In this episode of Walt Right Perspectives I am joined by Joel Carini, a philosopher and theologian in the Calvinist Protestant tradition.
He runs a page here on Substack called The Natural Theologian—give him a follow!
Topics include:
Joel’s specific doctrinal background and current beliefs
The Problem of Evil
Free Will as a gradient vs. a discrete thing
Humans as categorically distinct from other animals
Free will as freedom from animal impulse / instinct
How to escape dopamine traps
Technology makes you less of a civilized human and closer to a beast or a god
How Jordan Peterson interrupted anti-Christian impulse by communicating Jungian appreciation for religion to the masses
Primordial knowledge and the collective unconscious
Joel’s attempt to create a non-schoolmarmy Christianity
What does Christianity offer a young man?
Christian restraint - Was Jesus a soyboy?
Christian impulse is healthy in repressing urge of young men to fight and die
Downsides of purity culture and necessity of tradeoffs
Walt’s Traditionalist degeneracy — in a more sexually conservative society you can get transgressive appeal from less dysgenic / dangerous degeneracy
Winner-takes-all nature of pagan / classical society vs. Christian “safety net”
Negative prestige implications of sexual conservatism as a huge obstacle
You need loose women to enable virtue in higher tier women
How pro-life maximalists ended up getting babies killed
The decline / degradation of marriage as a social institution
Is marriage even possible in a technologically modern world?
Concubinage as modern manifestation of traditional femininity
Joel’s essay Toward a Religious Right
Christian egalitarianism as a cope vs. impulse for socialism / leveling
How religion can be useful to atheists
Impulse of some Christians to retreat from society as form of nihilism
BAPist vitalism vs. racial nationalism
Normies have an ingroup preference and religious impulse and don’t develop a purist fundamentalist or racial nationalist ideology
The world forces you into racial identitarianism in some situation (e.g. prison)
Walt’s desire for a moderate and mainstream political whiteness
Civicmindedness is easy to achieve in a homogenous society
Everyone—even white nationalists—likes when black people agree with them
Black churches are black nationalist (or racially particularist) organizations
Contra GOP retconning, MLK was a black nationalist and a communist
Liberals recognize in a way conservatives don’t that in a modern civilization intelligence makes you more moral
Is there a difference between virtue signalling and good acts that signal virtue?
The intrinsic value of debate and dialectical exploration
Easy come, easy go — you don’t value things you don’t fight for
Transactional negotiation within the friend enemy distinction
Episode 15 : Christian Right vs. Nietzschean Right with Joel Carini