Protestants (and Maybe Jews) = Atheists

[Daktoria]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-religion/#3.7

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Gospel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Salamanca

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valladolid_debate

Several months ago, I talked with the admin on Freesteader, and he provided some valuable insight on the Protestant Reformation and Calvinist Heresy. I studied the Protestant Work Ethic in college, but didn't really understand its implications.

The gist of the Protestant Reformation revolves around Luther's assertion that the sale of indulgences were illegitimate because people were called to predestined salvation or not as long as they were faithful. The organization of the Catholic Church was irrelevant because people should be able to worship on their own. Besides, Pope Leo X was a jerk in manipulating all of Europe just to wage the Italian Wars.

I used to think this was brilliant. After all, freedom of assembly would suggest that people should be able to live their own lives. They shouldn't be mandated into association. On top of that, the Protestant Reformation catalyzed universal literacy, and encouraged capitalism on the basis of meritocracy.

However, my position changed after mulling this over for a long time:

1) If people are saved on the basis of predestined calling, that suggests all people aren't created equitably.
2) Meritocracy degrades family values such that parents unsatisfied with their children become entitled to disown them.
3) Universal literacy bestows information to untrustworthy personalities. In turn, they can use knowledge against those attitudes which discovered it.
4) When people realize morality separately, they come to separate conclusions. As Isaiah Berlin put it, this can lead to incommensurable coexistence.

The implication is the destruction of "God" itself as an abstract model of perfection to be aspired to (as Kant justifies in the "Ethical Commonwealth"). After all, these four conclusions all contain a level of social imperfection in them one way or another: all people aren't created equitable, children disowned as unsatisfying, untrustworthy knowledgability, incommensurable coexistence.

What really set me off about this though was studying the Progressive Era, and learning about the liberal Protestant "social gospel", a resurrection of the Protestant Work Ethic into the 20th Century. The social gospel was an excuse used (in conjunction with the Statue of Liberty) to entice Catholic immigrants to move to America, but then forsaken their ethnic political machines in exchange for health care, education, social welfare, and labor unions. Therefore, Catholic immigrants became objectified into forgetting their heritage just so they could perform menial labor so natives didn't have to. I actually pity Hispanics today for falling for the same song and dance. Progressives compromise on the basis of social programs, and in turn, the working class is appeased just so aristocrats can keep their hands from getting dirty.

Furthermore, following the Progressive Era, the United States entered WW1, and ensured the enforcement of the Balfour Declaration - the agreement which established a prototypical Jewish homeland in the British Mandate of Palestine. I suppose this isn't really a surprise because after all, the Protestant Old Testament corresponds to the Hebrew Bible. Furthermore, both Protestants and Jews subscribe to a material interpretation of multiculturalism based on suffering. The Protestant Work Ethic demands that people perform good works before being treated with respect, and the Jewish narrative is one of perpetual nomadic exodus across others' homelands.

This is in contrast to Catholic multiculturalism which began with the Salamanca School in reforming Spanish colonization of the Americas following Cortez and Columbus. It recognized that people are abstractly reasonable, and therefore, regardless of the impressiveness of their civilization, nobody is obligated to endure slavery. In fact, Spain explicitly illegalized the slave trade, and only accumulated African slaves from its British, French, and Portuguese cohorts, all of which had extensive Protestant (or Jewish) connections.

In sum, I can't see why Protestants (or Jews) deserve to be classified as honestly faithful. Their religions are a sham, and tarnish the reputation of others.

[Medius]

Your conclusion really revolves around the idea that Catholicism is "correct". It also assumes that uniformity is more important than tolerance through common ground.

[Daktoria]

[eynon81]

Lutherans believe in predestination and total depravity now?

[Daktoria]

[Boris Johnson]

[The Dharma Bum]

pretty sure the catholic church is all about that there original sin

[Daktoria]

[Daktoria]

[Boris Johnson]