Benjamin Cain
2 min readAug 22, 2024

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You're assuming a centrist viewpoint, according to which everything has roughly an equal number of benefits and downsides, so that any objective representation must be balanced in that sense. That's dubious. Sometimes, the most objective account of something is one-sided to suit the subject-matter. For instance, is Trumpism as beneficial as it is objectionable?

Sure, the butterfly effect indicates that there are usually accidental benefits since the world is complex and chaotic. But no model can capture all those complexities or predict the results of chaos.

In any case, this article incorporates a theme found in others I've written, about Christianity's tragic decline due to its politically necessary betrayal of Jesus's counterculture. So that theme already demonstrates some "objectivity" in your sense, by associating that counterculture with the Axial age and with neoshamanism (another theme in my writing). I don't repudiate the moralistic satire of ancient civilizational values, so I'd count early Christianity as a forerunner of modern secular humanism. Christianity's main benefit, then, was that it paved the way for the modern revolutions of liberalism, although Tom Holland grossly simplifies that connection in his book Dominion, as I show in my two-part review.

I also demonstrate objectivity not so much by pretending Christianity is as beneficial as it is objectionable, but by critiquing secular humanism and modernity too. For instance, I criticize the rosiness of new atheism, contrasting that propaganda with a darker, cosmicist, existentially unsettling naturalism (involving pantheism, transhumanism, and a countercultural perspective). And I wrote a series against neoclassical economics, another that trashes American politics, and another that highlights the tragic heroism of modern progress (due to its apparent unsustainability).

Here are just a few relevant articles on Christianity:

https://medium.com/@benjamincain8/christianitys-betrayal-of-the-axial-age-37a55ddfc172?source=friends_link&sk=882cb3dba529e2be8ca3d8b913596d56

https://medium.com/@benjamincain8/the-mythic-jesus-and-the-fragmentation-of-shamanism-e4f43ba187e3?source=friends_link&sk=7bb8df4030543a29d5a2c7d61a904f4d

https://medium.com/interfaith-now/gods-comedy-and-the-theocrat-s-tragedy-24b191623f93?sk=6dea6f7af60a217cc7a71e6c2532f45b

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Benjamin Cain
Benjamin Cain

Written by Benjamin Cain

Ph.D. in philosophy / Knowledge condemns. Art redeems. / https://benjamincain.substack.com / https://ko-fi.com/benjamincain / benjamincain8@gmailDOTcom

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