re: Why do American Christians support Israel?

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In Sweden, for example,

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Try that here.

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What’s the hidden assumption there? The borrowed capital from Christianity: human value and dignity, and that society should flourish.

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First, I don’t have to value anyone’s dignity or their life to abide by these rules. I just simply have to value my own life. Without these rules, I will suffer as much as anyone else. Second, why could this not be rooted any of the other religions that espouse the same, including many that predate Christianity?

Could it be that humans desire to not die and have some semblance of social stability, and they’ve molded various belief systems around that desire?

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What makes you think Stardust must flourish?

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Stardust isn’t sentient. Some of the products of it are.

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Who are you to argue with me?

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Who are you to argue with the people who lived long before either of us and any modern religions who sought similar things? Did they come up with this Christian worldview by looking into the future?

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All you have is preference, societal convention.

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Sure, but the alternative is societal collapse. This is true regardless of what worldview you use to arrive at the conclusion. The only difference is you make unfounded assumptions about where that worldview originated.

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Try that here.

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We have essentially the same enlightenment produced, macro cultural norms as they do. This conversation isn’t about implementing Swedish policy here or vice versa, it’s about the nature of respective worldview, where they come from and what they produce.

In America the numbers are similar, Sweden just has the most comprehensive data on the topic

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Why are you saying that human beings should be the ones that flourish, who are the random results of evolutionary processes, and not dogs and snails and horses? Why aren’t you fighting for them? Why are you fighting for humans?

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Because I’m a human and not a dog or a snail or a horse. And if I were such a creature, I’d lack the cognitive capability of even pondering the question. Snails and dogs and horses don’t even recognize their own existence, they are not sentient beings. I care about humans because only humans are troubled with the issue to begin with, and because we’re all programmed to work towards our own survival. Our behavior is dictated by millions of years of evolutionary selection for certain traits.

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and you're trying to claim religion produces murderers because Sweden

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Wrong, I’m saying religion doesn’t prevent violence. THAT’S the point, not that increased rates of violent crime are caused by religion. Other things such as poverty, wealth and education also correlate with religiosity and are more directly related to the perceived correlation between religiosity and crime. It’s obviously not the religion (in most cases, with obvious exceptions most commonly seen in Islamic extremism) that accounts directly for the violence.

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It sure ain't Christian culture here that produces violence.

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I never claimed otherwise, I was arguing against the claim that only a Christian worldview is what prevents everyone from being a violent criminal on a whim.

Do you preach at an atheist church?

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What is it that tells use to keep babies with mental and physical defects alive?

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In most cases, the societal consequences of not doing so. When society allows us to avoid this, such as with early detection followed by abortion, the data shows the majority of people take the out. Yes, even a large percentage of Christians. But the social consequences of killing a 3 month old with autism or Down syndrome generally outweigh the benefits of doing so, and so we cover ourselves with the veil of altruism at that point. The reality is that most such parents would opt out of this given a realistic choice free of consequence. A majority of human societies in history discarded “defective” infants and children pretty readily unless they came from high social classes.

It’s not a fun thing to talk about, but reality doesn’t care about our feelings as they say. It’s why religion is so much more comfortable to believe.

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In most cases, the societal consequences of not doing so

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You're chasing your tail. There are societal consequences because people care about it, but your worldview doesn't explain why they care about. Presumably even you care about, but you can't explain why. They are unquestionably a drag on society if you take morality out of the equation. If evolutionary pressures were really about society thriving we'd be letting them die as babies.

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Presumably even you care about, but you can't explain why.

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My rational brain understands we’d be better off not devoting resources to these individuals. My monkey brain has evolved under selective pressure for some semblance of human empathy so that I don’t go around killing everyone I meet (as previously discussed). What we call morality absolutely has evolutionary roots. That doesn’t mean it’s always rational. The same reason why I have the ability to feel compassion for my fellow man that leads to productive societies always leads me to feel objectively unjustified compassion for individuals who are a net drain on society.

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If evolutionary pressures were really about society thriving we'd be letting them die as babies.

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They’re about staying alive and reproducing. I cannot reproduce from prison or if society falls apart entirely and we all die. The reason laws work is because we have an evolutionary aversion to being locked up, being executed by the state or society collapsing. Those who cannot abide by basic societal structures and laws have their traits, such as excess aggression, selected against because they won’t reproduce as well as the rest of us. Over time this weeds out the genetic tendency towards certain behaviors.

Guys can we get back on the Israel topic I think this thread got derailed somewhat I was having an entertaining time reading about the Israel Palestine conflict but I fear we won’t get back to it.