All posts by Wintery Knight

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I want men to stop giving money to Only Fans women

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I have an ongoing disagreement with a female friend about how to restore marriage and family. We both agree on the harm that is done to children by the redefining marriage to remove the traditional marriage norms of exclusivity, permanence, heterosexual romance, etc. But she thinks that it’s better to approach men and get them to change, whereas I think it’s better to approach women and get them to change.

So, in a previous post, I argued that we should focus on telling women to stop choosing hot bad boys, and trying to get them to commit. I said this because I don’t think you can change the hot bad boys and make them commit. They want s3x, and that’s what they are getting when the normal women throw s3x at them. They don’t have to commit if they get what they want before committing.

But is there anything constructive to say to the normal men, who are not getting s3x thrown at them from many different women? Well, yes. There is something to say to them. Although they are not smashing up families, they are doing something wrong. They are giving attention to the wrong sort of women, for the wrong reasons.

Consider this article about the web site Only Fans, from Business Insider:

OnlyFans, the subscription-based adult-entertainment site, boomed during the pandemic.

Revenue at the UK-based company grew by 553% in the year to November 2020, and users spent £1.7 billion ($2.36 billion) on the site, a seven-fold increase, the Financial Times reported.

The site allows creators to sell video clips, photos, and messages directly to subscribers on a pay-per-view basis, with OnlyFans taking a 20% cut. Customers pay between $5 and $50 per month.

User numbers grew from 20 million before the pandemic to more than 120 million over 12 months, as adult entertainers and their customers signed up during lockdowns to share X-rated content.

Only Fans is a web site where the most impulsive and reckless women make easy money by showing off their bodies and performing s3xual activities for subscribers. It’s voluntary, not coerced. They want to get rich quick without having to care about doing well in school or getting a job. They aren’t interested in marriage, because they know that good men don’t marry women who make themselves available to millions of other men. They are not conservative. They don’t want men to lead them. They don’t read anything that makes them wiser or more noble. Men shouldn’t be paying women like this any money, or even giving them attention.

I want normal guys to give better women their time and money – preferably in a relationship, but at least in a friendship. Even if the majority of women are using their young and pretty years to try to land hot bad boys, there are always a minority of women who are busy with better things, like doing computer science degrees. I think that the normal guys should be paying attention to them.

In fact, if I could just convince these normal guys to read more useful stuff, I’m sure they would realize that there is a lot more to a woman than youth and beauty. They would probably find the Only Fans girls pretty repulsive, once they realized how much different women can be if they are trained and prepared to commit to men and respect them. And by trained, I don’t mean “I’m a Christian, you can’t judge my past”. I mean bookshelves of good books, read and highlighted. I mean a public record of conservative Christian achievements.

If normal guys can’t find good young women to pay attention to, then they should try to make friends with older, wiser good women. That way, they won’t be lonely, they will learn something from the older more conservative women , and they will avoid making the wrong sort of women richer. I used to have a half-dozen older women advisors who would fill my head with wisdom chirped out in their cute girly voices whenever I wanted. Getting wisdom from conservative older Christian women is a lot better for me than throwing dollar bills at online strippers, who take your money, but have no interest in getting ready for marriage.

And if a younger woman came along who read good books, was conservative, and wanted marriage and children, you can start the marriage evaluation process. The important thing is to have the money to close the deal on a marriage if you find a real marriage candidate, which is why you don’t waste money on Only Fans women. Good women are the ones who trust you, respect your leadership, and achieve things when you lead and support them.

I don’t really care much about the Only Fans women, but I don’t think that getting attention and money for how you look is good for them in the long run. Women who get attention for stripping and doing s3x acts don’t learn anything that’s useful for them to be content in a stable marriage. They get used to seeing men at their worst, and they lose their ability to trust and bond with one guy. Giving them money to do something temporary that cannot be sustained as their looks fade isn’t good for them either. I don’t think it’s good for society long-term to have a bunch of shallow, immature women voting for bigger government and less liberty when they reach age 32 and can’t find good men to marry them.

Basically, what I would like is for men and women to get better at understanding moral character, religion and relationships, so they can choose quality relationship partners. And the best way to do that is what the Bible recommends – by renewing your mind. And how do you renew your mind? Well, you have to convince yourself that the world works a certain way. And how do you do that? By reading difficult challenging books that show you how to achieve the goals that are best for you, even if you have to sacrifice happiness in the short term. Men and women need to read better books.

I’m going to keep recommending to young people that they try to get out of the chaos of this generation by reading better books. Start with Philippians and John in the Bible. Then, I like “Is God Just a Human Invention?” by Sean McDowell and Jonathan Morrow. Read some Thomas Sowell economics, and some military history. There is no shortcut to valuing good things, and making good decisions. You have to change your mind by keep out the culture’s junk, and putting in the good stuff.

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How will you marry and support a family as a conservative Christian?

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I sometimes feel that I am very weird compared to other people when it comes to work. I have this terrible fear that the secular left will force me to choose between being a Christian and being able to earn enough money to not starve. In fact, this is one of the reasons why I never married, and never had children. And it’s only going to become more difficult for younger Christian men.

Here’s an interesting article that Randy posted from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

It says:

CEOs tripping over themselves to prove how “woke” they are has become de rigueur, but the news that American Express subjected its employees last year to what can only be described as Marxist “re-education” sessions has struck a chord—and rightly so.

[…]It would seem, though, that AmEx doesn’t want to hear any dissent. One ex-employee, Brian Netzel, just filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging that he was fired for voicing his opposition to these sessions.

I’ve been blogging about how people get fired for being conservative and/or Christian from all sorts of big corporations, and not just in Big Tech. Even with good technical skills, it’s challenging to find a job where you can just earn money, and not have to deny your own convictions and worldview. That sort of thing is common in secular left regimes of the past and present, but I’m still getting used to it.

More:

As one of America’s top investigative journalists Christopher Rufo has reported, American Express has demanded that its employees map out their degree of privilege, determine whether they are in an oppressor or marginalized category, and then asks whites to act subordinately to members of minority categories.

AmEx’s workforce has even heard speakers demand that the company discriminate racially by charging black customers lower premiums.

Moreover, the company’s handouts lead employees to the group Critical Resistance, which advocates for the dismantling not just of police but also of the prisons system.

[…]Critical Resistance was founded in 1998 by three committed Marxists: Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Rose Braz. Davis herself ran twice as Vice President on the Communist Party ticket.

American Express also brought in Khalil Muhammad to harangue its long-suffering employees about how capitalism is racist and steeped in “racist logics and forms of domination.”

I’ve written before about how the problems and solutions of BLM / CRT people are different than the problems and solutions of Christians. No Bible-believing Christian can sign off on BLM / CRT. Destroying the family and implementing Marxism are not the Bible’s solutions to the problems of wealth and poverty.

How are Christian men who reject BLM / CRT problems and solutions for the Bible supposed to survive in corporate America? And if they can’t keep a job, then how can they marry and afford to raise children? It seems like the man would have to compromise.

For example, a Christian man who marries and has children might:

  • mitigate job loss risks by cutting back on charitable giving
  • not have a public ministry under his own name
  • not participate in any serious discussions at work
  • learn to compartmentalize their faith, which can lead to secularism and eventually atheism (I’ve seen this happen)
  • be exposed to harm from leftists in community and schools

What makes this situation even harder is that the Christian man is all alone. Most churches have embraced a new feelings-based version of Christianity that agrees with the priorities of woke corporate America. Christians no longer defend the Bible. Instead, the new feelings-based Christianity says that people can do whatever they want and never be judged. There is a horror of making anyone feel bad by not agreeing with them about following their heart. And if that blows up in their faces, then it’s the fault of other people who made better decisions and got better results. This is the new feelings-based Christianity – moral standards and accountability are out, affirmation and non-judgement are in.

The new Christianity teaches that you determine God’s will for your life through your feelings. If it doesn’t work out, then no one can judge you or teach you to do better – because that might make you feel bad. And if you happen to have some abortions, frivolous divorces or fatherless kids along the way? Well, too bad for them – we wouldn’t want to lose our non-Christian friends by warning them about the likely consequences of their actions. The goal of the new Christianity is to never tell anyone that they should obey God instead of doing what they feel like doing. The goal is to feel good and be liked.

As a Christian man, what I have learned is that if I try to promote a Bible-based moral view in public, that not only will there be trouble from the corporate world, but there will also be trouble from the no-judgment Christians. In the corporate world, telling people that their problems are the result of their own actions will get you fired. In the church world, telling a single mother that her problems are the result of her own choices will get you thrown out of the church. You can’t tell people anything that places the blame for their actions on them, even if the Bible agrees with you.

So, as a Christian man, you have to lie about your convictions at work to keep your job, and you have to lie about your convictions in church to avoid the wrath of the feelings-Christians. You can’t teach any exclusive theological truth claims. That’s intolerant. You can’t teach any exclusive moral truth claims. That’s lacking compassion. Just where are Christian men supposed to go to say what we really think?

The no-judgement Christian crowd needs to understand that in order for Bible-based men to marry, they have to be able to hold down a job. We don’t take on additional responsibilities like marriage and children when it is hard enough already to put food on the table for ourselves and still be faithful to the Bible. If feelings-based people want Christian men to marry, they better dump this new feelings-based version of Christianity, and start doing actions to make it safe for Christian men to earn a living without compromising our convictions. Otherwise, Christian women can marry men who don’t have those convictions. See if that works out.

News

What criteria do historians use to get to the minimal facts about the historical Jesus?

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Have you ever heard Gary Habermas, Michael Licona or William Lane Craig defend the resurrection of Jesus in a debate by saying that the resurrection is the best explanation for the “minimal facts” about Jesus? The lists of minimal facts that they use are typically agreed to by their opponents during the debates. Minimal facts are the parts of the New Testament that meet a set of strict historical criteria. These are the facts that skeptical historians agree with, totally apart from any religious beliefs.

So what are the criteria that skeptical historians use to derive a list of minimal facts about Jesus?

Dr. Craig explains them in this article.

Excerpt:

The other way, more influential in contemporary New Testament scholarship, is to establish specific facts about Jesus without assuming the general reliability of the Gospels. The key here are the so-called “Criteria of Authenticity” which enable us to establish specific sayings or events in Jesus’ life as historical. Scholars involved in the quest of the historical Jesus have enunciated a number of these critieria for detecting historically authentic features of Jesus, such as dissimilarity to Christian teaching, multiple attestation, linguistic semitisms, traces of Palestinian milieu, retention of embarrassing material, coherence with other authentic material, and so forth.

It is somewhat misleading to call these “criteria,” for they aim at stating sufficient, not necessary, conditions of historicity. This is easy to see: suppose a saying is multiply attested and dissimilar but not embarrassing. If embarrassment were a necessary condition of authenticity, then the saying would have to be deemed inauthentic, which is wrong-headed, since its multiple attestation and dissimilarity are sufficient for authenticity. Of course, the criteria are defeasible, meaning that they are not infallible guides to authenticity. They might be better called “Indications of Authenticity” or “Signs of Credibility.”

In point of fact, what the criteria really amount to are statements about the effect of certain types of evidence upon the probability of various sayings or events in Jesus’ life. For some saying or event S and evidence of a certain type E, the criteria would state that, all things being equal, the probability of S given E is greater than the probability of S on our background knowledge alone. So, for example, all else being equal, the probability of some event or saying is greater given its multiple attestation than it would have been without it.

What are some of the factors that might serve the role of E in increasing the probability of some saying or event S? The following are some of the most important:

(1) Historical congruence: S fits in with known historical facts concerning the context in which S is said to have occurred.

(2) Independent, early attestation: S appears in multiple sources which are near to the time at which S is alleged to have occurred and which depend neither upon each other nor a common source.

(3) Embarrassment: S is awkward or counter-productive for the persons who serve as the source of information for S.

(4) Dissimilarity: S is unlike antecedent Jewish thought-forms and/or unlike subsequent Christian thought-forms.

(5) Semitisms: traces in the narrative of Aramaic or Hebrew linguistic forms.

(6) Coherence: S is consistent with already established facts about Jesus.

For a good discussion of these factors see Robert Stein, “The ‘Criteria’ for Authenticity,” in Gospel Perspectives I, ed. R. T. France and David Wenham (Sheffield, England: JSOT Press, 1980), pp. 225-63.

Notice that these “criteria” do not presuppose the general reliability of the Gospels. Rather they focus on a particular saying or event and give evidence for thinking that specific element of Jesus’ life to be historical, regardless of the general reliability of the document in which the particular saying or event is reported. These same “criteria” are thus applicable to reports of Jesus found in the apocryphal Gospels, or rabbinical writings, or even the Qur’an. Of course, if the Gospels can be shown to be generally reliable documents, so much the better! But the “criteria” do not depend on any such presupposition. They serve to help spot historical kernels even in the midst of historical chaff. Thus we need not concern ourselves with defending the Gospels’ every claim attributed to Jesus in the gospels; the question will be whether we can establish enough about Jesus to make faith in him reasonable.

And you can see Dr. Craig using these criteria to defend minimal facts in his debates. For example, in his debate with Ehrman, he alludes to the criteria when making his case for the empty tomb.

Here, he uses multiple attestation and the criteria of embarrassment:

Among the reasons which have led most scholars to this conclusion are the following:

1. The empty tomb is also multiply attested by independent, early sources.

Mark’s source didn’t end with the burial, but with the story of the empty tomb, which is tied to the burial story verbally and grammatically. Moreover, Matthew and John have independent sources about the empty tomb; it’s also mentioned in the sermons in the Acts of the Apostles (2.29; 13.36); and it’s implied by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthian church (I Cor. 15.4). Thus, we have again multiple, early, independent attestation of the fact of the empty tomb.

2. The tomb was discovered empty by women.

In patriarchal Jewish society the testimony of women was not highly regarded. In fact, the Jewish historian Josephus says that women weren’t even permitted to serve as witnesses in a Jewish court of law. Now in light of this fact, how remarkable it is that it is women who are the discoverers of Jesus’ empty tomb. Any later legendary account would certainly have made male disciples like Peter and John discover the empty tomb. The fact that it is women, rather than men, who are the discoverers of the empty tomb is best explained by the fact that they were the chief witnesses to the fact of the empty tomb, and the Gospel writers faithfully record what, for them, was an awkward and embarrassing fact.

There are actually a few more reasons for believing in the empty tomb that he doesn’t go into in the debate, but you can find them in his written work. For example, in his essay on Gerd Ludemann’s “vision” hypothesis. That essay covers the reasons for all four of his minimal facts.

So, if you are going to talk about the resurrection with a skeptic, you don’t want to invoke the Bible as some sort of inerrant/inspired Holy Book. You want to look at it as a historical book, and use historical criteria to get to some facts that critical historians would accept. From that, it’s possible to make a case for the resurrection, which is the guarantee that the words of Jesus are authoritative. Including the words of Jesus where he describes the Bible as a whole as God’s revelation of Himself to his creatures.

Here is the approach I use when talking to non-Christian co-workers:

  1. Explain the criteria that historians use to get their lists of minimal facts
  2. Explain your list of minimal facts
  3. Defend your list of minimal facts using the criteria
  4. Cite skeptics who admit to each of your minimal facts, to show that they are widely accepted
  5. List some parts of the Bible that don’t pass the criteria (e.g. – guard at the tomb, Matthew earthquake)
  6. Explain why those parts don’t pass the criteria, and explain that they are not part of your case
  7. Challenge your opponent to either deny some or all the facts, or propose a naturalistic alternative that explains the facts better than the resurrection
  8. Don’t let your opponent attack any of your minimal facts by attacking other parts of the Bible (e.g. – the number of angels being one or two, etc.)

And remember that there is no good case for the resurrection that does not make heavy use of the early creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8. That passages is universally accepted as early, eyewitness testimony from Paul, and represents the core of early Christian beliefs about the death and resurrection of Jesus. Everyone who takes evidence seriously has to account for that early creed, which passes the historical tests I outlined above.

The best essay on the minimal facts criteria that I’ve read is the one by Robert H. Stein in “Contending with Christianity’s Critics“. It’s a good short essay that goes over all the historical criteria that are used to derive the short list of facts from which we infer the conclusion “God raised Jesus from the dead”. That whole book is really very, very good.