White evangelicals are a fucking plague and scourge. Look at this fucking poll, just look at it:
I guess hating LGBTQ people, the poors, liberals and city dwellers isn’t enough hate for these hateful fuckers. Their hate has no boundaries, it is as deep as it is wide. They hate individually, and when they gather in their megachurches, they hate in unison. Today, they hate the immigrants. Tomorrow, who knows what their imaginary sky king and the fucking grifters who channel His message will tell them to hate. All I know is that when their pastor tells them who to hate, they’ll hate that person or group long and hard.
debbie
I sure could have picked a better time to binge-watch Handmaid’s Tale.
Baud
The Democratic nominee for president of the United States.
MattF
The point about hating who their pastor says to hate is true. My encounters with WEPs generally ended up there— ‘Pastor says XXX’, and that’s all there is to say.
Comrade Scrutinizer
The group labeled “Evangelical Christians” have nothing to do with Christianity or evangelism. They are a white supremacist group who hide behind a religious label to obscure and obfuscate their beliefs. They use “freedom of religion” as a screen to stifle criticism. Matthew 7:15-20 applies here. This is a secular group with secular aims, and they need to be confronted as such. Religious arguments don’t apply, and only confuse the issue.
laura
Trying not to hate them back is very difficult….
Hildebrand
”You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” – Anne Lamott.
germy
From the thread below:
Hildebrand
@Comrade Scrutinizer: Yep – white evangelicals are about as opposite from that nice young radical from Nazareth as you could be. They worship something far different from the guy presented in the four Gospels.
germy
Remember the “Jesus with suitcases” meme from the conservatives? They cropped and distorted the original meaning of the photo:
joel hanes
They feel strongly that their way of life is the only good and right way to live, and that their tribe comprises the only true Americans. All others are wrong and bad.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
That’s true. The schools they founded when the Supreme Court ordered an end to public school segregation reveals where the heart of their belief system lies.
Ruckus
And what is the point of it all?
Someone has to be getting something out of it and to me it looks like money for the grifting evangelical leaders. Of course creating hate and devision has been a power and money trip for many throughout history. And now we have a political party that does exactly the same thing and willingly accepts the same people because that political party is/has become primarily exactly the same, only wanting power and money above all else, good government and democracy be damned.
It’s no wonder they idolize the nazi party, they are two peas in the same pod.
PenAndKey
That’s easy, and they’ve already started. Their next target is the homeless. They’re already talking among themselves about rounding them up and putting them in federal camps. Hell, based on what I’ve seen on Fox News and heard through the local grapevine it’s not a stretch to think it’s only a matter of time until some genius decides all homeless people need to be ID’d with a black triangle.
glory b
@germy: I’m not on Instagram, so I’m not sure of Trump’s meaning, but I’ve seen that before and know the passage it references is this: “Come to Me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest… For My yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”
Richard Guhl
The white evangelical churches are the descendants of the ones that vociferously defended slavery and secession. Just google Waco lynching and look at all the grinning white faces.
A certain first century Jew observed that a bad/evil tree cannot bear good fruit.
Barbara
Megachurches are masking the material decline in church attendance among all populations but especially young people. Please remember that “Evangelical” is a self-assigned category, and that the bigger the delta between the entire sample and Evangelicals means that they aren’t just outlier in their views, but increasingly marginal in numbers. Of course, they aren’t marginal enough to ignore, and actually predominate in some places.
Brachiator
The poll shows a shift towards fear and nationalism by many groups. Trump and the GOP have tapped into and exploited a viciousness that did not exist to the same degree 5 or ten years ago. More people were neutral to or supportive of DACA, for example. And I don’t think many people thought much about the nuances of family based immigration programs.
I haven’t had a chance to look at the entire article, but I am curious who the “next most conservative group” is.
Frankensteinbeck
@Ruckus:
Why? People do irrational shit all the time, for good and for bad. What is it about politics that makes liberals think people must be pursuing their own self-interest?
Betty Cracker
This gives me some hope:
germy
@glory b:
They cropped the photo so that only Jesus with the suitcases was visible, and captioned it “Obama kicked me out!”
germy
@PenAndKey: I saw a photo of some policemen posing and grinning with homeless peoples’ signs they’d confiscated. They made one big poster out of all the signs. Sadly, many of the signs said “God Bless”
Frankensteinbeck
@germy:
Good. I don’t want the US government or American culture to be friendly to hate-based religions. I don’t want ‘Jesus made me do it’ to be a valid justification for any government action.
ThresherK
@Barbara: “Of course, Hillary Clinton voters aren’t marginal enough to ignore, and actually predominate in some places.”*
The distortion of reality as covered by our media leaders holds true for “real American voters” as it does for “real Christians”. FTFNYT will stop their Cletus safaris when they stop their Evangelical Crusades.
(*Hate to explain my own joke but: I’m not insulting you, rather I’m commenting on our press corps.)
danielx
If not tomorrow, then soon: anyone not willing to plummet to their knees in awe of the awesomeness of Donald Trump. Never mind that constitutes the majority of Americans.
ThresherK
@germy: Ugh. I saw that too; I can’t remember where. Texas, Florida, or Arizona?
(And I don’t want to see it again, so I’m not Yahoogling it.)
Barbara
@ThresherK: We don’t have to be like sheep following their distorted reporting and framing.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
It’s encouraging, but there’s one problem: no religion is growing primarily at the expense of mainline Protestants. Evangelicals and Catholics have both declined a bit since the Reagan era, but it’s only by a few percent. In contrast, Mainline Protestants have cratered from up around 30% in the 1970s to barely above 10% today.
Ksmiami
@laura: oh I give as good as they got- they’ve earned our spite and hatred in spades
PenAndKey
@Betty Cracker: I grew up nominally Catholic but stopped attending church when my parents moved us to a new town. Both my brother and I are stongly in the scientific worldview atheist camp now. My wife? she grew up an a household where religious stories and beliefs weren’t really a point of discussion, to the point where when she took a university course on mythology her professors was amazed that anyone could take the course not knowing the standard biblical stories.
We now have two kids of our own. They’re both growing up a second generation atheists. Not because I’m pushing them towards the view, but because we never treat religious beliefs as any different than the stories of Hercules or Thor. As the millennial and later generations continue to not pass on religious traditions the percentage of nones is only going to increase.
Betty Cracker
@Roger Moore: That is discouraging. Mainline Protestants aren’t the problem.
Immanentize
@ThresherK:
Imm approved!???
Mike in NC
We were introduced to some white evangelicals when we moved to this development over ten years ago. Quickly learned to avoid them (assuming they are still around/alive). Nothing good about people who believe in a literal interpretation of the bible, and that the earth is 6000 years old, and that Jesus rode to Sunday school on the back of a dinosaur. Apparently Fat Bastard and Mike Dense have hired hundreds of these folks to destroy our government (Barr, Pompeo, etc.). Also, too: FOX News talking heads.
Another Scott
Nancy LeTourneau at WaMo is again channeling the FPers here:
Scary stuff.
TJ, being a student of history and having knowledge of the religious wars in Europe, warned us about this:
Cheers,
Scott.
ThresherK
@Barbara: We aren’t. ETA: Just the fact that you’re a regular in this space shows you (the individual you) aren’t.
But too much of Your Daily Paper and My Local TV is made up of assignment editors and managing editors who take NYT as the Paper of Record (If A Bit Too Liberal) and Fox News as legitimate.
It infects everything.
ET
Their ancestors got them theirs, so everyone else can lump it.
ThresherK
@Immanentize: Lifted from a Bob’s Burgers several years ago, and I use the verb all the time in my house.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: If they go from being hateful Christians to hateful atheists, it does no good. And the prominent names in the New Atheism all went in heavily for anti-Muslim xenophobia. I tend to think theology isn’t the fundamental issue here.
germy
Betty Cracker
@PenAndKey: My husband and I raised our kid as a second-generation atheist too, and in school, she ran into the same issue your wife did — she didn’t always immediately identify Christian motifs in literature, art, etc. In retrospect, we should have probably schooled her a bit more on that. We didn’t shield her from it, and we did talk about it some, especially since the rest of the family are Christians and we celebrate Christian holidays in the cultural sense. But it turns out it really is useful to have a grounding in the stories when you analyze Western art and literature.
West of the Rockies
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
I disagree. You’re being too reductionist. These evangelicals also worship wealth (prosperity gospel). And they do worship a weird form of God–as the all-powerfyl, angry, “righteous” judgmental sky daddy who will smite their enemies. They truly believe they are the chosen few, the born-again golden babies.
JanieM
@Mike in NC:
It’s beyond me how anyone can be so stupid as to believe that there can be just one “literal” interpretation of anything, never mind the Bible. I wouldn’t trust them to take my trash out. That they’re now, in effect, running the country is something I have to get used to all over again every time I get out of bed in the morning.
Martin Luther has a lot to answer for. ;-)
Then again, they don’t really give a flying banana about the Bible. If they did, each little pastor’s flock would be fighting with all the other pastors’ flocks about whose interpretation was really the one and only right one.
Edited to get rid of unnecessary tags. Still getting used to the new system….
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
Because people are self interested first and foremost. It’s called survival. And not everyone sees that if we all survive together it’s better.
And conservatives seem to all fit into that glove like it was made for them. They hate because someone else might be getting something they aren’t, some special privilege, like being bussed to a far better school.
Humdog
@Roger Moore:
You may have old news here. I just read yesterday, and will try to find, that Evangelical numbers are down to 15% of the population while mainline Protestants are around 14%.
However, Evangelical vote percentage is about 25%, higher in many locales where people are scarce. About the only thing that they are faithful about, voting.
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin: No argument from me about the “New Atheists,” some of whom are misogynist pricks in addition to being Islamophobes. But my sense is they’re a tiny percentage of people who identify as atheist and not all that influential among nonbelievers.
ThresherK
I have seen some would-be meme images on Twitter where a subset of people idolize Barr the way that one hack cartoonist draws Trump as a beefcake superhero.
What are Barr-worshippers going to do when Trump throws Barr under the bus? When the shit hits the fan they’ll have to make a choice. I don’t expect sense, but I want to see their faces, like when one pretends to throw a tennis ball and a dog can’t find it.
West of the Rockies
@Frankensteinbeck:
Perhaps they’re getting warm fuzzies about how awesome they are for being “God’s Own”. My sister is/was a prosperity gospel mega-church goer with Saddleback Church (Rick Warren, the guy who delivered Obama’s first inauguration prayer).
She and her husband took great pride in thinking themselves awesome. True story: Warren announced that the Christmas service would be broadcast live. He said, and I quote, “We need the beautiful people to sit up front by the cameras. You duds will have to sit in the back.” My sister, of course, thought they were among the pretty-prettys.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Protestant religions were founded because the previous religions were too controlling and demanding. They came about because a lot of people wanted something not quite so stringent. They attracted people who were willing to question, not willing to blindly obey. Which of course is a perfect group to be attracted to conservative politics and more stringent religions.
Hungry Joe
@Betty Cracker: Of that 23.1 percent claiming “no religion,” how many (I always wonder) simply mean “religious/believer but no longer affiliated with a particular church”? Because no way are 23.1 percent of Americans atheists; I’ve seen stats indicating that (declared) atheists comprise 5-10 percent.
Matt McIrvin
@Hungry Joe: I suspect most of them are in the “don’t think about it much and don’t care” category.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
New Atheism. Is that like New Coke? I’ve never been much of a believer, but never much cared for any notions to herd atheists, or to make them into any kind of sect or “community.”
Also, for example, I could never abide libertarian atheists.
Hildebrand
@JanieM: Don’t hang literalism on Luther – that is most definitely a 19th century reactionary freakout over modernity and Continental theologians (mostly German) who argued that the Bible must be read like any historical text – taking historical and literary contexts into account.
Hildebrand
@Hungry Joe: It is more accurately read as ‘no affiliation’.
Betty Cracker
@Hungry Joe: Here’s Pew Research, which is a different study from the one cited above:
I think you’re probably right about the percentage of people who say straight up that they’re atheists; there’s still a bit of a stigma attached to that.
OzarkHillbilly
@Matt McIrvin: No, it isn’t. A friend and I got into an argument about Richard Dawkins. I said he was an asshole. My friend said he was just trying to “give us the tools with which to defend ourselves.” I replied I felt no need to defend my atheism by attacking other’s beliefs and that Dawkins was just another proselytizing asshole.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: Both my sons spent considerable time in Catholic schools. None of it ever troubled their atheism but it did arm them against obvious religious bullshit.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I recall a lit professor talking about teaching Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” which includes “I would love you ten years before the flood.” He was taken aback the first time a student asked, “What flood?”
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
One of the best college courses I had was “Literary Use of the Bible,” which focused exactly on the types of issues you raise. Of course, I also was interested in the larger idea of myths and literature, stuff like Northrop Frye’s “Anatomy of Criticism,” etc.
Oddly enough, much of my early interest in this was fueled by comic books and Greek/Roman/Norse mythology.
Amir Khalid
@Matt McIrvin:
I agree that religion is not the fundamental problem. People all too often look to religious scripture, or whatever is authoritative in their culture, to justify what they really believe and do, rather than to guide them towards what is right. From what I’ve seen of New Atheists, they believe their atheism makes them superior to the white Christians they came from, let alone nonwhite heathen.
Amir Khalid
By the way, It’s past midnight here. Selamat Tahun Baru kepada semua warga Balloon Juice.
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid: Gesundheit.
Matt McIrvin
@Humdog: Yeah, for a while the loss was mostly in the old mainline denominations, but evangelicals are having a terrible time retaining the young because youth associate evangelicals mostly with homophobia, which they do not go for. That *is* a hopeful sign. Not sure it correlates with anti-racism though.
Amir Khalid
@Brachiator:
Is that two categories, or one?
Amir Khalid
@OzarkHillbilly:
Oh yes, and good health to one and all.
West of the Rockies
@Betty Cracker:
I will say this… I can see how an atheist would detest violent fundamentalists of any religion, and Islamic fundamentalists have “enjoyed” a lot of press since about 2001.
jimmiraybob
Basically, they despise anything to do with American liberal constitutional democracy with all of its promise of egalitarianism and social, political and religious pluralism. Literally, they officially hate the world and the secularism that being in the world entails.
Take for instance the idea of constitutional rights not being limited to white evangelicals waiting for the Jesus train to take them to their rightful golden mansion in the sky.
I’d be keeping a close eye on Pompeo’s Commission on Unalienable Rights. This smacks of a roll back to the Old Testament concept of limited rights in accordance with the white European Jehovah. Fun fact, there was a time when America was great when, in some colonies, their published law concerning capital crimes was to quote Biblical ‘thou shalt be put to death’ passages as would be appropriate.
JanieM
@Hildebrand: It was mostly a joke, and maybe unclear. I didn’t mean to hang literalism on Luther, I meant to hang on him the notion that everyone should be able to read the Bible on their own. I stick by my utter bemusement (to put it politely) that the people who believe this sh!t don’t see the contradiction in the notion that everyone gets to read the Bible, but there’s only one true reading of it. Again, I wish they’d just fight with each other about it and leave the rest of us alone.
Brachiator
@Amir Khalid:
Comic books, probably a genre. Greek/Roman/Norse mythology is a category.
I read all kinds of comics, from superhero stuff to Richie Rich and Classics Illustrated. Some novels, like I think, “Ivanhoe,” I first new from a comics version.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
This is the right wing evangelical thread. Here, there is only one right time for New Year’s.
Saya berharap Tahun Baru dipenuhi kegembiraan dan gitar baru, Amir.
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
You have a point here, but I think the “New Atheists” are largely irrelevant. They exist and have a platform, but they represent only a tiny sliver of the people reporting “no religion”. As far as I can tell, most of the people who report “no religion” are rejecting membership in an organized denomination rather than rejecting all religious belief. Even among actual atheists, there are far more people who just don’t care about belief one way or another than ones who actively hate on religion.
That’s not to say the hateful beliefs of the New Atheists should be ignored. Anyone preaching hate is dangerous and deserves to be watched. But they aren’t leading a broad anti-religious movement; they’re leading a tiny sliver of what is probably the least organized part of American religious life.
West of the Rockies
@OzarkHillbilly:
Catholicism led to my agnostic-leaning-atheism stance, too. I can recall in 5th grade listening to the nun discussing Noah and realizing it sounded like hog spittle high-lighting a vengeful, sociopathic god. (At 11, I would have used different words, of course.)
Roger Moore
@Humdog:
I’m going off the link Betty Cracker provided, which is based on the Pew General Social Survey. Pew is the gold standard for this kind of stuff, though if I understand correctly the chart Betty linked to was based on somebody else’s processing of Pew’s data.
West of the Rockies
@Amir Khalid:
Same to you, dear cyber friend!
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
Uh, no. Puritans thought that other denominations were not strict enough.
Betty Cracker
@West of the Rockies: Some of the so-called New Atheists threw their lot in with GWB’s post-9/11 warmongering because the enemy of my enemy is my friend, I guess. It didn’t go well for them.
germy
@Matt McIrvin:
Which explains why those megachurch services are so busy with loud crappy rock music.
I see TV commercials for an evangelical church in our area, and the pastor or whatever he is actually rides a motorcycle onstage. And of course, loud hard rock with cymbals crashing and guitars blazing.
I would never attend, but would advise anyone who did to bring earplugs.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: Speak American, dammit. Like Jesus did.
Roger Moore
@West of the Rockies:
That’s not what’s going on with the New Atheists, though. The ones I’ve paid attention to are tarring all Muslims with the beliefs of the most extreme fundamentalists, claiming Muslims are incapable of participating in a modern democracy, etc. They are clearly treating Islam as fundamentally different (and worse) than other religions.
Hildebrand
@JanieM: Yep – the biggest problem with fundamentalists is their inability to have an actual conversation about, well, anything. I used to teach an ‘Intro to Religion’ class at a university in Texas – a general survey course about the major world religions – and the worst students to have in class were fundamentalists and right-wing Catholics. Mainline Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, most Atheists/Agnostics – awesome to have in class, great discussions, big questions, and a lot of willingness to be open to differences of opinion and going in new directions.
Gin & Tonic
@Baud: Amir said he was finished buying guitars, remember?
trollhattan
@germy:
“The Righteous Gemstones” is a documentary, down to the matching white Range Rovers and jets.
germy
@Gin & Tonic:
My wife and I like watching the TV comedy Superstore.
A regular character is an evangelical. One day he’s in the breakroom talking to the other employees about Jesus and all the troubles he endured: “It wasn’t easy for a white man in the middle east!”
Amir Khalid
@Gin & Tonic:
I’ve said that four times, and now I have five guitars.
trollhattan
@Gin & Tonic:
The false god Gibson has his holy claws sunk into Amir. IIRC he’s a polytheist, also worshiping Holy Fender.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic: I must have missed that thread because I’m sure I would have spoken up about that attempt to spread disinformation.
trollhattan
@Hildebrand:
When Barry was right, he was right.
grandpa john
Also you can add verses 21-23 to complete the description of fate of these false Christians who expect to be allowed past the pearly gates and to meet the required standard to do so
also
Hildebrand
@trollhattan: A great book to read about the rise of the evangelicals and their movement into politics is Kevin Kruse’s ‘One Nation Under God’.
trollhattan
When you think you’re engaging in bad parenting because your kid is spending too much time playing Minecraft, rest easy that it could be far worse.
Am I the only one impressed a minivan can crack 110?
West of the Rockies
@Roger Moore:
I was unaware. They sound dreadful. I respect Sagan’s position. I heard an interview where he said he was agnostic because he could neither prove nor disprove the existence of a good. There was no hating on the religious though he knew about “the rivers of blood” spilt in the name of religion and power.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
I spent my childhood in the rural South, surrounded by white Evangelical Christians. Most of the different Churches were basically Evangelical, though I don’t remember that word being used as much then. Their interpretation of the separation of church and state was that a single flavor of Christianity didn’t get favoritism by government (such as Nazerenes vs Baptists). However, there was no separation of Christianity from any aspect of life, including public school and other parts of government. The culture was overwhelmingly homogenous, reasonably prosperous, intensely proud, and pretty suspicious of outsiders. That community is very much in decline. Most people leave and those that stay behind have a lot of problems. They feel like their culture is under attack (i.e. their view that gender is determined by God, not individuals). Basically, their world is crumbling and they can’t even conceive that maybe their culture is part of why they aren’t thriving. The genius of Fox is that it speaks directly to these people, telling them it isn’t them, its those OTHER people that are the problem. Trump is yelling the same message… blame the liberals, the city people, the immigrants, the LGBT+! They are after you! They are stealing your future! They were ripe to believe it.
Gin & Tonic
@trollhattan: When Barry Goldwater(!) sounds like the voice of reason and the POTUS acts like a lackey of an ex-KGB dictator, I can’t help feeling we’re in upside-down world.
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
I learned all I needed to know about Christian motifs from a couple Renaissance Art History courses.
mrmoshpotato
@ThresherK: Remember what episode?
coin operated
@Matt McIrvin:
From one of my psych classes in college: Athiests don’t believe…Agnostics don’t care. Labeled myself as agnostic from that point on as it perfectly sums up my feelings on religion.
debbie
@Brachiator:
Not all Protestants were Puritans. Some wanted services conducted in English, for instance, making them more liberal than the Catholic Church.
Baud
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Most Republicans, whether evangelical Christian or not, think that their culture is under attack.
And it is! At least the large parts of it that we think are wrong and that harm other people. And add to that ongoing cultural change that is not part of our agenda. We aren’t really pushing atheism or veganism politically, but those things are increasing and we would oppose attempts to repress the freedom of people to make those choices. It’s all just as scary to them as the rise of fascism is to us.
This is one reason why I am skeptical that economic populism is the wholly grail of winning a majority. It doesn’t address all these other things.
debbie
@trollhattan:
Maybe she had to stand on the accelerator to see out the windshield?
schrodingers_cat
For most religious fundamentalists religion is a means to control others, especially women within the faith. Be it Taliban or the fundamentalist Mormons or orthodox Brahmins.
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: hahahahaha
Matt McIrvin
@trollhattan: Goldwater’s movement and the white evangelical movement were both, at the bottom, fueled by opposition to civil-rights advances. Goldwater was just upset that his libertarian style of doing so wasn’t as politically effective as theirs.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Baud: Exactly!
And by the way, I agree with you concerning your skepticism about economic populism, at least as conceived by the Sander’s Left. I don’t think it will fix what is ailing rural America. At the end of the day, rural America needs fewer people because of corporate farming and the move away from coal. They can’t compete in the information economy, not just because of infrastructure, but also because they feel higher learning is a threat to their culture (because it is). These are much more fundamental issues than a higher minimum wage and rich people paying fairer taxes.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: In India too its the privileged who are the base of the BJP
(It used to be called the Brahmin-Baniya party)
Baniya is a trading caste, they are pretty wealthy in general, M K Gandhi was a baniya, as is the current PM.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: Pretty much as a rule, right-wing parties have the privileged as their base.
ETA: I suppose in theory it can get more complex if you have two privileged groups in society that each have their own parties who fight each other for dominance, rather than the privileged vs. the up-and-comers.
Mallard Filmore
@Another Scott:
The Philippines is a very Catholic country, yet has many of the problems listed. Along with an elected president that approves of police murdering druggies.
Somehow being a very religious country is not working.
Naw, they are simply doing it wrong.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Roger Moore: Yes.
While I agree that they most certainly don’t speak for atheists, agnostics, and free thinkers as a group (like anyone could…), the Islamophobia of these “new atheists” should absolutely be denounced. Especially by atheists, agnostics, and free thinkers of conscience.
Exhibit A: Bill Maher – why does he still have a TV show on HBO?
(Fact Sheet from Georgetown University Diversity Initiative, re Bill Maher’s history of Islamophobic statements and actions.)
VeniceRiley
@OzarkHillbilly: I wonder what your friend would say about Dawkins’ rank and vile sexism then? It would have been cool if you’d brought it up to bolster your “asshole” argument.
Baud
@VeniceRiley: God’s plan, naturally.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: The Brahmins are pretty influential but they are minuscule in number, they cannot win elections on their own. Their numbers vary from 1% to 20% depending on the state.
ETA: They have somehow convinced enough people that Brahmin identity is the default Indian identity.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: Not to different from rich people here convincing struggling white people that they are temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@trollhattan: Shit. Those kids are lucky to be alive, and that they didn’t kill or maim anyone else.
About a year ago, one of my colleague’s children was in a group of other young teens in a joyriding situation involving a high-speed accident. Thankfully, no one was killed, but my colleague’s child has spent the past year learning to walk again. Her life has completely changed.
A year before that, my father was killed by an impaired driver during a highway cleanup event. Fuck unsafe drivers.
I’m not sure what’s the best way to get there, but we need to make cars and driving a lot safer. (Add it to the list of big changes we need to make somehow…)
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: People can become rich, but you have to be born a Brahmin. So its an even bigger sleight of hand.
Suzanne
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
My experience with many of these kinds of people is that they also loooooove to tell other Christians that they aren’t really Christians and that they’re going to hell.
I will also note that the only overarching theme even remotely theological that I see among these people is the idea of a “personal relationship with God”. It’s amazing how they take the Bible and turn it into self-help shit.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Dear Baud,
That is a lot of words for you to spend in a single comment. Not for most of us, but definitely for you!
Maybe everybody got you the same thing this year, and you received an abundance of words as Christmas gifts?
Crossing my fingers that you still have enough words in your pocket to allow you to regale us with pithy comments throughout the day and New Year’s Eve, as we have come to expect!
germy
https://wnyt.com/news/minister-texas-gunman-grew-angry-in-past-over-cash-requests/5594538/?utm_source=zetaglobal&utm_campaign=thumbnails&utm_medium=onsite
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: And of course, I neglected to address the misogyny of folks like Maher and Dawkins.
They’re just not representative of the kind, loving atheists I’ve known in my own life. However, they are rather representative of the privileged and powerful.
These “new atheists” are just another spin on white male elite power.
Baud
@WaterGirl: I took breaks.
ETA: Oh, no. The cache issue came back. This comment appeared instantly, then disappeared, then appeared again.
coin operated
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
This…
trollhattan
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
I’m so sorry to hear about your father. It feels like thievery to lose somebody close, for absolutely no good reason whatsoever.
Some fancy-schmancy performance cars have valet modes that greatly limit their performance (I blame “Ferris Bueller”). There’s no reason the technology couldn’t migrate to any new car, so vastly computerized they are, and a teen driver’s key could carry the same limitations. Stolen cars (presuming it’s known they have been stolen) could be remotely disabled in the same fashion cars now get firmware updates wirelessly.
Definitely agree the fleet can be made safer, with time. It’s improved a ton since I was a kid–today’s nostalgiamobiles are fooking death traps compared to, say, a 2020 Civic.
hitchhiker
@Roger Moore:
Evangelicals are currently 23% of the population, and they’re not, uh, evangelizing. They’re not winning new converts. They have to count on their young to keep their numbers current, but that’s not happening, at least not to the extent it was.
In 1972, evangelicals were 27% of the population, so they’ve lost some ground — but not nearly as dramatically as mainline protestants. Since 2010, their trendline is falling at just about the same rate as the catholic one, slowly but steadily.
The line that jumps off the page now is No Religion. It’s rising fast, because the new generations of adults are just not into it. Some were raised by all those fallen away mainliners, and some were raised by people who never had a religion at all.
If you’re not raised in a faith, you have to be converted. If you’re not successful at attracting converts and your kids don’t buy in, your faith is going to die eventually. When christianity was the “public religion” of the USA, in the time boomers were children, it was easy to assume it would always be like that.
It won’t. In my kids’ lifetimes, the USA will become like Europe in terms of religious participation.
Doesn’t help us now, but reading those numbers, remember that evangelicals are less than a quarter of us. If 75% of them agree with some statement, that’s only 1 in 6 Americans.
We outnumber them now, by a lot. We need to vote in massive waves until they enjoy exactly the amount of power they deserve: none.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Oh, no, is right!
Did it appear, disappear, and then appear WITHOUT refreshing in between? If there were refreshes in there, please let me know where they were in that sequence.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@germy: What an awful situation. What a fucked up thing to do.
Helpful to have some clarification on the motive, however. Thankfully, this was not an incident where the church or the parishioners were targeted due to their religious identity. Unlike what the headlines, and their conflation of this event with the Hanukkah attacks in NY, would have you believe…
trollhattan
@germy:
They really are now the Texas ideal of the perfect church, where the good guy with a gun finally gets his bad guy. Too bad about the deaths, but what are you gonna do?
Freedom!
WaterGirl
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: I am so sorry.
Another Scott
@Roger Moore:
The GSS is run by the NORC at the University of Chicago.
Agreed, it’s the gold standard. (E.g. Once they pick someone to participate in answering the questions, they will move heaven and earth to get them to respond.)
Cheers,
Scott.
LivingInExile
I was raised Lutheran, had no use for it then, and have even less now. I tend to divide Christians into two groups. Old Testament Christians, an eye for an eye, and New Testament Christians, turn the other cheek. They look at me funny when I ask which they are.
Kent
Not true. Early protestant sects were MUCH more religiously demanding than Catholic. They were really founded because the Catholic church had grown MUCH to corrupt and secular. It’s called the Reformation for a reason.
Baud
@WaterGirl: There were refreshes.
Nicole
These folk are cruel to each, other, too. I broke ties with one last year who I’d known her since I was 10. She was a pain in the neck where religion was concerned back then, too, but 30+ years of living with her racist parents and 20+ years of FOX News made her into one really toxic individual. Anyway, a couple of years before I finally said I was done, she related to me that one of the members of her church’s son committed suicide. And the pastor, at the very next sermon, when the grieving mother was there, gave a sermon about how people who commit suicide don’t go to heaven. And yet, even after telling me about this, this now ex-friend of mine and her parents were content to continue attending this church because it was conveniently located for them.
Mind you, said pastor’s son was a divorcé, and divorce, I recall from my limited Bible reading, is something God and Jesus had a LOT of opinions about, but apparently that was okay with the pastor because reasons.
Kent
What percentage of the world’s current wars and conflicts involve Muslims on one side or the other or both?
Here’s the list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflict
And how many of the world’s functioning democracies are majority Muslim? Here’s that list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
Baud
@WaterGirl:
I posted, the screen refreshed and the comment appeared. Next few refreshes, no comment. Then it appeared again after refreshing.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Betty Cracker:
The misogyny and anti-feminism of them and Youtuber Atheists turned me off of that particular brand of atheism. I still believe that atheists should take an active role in society, but not like douchecanoes like Sam Harris or Dawkins.
Among the most prominent “New Atheists” Daniel Dennett is the only decent one among them
Amir Khalid
@Kent:
And your point is … ?
Baud
@Kent: An irrelevant question. All societies go through bad periods. You don’t get to just pick one out of a hat and make sweeping generalizations about a group of people based on that.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@WaterGirl:
It is.. and I am honored!
Another Scott
I’ll just leave this here: The Mansplaining Conference:
PZ Myers is a good guy. I should read him more often.
Cheers,
Scott.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kent:
They’re claiming that about muslims even in first-world democracies. Can’t you see how that can be weaponized against refugees and immigrants?
And the causes behind those conflicts are more complex that just religion. We (the West) fucked up a lot of the Middle East over the last few centuries. And prior to the Enlightenment, Europeans slaughtered each other partly over religion as well
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Another Scott:
That picture on the top right tho:
“Men Prefer Debt Free Virgins Without Tattoos”. The girl in the picture the text is overlaid over is a conventionally attractive blonde to boot.
Beyond being trollish sexist assholes, these guys live in a fucking bubble and confuse their own preferences with those of all men. Tattoos are not going away, neither is debt, and most men above the age of 14 don’t give a fuck about virginity (it’s BS anyway)
Tim C.
@Matt McIrvin: Politically, the total denial of climate change is becoming a factor in the decline of the Evangelicals too. Mainlines on the other hand are sounding the alarm as much as anyone, hard to pretend you love God when you are full bore destroying his creation.
Chris Johnson
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
I literally live in that information economy and have for many years. It’s not that you’re inaccurate, it’s that what you describe is a fundamental problem FOR HUMANS, not just ‘uncompetitive people’.
People live in America. As it’s currently ‘economiced’, America is full of people that can’t compete in the information economy, because it is set up as a wealth extraction machine and completely unsuitable as a society. The rural coal people etc. are only canaries in the coal mine but as someone currently ‘winning, big time’ (as in, close to top 50 WORLD WIDE in a Patreon earning category) I am here to tell you the information economy is ruinous and it ain’t just coal miners at risk.
I am obstructing worthy people from being able to make enough money to live, because the information economy has no room for two people doing what I do at the dirt-cheap I’m willing to do it for. I have no choice: it’s all I’ve got. I’m barely making any money but it’s a niche. Me being there means other people are starving, unable to break through.
With all my heart: get over it, regarding economic populism. It’s desperately important, people are dying all over the place, and the ‘success’ places are becoming hellholes of desperation as people try and survive by doing any damn thing to get by, all while a number of people you could fit into a small room get wealth formerly reserved for entire sovereign countries. We have effectively changed to something that is killing us, stop making excuses for it. I ask that as someone who ought to pull substantial rank as being one of the WINNERS in this economy.
Kent
@Amir Khalid: I come from fundamentalist Christian (but not evangelical) roots. My ancestors going back centuries are conservative Mennonites. As such I have developed a healthy suspicion of religious fundamentalism in all its forms: Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, etc. And I tend to believe that fundamentalism in all its forms is incompatible with democracy. We see that here in the US with the Christian right. We see that now in India with the rise of Hindu nationalism. We see that in Israel with the settler movement. And we see it all over the Muslim world
I’m now basically atheist. But no big fan of these so-called “new Atheists” who are mostly argumentative assholes. But I do tend to think they have a point when it comes to Islam. Show me the Islamic Norway or New Zealand and I’ll be happy to be proven wrong. I think Islam suffers from the same problem as Christianity in that the fundamentalist and intolerant strains seem to grow and dominate while the liberal, tolerant and more ecumenical strains seem to weaken over time. Same thing happens here in the US. Look at our Supreme Court, for example. It is the intolerant fundamentalist wing that is gaining ground.
Baud
@Kent: You are literally engaging in the fame form of argumentation that white nationalists engage in.
Didn’t we literally just bash Bret Stephens for this?
enplaned
@Ruckus: Not true at all. Protestant religions came about, initially, because of the obvious (then) corruption of the Catholic Church, the canonical (heh) example being the sale of indulgences (e.g. pay the Catholic Church, get a free pass to heaven regardless of what shady **** you were up to). They were an attempt to make christianity more pure, more extreme.
Of course, there was the Anglican counterexample, which was Henry VIII creating Catholic Light so that he could get divorced. But Calvinism, Presbyterianism, etc – those were pretty stringent sects.
Kent
@Baud: Not at all. I’m suspicious of religion in all its forms, especially the most fundamentalist varieties. White Nationalists are weaponizing fundamentalist Christianity for racist ends
I find it completely hypocritical that we can have endless bashing of the Evangelical Christian Right here and on every other left-leaning blog. But don’t dare raise any of the same questions about any other religion.
Baud
@Kent:
The assertion above that you are defending is that Islam is categorically different, not that Islam is a concern because it happens to be the most conservative of religion (assuming that’s ascertainable and factual). That’s no different from who white people label non-white people, or wealthy people label poor people.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Chris Johnson:
As someone who is highly educated, works in IT, and is affluent by US standards (above 80th %tile in earners), I’m a winner in this economy. A bunch of vague words about revolution are not going to disincentivize the push to automate. None of Sanders or Warren’s policies are going to stop that. There is much too much money to be made. If they can’t do it here, they will host the servers overseas. At their best, all they might actually accomplish is make life easier for the people left behind. That, of course, is what any of the Democratic candidates supports.
Of course, I have started hearing anti-Democratic noises (and I don’t mean party, I mean system of government) coming from some of my more extreme leftest friends. In my opinion, they are extremely naive if they ever think that would end up working out in their favor.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Kent:
We bash the Evangelical right because they are a powerful political force in the US that work in opposition to the stated beliefs and goals of most of the posters here. In the US, Muslims are a vanishingly small minority. Do you actually believe that there wouldn’t be critical posts if conservative Muslims were dominating the GOP? Honestly? Or are you just trolling?
trollhattan
@Another Scott:
UHHHHhhh. Say what, now?
Lemme guess, “certain” Republican funders will make copious scholarships available for this event (“Please, only born-females between
14[checks] 16 and 25 need apply.”)It’s money better spent than on tens of thousands of Donny Jr’s book.
WaterGirl
@Baud: :-(
Kent
@Baud: I do think that Islam as it is currently expressed in much of the world is uniquely conservative and problematic when it comes to democracy and pluralism. Yes of course there are many millions of tolerant pluralistic Muslims around the world. But they seem to be losing ground as fast as the mainstream Protestants in the US. It also looks like Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism as they are currently being expressed in politics are trending in that direction as well. William Barr with his extremist Catholicism has more in common with the leaders of Saudi Arabia or Iran than he does with secular Democratic traditions in the US.
I’m not sure why it is controversial to call out religious fundamentalism in all its forms and note that Islam seems to be leading that pack in that regard.
Kent
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Which is of course, a strawman argument. I’m not even slightly concerned about Islamic fundamentalism here in the US because as you note it is vanishingly small and mostly powerless immigrants.
What I am saying is that religious fundamentalism is incompatible with pluralism and democracy everywhere. Here in the US with Christianity and in some European countries like Hungary where they are breeding their own versions of white Christian ethno-nationalists. It is happening in Israel with the right wing Jewish settler movement. It is happening today in India with the Hindu-nationalist movement. It is happening in Myanmar with fundamentalist Buddhism. And it is happening across the Muslim world from Nigeria to Indonesia.
Gvg
@Brachiator: Puritans were later. Protestants thought the Catholic Church had gotten total corrupt. The church sold forgiveness for sin publicly. Pay to be forgiven and the pope got gold. Churchmen lived richly while the poor starved. There was also the fact that the priests had been the only ones that could read and owned the rare copies of the Bible for so long, that they had gotten into the habit of lying about what the Bible actually said to the masses. The printing press was a part of the Protestant revolution and Luther translated the Bible into modern German on his era. Other leaders did the same in their countries. Protestant movements also pushed the idea of public education and everyone being taught to read.
the Catholic Church didn’t stop bleeding followers until they acted on some reforms.
So early Protestants were definitely not conservative, they were reformers. Centuries of time and respectability flipped things around, sort of like Civil war republicans compared to modern GOP. Mind you, I only appreciate about half of their reforms, and dislike intensely the other half. But I don’t recall any good points about the Catholic Church just before the reformation. It was corrupt and brutal.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Kent: LOL. No. What I was responding directly to was you saying this:
Which was, as I noted, a ridiculous statement to make.
chopper
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
exactly. it’s like your kid fails math and says ‘well tommy down the street did too, why don’t you yell at him also’.
we attack these guys because they’ve been destroying our country for decades.
Kent
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Except that none of my comments were about religion in the US. I’m a product of religious fundamentalism here in the US and will happily concede that the Evangelical Christian Right is the most toxic form of religion in this country. In my wife’s native Chile it is Opus Dei. And in a large swath of the world from Nigeria to Indonesia it is fundamentalist Islam. I’m not sure how that is remotely controversial from the point of view of any atheist. They are all sexist, misogynist, intolerant, and anti-democratic.
Chyron HR
@Kent:
It takes some real goddamned fucking gall to describe the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan as “Muslim wars”.
chopper
@Kent:
this discussion is about a religious group in the US and how bad it is for the US. saying ‘well whatabout muslim countries overseas’ seems…suspicious.
West of the Rockies
@Chyron HR:
Yeah, weird, innit? The US is not connected to any of those hit spots?
J R in WV
@West of the Rockies:
I happened to browse a few pages of the old testament KJV not too long ago, looking for some semblance of order in modern fundamental prosperity gospel. I hit the part where G-d instructed the warriors of Israel to kill all the men of the Canaanite tribes, and all the boy children, and to take all the women and girls as concubines. I was struck by the sociopathic nature of nearly all the pronouncements that G-d made through one high priest or another back then.
No different today, looking at the most famous preachers of the RWNJ religions. Not a bit different. They would be killing all the men and taking women as concubines right now if they thought they could get away with it. Of course, they’re as split now as they were back then, so….
Kent
@chopper: Oh, come on.
Scroll up to the very top. This thread started with this post:
Whataboutism would be to say that “hey, fundamentalist Christians are fine and aren’t really *that* bad because Muslim’s are worse which neither I nor anyone else here has said.
Then the thread diverted into a tangent criticizing ‘new Atheists’ and cited without evidence that these “new atheists” are motivated by xenophobia rather than opposition to fundamentalist religious beliefs. Yes, there are deliberative provocateur atheist types like Hitchens who like to stir up shit. Mostly in a Euro-context. They are utterly unrepresentative of atheism and basically the flip side of Milo Yiannopoulos. But I don’t buy the notion that atheism is xenophobic as opposed to suspicious of fundamentalist religions of all stripes. If anything it is the opposite. Fundamentalist religion correlates much more closely with xenophobia here in the US and everywhere else in the world than lack of belief does.
Brachiator
@Kent:
You obviously have not been following posts about Hindu nationalism.
If you have a particular need to kick Muslims around, just say so.
Kent
I’m an equal-opportunity basher of ALL toxic, xenophobic, misogynistic fundamentalist religions starting with all the fundamentalist Christians in my own family.
J R in WV
@Kent:
I think the level of education and social well being probably has more to do with democracy and warfare — but that’s just me thinking out loud. What are you really thinking, hinting around about? Quoting statistics that may or may not be related to some third factor.
Perhaps we should have a serious talk about pie, I have a black walnut pie in the oven right now, styled after pecans with Maple syrup instead of Karo and, well black walnuts instead of pecans. I’m taking it to a neighborhood New Year’s Eve gathering at a friend’s house.
chopper
@Kent:
i read the fucking post. it was about white evangelicals and the shitty policies they push in fucking america. not the fucking middle east, not fucking muslims.
you obviously want to shit on muslims, fine, but don’t throw a fit over the fact that the rest of us don’t in a thread about evanfuckinggelicals.
chopper
@Chyron HR:
it’s almost as if there’s some sort of agenda at work.
Brachiator
@Gvg:
Yes. The Puritans were later, but the larger point remains that Protestant denominations were not more loosy goosy compared to the Catholic Church.
The priests were not the only ones who could read or who owned rare copies of the Bible.
It was more that the priests were the only ones who could mediate between God and the people.
One irony about the printing press is that it accelerated the perception that the Church was corrupt. The Church fathers quickly used the new invention to print indulgences, which were then sold for lots of money.
The other irony is that in England, especially, people were burnt at the stake for translating the Bible into English. Again, the Church had a monopoly on scholarship and Biblical exegesis, and insisted that only the Latin translation was valid.
Brachiator
@Kent:
You flat out lied that only fundamentalist Christians are bashed here. You want to formally back pedal on that?
Kent
@J R in WV:
I think religious fundamentalism is the biggest threat to progress around the world, not religion in general. Especially when it is weaponized by bad-actors as is the case here in the US with the alliance between the GOP and Christian Right. Or in Saudi Arabia or Iran or Pakistan.
I do think that for whatever combination of culture, history, geography and/or theology that fundamentalism is closer to the surface and more prevalent in Islamic societies than Christian, Jewish, Hindu, or Buddhist societies. It is what it is. There’s frankly not that much difference between the old-order Amish and the Taliban other than the guns. But there are a LOT more Taliban than Amish. But that gap seems to be closing around the world in recent decades to my dismay.
Brachiator
@Kent:
Bullshit.
You keep trying to sell anti-Muslim sentiment. Same shit, different rhetorical dresses.
West of the Rockies
@Kent:
I hear that.
glory b
@germy: Geez.
Another Scott
@Kent:
Counterpoint – Pharyngula (from September):
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
glory b
@Another Scott: but her emails!
glory b
@Chris Johnson: Exactly what is it that you do?
Azhrie139
It is a true fact that if the Beast from white evangelicals’ apocalypse fanfiction where ever to be real, white evangelicals would be worshiping him as he we the coming of Jesus. They are that evil.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Puritans were not all the Protestants, or even all that large a group. And of course I hadn’t thought of them in that way simply as you are right they wanted a far stricter interpretation of everything. I do like to say that they didn’t come here for religious freedom, they came here so they could practice exactly the opposite and subscribe everyone into their cult. And a lot of our early laws and local ordinances were very strict because of them, especially on the eastern seaboard.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
No. Some of them do have enough power.
But. I had a situation where another person and I had to drive a Pontiac Aztec at speed on a closed course. The course required the speed to be about 130 to be useful. The piece of shit wouldn’t go 100. Which wasn’t so bad, as the handling was, what’s the word, it isn’t stellar, nor great, what is the appropriate word – absolute shit. Couldn’t get it in one word, shit just wasn’t strong enough.
Also we had been told that it had all been beefed up so it would be fast enough and the suspension had been supposedly attended to.
I thought they were lying before we got in. I was right, but I wasn’t ready for how truly bad it was.
The Edsel wasn’t as bad as this.
No One You Know
@ThresherK: Alabama, I think.
Citizen Alan
@Baud:
To the extent that Evangelical Christianity is a religion that actively desires the end of the world, it SHOULD be attacked! Attacked and utterly destroyed!