionalism should be expressed through conquest) and racial purity that was prominent in the late 1800s and early 1900s. What I find curious is that Objectivism is very close to the central philosophies of modern conservatism yet you enjoyed the games built on a dystopian view of Objectivism, while racial purity and imperial exceptionalism is not central to modern conservatism and you object to a dystopian view of those.

@jasmovt: A small correction - BioShock 2 concerns itself with collectivism.

As I said earlier, I'm over my concern. I'm near the end of the game now and really enjoying it.

1 was a criticism of Objectivism taken to vicious extreme, 2 was a criticism of Collectivism overdone, and 3 has been equally damning of extreme Nationalism and populism. The Vox are portrayed just as bad (if not worse), so my initial fear it would be one sided has been assuaged.

Sarcasm is a refuge.

There in fact is nothing contradictory about thinking critically and then applying your reasoning. If the application of critical thinking could somehow contradict the act of analysis, it would logically require that we think critically about a situation until we reach a conclusion, think critically of our conclusion until we've reached a conclusion about our conclusion, think critically of our conclusion to our previous conclusion until we reach a third conclusion, and so on. Instead of throwing out vague condemnations of method, you should attempt to focus on the actual crux of the argument; to follow the fundamentals of an ideology is a necessary function of identifying as a follower of it, to reject those fundamentals is to reject the ideology itself. To follow any ideology with integrity is to unavoidably adopt a fundamentalist view towards it; a 'moderate' view is a rejection of the actual fundamentals of the ideology and thus a rejection of the ideology.

Whether my argument is 'common ground' is irrelevant, this is an ad populum fallacy. I've made no 'demeaning' remarks about whatever your religion is, remember that it was you who called the Bible inherently contradictory. You cannot state it as fact and then excoriate me for restating it. In fact, it's been you besmirching your religion as being both inherently contradictory and morally relativistic, two things it demands by authority it is not. And you settle the paragraph with a smarmy personal attack. How droll.

Once again, sarcasm is a refuge. You can choose to dwell in it or actually meet an argument with a counterargument rather than fallacy and pretense.

I know I am posting this a little after it has come out and also without reading the posts above, but what you're worried about is definitely not happening. As someone who has beaten the game.

Yea. It's very even handed.