It seems to me that a number of people just haven’t listened to (or at least don’t understand) some of the points that I’ve recently been making. Certainly people cannot understand my linking current political opinions to twisted Bronze Age ideology.
One of the points that I have faced great resistance to (even, indeed sometimes especially, from atheists) is that YHWHism inclined folk to be pro not anti-slavery. I have compared the shift in thinking post-abolition in America to that going on now as doctors of divinity rush to spin the most convincing yarn for apologists to retail about how the Bible implies that God loves gay people. I imagine that the winner for the way to explain away “kill them both, stone them, their blood is on their hands because what they do is so hateful to the Lord” verses is that Lord YHWH was talking about temple prostitution and it is my prediction that when that is widely adopted into Christianity Christian apologists will make the case that gay rights were championed by Christians because of God’s Love.
In arguing against the asinine proposition that Christianity helped towards abolition because Wilberforce, I have often protested that the metric that we should study to determine the role of YHWHism is the ratio of ratios implied by considering the number of Christians and non-Christians in the abolition movement and the number of Christians and non-Christians in American society at large.
Let’s put aside American attitudes to slavery from yesteryear and consider their attitudes today.
I just discovered these people (I have spent a total of five minutes or less scanning their website):
I am determined (since it is relatively easier to find information about people alive today than it is to find information about people long dead) to discover these four statistics and compare them:
How many YHWHists are there in America?
How many non-YHWHists are there in America?
How many YHWHists are there in Critical Resistance (especially among founding and active members)?
How many non-YHWHists are there in Critical Resistance (especially… ditto)?
When I do, do you suppose that I will find what we all know I think I’ll find?
Will YHWHism be correlated with being against forced labour under threat of years of solitary confinement? Or will YHWHism be seen to incline folk towards, as I have often suggested, extreme views on the subject of crime and punishment?
Is that ratio a useful metric? Should the answer convince either side to reconsider?
And here’s the bet:
I bet that there are a smaller percentage of YHWHists in Critical Resistance than in America the Brave.
Am I guessing correctly or falsely?
I will do the research, but I’m going to leave it till a lot later (at least until this conversation is dead) to do so. I’ll author an OP to list my findings after that. Might take me months. In the meantime, please feel free to find YHWHists and non-YHWHists in that movement to make the case either way and help me with my upcoming research.
Or just offer an opinion on my proposition, my suggested metric or what you think I’ll find.
Andy Hood