Bridge-Building Counter Apologetics - Lindsey Medenwaldt

 
I listened to this entire stream; on 2x speed.

It's really the last 2 minutes or so that I felt like I got something out of it. I mean, you know, it's nice that people are talking about ways to be socially progressive. But to me it's all just pretty basic 1. you can more flies with honey than with vinegar, 2. we should try not to make assumptions about the people we disagree with, and 3. holding ourselves accountable will yield better social fruits than trying to hold others accountable. As for your guest, she seems really nice. I am on the fence about getting her book. I mean, if it's mostly just a book about the benefits of being nice, and a few related points about social/conversational strategies, then it's probably going to be things I already know and (try to) practice. But I do worry it could be (also) something else; something un-wholesome hiding under a layer of icing. I remember when I read the first four chapters of Rebekah Davis' book "Building Bridges Of Love And Understanding". I went into it really hoping to find some common ground and to see a side of her that was not only relatable but thoughtful and progressive. Instead, it ended up being a soft-sell for the necessary virtues of Abrahamic-religious, fundamentalist colonizing. She even expressed the idea (partly in her book; and partly in conversation, when I asked her about part of it) that: If a lot of lives need to get mowed down with violence, and even if a lot of human rights need to be canceled as a means to remake our whole world (on nation at a time) into an ideological paradise where every conversation between every citizen was all about "God", ... then so be it. It made me so sick to my stomach and low-key angry that I just couldn't read any more of it. I am also reminded of how Mike Jones released (and later removed) a short-vid several months back where he said it was a "good thing that the Holocaust happened" because all that suffering and death drove some survivors into Christianity (the very same religion which caused said Holocaust in the first place). It also reminded me of William Lane Craig talking about genocide and child-killing as "good" IF "God" commands it. -a point which is extra-extra troubling in a world where the only way anyone ever has a way of knowing that a "God" commands anything (anything at all).. is either: a.) when a voice in someone's own head says so, or b.) when a voice in a religious leader's head said so. - which is where we got "Bibles" from in the first place. That absolutely IS the foundational premise of the larger collection. And it doesn't take a genius to see how dangerous that foundation is (and has proven to be). It's too much power for mere humans to wield. So we shouldn't be dignifying the premise; no matter who is using it, and no matter how nice they are. For that reason (and several other reasons I've talked about on my channel before), it's the ethical duty of a "God" to speak only and directly for their own self. This is not a trivial point. If your guest (as sweet as she is) succeeded in helping ANY version of Christianity (or any moral-authoritarian ideological movement) become the stablished vast-majority view in this (or any) nation, it would automatically and quickly morph into something she can't even recognize; because: Those would be the people who occupy the seats of government, and whom organize curriculum for children. Power corrupts.

And Absolutely Power, which flows from the idea of "absolute authority", corrupts absolutely. So then, ... even if we were talking something that really IS peaceful (like Jainism) [and not something psychologically violent like Christianity] ... If a new version of Jainists combined Jainism with moral-authoritarians, and with a colonizing "mission" (like Christianity), BUT kept everything else about Jainism the same as it is, ... and then IF they succeeded in ascending into political power, ... the popular interpretations of Jainism would change. it would then morph the-rest-of-the-way into: a socially and politically dystopian nightmare. They'd go from: "harm no living being" to: the realized rationalization that the only way to protect the most sentient-organisms possible ... is in fatally "defending" the majority from the minority. This is why Jainism does not allow for moral-authoritarianism, nor ideological-colonizing, nor an entitled narrative of having greatly more value than anyone else.

Those things go against the core ideal of Jainism. Because those ideas, in practice, must always lead to harming non-consenting people (and other living entities).