Thread by @shadihamid

If you missed it, episode 2 of my new podcast with @dmarusic—The Wisdom of Crowds 👇

We discuss mass shootings, similarities (or lack thereof) between Tunisians who joined ISIS and white nationalists, and "wokeness" as religion: soundcloud.com/the-wisdom-of-…

@dmarusic A couple listeners have asked about my argument that as soon as you bring “evil” into the conversation, you’re moving into a religious context and you also need to bring God in (regardless of whether or not you think he exists). Is "evil" a useful category in secular politics?

@dmarusic This long and fascinating @guardian essay by the philosopher John Gray is a great place to start. "The west owes its ideas of evil to Christianity, though whether these ideas would be recognised by Jesus...is an open question," he writes

theguardian.com/news/2014/oct/…

@dmarusic @guardian @gdnlongread I don't think one needs to believe in God to believe that conceptions of good/evil are directly or indirectly drawing on fundamentally religious categories. If God exists, then presumably he is the only standard that can be truly *external* to human conceptions of goodness

@dmarusic @guardian @gdnlongread Then evil, to be definitively evil, can only be defined within that rubric. Without God these categories are ultimately arbitrary, constantly changing according to time and place. It may be better that they're arbitrary (from a progressive standpoint) but that's a different issue

@dmarusic @guardian @gdnlongread In this @WisdomCrowdsPod segment, I discuss how woke progressives have no tradition that constrains them that is external to them. It's a self-referential belief system with no end and no limit. Unlike actual religions, it's an endlessly progressive faith soundcloud.com/the-wisdom-of-…