Article Do atheism and social justice activism owe a big debt to Jesus?

[Syne]

It is not fair to demand, through government force, that some people must provide for others. Nor is it fair for hiring quotas to trump merit. Human rights are only negative rights, that say what you cannot do to another. Rights are not positive rights, that demand what you must provide for another (which is slavery).

Equity is equality of outcome, regardless of how little time, effort, or skill you apply. That is inherently unfair to those who work hard, and it only incentivizes a race to the bottom.

Again, any time you add a qualifier, like "distributive justice," you are lessening the term. Just basic English. Notice how social justice is only "equivalent to justice itself" "in theoretical terms."

Social justice is just the losers demanding the capable and hard working take care of them. That's because the losers are predominantly on the left, which prioritizes fairness & care to the exclusion of the other foundations of morality. It's an inherently selfish motive, which demands that society care for everyone... so it also cares for you. Otherwise, these social justice warriors would be satisfied with voluntary charity...... like Jesus taught.

[Magical Realist]

Social justice is just the losers demanding the capable and hard working take care of them.

Wow..so it didn't take long for you to expose your true bigoted and racist colors. So black people or immigrants or single moms or the disabled or the elderly or the homeless or the mentally ill or veterans needing help with getting jobs or good housing or healthcare or education is really just due to them being "losers" wanting the hard working to take care of them? You're a disgusting pig, you know that? Calling the oppressed lazy and selfish is pretty much oppression of these people in action, stereotyping them as morally inferior or stupid just like they have always been portrayed. Pretty sure you don't know any of these people or you'd know they are just innocent human beings like everyone else. You really should read more about Jesus to see how he treated the oppressed. You might just discover a new side of yourself, if it even exists that is.

[confused2]

Probably a different Jesus being referred to here..

Given Jesus’s own quite specific announcement that his return in glory would involve literal damnation for people who had refused to feed the hungry, water the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, and visit the sick or imprisoned (Matthew 25:31-48),

[Syne]

Social justice is just the losers demanding the capable and hard working take care of them.

Wow..so it didn't take long for you to expose your true bigoted and racist colors. So black people or immigrants or single moms or the disabled or the elderly or the homeless or the mentally ill or veterans needing help with getting jobs or good housing or healthcare or education is really just due to them being "losers" wanting the hard working to take care of them? You're a disgusting pig, you know that? Calling the oppressed lazy and selfish is pretty much oppression of these people in action, stereotyping them as morally inferior or stupid just like they have always been portrayed. Pretty sure you don't know any of these people or you'd know they are just innocent human beings like everyone else. You really should read more about Jesus to see how he treated the oppressed. You might just discover a new side of yourself, if it even exists that is.

You're imagining things again, as no one said any of that.
You're just failing to realize the simple fact that without "social justice" justice still exists.

Social justice insists on treating people different, based on the color of their skin. Justice treats everyone equally.
Social justice insists on treating people different, based on their sex. Justice treats everyone equally.
Etc., etc., etc...

[confused2]

The cultural christian accepts that Jesus was living in the shadow of an empire where crucifiction was a spectator sport and slavery was essential to the prosperity of the empire. The cultural christian (this one) thinks it remarkable Jesus lasted as long as he did whereas the literal christian accepts everything as part of a plan.

With integrity a cultural christian can say what he/she believes(!) Jesus[2025] would say/do while the literal christian may be left struggling to find relevence in ancient texts.

Without integrity the cultural christian can make up anything and the literal christian can weasel their way through gaps and cherry picking.

In an ideal christian world the punishment for bad actions could be left to god - in the form of eternal torment. In a secular society there is no heaven and hell and policing has to be based on punishment and reward in the here and now. In another thread we might discuss whether Jesus[2025] transported into a democracy might be prepared to lay less emphasis on heaven and hell and more on creating a better society using the tools available now.

For those unable to read between lines .. going back to the OP ..
This atheist thinks atheism and social justice activism do indeed owe a big debt to Jesus.

[Syne]

God has always used good men to stop and destroy bad men. You can't let bad men run amok without risking the safety of women and children.

[Magical Realist]

Social justice insists on treating people different, based on the color of their skin. Justice treats everyone equally.
Social justice insists on treating people different, based on their sex. Justice treats everyone equally.
Etc., etc., etc...

SJ only makes equal what society has already made unequal. Racial and ethnic profiling in jobs and law enforcement and housing. Lower wages for women for the same jobs as men. Single mothers living in poor and crime-ridden neighborhoods. etc etc etc.. That's what equity means:

"The term “equity” refers to fairness and justice and is distinguished from equality: Whereas equality means providing the same to all, equity means recognizing that we do not all start from the same place and must acknowledge and make adjustments to imbalances. The process is ongoing, requiring us to identify and overcome intentional and unintentional barriers arising from bias or systemic structures."--- https://www.naceweb.org/about-us/equity-definition

[Syne]

The gender pay gap is a thoroughly debunked myth, where proponents moronically fail to compare the same jobs and the hours worked (ignoring the difference in jobs men and women are interested in doing... where when done, women have a slight pay advantage). Government trying to forcefully rebalance "redlining" is what led to the 2008 recession, as they threatened banks into subprime lending. The rebalance of law enforcement has led to a crime surge and under-policing (in those very "poor and crime-ridden neighborhoods" that your single mothers live in). And affirmative action led to new discrimination (which, like new violence, never corrects past offenses, but only begets more of the same).

Equity to the equality of outcome... regardless of where you start, how skilled or talented you are, or even how hard you work. That's a recipe for a race to the bottom, as you disincentivize merit and hard work. Booker T. Washington had it right. You just have to work hard and prove your worth, not, as W.E.B Du Bois argued, that a "talented tenth" should be handed opportunities so they could plea for/lead the rest.

Equity is a moron's solution that only leads to more moronic problems.

[Magical Realist]

Government trying to forcefully rebalance "redlining" is what led to the 2008 recession, as they threatened banks into subprime lending.

So you admit that redlining went on, but blame the 2008 recession on the attempt to correct it? That doesn't sound like a very good argument against trying to correct redlining. Should we have continued slavery because it wasn't economically beneficial to abolish it? Actually, as everyone knows, the collapse of the housing market is what caused the recession.

The gender pay gap is a thoroughly debunked myth, where proponents moronically fail to compare the same jobs and the hours worked (ignoring the difference in jobs men and women are interested in doing... where when done, women have a slight pay advantage).

No it isn't. The evidence for gender-based wage disparity is solid and irrefutable:

"Working women are paid less than working men. A large body of research accounts for, diagnoses, and investigates this “gender pay gap.” But this literature often becomes unwieldy for lay readers, and because pay gaps are political topics, ideological agendas often seep quickly into discussions.

This primer examines the evidence surrounding the gender pay gap, both in the literature and through our own data analyses. We will begin by explaining the different ways the gap is measured, and then go deeper into the data using hourly wages for our analyses,1 culling from extensive national and regional surveys of wages, educational attainment, and occupational employment.

Summary
Why different measures don’t mean the data are unreliable

A number of figures are commonly used to describe the gender wage gap. One often-cited statistic comes from the Census Bureau, which looks at annual pay of full-time workers. By that measure, women are paid 80 cents for every dollar men are paid. Another measure looks at hourly pay and does not exclude part-time workers. It finds that, relative to men, typical women are paid 83 cents on the dollar.2 Other, less-cited measures show different gaps because they examine the gap at different parts of the wage distribution, or for different demographic subgroups, or are adjusted for factors such as education level and occupation.

The presence of alternative ways to measure the gap can create a misconception that data on the gender wage gap are unreliable. However, the data on the gender wage gap are remarkably clear and (unfortunately) consistent about the scale of the gap. In simple terms, no matter how you measure it, there is a gap. And, different gaps answer different questions. By discussing the data and the rationale behind these seemingly contradictory measures of the wage gap, we hope to improve the discourse around the gender wage gap."---- https://www.epi.org/publication/what-is-...s-it-real/

The rebalance of law enforcement has led to a crime surge and under-policing (in those very "poor and crime-ridden neighborhoods" that your single mothers live in).

Cite your sources and show how this was caused by working to eliminate racial profiling.

That's a recipe for a race to the bottom, as you disincentivize merit and hard work. Booker T. Washington had it right

That would be great in a perfect society. Unfortunately we live in one where there exists classes of people who have greater disadvantages and more obstacles blocking access to jobs and housing and education and healthcare and these inequalities need to be remedied. The very fact that you earlier called these classes of the oppressed "losers" shows the persistence of these disadvantages in white prejudice and discrimination based on racism and sexism. So claiming the system is fair and should be based on merit is a lie perpetrated to continue depriving marginalized minorities of being helped out of their disadvantages. It is prejudicial treatment denied to even be happening in order to sustain its systemic continuation.

[Syne]

Government trying to forcefully rebalance "redlining" is what led to the 2008 recession, as they threatened banks into subprime lending.

So you admit that redlining went on, but blame the 2008 recession on the attempt to correct it? That doesn't sound like a very good argument against trying to correct redlining. Should we have continued slavery because it wasn't economically beneficial to abolish it? Actually, as everyone knows, the collapse of the housing market is what caused the recession.

In that period, "redlining" was a misnomer (hence the scare quotes). Banks were not denying loans due to race/ethnicity. They were denying loans to high risks of defaulting on the debt. But the left is always so eager to attribute to immutable characteristics, like race or gender (to create victims they can farm for votes), they ignore the obvious facts that bad loan risks do not make the lenders money. IOW, they caused the Great Recession because they insisted there was racism where there was none. That's what social justice always does... more harm than what it seeks to address.

The collapse of the housing market was directly due to all the defaulting on home mortgages.

The gender pay gap is a thoroughly debunked myth, where proponents moronically fail to compare the same jobs and the hours worked (ignoring the difference in jobs men and women are interested in doing... where when done, women have a slight pay advantage).

No it isn't. The evidence for gender-based wage disparity is solid and irrefutable:

"Working women are paid less than working men. A large body of research accounts for, diagnoses, and investigates this “gender pay gap.” But this literature often becomes unwieldy for lay readers, and because pay gaps are political topics, ideological agendas often seep quickly into discussions.

This primer examines the evidence surrounding the gender pay gap, both in the literature and through our own data analyses. We will begin by explaining the different ways the gap is measured, and then go deeper into the data using hourly wages for our analyses,1 culling from extensive national and regional surveys of wages, educational attainment, and occupational employment.

Summary
Why different measures don’t mean the data are unreliable

A number of figures are commonly used to describe the gender wage gap. One often-cited statistic comes from the Census Bureau, which looks at annual pay of full-time workers. By that measure, women are paid 80 cents for every dollar men are paid. Another measure looks at hourly pay and does not exclude part-time workers. It finds that, relative to men, typical women are paid 83 cents on the dollar.2 Other, less-cited measures show different gaps because they examine the gap at different parts of the wage distribution, or for different demographic subgroups, or are adjusted for factors such as education level and occupation.

The presence of alternative ways to measure the gap can create a misconception that data on the gender wage gap are unreliable. However, the data on the gender wage gap are remarkably clear and (unfortunately) consistent about the scale of the gap. In simple terms, no matter how you measure it, there is a gap. And, different gaps answer different questions. By discussing the data and the rationale behind these seemingly contradictory measures of the wage gap, we hope to improve the discourse around the gender wage gap."---- https://www.epi.org/publication/what-is-...s-it-real/

Who said the data was unreliable? I literally just said that it fails to compare the exact same jobs or the hours worked. If you can manage to read your own citation, you'll notice how neither is mentioned. They do mention occupation, but there are many different job titles and pay scales within any occupation... even with the same education level.

These lefty academics are as out of touch with the real world as those who had to do a study to find out that fat girls get less dates.

The rebalance of law enforcement has led to a crime surge and under-policing (in those very "poor and crime-ridden neighborhoods" that your single mothers live in).

Cite your sources and show how this was caused by working to eliminate racial profiling.

It's a direct result of all the BLM rioting, prosecuting police officers for doing their jobs, attempts to "defund the police," etc., etc.. The overreaction against all police to isolated real racism has made officers gun-shy about doing their jobs in neighborhoods of certain demographics... even the officers of the same race as that neighborhood, as they get accused of internalized racism. Again, the left insisted things were racist, due to supposed "disproportional" injured by police, by like the gender pay gap, they fail (or outright refuse) to account for the higher crime rate in different demographics and the subsequently higher interactions with police.

So again, the social justice "solution" made the problems worse.

That's a recipe for a race to the bottom, as you disincentivize merit and hard work. Booker T. Washington had it right

That would be great in a perfect society. Unfortunately we live in one where there exists classes of people who have greater disadvantages and more obstacles blocking access to jobs and housing and education and healthcare and these inequalities need to be remedied. The very fact that you earlier called these classes of the oppressed "losers" shows the persistence of these disadvantages in white prejudice and discrimination based on racism and sexism. So claiming the system is fair and should be based on merit is a lie perpetrated to continue depriving marginalized minorities of being helped out of their disadvantages. It is prejudicial treatment denied to even be happening in order to sustain its systemic continuation.

There are tons of people, from every sort of demographic and disadvantage who succeed every day. Many of their disadvantages are created or maintained by the social justice left. See the increased crime rates in their neighborhoods, the predatory loans to objectively bad loan risks, the victim/oppressed narrative, welfare, etc..

Again, your tenuous grasp of the English language fails you. I never said actual oppressed people were losers. I said, "Social justice is just the losers demanding the capable and hard working take care of them." The losers are those who fail because they do not work hard, do not develop marketable skills, etc.. Among the social justice morons, this can include everything from someone with a gender studies degree who can't find work to someone who chooses to sell drugs rather than start building a legit work history.

Social justice is an excuse for bad choice. It is not society's responsibility to protect you from your own bad choices.