Here’s a pastor in the United Church of Canada, responding to Dan Savage:
I’d love to get into a debate with you about this. I’d love to be able to argue that you’re wrong. I’d love to lay out my proofs that the majority of Christians around the world are working our collective asses off to support and celebrate gays and lesbians and folk who are bi and transgendered… but I can’t.
Because you’re right.
That isn’t to take away from the individuals, groups, congregations and denominations who do stand up—both in the world and with our “co-religionists”—and scream, “SIT DOWN, SHUT UP AND LISTEN, there is nothing wrong—nothing sinful—about being lesbian, gay, transgendered or bi.” […]
Sadly, I believe that a majority of Christians world-wide, here in Canada, and in your own country either tacitly or overtly support homophobia.
I’m sure he’ll be labeled a self-hating Christian for expressing these views, but I’m glad he had the guts to say it.
Hunter Gathers
This guy’s going to be an ex-pastor very soon.
Arclite
Because Jesus was all about excluding the persecuted…
Winston Smith
It’s hard to be a Christian according how Christ defined it. It’s way easier to pick and choose and decide that Christianity is a big club that validates whatever you prefer to believe.
If Matthew 25 is true in any meaningful way, then there are going to be a lot of really pissed off self-identified Christians getting the brush-off from Jesus on Judgment Day. I think they’ll be particularly upset to see that atheists who followed Jesus’ teachings even though they didn’t believe in any of the supernatural mumbo-jumbo get a thumbs up.
I don’t think it works like that, but it would be cool if it did.
Omnes Omnibus
Cue the militant atheists in 3, 2, 1…
TooManyJens
I wonder — does being an atheist who largely agrees with what Pastor Bott said make one a “militant” atheist?
PIGL
@Omnes Omnibus: ready to oblige….what was it you were expecting us to say?
As for Hunter Gathers, the United Church of Canada is a quite liberal main-line protestant organisation. There’s very little danger of this priest being ousted. My understanding is that the radical homophobes have long since left the UCC, probably for some of those baptist mega-churches that are oozing across the border.
It’s odd to think that the primary tumour for the anti-modernist counter-reformation should be situated in the United States of America.
West of the Cascades
Nah, he won’t be an ex-pastor — there ARE millions of Christians (in Canada, in the US, and elsewhere) who believe in equality of marriage and equal rights for everyone. The United Church of Christ in the US has one of the stronger positions in favor of equal marriage rights for everyone, and has had that as official church policy since 2005 (http://www.ucc.org/lgbt/issues/marriage-equality/).
But he’s sadly right that it’s nowhere near a majority of Christians. But Christians who believe in equal rights deserve a break from people who would paint a religion with over a billion believers worldwide as if it were monolithic in its beliefs (see, e.g. followers of Islam, also, too).
Omnes Omnibus
@TooManyJens: Nah, I was thinking of those who were going to show up and explain that all religions are stupid and all Christians are bigots.
Edited to fix spelling.
Roivas
@Omnes Omnibus
Would you be refering to those atheists that kill religious people and murder fertility clinic doctors, or the ones that write books? It gets so confusing sometimes.
Chuck Butcher
A whole lot of very negative things can be said about Christians, but it would be a good idea to leave the UCC out of it.
Too bad so few are like that.
Svensker
@Hunter Gathers:
Not at all. The UCC is so liberal that there was actually a move afoot a few years ago in the denomination to replace the wine and bread of communion with an apple, because the imagery of the wine and bread (the blood and body of Christ) was too violent.
Arclite
@Omnes Omnibus:
And all terrorists are Muslims.
Omnes Omnibus
@Roivas: That’s what I was talking about. FWIW I am an agnostic, so I don’t really have dog in this fight.
ETA: @ Arclite: That too.
brent
@Omnes Omnibus:
Nah, I was thinking of those who were going to show up and explain that all religions are stupid and all Christians are bigots.
Well as an atheist, I certainly believe that religious worldviews are not especially helpful or useful as a way of understanding things. I woudn’t use the word stupid but I suppose one could interpret that sentence as believing religions are “stupid” if they were so inclined. On the other hand, I and very few atheists that I can think of really believe that all christians are bigots. That would be an odd thing to believe and a pretty basic category error. Not saying that some atheists don’t believe just that but I am not familiar with such a frame of thought.
With respect to Savage’s point, I certainly get what he is saying and, at most levels, I agree. But, speaking from my own experience as a black person, I am never entirely comfortable with making any particular subset of a group responsible for the attitudes and behaviors of a larger subset of that group. That isn’t really what Savage is doing but there is some implication that if one doesn’t want to get tarred as bigoted, that person is, to some extent, responsible for shutting other bigots, who may have very little to do with them, down.
Hunter Gathers
I forgot about how much more tolerant our cousins to the north are. I also have yet to meet a rude Canadian. Is there something in the water down here that makes us so fucking crazy?
Uloborus
@Roivas:
Just out of curiosity, you do know that religious people being killed in the name of atheism has a glorious and bloody (if much shorter than the alternative) history?
Doesn’t happen much in the US, though.
Ash Can
I’d say that I’d love to see the major news organizations pick this story up, but I’m sure it would mean an awful lot of grief for this pastor from the Christianists.
Nick
@Arclite:
Organized religion does not follow the teachings of Jesus, it manipulates certain teachings to reinforce the worst of humanity and promote it by saying it’s God’s will.
ChrisZ
At what point do we start calling people like Omnes Omibus “militant whiners?”
Uloborus
@Nick:
Okay, but I don’t think that’s inherently true. I blame Paul.
mistermix
@brent:
He’s holding the subset responsible for not saying STFU more loudly and more often, which I think is fair, and that’s how this pastor took it.
Richard W. Crews
Can we find a more accurate word than “homophobe?” It implies fear, and surely that’s true in many self-doubting or fear/rule ridden folks, but for MANY, it’s HATE.
Many need rules for restraint; I mean, Republicans have already threatened dogs (santorum), box tutrtles, dead people, it goes on and on.
Many men are so insecure, or are buried in their own closet and sorta’ know it, so they have fear. What percentage? I can’t know, since I’m not a mind-reader. If I were, I would know how Republicans are distributed in the ignorant/evil classes. (Hey. it’s complicated! Some are evil, some are ignorant, most are probably both.)
Regardless, I there’s more hate than fear.
Hate for homosexuals.
What’s the word?
Also, there is no mention against homosexuality in the New Testament,, and NO Christians in the Old Testament.
Republicans are making progress in ruining Christianity, and they need to be stopped, educated, and corrected.
Nick
@Uloborus:
I do. I have never felt closer to God than after I left “the church.”
PIGL
@Hunter Gathers: well, I’m on my best behaviour here.
There are plenty of rude Canadians, it turns out. Mostly, they are right wing internet tough guys, skulking in the comments sections of the CBC, Globe and Mail, and any other national news media feckless enough to allow un-moderated comments.
I expect we have the same proportion of jerks as you guys. It’s just that the social conventions inhibiting the full-throated expression of right-wing ass-holery remain a bit stronger here. For the moment, at least.
Svensker
@Ash Can:
The Christianists don’t consider this guy an actual Christian, so they really don’t give a shit about him. He’s just another invisible liberal unless he does something that gets in their way — and saying stuff they don’t believe does not get in their way.
aimai
@Uloborus: Really, religious people being killed by avowed atheists who were actually acting out of atheism and other aspects of real politik have killed a lot of religious people? That’s who? Commies killing priests in the Soviet Union? the Chinese killing Tibetans? I’m really not sure you can even put those down to a serious opposition between atheism and religion per se. For example the Chinese had laid claim to Tibet as a client state for centuries and when they invaded and took over, under the Communists, it was under the guise not strictly of atheism but of “liberation” not from religion but from the politico/legal structures of Tibetan Buddhism which inextricably linked religion and the political/juridical. I’m not saying it was good, I’m just saying that it wasn’t strictly an opposition of atheism and religious status.
aimai
ChrisZ
@mistermix:
_
I don’t even know if he’s holding them responsible for anything. I think he’s just saying that they shouldn’t get upset at him for criticizing the Christians who are trying to refuse him his rights. He gets to do that, and he doesn’t have to run off a list of Christians who aren’t doing that every time he wants to.
jrg
Gay marriage does not have enough political support to be legal in much of the world. Therefore, Christians are no more bigoted than everyone else… Except in the sense that Jesus thinks they’re awesome, and the rest of us are a bunch of fucking scumbags.
Yutsano
@PIGL: I actually knew a rude Canadian, the ex-boyfriend of a good friend of mine. He ended up killing himself in a meth lab fire. I somehow wasn’t sorry to see him depart this mortal coil, he made life hell for my friend, although Kev has a much more successful life as a result.
Bubblegum Tate
Nah, he’ll be labeled a non-Christian by the wingnuts.
Winston Smith
@Richard W. Crews:
Actually, there is. In one of the letters attributed to Paul it talks negatively about a debauched group of people whose evil deeds included guy-on-guy and girl-on-girl.
Paul’s wording is very specific however, and doesn’t translate well. If you look at a “cultural translation,” Paul is likely talking about certain kinds of Roman homosexuality performed for purely hedonistic reasons and often exploiting young slaves for the practice. The Christian Church recognized committed same-sex relationships as valid as late as the 1400s.
Just saying that if you make that claim to a fundy, they’ll throw Paul in your face, and it’s pretty much impossible to give them a counter-argument they can even understand, much less accept.
WyldPirate
Christianity and all religions are basically a con game and/or Santa Claus for adults.
As was mentioned in a thread earlier, Christians are able to get away with readily admitting to hearing voices “speaking” to them and they are taking seriously. Most everyone else that will admit to the same and it can earn them a trip to a psychiatric ward.
aimai
@aimai:
Sorry, I tried to edit my own comment to make it a bit clearer but the system woudln’t let me. If I can’t edit my own comment who can? Its a bit Gilbert and Sullivan really. Next the system won’t let me disinherit my own unborn son!
My point, however, is basically this: what in atheism would constitute some kind of, say, bible or prescription that leads directly to killing the religious in the same way that specific religious texts have been used to justify the oppression and murder of the non religious and the wrongly religious? People have been killed in the changeover between one economic system and another, between one political system and another, and sometimes people who are identified with a given religion and its special legal and social rights and duties have been singled out by sub state and state like forces. But to ascribe that to atheism is absurd. Atheism has no tenets other than a non belief in gods.
aimai
Winston Smith
@jrg:
I don’t know where you got this idea. Read the book, Jesus thinks pretty much everyone is awesome.
Uloborus
@aimai:
Of course you can. It’s been happening since The Enlightenment. Usually under the title of ‘socialism’ or ‘anarchism’, which is why those were big scare words up through the 20s. Your average Christian doesn’t go out to kill atheists in modern times either. Only the ones attached to a heavy-duty dogma with a semi-political axe to grind or the ones who are already homicidally insane. If a major movement that is militaristically anti-religious decides to kill the overtly religious, how can that not count?
Now, over the years way more blood has been spilled by religion (particularly the Judaic/Christian/Islamic triad) but anyone who thinks the atheists are bloodless is fooling themselves.
Winston Smith
@WyldPirate:
FTW!
Omnes Omnibus, agree?
WyldPirate
@Nick:
Bingo. But, you left off the part about many of the sects trying to separate their members from their money as rapidly as possibly and not necessarily for good works, either.
brent
@mistermix:
Well as I said, I mostly agree but I think it is a little more complicated than that. I mentioned that I am black, and I think that fact is of a very specific relevance in this context. During the whole Prop 8 matter, there was a great deal of back and forth, involving a lot of statistical analysis, about whether black people in particular held a certain amount of responsibility for the failure of gay marriage in California. There was also a great deal of discussion about homophobia in Black communities and the responsibility that non-homophobic blacks bear to correct this situation. Now I am happy, as a human being, to speak out against homophobia but I don’t feel any special responsibility for say, homophobic hip hop lyrics, as opposed to the homophobia of say, Jesse Helms, because I happen to be black and I don’t think its reasonable for anyone to expect that of me.
Ailuridae
@aimai:
Err, Stalin?
ChrisZ
@Winston Smith:
Except that bitchy Canaanite woman in Matthew 15
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+15&version=NIV
PIGL
@Yutsano: well, I am sorry your friend had to go through that. I doubt a serious meth habit improves anybody’s manners.
Winston Smith
@aimai:
How about this?
“some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.”
Sam Harris, _The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason_ (New York: Norton, 2004), pp. 52-53
toujoursdan
My Episcopal priest and the bishop of our Diocese would say the same thing. In fact, the head of the Episcopal Church signed a document agreeing with this and pledging to work for change (though the Episcopal Church has been overwhelming gay friendly for years.)
What many don’t want to acknowledge is that there are many pro-science, pro-gay, pro-progressive Christians, Jews and others out there. The media ignores us, because we don’t fit into their box, but we are there – millions of us.
The United Church of Canada was one of the leaders in the fight for same sex marriage in Canada. They held rallies and sent lobbyists to parliament. They are a great bunch of people.
Dan
Christian AND gay AND a Canadian citizen
Bill Murray
@Ailuridae: not sure you can prove he had people killed because they were religious and because of his atheist beliefs
Yutsano
@PIGL: It does end happily though. Kev is now a constable in the RCMP and doing quite well, although he’s dropped off my local radar. Things tend to occur when you have to spend your first year in Yellowknife.
@toujoursdan: And ultimately it was the judiciary that said that denial of equal marriage violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (I love that name BTW). So your High Court finally got the ball over the line.
toujoursdan
@Winston Smith:
I don’t agree. This is an absurd misrepresentation of Christian theology and praxis, but it makes for a good strawman.
West of the Cascades
@mistermix: How loud do we have to shout STFU at the majority of our co-religionists to get commentators to make a pretty simple distinction? I march in the Portland Pride Parade under a UCC banner, I speak up every time I run into someone who says “I’m a Christian and I believe homosexuality is a sin” (lots of my relatives in the South) — Jesus never said that, and I believe Jesus would want people who love each other to commit to each other, no matter their sexual organs. Jesus (unlike the Old Testament) didn’t spend a whole lot of time getting down on people about sex.
One of the things I love about this blog is the term “Christianist” which seems to mean “the Christian right” (and maybe the majority of Christians, or at least the intolerant ones) as distinct from people who try, more or less, with differing success, to try to follow something more like the path of love and sacrifice and concern for other that the Gospels teach.
One other thing Jesus teaches is humility – today’s sermon at my church was on Jesus’s teaching about not being self-righteous (Luke 18:9-14 for those watching at home). It’s a fine line to shout STFU at the Christian right and not be self-righteous about it. That accounts for some of the shrinking from trying to drown out the homophobes in the broader church – so does lack of resources, and, obviously, so does sloth and/or cowardice.
But Dan Savage is being lazy in not making a distinction among Christians who oppose same-sex rights and Christians who support equal rights and specifically equality of marriage — it’s as unhelpful in the overall dialog as people on the right who make no distinctions among Muslims.
And I feel pretty damned self-righteous saying that.
Winston Smith
@ChrisZ:
You mean the one whose daughter Jesus heals? Yeah, what an asshole.
jrg
@Winston Smith:
Read my post. I’m suggesting that Christianity is often bigotry in disguise. If Christians didn’t believe that they are better than everyone else, there would be no need for the concept of “hell”, would there? There would be no need to show up at church every Sunday, would there?
Jesus might have thought that “everyone is awesome”, but the majority of Christians don’t… Especially if “everyone” includes commies, fags, and baby killers.
Winston Smith
@toujoursdan: I was referring to Omnes Omnibus’ earlier comment.
Loneoak
Most people are murderous assholes in the right condition. Christianism just happens to be the force pushing for those conditions where most of us live. Historical analogies are not very useful in thinking about this, imho. I don’t really care whether Hitler was a Catholic or Stalin was an atheist; Bush isn’t Hitler and Hitchens isn’t Stalin.
People I know and love here and now live a less than equal life and many of us have family and friends that died too young because of this church-and-state enforced inequality. ‘Christians are stupid jerks’ doesn’t really explain this or get us any closer to fixing it, which is what I am actually interested in doing. The goal is to either a) make Xtians less stupid and less jerky, or b) make all stupid jerkosity less politically powerful.
Winston Smith
@jrg:
People who don’t agree with Jesus aren’t Christians, no matter what they claim. That’s pretty simple.
slightly_peeved
@aimai:
But the same is true of religion; religious groups who kill atheists and attempt to wipe out atheism will also try and wipe out other religious groups. It’s not about not believing in god, it’s about not believing in their god.
Plenty of ideologies, with or without a claimed divine mandate, have advocated the murder of opposition. This doesn’t prove that a religiously based set of beliefs are better or worse than an atheist set of beliefs; if anything, it shows the pointlessness of that argument.
Bill Murray
@Winston Smith: that does not prescribe the killing of the religious and does not call directly for the killing as it says may be ethical
PIGL
@Yutsano: Yellowknife? That poor unfortunate fellow. Well, maybe if he sticks it out, he’ll make the UBC or Gabriola Island detachment :-)
aimai
@Winston Smith:
I was responding to Uluboros’s assertion that there had been actual mass murders by atheists, in pursuit of atheism. Can you point me towards any murders that Sam Harris has committed, caused to be committed, or applauded? Killing for an ideal is by no means new in human history but it has very, very, seldom been for the idea of atheism. It can be for non religious ideals, of course, but non religious doesn’t mean atheistical. You might say that killing people in the course of enslaving them was the result of killing them in pursuit of property rights, for example. Of course in the US religion was explicitly used to justify slavery and modern american right wingers explicitly use their version of christianity to defend property rights so there’s no clear distinction between those specific non religious ideals (law, property, ownership) and religious interpretation and defense of those laws. But I totally fail to see any historic link between atheism as such and the murder of non atheists.
aimai
ChrisZ
@Winston Smith:
You’re clearly a troll, but yes, the one whose daughter Jesus heals after, and only after calling her a dog, stating that he was sent only to the Jews, and making her grovel before him and admit that the Canaanites are inferior to the Jews.
Yutsano
@PIGL: Apparently the NWT or Nunavut is the hazing period for all new Mountie recruits. After they survive that they get a bit more flexibility in where they end up. I think he’d be just fine with UBC as he’s from Burnaby and also did a few classes there. He was in Nanaimo for a very brief period then I lost touch with him. I’m hoping he ended up back home.
And I’d get a vacation house on Gabriola in a heartbeat.
ChrisZ
@Bill Murray:
Nor is it in any way a part of some “atheist canon,” that all atheists follow.
He is just trolling though, lets just talk amongst ourselves.
WyldPirate
@Winston Smith:
Fundies, truly baffle me, Winston. They know so little about the history of their own religion it’s ridiculous. Try getting into a conversation with them about the history of their own religious text. Most of them have no clue that there is any other version than the King James version. Most have no clue about the Councils of Nicea or Trent, the Apocrypha or Septuagint.
At least it fits with their pride in their own ignorance and goes a long way towards explaining the political leanings of most fundies I’ve met.
Ailuridae
@Bill Murray:
Well given that he outlawed the major Christian sects and then proceeded to wholesale slaughter any Christian adherents (and the Jews obviously) I don’t think that there is much of a burden to proving that he was killing them because they were indeed Christian and Jewish (and specifically not atheist).
As for motivations for the slaughters this can be spun pretty easily to suggest that none of the many atrocities committed by Christians actually stem from any reasonable reading of the New Testament. I’m less hippy dippy than a lot of Christians in this thread (ELCA instead of UCC) but there isn’t a whole lot in my understanding of Christ or his teachings that would lead me to conclude that, say, the Serbian Orthodox were “acting as Christians” when committing genocide against the Muslims of Bosnia yet it is pretty clear that many of those Christians believed exactly that. Simply, they’re wrong.
And I don’t think that Stalin’s decisions were the inevitable result of being an atheist. But I do believe he felt that to be the case.
aimai
@Ailuridae:
Yes, Stalin–but given the history of Russia up until that time, and since, are you seriously arguing that the deaths in Russia were the product of specifically atheist arguments and ideologies and not simply the natural bloodletting that always accompanied a massive regime change and a transformation of the basic mode of ownership and political structure? The Tsars had always owned everyone, and killed who they wanted when they wanted. Stalin simply stepped into that model. The church was just one of the many groups he oppressed and had killed. What’s the atheism part of that that isn’t explained by the need to get the gold and power that the church had accrued to itself and to break down old patterns and allegiances in order to replace them with the state? I’m just not seeing the specifically atheist part of it. To me the whole argument reminds me of the insistence of religious groups that do have heads (like Popes) that acephalous religious communities also have some kind of supreme leader–or groups that have scripts insisting that all religions must have and venerate sacred texts in the same way. Atheism is not believing in god. There is no specific content to that or ideology that accompanies that.
aimai
Winston Smith
@Bill Murray:
That’s an interesting distinction.
Perhaps you could point to me the place in the New Testament where Jesus says that killing unbelievers is even ethical, much less mandated.
Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@brent: The fundamental distinction that you’re missing here in assuming that black is to hip hop homophobia as Christian is to fundamentalist homophobia is that there isn’t a scripture of blackness that says ‘gay people should be killed’ or “God hates gay people.’ There actually exist such sentiments in Christian scripture. The burden of decent Christians to disavow such hatreds is thus a little greater than it is for all black folk to disown the homophobia or misogyny that exists in much hip hop. Nobody but bigots would ever assume that Nas or Jay-Z speaks for all blacks. Lots of people, for very good and valid historic reasons, believe that the Bible, with all its homophobic injunctions, is the authoritative voice of Christianity.
Winston Smith
@aimai:
Perhaps you need to read a history of Tibet, then.
aimai
ailuridae, we cross posted.
aimai
I’d like to add that I have a huge amount of respect and affection for many Christians and for many interpretations of the teachings of Jesus in some versions of the New Testament. But I find when I try to say “this is” or “is not” congruent with the teachings of Jesus, or with Christianity as a religion, I run into quite a bit of trouble excluding, say, the Serbs, or the Crusaders, or the Catholics who martyred the Hugenots or the Protestants who martyred the Catholics. Somehow when I start means testing the Christianity of Christians almost everybody turns out to not be a “real true” Christian. That makes me really uncomfortable. I am sorry to say that Christianity has to be what most self proclaimed Christians do with it, not what some aspire to. (Same for Judaism, of course, my own birth religion/poison).
aimai
Bill Murray
@Winston Smith: try the Old Testament, that’s where the killing is. But of course you know this, just want to pretend it’s not part of the Bible
WyldPirate
@Ailuridae:
It seems that a more simple explanation for Stalin and his purging of Christians and Jews would be that he saw those organizations as a threat to the Communist state, not because he was a hardcore atheist.
Winston Smith
@Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion:
Actually the reasons are pretty shoddy. The laws in Leviticus that apply to homosexuality do not apply to gentiles, and many Jewish scholars believe no longer need to be enforced by Jewish law.
Christians who conveniently ignore the Jews interpretation of their own Scriptures shouldn’t be taken seriously. There is almost no mention of homosexuality in the specifically-Christian portion of the canons.
Svensker
@Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion:
Uh, there may be Christian writings that say those things, but not scripture.
Bill Murray
@Ailuridae:
or you’re wrong
Winston Smith
@Bill Murray:
…as do you.
Perhaps you should be harassing Jews instead of Christians. Jesus laid out the rules for being a Christian and made it pretty clear that there it was not cool to kill anyone, much less unbelievers. Stop trying to pin the bloody tribalism of the ancient Hebrews on Christianity. Even the Jews were largely over that by the time Jesus came around.
toujoursdan
@Winston Smith:
My apologies. These threads too often generate into Christian vs. atheist debates, which make as much sense to me as debates over whether science or art best describe our world. I got defencive too quickly.
aimai
@Winston Smith:
Fuck off, Winston. I’m extremely familiar with the history of Tibet and I, in fact, pointed out that the Chinese Empire has laid claim to Tibet for centuries before the concept of modern communism or the affectation of atheism even existed as a possibility. Furthermore in Tibet the political/legal/and cultural were so bound up with religion that in attacking and destroying Tibetan *nationalism* in order to expropriate Tibetan *resources* the Chinese government chose to destroy the religion because the two were inseperable. Simply inseperable. Frankly, a Confucian Chinese Empire would have done the same thing if the time and the politics had been propitious.
Look, what’s the point of scapegoating atheism here? Its simply incontrovertible that religion has been responsible for many more deaths and political upheavals than atheism *even if* you accept your totally moronic view of history and politics. The continued charge that atheism is responsible for death associated with modernity, with political change, etc… is just a way of trying to take the heat off the very real and obvious ways in which the major religions have failed, again and again, to actually live up to any kind of promise of delivering people from the real suffering of their lives.
Whether one wants to argue that “real” christianity or islam or judaism has “never been tried” or that its been some kind of mass hallucination and misinterpretation of totally clear scriptural authority the fact of the matter is that individuals, communities and states have been religious for thousands of years longer than any have been non religious and that most of the wars and deaths (judicial and otherwise) meted out to people have been done on the basis of religious interpretation and religious morality.
aimai
The Institute For A Meaningful Apocalypse
Hominids have been murdering one another for any sort of reason, or just because, since the first cousin ape figured out it could clobber his rival ape with a Dino bone and make them dead. Religion comes along and provides another excuse for humans to keep doing what they have always done. And maybe at times an organizing tool for the bloodletting. But religion also introduced a means by which some folks could sever the ties with murder and mayhem and try something different. That has to be a plus, and gawd forbid, an evolutionary advance, and it is impossible to example the times religion has thwarted bloodletting because you can’t quantify things that never happened.
Uloborus
@aimai:
I actually had an answer, but unfortunately bombing churches and other religious targets was a favorite game of a political movement 100+ years ago (that bears little resemblance to current political theories with the same title) whose name got me in moderation. And yes, of course you can count the communists. Why not? Do you think the religious don’t have political axes to grind, too?
stuckinred
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
toujoursdan
@Winston Smith:
Well, exactly. A careful reading of the Bible shows that the authors’ concept of God evolved from being one tribal deity of many, to a God of justice and love over the course of the Old Testament. You’ll find lots of blood and gore in earlier writings, but the latter ones (Jeremiah, Ezekiel, etc.) would resonate with any reader of this blog, whether they embrace a spiritual practise or not.
The problem is that people read the Bible more as encylopaedia where you look up answers to questions, rather than a novel where the characters and framework change over time.
Ailuridae
@aimai:
No. Actually I am pointing out that the claim that people are murdered out of Christian ideology is spurious as is the claim that Stalin’s decisions are motivated out of atheism.
O-O’s jab at militant atheism is pretty apt. The atheist crowd here absolves all atheists in history no matter how awful their actions from acting qua atheists (a point I don’t disagree with) but then are immensely uncharitable when Christians point out that there is absolutely nothing in Christ’s teachings that suggest that, say, ethnic cleansing is morally permissible.
In short atheists believe that Christians committing atrocities are acting in accordance with Christ’s teachings with absolutely no evidence whatsoever that is the case. When Christians act badly you all seem to argue its because of what they believe; when atheists act badly (and yes there are plenty of examples) you insist that they are not acting due to their atheism.
Omnes Omnibus
@Winston Smith: Oddly, I figured WyldPirate would be good candidate.
Ash Can
@aimai: I think that if you scratch the surface of any ostensibly ideologically-motivated exterminations throughout history you’d find that the primary motivation wasn’t ideology at all, but politics and/or economics. Ideology was used to provide cover and to motivate the aggressors’ populations to carry out the exterminations.
PIGL
@Yutsano: I intend to move to Gabriola as soon as ever I can afford it. And considering where and what it is (as close as I expect to get to Heavan), it remains remarkably affordable.
Meanwhile, and luckily, I have a place there where I can squat. My friend the expat let’s me use her place all summer, while she is dodging landmines and tsunamis and such horrors.
toujoursdan
But it’s also responsible for the establishment of 75% of American universities (including the Ivy League), 80% of American hospitals and about 90% of American food banks and homeless shelters. It was monastic communities which preserved the art, literature and technology of the Roman Empire which led to the Enlightenment in the first place.
In fact, both the concept of a university and hospital came out of the church in the first place.
Lolis
I have a really religious Christian friend who likes who to feel very persecuted by the mainstream. I try to gently remind her that a lot of people who mock Christians do so because the Christians have spent decades belitting them and proclaiming they were going to hell based on things like sexual orientation or political beliefs. Christians complaining about the way they are treated is kind of like Glenn Beck complaining about white racism. It just bugs me. My friend is great but she doesn’t have a lot of context for why a lot of people feel the way they do about Christians.
aimai
@Uloborus:
I’m sorry you are stuck in moderation. Especially because I can’t tell what point you are trying to make. I’m not ignorant of the arguments for the notion that communism was atheistical but I don’t find any evidence to argue that particular communists had a clear ideology of atheism which forced them to kill the religious other than opportunism. And I see no way of tying the atheism of specific communist leaders to atheism generally since there are no scriptures that we all appeal to and no shared history of atheism as there is a shared scripture and history for various religious communities. Sam Harris and Stalin, to take Winston’s example, share nothing but bipedalism. That is not true for any two Christians even if they are as different as Mother Teresa and the Grand Inquisitor in charge of burning Jews and Witches.
aimai
cminus
How loud do we have to shout STFU at the majority of our co-religionists to get commentators to make a pretty simple distinction?
I’m beginning to think it’s a cultural lost cause. Our Quaker meeting supports gay rights and performs gay marriages, and I’ve been told that this disqualifies me from being considered Christian — by people who sincerely intend this as a compliment.
We may need a new word. This old one has been pretty well discredited among far too many people who otherwise agree with our positions on the issues.
Ash Can
@ChrisZ: That’s an incorrect interpretation of that passage. And this in fact is where fundamentalists err — they take at face value writings that, separated from their cultural and historical contexts, lose much if not all of their meaning.
Ailuridae
@Winston Smith:
Yeah, this is pretty trivial. I was raised an almost Opus Dei form of Catholicism and understood at a pretty young age that where there was conflict the teachings of Christ and the Old Testament that Christ’s teaching were to be followed. As such, nearly all of the Old Testament is fucking useless.
It is not a surprise that unthinking atheists and fundamentalists Christians read religious texts the same way.
burnspbesq
@brent:
“That would be an odd thing to believe and a pretty basic category error.”
Which is only observed on this blog on days that end in “y.”
Svensker
@cminus:
Hi, Friend!
Yutsano
@burnspbesq: The tag line does say, “Consistently Wrong Since 2002”. I see no reason to change that now.
@PIGL: Hell I would settle for Nanaimo. That is some seriously beautiful territory up there. And coming from Seattle that’s saying something.
WyldPirate
@Omnes Omnibus:
You figured wrong. I’m not an atheist. I’m agnostic like you.
I don’t think there is a cloud-riding Sky Daddy nor that there was any necessity for an “intelligent” Creator of the universe. No evidence exists for one. That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t one, but that complicates matters further because if there is/was a Creator what created it?
I think the tenets of all religion are basically bullshit and I resent the fact that the most obnoxious of Christians are the ones that try to shove their concepts of “morality” down society’s throat.
aimai
@Ailuridae:
I think there’s some real confusion here about who is saying what about whom. Sam Harris is, obviously, not guilty of Stalins crimes. A modern day UCC member is, obviously, not guilty of being Fred Phelps. Also, I like Universities and Hospitals. So what? This whole thread is starting to feel like Sullivan’s plaintive cries that someone, somewhere, is hurting the feelings of rich people every time we don’t kiss their feet for sharing their money with us.
Christians can either police their own membership and spend their time bitching at each other for not being christian enough or they can occasionally endure hearing outsiders say the same damn thing. I’m sorry if people’s fee fees get hurt. But its not really that big of a deal, is it? Not compared to being burned at the stake or having your gay child kill him or herself as a result of being shunned by childhood friends.
aimai
Ailuridae
@Ash Can:
That can’t be true! No! When Christians murder the masses it is because they remember the campaigns Jesus led against the Pharisees and are simply trying to act like Jesus.
BethanyAnne
http://xkcd.com/386/
toujoursdan
@Yutsano:
The High Court of Canada did declare it unconstitutional.
Government could have ignored the ruling*, but instead they chose to pass a Civil Marriage (bill C-38), which passed by a vote of 156- 133.
*in Canada, the Charter has the “Notwithstanding Clause” which allows Government to ignore court rulings on human right matters for 5 years at a time, subject to renewal. There is no check and balance in Canadian government structure like in the U.S. All rights flow from Parliament. In practise, it’s a political hot potato, though.
So it was Parliament that got us over the line.
ChrisZ
@Ash Can:
Thanks for the link. I don’t think I see it that way, but honestly I had never seen an attempt at a defense of that passage.
burnspbesq
@WyldPirate:
“Christianity and all religions are basically a con game and/or Santa Claus for adults.”
Sure must be nice to have all the answers.
The Cult of Sam Harris is just as dangerous as any other brainwashed, bigoted, insular cult.
Origuy
Did someone mention Gilbert and Sullivan?
The Very Model of a Modern U.S. President
brent
@Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion:
Well its an interesting argument and others have already offered a few complications to it but what I would say is that I don’t think that at root, that this is an argument about scripture. I think its been pretty well established that most of the players, particularly the ones in these pitched political battles, don’t really seem to have an especially firm grasp of the scripture anyway. The burden, I think, is placed upon Christians to speak out against other Christians, mostly because the ones that get the most public attention are the most noxious. But this is the way of things isn’t it? The only questions really are, to what extent do these most visible Christians represent the prevailing attitudes among Christians generally and thus to what extent are other Christians responsible for offering an effective response to them.
Omnes Omnibus
@ChrisZ: In what way is my comment whining, let alone militant whining? I will quote a guy I served with in the Army, “I’m not whining. I am bitching; there is a difference.” Look, I simply pointed out what was going to happen on the thread. Then what I had predicted came to pass. I would say, sticking with the religious theme, that I am a prophet.
Ailuridae
@aimai:
I never made reference to Sam Harris so I have no idea what that is about.
Its pretty simple. When atheists commit atrocities (and there have been many who have done so) atheists claim that there is nothing in atheism that led them to that decision (a claim I agree with). And then the same atheists, without any evidence claim that atrocities committed by Christians are Christian in nature and somehow extend from Christ’s teachings. That claim is on it’s face absurd and the two claims in conjunction are a pretty clear example of woolly thinking. The fact that it is a pervasive view of many of my fellow travelers on the left doesn’t make it any more true.
morzer
@aimai:
Under Stalin, there certainly was a heavy propaganda campaign for atheism, as well as constant promotion of atheism in schools. Stalin took Lenin’s view that religion was an impediment to the construction of a Communist society, and the result was a merciless annihilation of religions of every sort. You could argue that Stalin was a Communist primarily and an atheist second, but this would be splitting hairs.
Yutsano
@toujoursdan: Thanks for the clarification of the way it finally all went down. I think it had to be a combination of the factors though, because it was a political firestorm even before all that. And IIRC this just pre-dates the Harper atrocity. You guys really need to figure out a way to dump that tool.
WyldPirate
@burnspbesq:
This comment is a hoot coming from you. Pot. Kettle. Black.
Ash Can
@ChrisZ: I’d call it more of an explanation than a defense. The defense becomes self-evident once the context is revealed. Now, if you take issue with the context, that’s another story. Especially since this kind of rabbinical context shows up throughout the Gospels, though, I see it as a legitimate interpretation.
ChrisZ
@Omnes Omnibus:
You started the fire.
I don’t think your whining is militant. Calling it militant whining was my way of pointing out your serious misunderstanding of that word.
Omnes Omnibus
@WyldPirate: My apologies then. I find that almost any form of militancy or dogmatism bothers me. There is almost always an exception to every rule and a counter-example to every example. I am willing to burn at the stake anyone not willing to accept my standards or reasonableness. Good god, I am one of the shock troops of the Unitarian Jihad.
burnspbesq
@aimai:
You’re kidding, right? The passage that Winston Smith quoted can only be interpreted in one way: it is an unambiguous call for the categorical extermination of people of faith. And Harris’ overall body of work makes it clear that he means it.
morzer
@West of the Cascades:
Well, you dons your camouflage gear, you takes your rocket-launcher, your Kalashnikov and your Glock, and you blends in among the worshippers ….
ChrisZ
@Ash Can:
Fine, I don’t mind the word “explanation.” I don’t think the analogy of Canaanites to dogs is appropriate if you’re not trying to imply they’re inferior, and the link you provided did not address that aspect of it to my satisfaction.
But I really don’t care that much about specific Biblical passages. I don’t even remember what we’re talking about. I think it’s that everyone else on the internet is wrong.
gbear
@ChrisZ:
Ignore-ance is bliss. He sure didn’t sound like a troll to me. He just sounded like someone you didn’t want to listen to.
Resume talking amongst yourselves…
PIGL
@Yutsano: Nanaimo would work, too. Anywhere on that coast would be fine with me, but my eye is presently on Gab.
It all looks good from exile in Québec. You can takes yer maples and yer black spruce. I want Arbutus and Douglas Fir.
Omnes Omnibus
@ChrisZ: To paraphrase Billy Joel, I didn’t start the fire. In my experience at the blog, a post like this will automatically lead to an atheist v. religious fight. I may have nudged the conversation in that direction a little faster, but odds are it was going there anyway.
Yutsano
@gbear: I’ll make coffee. We’ll tawk.
toujoursdan
How does this work?
Should black people police every Black person who commits a crime and issue an apology?
Should Jews police every IDF soldier and issue an apology every time they kill a Palestinian?
Should Americans police every American who makes a boneheaded comment about a foreigner and issue an apology to the world?
I can’t control what other people do and take responsibility for them. I can only control what I do.
James E. Powell
The homophobia and less hate-filled resistance to gay & lesbian rights that we observe are not really religious objections. Rather, they are standard issue, fear-of-the-unknown objections. People then wrap their hate or fear in a religious argument because it hides the uncomfortable truth (ie, I am afraid) behind an authority that cannot be questioned.
A great deal of the modern American “Christian” politics is really fear of the future hiding behind a religious screen.
celticdragonchick
@Ash Can:
Exactly. When you start looking at something like the Salem Witch Trials…religious murder, right?
Then you dig into where the victims lived and what their social status was and you see another pattern emerging. Religion was a cover for something else going on, and there were personal grudges and property disputes being resolved in a very lethal way under the guise of witch trials.
toujoursdan
@Yutsano:
The left of centre parties (NDP, Liberals and even the BQ) have to merge or form a coalition. Unfortunately the egos are too strong to do that right now, so the 60-65%+ of people who voted AGAINST Harper lose.
dms
@West of the Cascades:
So when are we going to hear their voices?
ChrisZ
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think you did in fact nudge it in that direction, and therefore reject your application for the title of Prophet.
I do admit that these threads usually degenerate into unhelpful religious flame wars, but I don’t think it can be blamed on one side or the other.
toujoursdan
@Yutsano:
The unanimous rulings from the 9 provincial courts convinced the (Liberal) Government that the writing was on the wall. They could have fought it, but they would have lost many of their constituencies, which tend to be urban and comfortable with gay people.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
Can people please stop using “militant atheist” like that’s synonymous with “atheist who is insufficiently soothing of religious people’s pwecious fee-fees”?
The day Sam Harris sets up an atheist militia to terrorize the faithful, “militant atheist” will be an accurate way to describe him.
Though it is telling that, to some Christians, having their bullshit called out in books and essays is little different from being shot at by militants. These would be the same some Christians who get pissy when a writer like Dan Savage fails to spend half of his post or column pointing out that some Christian bigots aren’t truly following the word of our LORD Jesus Christ.
The problem with some Christians isn’t the words attributed to Yeshua ben Yosef. The problem is that some churches are openly politicking against equal rights for all using the tithing of some Christians to do it. So sorry if you don’t like hearing that, but saying so doesn’t make me a militant anything.
(Cue one of ever-so-droll BJ Butthurt Brigade to respond with “No, it makes you an asshole hurr hurr.”)
WyldPirate
@Omnes Omnibus:
No problems.
It’s easy to not get ones entire point across in this medium and it’s easy to be misunderstood. Then there is also the dogmaticism and cantankerousness of most posters. These four things are at the root of most urinary olympiads on blogs.
edited to correct spelling.
burnspbesq
@James E. Powell:
Well said.
toujoursdan
@dms:
When the media isn’t corporate controlled, right-wing and likes to oversimplify and sensationalize conflicts for drama and ratings.
In other words, no time soon.
WyldPirate
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
Thanks for that, jrod. It was beverage-spewing funny–and typical of the easily offended Christians.
celticdragonchick
@aimai:
What do you base that on beyond your own opinion?
Atheists must be definitialy more different in kind by way of temperament and belief than any adherents throughout the entire canon of belief in Christianity??
How do you you justify that beyond mere wishful thinking?
Right off the bat, atheists subscribe to their own non-belief in a supernatural beings or causation, and this is a shared belief structure.
Yutsano
@toujoursdan: Egos in the BQ? Mais non! I swear sometimes my people are complete idiots. You left France 500 years ago, get the fuck over it!
(And yeah Layton is still an egomaniac and Ignateff (if he’s still heading the Liberals) is your version of Harry Reid.)
Uloborus
@aimai:
I’m sorry, but you’re splitting hairs for atheism you’re not splitting for religion. Mao, Lenin and Stalin all viewed religion as an enemy that needed to be destroyed and it was entirely part of their dogma that was tied inextricably to atheism. Attacking religion with fatal acts of terrorism was part of the soccccclist movements throughout the 19th century and very early 20th. A major atheist thinker has been quoted *in this thread* advocating killing the religious. Atheism was one of the Things (there were many) in The French Revolution.
Atheism does not have clean hands. People kill each other for any ideal, including believing there is no god.
WyldPirate
@James E. Powell:
I think that this is the basis of most religions–particularly Christianity.
“Just so” stories to explain things that were beyond the comprehension of the adopters/developers of the religion. Plus, it gave status/power to those that had the “answers” or the priests of the particular cult/religion.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@burnspbesq: Of course! Harris was simply calling for the indiscriminate extermination of the faithful! There’s most definitely no context to that quote oh wait:
Endquote here FYWP.
I’m really not with Harris here, but he’s not calling for a general holocaust of the religious, and pretending it’s so is dishonest.
As the man points out, his position is little different from the position we use to justify killing anyone who joins al Qaeda, whether they’ve yet killed anyone or not. Their ideology makes it inevitable that they will, therefore killing them is justified.
brent
@toujoursdan:
Having argued, in this thread, something that sounds something like what you have written here, I think its important to make clear that I do believe that we do bear at least some responsibility to the prevailing behavior within the membership of our various groups. “Policing” is too strong a word and suggests too high a level of responsibility but there is legitimate degree to which communities have to deal with their own. No, black people are not responsible for every crime that a black person commits but if it is clear that criminal pathology is endemic within the black community (and it really isn’t but for the sake of discussion), I think that I do have a responsibility to address those realities to the extent that I reasonably can. That involves both political and social responsibilities that I do accept as an element of my membership within that community. To the extent that I don’t take those responsibilities, I can’t be too surprised if people then associate me with those endemic problems no matter how innocent I may personally be.
Ailuridae
@Uloborus:
This. It is almost as if when leftist atheists talk about religion they turn into right-wing fundamentalists. The atheists in this thread might as well be arguing that terrorism is an inevitable off shoot of Islam while quoting the same three or four hadiths that Pam Geller and her ilk do.
toujoursdan
@Yutsano:
My mother’s family is Québécois and I am strongly in favour of preserving their heritage and language, but I am not a separatist because I think an independent Québec would be poorer, more isolated and this would imperil French language and culture, rather than being part of Canada. Support for separatism has been declining since the last referendum because young people are multilingual and don’t care, and the fast growing number of immigrants chose Canada and then chose to settle in Quebec, think of themselves as Canadians and don’t want instability.
Apart from Separatism the NDP, Liberals and BQ have significant overlap in social and economic policy. The Liberals tend to be more pro-business, but they have drifted more toward the left in recent years. A coalition could work. They do it in Europe all the time. I think it will happen eventually in Canada too.
burnspbesq
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
“The problem with some Christians isn’t the words attributed to Yeshua ben Yosef. The problem is that some churches are openly politicking against equal rights for all using the tithing of some Christians to do it. So sorry if you don’t like hearing that, but saying so doesn’t make me a militant anything.”
Perhaps not, but that’s a long way from calling for the extermination of people of faith, as Sam Harris has done. A call for the extermination of any group of people is by any meaningful definition militant.
brent
@Ailuridae:
It is almost as if when leftist atheists talk about religion they turn into right-wing fundamentalists. The atheists in this thread might as well be arguing that terrorism is an inevitable off shoot of Islam while quoting the same three or four hadiths that Pam Geller and her ilk do
I don’t think its putting too fine a point on it to point out that I am most assuredly a leftist atheists and I don’t hold a belief that is in any way comparable to this. (I also don’t think that this is a very fair assessment of what aimai is saying.) Now, is the problem that I haven’t spent enough of the thread loudly disagreeing with atheists who suggest otherwise?
toujoursdan
@brent:
I understand, but the issue here is that conservative/right-wing/fundamentalist Christians don’t believe that pro-gay, pro-science, pro-humane economics mainline Christians are “really” Christian and think we have nothing to say to them.
We are an even bigger threat than secular people because we claim to be part of the same faith tradition but take the “wrong” stances on everything, thus muddying their “witness”.
So what we say will fall on deaf ears. In other communities there is a mutual consensus that they are part of the same community. Liberal and conservative Christianity are essentially two different religions that share the same language.
brent
@burnspbesq:
Perhaps not, but that’s a long way from calling for the extermination of people of faith, as Sam Harris has done.
I think its important to point out, for at least the second time in this thread, that Sam Harris is doing no such thing and the quote that suggests otherwise is quite badly decontextualized.
burnspbesq
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
Nice try, but your attempt to put the sound-bite in context fails because it ignores the overall body of Harris’ writing.
Omnes Omnibus
@toujoursdan: Following up on your point, I think there is a tendency for the non-religious left to view people like you with some suspicion or, at least, harbor some doubts bout you because of your ostensible connection with conservative Christians. Some natural alliances are stymied as a result.
West of the Cascades
@dms: “So when are we going to hear their voices?”
Hmmm. Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson gave the opening prayer at the President’s inauguration. Last time Westboro Baptist sent its minions to my fair city, some Christians here got out and counter-protested. Google “Duke Revard” and Portland and Westboro Baptist.
The voices are out there – not as loud, or as interesting to the media, as the Christian right, but they’re out there.
Ailuridae
@brent:
I think it is a highly accurate way of describing what aimai is doing in this thread. I think it also accurately describes the overall tenor of atheist posters in the many threads here about Christianity. Its a stunning inability to show intellectual consistency when viewing your own tribe versus tribes you find problematic/wrong/etc.
And for the same reason I am not asking you to dissent from the prevailing atheist’s sentiment in this thread. I find it loathsome that I am supposed to be accountable as a Christian for the heinous acts of professed Christians acting perversely. As such, I would never demand that all atheists accept accountability for Stalin or Mao or the Khmer Rouge or Hoxha. That tactic is best use by unthinking right-wingers.
Yutsano
@toujoursdan:
Hopefully before Harper catches the austerity bug as well and uses it as an excuse to start cutting health care and other social programs. I’m just dying for one country to have the balls to tell the bankers to fuck off and continue running their economies in the interests of their nation. I know, I know, I’m a dreamer.
Did I mention I hate Stephen Harper with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns?
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano:
I don’t think you had mentioned it, but feel free to do so if you wish.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@burnspbesq: If that’s so, then undoubtedly you’ll find it quite easy to link to many more Harris quotes in which he more explicitly calls for the religious to be wiped out in an orgy of blood. However, the fact that the single attempt to do so on this thread was blatantly out of context, makes me skeptical.
I admit, though, I haven’t read much Harris. So enlighten me.
Edited to remove untrue thing I said. Prove me wrong about Harris as well, and I’ll gladly admit it.
Roivas
The issue with religion is that it is specifically designed to not be questioned. This isn’t something that is only associated with religion, but religion has it most consistently.
A non-religious example. Questioning George Bush circa 2004 was high treason for many people. The heretics must be silenced, dear leader knows best.
Similarly, many people who were known doubters or thought to be doubters of communism were labeled “mentally ill” and put in institutions.
In North Korea, the stories told about Kim Jung are about his amazing super human attributes and abilities. The first time he played golf, every shot was a hole in one. When he was born, owls all over the country hooted his name. Essentially, communism in North Korea is a secular religion centered around the God-head Kim Jung.
Politics, ideology, nationalism, even patriotism are considered valid topics for debate and discussion in our country. But not religion. With religion, someone says their beliefs, and then you nod your head and smile. Do otherwise would be rude, militant even. It is preciously this wall of unthinking acceptance around religion that makes it so pernicious.
Suffern ACE
So, lost that I am, if I listen to the atheists, the path of the religions of the West leads to the sack of Constantinople and the 30 years war while if I listen to the Christians, atheism leads right to the forced starvation of the reactionary peasantry in the name of economic and political transformation. I’m not certain on the way forward for the world, but could it be that both paths lead to wars and famines?
Where are the Jains and the Zorastrians to shed light on these debates when ya need them to?
WyldPirate
@burnspbesq:
You’ve definitely jumped the shark from obnoxious know-it-all to just flat out making shit up.
Harris makes the case that religion is the biggest inherent danger to mankind for sure, but he doesn’t call for the extermination of religious people.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
Here’s how I see the link between ideology and violence. People have been using violence to gain wealth and power for the last… uh, when did the hominids first appear again? No ideology besides enriching the tribe was needed at first. Eventually, though, we humans decided that we were moral actors, and to maintain our self-esteem we needed a better reason than greed to justify the violence we wanted to commit.
Providing that excuse is the real value of religion and ideology when it comes to killing. They allow people to do horribly immoral things while maintaining their own high opinion of themselves.
That’s why Stalin is a poor example of an atheist mass-murderer. His excuse wasn’t atheism, it was communism.
That said, I don’t see any difference in the desire to kill for profit between atheists and the religious. It just means that atheists have to look just slightly harder for their excuse.
morzer
@Suffern ACE:
I don’t think you can blame the Orthodox for the sack of Constantinople, or the Thirty Years War. The Catholic Church is a rather different matter.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suffern ACE: It might be that humans have a tendency to behave badly. I think that if a belief system or philosophy causes individuals to behave better it should be encouraged. Religion can do this; it can also do the opposite. People are weird.
morzer
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
But atheism is baked into the Communist cake, so you can’t really absolve atheism of responsibility that easily.
Ailuridae
@Roivas:
Politics, ideology, nationalism, even patriotism are considered valid topics for debate and discussion in our country. But not religion. With religion, someone says their beliefs, and then you nod your head and smile. Do otherwise would be rude, militant even. It is preciously this wall of unthinking acceptance around religion that makes it so pernicious.
I’m sorry that you exist in such a world. I’m a practicing Christian and have never missed an opportunity to question the faith of any fundamentalist Christian. Or Mormon. Or Jew.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ailuridae: Roivas does have a point in that it is socially easier to question someone’s actions or statements if they are justified by religious rather than, for example, political beliefs. This, of course, leaves aside the degree to which religious belief affect one’s political beliefs.
morzer
@Ailuridae:
What about fundamentalist devotees of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Omnes Omnibus
@morzer: They must remain unquestioned.
morzer
@Omnes Omnibus:
Bigot!
j/k
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@morzer: Why not? Atheism is a failure to believe in god. Any belief beyond that is a separate ideology.
Stalin purged the churches for the same reason he purged everything else: he saw them as a threat, and he was a paranoiac with no qualms about killing people on a massive scale.
Of course, at this point I could play the same card as some Christians on this thread and claim that Stalin wasn’t a true communist. Except that would be fucking stupid. Not because Stalin truly believed in a pure Marxist paradise (he didn’t), but because “communist” is what it says right on the tin.
Stalin used the communist identity to rally support, spread the belief that communists knew the true truth while all others had false belief, fostered a siege mentality in which communists were constantly under attack from non-communists, and so on. Basically, all the things that the orthodox church once provided for the czar were now being provided by communist ideology.
Really, to say that atheism led to the mass slaughter in the USSR, you’d also have to say that Christianity led to the Holocaust. I don’t believe either of these are true. In both cases, the problem was ideology, not religion (or the lack thereof).
jrg
@Winston Smith:
OK, so you get to define who’s a “real Christian”, and who’s not… Depending on the context. That’s a neat trick.
Yeah, I’ll keep that in mind the next time someone who was elected in large part because of the “Christian Right” lies to start a war… Or the next time a well-watched TV preacher blames an unrelated tragedy on “the gays”… Or the next time some fundie says America is a “Christian Nation” because 70-some percent of Americans are “Christian”.
…I’ll sit back and relax because I know that “Winston Smith” on Balloon Juice told me “People who don’t agree with Jesus aren’t Christians, no matter what they claim.”
Roivas
@Ailuridae
Ever heard the phrases “You just got to have faith,” or “God works in mysterious ways?” Pretty inevitably, the debate circles back to the core of religion: I have faith because I have faith in my faith, and nothing is going to change that.
At least with economic philosophys or political ideologies, people at least pretend that their beliefs have basis in evidence. Religion doesn’t even need to do that. Faith is considered a good unto itself. That is why the so called New Atheists are so ridiculed and tut-tutted by serious people: They are not calling into question one religion or another, but the bedrock of all religions.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@jrg: It reminds me of trying to argue with a libertarian. None of the silly stuff is believed by true libertarians, and you’re a meanie doo-doo head if you don’t stop every other sentence to make that distinction.
brent
I think it is a highly accurate way of describing what aimai is doing in this thread.
I really don’t think so. I think her point is more that religion is more often used as an ideological justification for certain large scale bad acts because any religion is a more coherent ideology and thus more effective rallying point than atheism. It is not her point, I believe, that it is the specific precepts of any particular religion itself that “inevitably” leads to such acts. Indeed I think that is pretty much what she is saying here:
@aimai:
The point, in other words, is not that religion is inherently evil but that it has, in a way that atheism has not, been oft used as a justification for large scale slaughter. I may disagree with that to some extent but I don’t think it resembles anything Pam Geller believes to any extent which is that Islam itself is inherently evil.
morzer
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
You are much too naive in assuming that there are neat dividing lines between atheism/religion and “other” ideologies. It is clear that a core tenet of Communism is atheism – religion is seen as a feudal, imperialist means of keeping the masses in subjection, and thus as an obstacle to the establishment of the Communist state. This was true both in Russia and China. In reality, one simply does not find “pure” atheism or “pure” religion – they are always entangled with other ideologies or causes. You can’t isolate them as essences immune to criticism without abandoning the real world for some ideal unknown to humanity.
General Stuck
Oh well, another virtuous thread on religion.
I believe what I believe, therefore, I are.
Uloborus
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
By this same argument Christianity is not guilty of any murders either. I mean, Christianity is believing in Christ as inherently divine. Anything else is separate ideology.
Atheism was an integral part of the communist dogma of the period that launched both the Russian and Chinese communist governments. Not an incidental part, an integral part. They believed in the power of humanity and that attempts to divert this with a belief in the divine were evil. They believed that religion causes… oh, crusades, bloodshed, irrational behavior, you know, arguments you hear here. You cannot take the atheism out of their dogma. And without that atheism they had not much reason to include any and all religions on their list of enemies to be persecuted with varying levels of murderousness depending on the leader.
Again, you are doing exactly what is being argued about here. You are trying to split guilt away from atheism in a way that is not being done for religion.
morzer
@General Stuck:
I are? How many Generals are we talking to?
morzer
@Uloborus:
Well, the divinity of Christ is actually a much-debated aspect of Christianity. Not to go all Monophysite on you, you understand.
Ailuridae
@brent:
I really don’t think so. I think her point is more that religion is more often used as an ideological justification for certain large scale bad acts because any religion is a more coherent ideology and thus more effective rallying point than atheism. It is not her point, I believe, that it is the specific precepts of any particular religion itself that “inevitably” leads to such acts. Indeed I think that is pretty much what she is saying here:
You’re being infinitely more charitable to her than she has been to Christianity. Please re-read her initial. It is plain that she thinks that Christians who have committed heinous acts are acting as followers of Christ.
General Stuck
@morzer:
Just one grammatically challenged.
Ash Can
@morzer: “Much debated?” Which Christians debate it?
morzer
@Ailuridae:
To be fair, many Christians who commit heinous acts do make that precise claim.
Svensker
@morzer:
Yeah, but the Monophysites aren’t really Christian. :)
(If you want to have fun, inveigle some Greek Orthos to a Syrian Orthodox church while letting them think its an “Orthodox” service. Then sit back and listen to a discussion of the monophysite heresy and the fact that the Syrians “stole” the Orthodox service. Very entertaining.)
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@morzer: I agree that ideology and religion are not really separate phenomena. That was part of my point. My contention with you is over whether atheism is either a religion or an ideology. It’s not. It’s the belief that no god exists. It’s no more an ideology than believing in general relativity.
I gotta run, so I won’t belabor the point. And really, I don’t have a lot of interest in arguing that atheism can’t be twisted into a religion or ideology, and that arguably Stalin did so. Sure, fine, I’ll give you that. Why not? It’s about as relevant to modern atheism as the Shimabara Massacre is to modern Shintoism.
Christian based bigotry, on the other hand, is being used this very day to justify making people second-class citizens. Not all Christians are bigots, obviously, but lets not pretend that atheists in the US are doing anything comparable.
(Unless, of course, somebody provides more Sam Harris quotes in context calling for the slaughter of the religious. Stiiiiiilllllll waiting over here.)
Jewish Steel
My dogs converted me to animism. Rocks and trees never have much to say that is divisive or intolerant. Much simpler this way.
Ash Can
I should say, outside of the adherents to Monophysitism, that is. FYWP didn’t let me edit my comment to ameliorate my initial lack of reading comprehension there.
morzer
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
You seem to be arguing with someone else, since I have yet to argue that atheism is either a religion or an ideology. My point was, and remains, that you don’t find “pure” atheism or “pure” religion. They are invariably bound up with other beliefs/concerns/issues, and it is naive to try and separate them out.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jewish Steel: And for some reason I thought you were Jewish.
Ailuridae
@morzer:
Sure. That doesn’t mean the claim has any legitimacy however.
The entire assembled, credited words of Christ can be read in an afternoon. It would be impossible to honestly argue that anyone having read such words would ever attribute to Christ the claim that ethnic cleansing is morally permissible. That’s the standard. If you are to argue that something is Christian it has to be from Christ (or a simple analogy to another teaching obviously).
morzer
@Svensker:
It’s almost as good as inveigling a Patriots fan to an evening devoted to Spygate under the label of reviewing the Patriots’ dynastic period….
Damn you, Svensker, every time I prepare to denounce all Jets fans as evil bigots who call for the mass slaughter of Dolphins fans, you pop up and start being reasonable, even.. likeable! You, you… devious creature!
(And I now have to support the next challenge thrown by Rex Ryan too!)
SiubhanDuinne
@aimai #33:
I didn’t forge his banker, I forged his cheque :-)
brent
@Ailuridae:
It is plain that she thinks that Christians who have committed heinous acts are acting as followers of Christ.
But they are, or more precisely, they say they are which is the crux of this. Saying that, even if you disagree, is not even close to the same thing as saying that bad acts are the inevitable result of those beliefs something which Geller is absolutely arguing with respect to Islam. By aimai’s initial comment, I assume you mean this:
My point, however, is basically this: what in atheism would constitute some kind of, say, bible or prescription that leads directly to killing the religious in the same way that specific religious texts have been used to justify the oppression and murder of the non religious and the wrongly religious? People have been killed in the changeover between one economic system and another, between one political system and another, and sometimes people who are identified with a given religion and its special legal and social rights and duties have been singled out by sub state and state like forces.
I have bolded the key passage there and I think the key word is “justify.” In other words, it is not religion itself but the common human technique of rationalization by exploitation of a shared human ideology (of which she gives several non-religious examples).
I will let aimai defend herself from here on out. I feel a bit awkward speaking for her. But I did think it was important to point out that you are reading the critique of religion too broadly here.
Svensker
@morzer:
Yeah, well, I saw what you said about Mark Sanchez in the other thread so I ain’t talking to you. Harrumph. Detente, my ass, you you Dolphag fan you.
morzer
@Ailuridae:
But the problem is that the words of Christ are now only one source for Christian doctrine, and are endlessly open to reinterpretation. That is, assuming you can get agreement as to what Christ said, whether the translation is reliable, and whether the whole thing is a matter of the Gospel writers understanding their sources correctly in the first place. It’s a nice idea that the words of Christ would be the only valid source text – but Christianity doesn’t work that way, and arguably never has.
morzer
@Svensker:
Ah, I feel that normality has been restored, you miserable snotgreen toothpaste stripe on white shirt wearing wretch, you! However, as a man of honor, I shall still uphold Rex’s next challenge.
Incidentally, your brief interlude of human decency clearly makes you a Dolphag hag….
Svensker
@morzer:
At least it’s not fuggin turquoise and orange. Complete wuss colors. Which is only appropriate. I’m surprised the Fins don’t wear turquoise and orange tutus to play. AND high heels.
Ash Can
@morzer: And upon further review, now I’m totally confused about your point. As far as I can find on teh Google, the Monophysites took issue with the human nature of Christ, not his divine nature. So, once again, I’m unaware of any Christians today who debate the divine nature of Christ.
ETA: LOL @ the religious football wars here!
morzer
@Svensker:
Well, we can’t take all your clothing ideas now, can we, my Dolphag hag friend?
morzer
@Ash Can:
Oh dear. Another invitation to the endless Christology seminar of futile hairsplitting on the nature or natures of Christ. The point is that the Monophysites were part of the spectrum of that great debate, and people assume too readily that the loosely Chalcedonian orthodoxy which prevails in western Christianity of whatever stripe is all that ever needed to be said. I wasn’t actually claiming to be a Monophysite (or a Christian) just pointing out that the history of the debate on Christ and his nature(s) is much more complex than it seems.
Putting it into NFL terms – nowadays the divine and human natures of Christ are seen, loosely, as inhabiting the same Person of the Trinity, just as the Giants graciously share their fine stadium with the other New York NFL team. However, there was previously a dispute as to whether both teams existed, and if so, as to their precise relationship relative to that stadium.
morzer
@Ash Can:
Also too, I probably should have referenced Arianism rather than the Monophysites, but I was afraid of being accused of being a Texans homer, or a secret fan of mad Adolf.
Ash Can
@morzer: I have a now-vague recollection of the various heresies, councils, and schisms, and do recall that disagreements over the nature(s) of Christ figured prominently in all the hoo-haw. Your initial comment gave me the impression you were referring to current debate, though, hence my initial “huh-wha?” reaction.
Regardless, though, your comments prompted me to look up Monophysitism specifically, and I learned something new (or perhaps relearned it from many years ago), so I thank you for that. :)
Svensker
@morzer:
My son’s high school theology teacher (at a liberal Christian Reformed school) was an Arianist. Very interesting fellow. Neither a Texan nor a German, tho.
morzer
@Ash Can:
I suspect a good case could be made for a new Christology emerging within the Evangelical churches, in that they seem to to reference a divine, wrathful Christ much more than a suffering, human, compassionate Christ. This is, however, not my area of expertise, for which I thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster and St Monty of the Python in equal measure.
morzer
@Svensker:
So was Isaac Newton (and possibly Christopher Marlowe as well) although both kept it very quiet. Charles Nicholl has a really good book (The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe) in which he suggests that Marlowe’s alleged atheism may have been Arianism. It’s also an extremely good read.
Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@Winston Smith: What you know about the Bible could fit on a fly’s ass with enough room left over for the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. You have utterly no notion of what the hell you’re talking about, and the combination of complete ignorance with breathtakingly unselfconscious arrogance is kind of a natural wonder, like a geyser, or one of those bizarre places where the laws of gravity appear to operate differently from time to time. You should open the cavern between what you know and what you think you know to tourism. The closest natural chasm that size is on the surface of Mars.
Wile E. Quixote
@toujoursdan:
Yes, of course they should. The same goes for Mexicans apologizing for all illegal immigrants and of course it’s OK to be afraid of Muslims because they haven’t all apologized for 9/11.
Of course not, the Palestinian was a Muslim who might have flown on an airplane with Juan Williams and made him afraid.
Of course not. U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A!
Svensker
@Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion:
I realize this is a dead thread, but that was an excellent rant. Just excellent. Hat’s off to ya.
sneezy
@Winston Smith:
“People who don’t agree with Jesus aren’t Christians, no matter what they claim. That’s pretty simple.”
Well, this is just “no true Scotsman” and it doesn’t get you far. If some self-identified and practicing Christian holds some belief that I might not attribute to Jesus, who am I to say that he or she is not really “Christian”? For that matter, who are you to say that?
I don’t have time to decide who among the self-professed is truly Christian, and am willing to take people pretty much at their word. If they say they’re Christian and gather together to worship with others who say they’re Christian, then for my purposes, they’re Christian.
Put another way, you go through history with the Christians that you have, not the ones you’d like.
Comrade Mary
Point of info: the United Church in canada is not a branch of the united church of christ in teh states. Modertae, some in group conflict over gays. Someone pls google if interested, am on blabkberry in grocery store line up.
Barb (formerly gex)
Wow, if I, an atheist, were to say this:
I’d be harshly criticized. In fact, I’ve said similar things, and I’ve been criticized. This is a point that is vehemently disputed even on this site in the comments. Whatever. Religious people can just keep on living in their magical world where whatever beliefs pop into their head are absolutely factually true. Christianity isn’t homophobic when gays point it out, only when the appropriately vetted believers point it out.
As is obvious, we gays can just sit on the side and wait for Christians and straight people to decide that we aren’t so awful after all. Then things will get better. Until then, not so much.
Winston Smith
Returning to wrap up for anyone who still cares:
@jrg:
No, Jesus gets to define who is a “real Christian” and who is not. People who disagree with me may or may not be Christians. People who disagree with Jesus are certainly not Chrstians.
@sneezy:
No, it isn’t. Using Jesus’ words as the definition of Christianity provides an a priori definition. “No true Scotsman” is a fallacy that relies on a post facto definition being presented.
@Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion:
Very witty, Oscar. [golf clap] Perhaps next you could augment your masturbatory rant with a reference to something that I actually got wrong.