We really need to start shoving these people out of an airlock somewhere. I'm not even sure which people, but let's start with the christians and the CNN copy writers, and keep going 'til things start improving.
Please don't paint them all with the same brush. I'm non-religious myself, but I know plenty of good, sane Christians whose views on God and life are open enough to accept scientific evidence and flexible enough to change in the face of it. They're not bad people by any means.
I do acknowledge the difficulty of sorting good christians from bad. So, if the good christians want to save me the trouble by doing their own house-cleaning, I'm happy to outsource the airlocking. Same applies to the muslims, hindus, buddhists, jains, and assorted believers in Special Invisible Space Friends. No organization should be able to demand blanket tolerance simply because its moderate wings can't (or dare not) rein in its radicals.
You mean, like, a regulated group that actually has a concrete definition of who is and isn't Christian that all Christians are going to accept? An organization that encompasses everything from the eclectic Christian-pagans through Unitarian Universalists to the Branch Davidians--or at least whatever examples qualify?
I laugh now.
I laugh really hard.
(Somehow, I am seeing this as even less viable than "tolerant folk need to toss other non-tolerant folk out of the airlock because they both happen to use the same word when referring to themselves, regardless of how radically different the philosophies and behaviours are.")
Good grief, if you want to start with "organizations" which consist of superficial commonalities and radically different philosophies, start with "Americans" or "Canadians" or "British" (I'm not even going to *touch* suggesting "Irish", as it's not even a week after St. Patrick's Day, and I'm sure people aren't finished getting up in arms about the one true meaning of what is and isn't Irish yet). At least there you've got better odds of finding a common definition of who qualifies, if not what they should all be believing.
Look, it's tricky, but christians need to own up for other christians, if only because ostensibly there's the same god at the top of the pile. And if there isn't - if sect A wants to make it clear that they disagree with sect B's bullshit - then they need to start living it.
To take an even larger group than 'christians', I'll take 'men'. The prevalence of male-on-female violence cannot be waved away, by me or anyone else, by saying, 'well, I've never raped anyone, so I don't need to lift a finger or spend a second thought on the topic.' No, sadly, I need to own my maleness and work to mitigate the destructiveness of my borthers, in thought, word, or deed. Same goes for christians.
The trouble is that there's a pretty clear and nigh-universally accepted definition of "men", and it is something you are born to, not something you intellectually accept (yes yes, I realize there is room for a cheap shot at how little thought can go into the process of deciding to be Christian--nonetheless, it is an intangible intellectual/psychological/emotional thing, rather than a matter of biology). That is not true of "Christian". The analogy breaks down.
To hold one person who self-identifies as a Christian responsible for the behaviour of another person who self-identifies as a Christian is, I think, a flawed tactic. If If your analogy didn't break down, it'd be rather like holding one man responsible for the rape that another man committed.
Christians != Fundies. Fundies who think that a thrice-translated document is the literal truth and inerrant (despite having the Aramaic-speaking son of a Jewish carpenter making bad puns that only work in Greek) are a subset, and not a representative sample of the entire set of Christians.
-- Steve doesn't follow any denomination of Christianity, but can work quite readily with the vast majority of the non-Fundie Christians.
'Non-fundie believer' is a contradiction in terms. The belief in a god against all calls for proof, all recourse to reason, and all contrary argument, is fundamental by definition. This leaves the difference between 'fundies' and 'normal' believers as a matter of degree rather than kind, and one I'm inclined to dismiss as PR garnish.
Personally, I support the religious lifestyle choice the way I support fisting or scatophagia - do it if you must, justifiably complain if you're persecuted because of it, but don't you dare wander around and assert its universal validity where I can hear you. Because to do do so is to disrespect my world-view in precisely the way you'd prefer didn't happen to you.
-- Wytchy is not technically an atheist: his greatest fear is that deceptive, jealous, ineffable god(s) do exist and bear any resemblance to their followers.
"Fundie" refers very specifically in this case to those christians who hold the bible to be literally true. You cannot redefine the term and then triumphantly claim that it's "PR Garnish" to claim it as such.
But then, you seem to be a little too radical even for this bitter atheist, so I think I'm going to bow out.
I take your point, but fundamentalism is hardly the sole province of christians. Given that, it cannot be bible-dependent. Given that, it must pertain to the unassailable belief in a divine force, a belief which permits no argument (no matter how politely it does so).
I've never thought of myself as a radical, although perhaps I favor more shocking or sharp-edged ways of expressing my beliefs than is strictly healthy. What I will concede is that the step between privately deciding that there is no god, and publically living out that belief in a way which seems truthful or at least non-deceptive to me, is a short and easily taken one. I find it hard to imagine, though, that atheism could be viewed as anything other than radical by believers. And that is yet another thing that makes them fundies.
(More seriously, since such "proof" is actually impossible BY DEFINITION even when you're not dealing with a hypothetical omnipotence, I would be surprised as well. However, if "you can't disprove it" is reason to believe something, then I invite you to taste my shoes. They prevent cancer!)
You said you acknowledge the difficulty of sorting good Christians from bad, which implies you see a distinction.
You also say that you're inclined to dismiss the distinction between "fundies" and "normal" believers as PR garnish, which suggests that there isn't really any distinction to speak of.
I am a little thrown. Could you clarify what, IYO, are the distinctions and relations between good Christians, bad Christians, fundie Christians, and normal Christians?
I'd have thought it was pretty clear, given harald387's point, but OK, I'll bite.
He made reference to 'good, sane Christians whose views on God and life are open enough to accept scientific evidence and flexible enough to change in the face of it.' That sounds pretty cool. These sound like people who have some whacky beliefs - as whacky as their so-called 'fundie' brethren - but who at least have the decency not to be total dicks about it.
To grab other stuff from elsewhere in my posts, I will suggest that the bad/good division seperates believers who fail to grant the rest of the world the same degrees of tolerance that any group can expect (whether they're furries, scatophagics, or fist-fuckers), from those who do. And by tolerance I mean more than polite restraint; I mean not undermining others' world views by wandering around saying 'I know the Truth, and you don't, and I still love you (even though you're wrong and blind), and I'm going to pray for you.' That's... bullshit, and it's out of line, and believers shouldn't be able to get away with it.
There's also Balaam's talking donkey, and god sending she-bears to eat naughty children, and the strict prohibition agaisnt interfering in a fight between two men by grabbing one's genitals. I swear, you can't make this shit up.
Neither. I actually have a functioning airlock right here and I'm totally serious about throwing christians through it. I've set aside Thursday afternoon - think that'll give me enough time?
What really makes those links awesome are the comments on the second, more detailed, article. 90% of them are angry that the teacher was fired, and none of them seem aware of the difference between 'theory' and the religious insanity that is ID/Creationism.
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Date: 2007-03-21 05:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-21 07:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-21 07:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-22 12:41 am (UTC)Ill do it for free. Hell, for this, ill chip in 25 cents per idiot.
/Cant go any higher than that, after comparing the idiot/bank account ratio.
//Still might need second job.
Organizatio-- oh, that's funny.
Date: 2007-03-22 03:51 pm (UTC)You mean, like, a regulated group that actually has a concrete definition of who is and isn't Christian that all Christians are going to accept? An organization that encompasses everything from the eclectic Christian-pagans through Unitarian Universalists to the Branch Davidians--or at least whatever examples qualify?
I laugh now.
I laugh really hard.
(Somehow, I am seeing this as even less viable than "tolerant folk need to toss other non-tolerant folk out of the airlock because they both happen to use the same word when referring to themselves, regardless of how radically different the philosophies and behaviours are.")
Good grief, if you want to start with "organizations" which consist of superficial commonalities and radically different philosophies, start with "Americans" or "Canadians" or "British" (I'm not even going to *touch* suggesting "Irish", as it's not even a week after St. Patrick's Day, and I'm sure people aren't finished getting up in arms about the one true meaning of what is and isn't Irish yet). At least there you've got better odds of finding a common definition of who qualifies, if not what they should all be believing.
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Date: 2007-03-22 04:23 pm (UTC)To take an even larger group than 'christians', I'll take 'men'. The prevalence of male-on-female violence cannot be waved away, by me or anyone else, by saying, 'well, I've never raped anyone, so I don't need to lift a finger or spend a second thought on the topic.' No, sadly, I need to own my maleness and work to mitigate the destructiveness of my borthers, in thought, word, or deed. Same goes for christians.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-22 04:43 pm (UTC)To hold one person who self-identifies as a Christian responsible for the behaviour of another person who self-identifies as a Christian is, I think, a flawed tactic. If If your analogy didn't break down, it'd be rather like holding one man responsible for the rape that another man committed.
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Date: 2007-03-21 07:39 pm (UTC)-- Steve doesn't follow any denomination of Christianity, but can work quite readily with the vast majority of the non-Fundie Christians.
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Date: 2007-03-21 07:55 pm (UTC)Personally, I support the religious lifestyle choice the way I support fisting or scatophagia - do it if you must, justifiably complain if you're persecuted because of it, but don't you dare wander around and assert its universal validity where I can hear you. Because to do do so is to disrespect my world-view in precisely the way you'd prefer didn't happen to you.
-- Wytchy is not technically an atheist: his greatest fear is that deceptive, jealous, ineffable god(s) do exist and bear any resemblance to their followers.
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Date: 2007-03-21 08:20 pm (UTC)But then, you seem to be a little too radical even for this bitter atheist, so I think I'm going to bow out.
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Date: 2007-03-21 08:27 pm (UTC)I've never thought of myself as a radical, although perhaps I favor more shocking or sharp-edged ways of expressing my beliefs than is strictly healthy. What I will concede is that the step between privately deciding that there is no god, and publically living out that belief in a way which seems truthful or at least non-deceptive to me, is a short and easily taken one. I find it hard to imagine, though, that atheism could be viewed as anything other than radical by believers. And that is yet another thing that makes them fundies.
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Date: 2007-03-21 11:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-22 12:28 am (UTC)(More seriously, since such "proof" is actually impossible BY DEFINITION even when you're not dealing with a hypothetical omnipotence, I would be surprised as well. However, if "you can't disprove it" is reason to believe something, then I invite you to taste my shoes. They prevent cancer!)
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Date: 2007-03-22 12:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2007-03-22 03:58 pm (UTC)You said you acknowledge the difficulty of sorting good Christians from bad, which implies you see a distinction.
You also say that you're inclined to dismiss the distinction between "fundies" and "normal" believers as PR garnish, which suggests that there isn't really any distinction to speak of.
I am a little thrown. Could you clarify what, IYO, are the distinctions and relations between good Christians, bad Christians, fundie Christians, and normal Christians?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-22 04:14 pm (UTC)He made reference to 'good, sane Christians whose views on God and life are open enough to accept scientific evidence and flexible enough to change in the face of it.' That sounds pretty cool. These sound like people who have some whacky beliefs - as whacky as their so-called 'fundie' brethren - but who at least have the decency not to be total dicks about it.
To grab other stuff from elsewhere in my posts, I will suggest that the bad/good division seperates believers who fail to grant the rest of the world the same degrees of tolerance that any group can expect (whether they're furries, scatophagics, or fist-fuckers), from those who do. And by tolerance I mean more than polite restraint; I mean not undermining others' world views by wandering around saying 'I know the Truth, and you don't, and I still love you (even though you're wrong and blind), and I'm going to pray for you.' That's... bullshit, and it's out of line, and believers shouldn't be able to get away with it.
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Date: 2007-03-22 03:59 pm (UTC)Seriously?
That's kind of neat. Can you point me towards a source where I can dig up additional references?
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Date: 2007-03-23 03:18 am (UTC)Just one I remember from a friend's class on the poetry of the Bible. He was a poet agnostic who wanted material for poems.
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Date: 2007-03-23 10:34 am (UTC)Oh wait - you can ;-)
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Date: 2007-03-21 11:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-21 11:11 pm (UTC)Jesus, some people.
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Date: 2007-03-21 11:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-23 03:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2007-03-22 12:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-21 11:14 pm (UTC)