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[alynnidalar]

In the case of Catholicism, you have conflicted feelings about the communion. You know it's not cannibalism, but your unconscious can't shake the accusation. You overcompensate by imagining people who celebrate a communion where real cannibalism takes place and are violent towards them to prove that you are better.

Wait, so is it the Protestants who have conflicted feelings about cannibalism (and thus are prone to blood libel conspiracy theories) or is it the Catholics? I initially assumed you meant it was the Catholics, but when I responded to that you said it was about Protestants, and now you're back to Catholics again.

[Travis B.]

It makes no sense for the blood libel to be a Protestant thing, considering that it well predates the Reformation.

[rotting bones]

Both Protestants and Catholics have slightly different conflicted feelings about cannibalism. I discussed some of the details separately. For Catholics, I'm talking about the old blood libel against Jews. For Protestants, I mainly discussed QAnon's cannibal Democrats.

The details will never be identical in two separate cases. Remember, psychoanalysis is unfalsifiable and not a real science. Strictly speaking, the only real science is physics. Nevertheless, we do talk about human motivations, and psychoanalysis is one framework we can use to analyze them systematically.

[rotting bones]

It makes no sense for the blood libel to be a Protestant thing, considering that it well predates the Reformation.

The details differ for Protestants. I started this discussion after reading Raphael's book on QAnon, which compares its cannibal Democrat conspiracy theory to the old blood libel against Jews.

[Travis B.]

The idea that Jews are mocking the Eucharist by substituting blood for wine indicates, though, that Christians (regardless of denomination) are aware of the idea that one could perceive the Eucharist as cannibalistic, however incorrectly, even if they themselves do not see it as anything of the such, such that someone else would allegedly incorporate such cannibalism into their own rites so as to mock them.

[KathTheDragon]

Both Protestants and Catholics have slightly different conflicted feelings about cannibalism.

Who are these mythical Protestants and Catholics? This needs so many citations that the citations need citations.

[rotting bones]

The idea that Jews are mocking the Eucharist by substituting blood for wine indicates, though, that Christians (regardless of denomination) are aware of the idea that one could perceive the Eucharist as cannibalistic, however incorrectly, even if they themselves do not see it as anything of the such, such that someone else would allegedly incorporate such cannibalism into their own rites so as to mock them.

They knew because the Romans accused Christians of cannibalism. If the accusation never occurred to them, there would be no repression. I'm assuming it would be worse after Protestantism because people made such a fuss about it in the ways I indicated.

[Travis B.]

This probably needs citations, but the fact that Protestants shied away from transubstantiation implies that they did not like the idea that the Eucharist could even suggest the idea of cannibalism to the point that they changed a central rite of Christianity to avoid the idea of cannibalism altogether, to make it clear that the Eucharist was actually just symbolic of Christ and that the bread and wine were not actually the body and blood of Christ.

[rotting bones]

Both Protestants and Catholics have slightly different conflicted feelings about cannibalism.

Who are these mythical Protestants and Catholics? This needs so many citations that the citations need citations.

Be more specific about what you need citations for.

Catholics regarding the old blood libel against Jews:

The way repression works is that you have conflicted feelings about something, say your father. You are supposed to love him, but you hate him when he hits you. You overcompensate to make up for your negative feelings by saying you have infinite love for him.

In the case of Catholicism, you have conflicted feelings about the communion. You know it's not cannibalism, but your unconscious can't shake the accusation. You overcompensate by imagining people who celebrate a communion where real cannibalism takes place and are violent towards them to prove that you are better.

Protestants regarding QAnon's blood libel against Democrats:

I don't understand my mistake, but whatever.

Obviously, Catholics would be susceptible to this interpretation too, only to a lesser degree.

Protestants really hated the Catholic interpretation, so their feelings were conflicted. But you're saying that because they didn't believe Catholics were literally cannibals, these conflicted feelings couldn't be related to the blood libel.

That would make sense if I were arguing that the QAnon people are good Christians, but I don't think it's a good argument when we're discussing conspiracy theorists. I will try to explain why. Since I'm sleep-deprived, let me know if I stop making sense.

1. It doesn't matter what theologians believed. The words that Protestants literally use say that if Catholics believe what they believe, then the communion is cannibalism. My link suggests this has happened at least once. Pathological mentation uses the outer forms of words and objects and the shallow feelings they evoke as focal points, not their deep inner meanings. If these people cared about deep inner meanings, they wouldn't imagine their neighbors are cannibals!

2. QAnon is trying to establish a narrative where good is victorious over evil in defiance of the facts. Protestants wanted to displace the Catholic narrative. Both fights are about narratives. QAnon by and large takes no action. (Here, there is an irrelevant difference from Protestants, who did much more actual fighting than QAnon.)

3. We are literally dealing with a case where people looked at a long-established rite, decided that the interpretation verged on cannibalism, and for this and other reasons, violently changed the narrative. Cannibalism of whom? Jesus for Christians, and children for the lunatics. I can't presume to speak for Christians, but I would imagine that the feelings of innocence evoked by Jesus and children, while not identical, are close enough that shallow people are likely to displace emotions originally directed at one to the other.

Google is your friend.

[KathTheDragon]

Ah, yes, citing your own statements in support of yourself, when I'm already doubtful, is so convincing. Anyway, saying "Protestants believe X" needs some refinement when I know a whole church full of protestants that do not, and from what I can find out this is very typical.

[Travis B.]

I do have to say that Gedankenexperimente are not always the most reliable ways of coming to conclusions...

[rotting bones]

Ah, yes, citing your own statements in support of yourself, when I'm already doubtful, is so convincing. Anyway, saying "Protestants believe X" needs some refinement when I know a whole church full of protestants that do not, and from what I can find out this is very typical.

Do you get a kick out of pretending to misunderstand me? I don't see how I could be clearer in asking you what you need citations for. And I already explained that QAnon theorists are sick people building a conspiracy out of Protestantism. They are not good Protestants.

After writing enormous paragraphs and quoting them so you don't have to go look for them, not only have you not read anything I said, you are pretending that I'm citing myself. This laziness and/or dishonesty is making me angry. How would you like it if I ignored everything you said and pretended that this post pushes a QAnon conspiracy theory?

Don't be an idiot, Kath. Democrats are obviously not cannibals. No, stop it, Kath. Your vague mental associations are not facts.

[rotting bones]

I do have to say that Gedankenexperimente are not always the most reliable ways of coming to conclusions...

The reliable way of coming to conclusions is to model QAnon theorists at the level of particles and run a physical simulation. This is completely out of the question, leaving us with my method.

[Travis B.]

I do have to say that Gedankenexperimente are not always the most reliable ways of coming to conclusions...

The reliable way of coming to conclusions is to model QAnon theorists at the level of particles and run a physical simulation. This is completely out of the question, leaving us with my method.

One could track down the words of actual QAnon theorists themselves and use them as a starting point, rather than trying to derive things from first principles via Gedankenexperiment.

[rotting bones]

One could track down the words of actual QAnon theorists themselves and use them as a starting point, rather than trying to derive things from first principles via Gedankenexperiment.

My thought experiments are based on the words of QAnon theorists that were quoted in the book Raphael recommended. For example, I proposed an association with Christianity because QAnon theorists associate themselves with Christianity.

[KathTheDragon]

Do you get a kick out of pretending to misunderstand me?
...
No, stop it, Kath. Your vague mental associations are not facts.

The last time someone pulled this on me I laughed and ignored them. I at least already know you so I won't do that, but please don't accuse me of willful ignorance. I'm replying according to how I'm reading your posts.

If I must spell it out: stop overgeneralising by saying "Protestants believe X", "Protestants have X feelings about Y". You do not mean all Protestants. Stop talking as if you do.

Regarding anything you've said around QAnon: I don't care. I have no idea why you brought it up, but it has no importance to me. Nothing I'm saying to you is about QAnon.

[Ares Land]

There are several issues here.

You should take psychoanalysis with a solid grain of salt. It's not uninteresting, but generally unscientific. (Social sciences are psychology are sciences. Psychoanalysis mostly isn't.)

You are mixing very different things under the 'Christian', 'Protestant', 'Catholic' bags. No. The people who come up with QAnon conspiracy theories are not representative of Christianity. They probably suffer from paranoid schizophrenia and a fairly long list of other hangups. Or they're just con men. However you may analyze them, the results aren't applicable to all Christianity.

The people who buy into the QAnon theories, to varying degrees, probably have a whole different set of hangups that can't be generalized to all Christians, or all Protestants. The results wouldn't even be generalizable to all QAnon believers, since not everyone believes in the same package of theories, and there's a lot of variations in motives.

Speaking in scientific terms, you're formulating an hypothesis, and testing it. As it happens, no, most Christians see no connection at all between cannibalism and communion.
You could argue that subconsciousally they do, but that's an unfalsifiable, and so useless hypothesis.

[rotting bones]

The last time someone pulled this on me I laughed and ignored them. I at least already know you so I won't do that, but please don't accuse me of willful ignorance. I'm replying according to how I'm reading your posts.

If I must spell it out: stop overgeneralising by saying "Protestants believe X", "Protestants have X feelings about Y". You do not mean all Protestants. Stop talking as if you do.

Regarding anything you've said around QAnon: I don't care. I have no idea why you brought it up, but it has no importance to me. Nothing I'm saying to you is about QAnon.

Oh, sorry about that. I didn't bring up QAnon. Raphael was already discussing a book about them.

And no, QAnon is obviously not representative of all Protestants or all Christianity. I'm only assuming that their justifications are related to Christianity because they say so. They could be lying, but I've assumed they're telling the truth about that.

Think of a Venn diagram with a large circle representing Christians and another large circle representing sick people. There is a teardrop (ish) shape where the two circles intersect. The QAnon people are a very small circle that is mostly, but not entirely, inside this teardrop shape. The original core followers of QAnon are an even smaller circle that is entirely inside the teardrop shape.

I know I said I was bitching about religion. That was a stupid joke.

[rotting bones]

There are several issues here.

You should take psychoanalysis with a solid grain of salt. It's not uninteresting, but generally unscientific. (Social sciences are psychology are sciences. Psychoanalysis mostly isn't.)

I don't believe that scientific psychology is a real science either. Please don't ignore the 3 reasons I'm about to list to justify this opinion: 1. Scientific psychology is greatly influenced by psychoanalysis. 2. We recently found out that it routinely uses bad statistics. 3. In light of reason 2, I think the sample sizes are too small for it to be a strict generalization of physics.

Having said that, I'm not against the practice of scientific psychology. I just think that its claims of superiority over psychoanalysis are exaggerations.

You are mixing very different things under the 'Christian', 'Protestant', 'Catholic' bags. No. The people who come up with QAnon conspiracy theories are not representative of Christianity. They probably suffer from paranoid schizophrenia and a fairly long list of other hangups. Or they're just con men. However you may analyze them, the results aren't applicable to all Christianity.

The people who buy into the QAnon theories, to varying degrees, probably have a whole different set of hangups that can't be generalized to all Christians, or all Protestants. The results wouldn't even be generalizable to all QAnon believers, since not everyone believes in the same package of theories, and there's a lot of variations in motives.

Speaking in scientific terms, you're formulating an hypothesis, and testing it. As it happens, no, most Christians see no connection at all between cannibalism and communion.
You could argue that subconsciousally they do, but that's an unfalsifiable, and so useless hypothesis.

I honestly have no idea what I could have said that gave people the impression I'm arguing all Christians are conspiracy theorists. I'm not a native English speaker, so if you can point out my mistake, that will be helpful.

[fusijui]

Honestly! guys, what's the second rule of the internet again? Don't feed the trolls.