Moderate Religion

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Curse you, AG. Here's the point-by-point rebuttal.

Yeah, it's called freedom of religion, and it's why atheism is legal and tolerated.


Anything is "potentially" nasty, so referring to Christianity as such is just pointless. Atheism is potentially nasty.


If you're going to throw a pile of verbal diarrhea onto the Internet, you could at least do the courtesy of spending five minutes on Wikipedia to get some basic background information. The author's laziness here reveals a general intellectual slovenliness, which will come into play later on in the essay.


The overwhelming majority of educated theologians see no reason to believe that stoning gays or believing in a 6000 year old Earth have anything to do with Christianity, and neither of those is part of the religion. Straw man argument.


Again, the author's intellectual laziness and failure to understand basic fact. America is indisputably more secular today than it was 30 years ago, and it sure as hell is not a theocracy. The author clearly has paranoid delusions of persecution if he believes moderates are establishing a theocracy. In fact, it's the moderates who fight for true religious freedom, whereas the outspoken atheists are pushing to force their worldview on everyone else.


No we don't. Most moderates are just as annoyed at fundies as atheists are.


You want to argue epistemology now? Everyone takes a good deal of their knowledge on faith. The difference is where faith is placed.


Straw man. I dislike fundies just as much as atheists do. Probably more, since they give my entire religion a bad reputation and hurt my credibility by association.


It is quite different. Belief in evolution versus creation, for example, has no practical implications in anyone's day-to-day life. It really doesn't even make much difference to people working in biological fields most of the time. Believing silly things that have no implications of acting stupidly (and dangerously) is not the same as trying to use mercury as medicine.


Even many fundies are able to tolerate stem cell research, and besides, recent developments in umbilical stem cell research (which fundies have no reason to oppose) make the more controversial embryonic stem cell research largely unnecessary. As far as abortion clinics, the overwhelming majority of fundies oppose using violence to stop abortion, and abortion clinic bombings and such are mostly a thing of the past.


The hell they are. The author evidently has been living in a hole in the ground for the past 8 years. In 2000, I think I remember Social Security and Medicare being among the major issues, along with education reform. 2004 was largely about Iraq, and also about the economy. Abortion was somewhat an issue in 2004, but it did not take center stage. 2008 was about the economy pretty much to the exclusion of everything else, with some foreign policy being debated as well. Gay rights have mostly been ignored in presidential elections- I remember Palin and Biden at the VP debates both dancing around the issue and essentially "agreeing" with each other. Anyone who thinks that gay marriage and abortion rights are the biggest issues nationally is just unobservant.


Um... very bold statement with no support. My beliefs don't facilitate violence, and there is no reason why "the very foundation of religion itself" would tend to do so. In fact, the empirical data suggest that religious people are less inclined to crime and violence than non-religious people. I can just as easily say atheists facilitate violence and indeed cause much of it by their rejection of morality.

Oh, and also: the biggest mass murderer of the twentieth century was an atheist, so stop bitching about how violent religious people are. You atheists don't have any better of a track record.



Actually, several studies show that Christianity is indeed quite helpful in several real and material ways. Christians have higher life expectancies than atheists. Christians generally have better occupational success than atheists. Christians have lower rates of delinquency and substance abuse. But atheists will ignore these things or deny them.


Sure it is.


Then why didn't you?


This is more a function of an individual feeling uncomfortable and attacked than anything else. And yes, some things do have to be taken on faith. That is true no matter what you believe, as I think AG already mentioned the regress problem.


The belief in anything requires faith. Hell, mathematics requires faith.


Why would I follow your writings? They're not exactly as interesting as other things I could be reading.


You don't get to decide how a word should be "properly defined." The word is already defined, and if you're trying to give it another definition than the one already in use, you're just being an incredibly dishonest bastard.


Yeah, that's not the definition of faith. Again, the author is too lazy to do his work properly. It's not that hard to check a dictionary.


Non sequitur. Faith is not necessarily in opposition to reason.


That has not been demonstrated at all.


Humans are irrational beings. For atheists to claim that they are somehow paragons of rationality is delusional and arrogant.


No one questions everything. You really, really do not want to make this a debate about epistemology.


Like the axioms used in mathematics?


A skeptic would actually be agnostic. The author is making up words, that disinclines me to take him seriously. Especially given that I doubt the process for which he has invented a term is actually occurring. America is consistently becoming more secular, not less.


So? Atheists arbitrarily accept and reject beliefs based on their whims.


And atheists are perfectly rational? You hold absolutely no irrational beliefs as an atheist?


Is the author referring to himself here?


People who blow up buildings are not "encouraged to be a little more moderate." They're locked up as criminals.


Moderates refuse to come out publicly against fundamentalists? Since when? I've always been sharply critical of fundies. I remember at least one or two sermons at my church were explicitly anti-fundamentalist. Where are you getting this idea that moderates don't oppose fundamentalism?


I can challenge fundies pretty well on religious grounds.


I consider the term "moderate Christianity" to be a misnomer, so I don't really care about this criticism. I would consider "moderate Christianity" to be more fundamental than "fundamentalist Christianity." But, I stick with terms as they are defined and accepted in order to avoid confusion.


No one applies logic to all questions. There are questions where logic really doesn't even apply.


Completely false. Many moderates openly criticize fundies. I think just about everyone at my church is opposed to the Iraq war, and the same church is also in favor of same-sex marriage, gay rights, etc.


My faith doesn't make any scientific claims, so it doesn't matter if there is any scientific scrutiny or not. Stop making Science out to be your God. Science is a tool, nothing more. And you have to have the right tool for the right job.


Evidence please?


No, I actively oppose fundies when I meet them.


People frequently vote based on a candidate's physical appearance. Besides that, the very act of voting is profoundly irrational to begin with. Unless the opportunity cost of your time to be informed and go vote is literally zero (in which case you have a pretty freaking pathetic life) then voting is not a rational thing to do.


Straw man.


That's not even the foundation of religion, and atheists are deluding themselves if they believe themselves to be any more rational than anyone else.

I'll have to dig it out again, but I remember recently seeing a study that found that less religious people were more likely to be superstitious and hold assorted quack beliefs in things such as alternative medicine.

Nearlt every atheist I ever met was also skeptical of alternative medicine, ghosts, psychics, UFOs and other such nonsense. Unless you are using a poor definition of "faith" atheists do not have it. Executing homosexuals (along with disobedient children, people who work on the sabbath and many other non-harmful things) is in the OT, and by going through all the "begots" from Adam through Jesus does say the Earth is around 6000 years old. How is the US more secular when insane groups like the Moral Majority, Focus on Family and such didn't even exist until a bit over 30 years ago? And all the things like puting 10 commandments displays, crosses and such on public property - Freedom of religion doesn't mean Jesus's gang sign gets tagged on public property.

Anecdotal evidence is meaningless and not sufficient as proof. Large-scale surveys give results contrary to your personal perception.


From dictionary.com:
faith
  /feɪθ/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [feyth]
–noun
1. confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.
2. belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.
3. belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims.
4. belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.: to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.
5. a system of religious belief: the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.
6. the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.: Failure to appear would be breaking faith.
7. the observance of this obligation; fidelity to one's promise, oath, allegiance, etc.: He was the only one who proved his faith during our recent troubles.
8. Christian Theology. the trust in God and in His promises as made through Christ and the Scriptures by which humans are justified or saved.

Atheists can certainly have faith as described in definitions 1, 2, 4, 6, and 7. I think definition 2 is most applicable as a general definition of faith, perhaps followed by definition 4.


Even fundies don't advocate executing any of those people. The OT has to be interpreted in the context of its time and in light of the New Testament. Again, a straw man.


And most people take most of the OT as allegorical, especially Genesis.


Those were all formed in response to increasing secularization. When my parents were growing up, mandatory Bible readings were commonplace in public schools. A year or two ago I remember reading of a teacher who got into legal trouble merely for having a Bible in plain sight at school- not reading it to anyone, merely that it was present. So you can clearly see the change. In the 1830s there was actually a Supreme Court case that held that it was illegal for a school to lack Biblical instruction, and in the 1890s the Supreme Court ruled that America was a Christian nation. Where I grew up (a very conservative region with a lot of fundamentalists) public school teachers were typically afraid to even mention religion at all because they could risk a lawsuit by doing so.

Last edited by Orwell on 21 May 2009, 11:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

Orwell, please edit this.

MattShizzle, from the definition of "troll" that I got the other day, I would say that this topic qualifies. Because I am very inexperienced at this, I will ask the other moderators if they agree.

as one who knows trolling, this isn't it, it is simply showing Orwell to be a religous Zealot.

Orwell isn't a religous zealot.

maybe not a religious one but a zealot none the less.

thank goodness I don't moderate religion!

Actually it seems the opposite to me - that Orwell is religious but not a zealot.

I deserve more cursings, as I sadly do not receive enough.

May you live in interesting times. There, that fill your quota?

AG, a thousand curses on you and your progeny to the thousandth generation. (That should make up for any previous cursing deficiencies)

I show zeal for certain things, and have been called (probably fairly) a Linux zealot, so definition 1 works. For definition 2, the idea of "fanatic" is subjective, but I think any Aspie with a special interest will tend to seem like a fanatic to outside observers. As far as definition 3, I am a relatively moderate, mostly peaceful, decidedly unpatriotic gentile in America, nonexistent from a.d. 69 to 81, and don't advocate violent overthrow of anyone, especially as I would have liked the aqueduct, sanitation, roads, wine, public order, and public health that came along with Roman rule.

Anyways, I don't think the topic seems to have been intended as trolling. Some people just have anti-religious views, and PPR is the place where those would get discussed.

*shrugs*

The people of so-called 'moderate' religion make concessions in their thinking. They might say religion and science is compatible, but we'll see what happens. I'd say they undermine the fundamentalists.

This is not at all obvious to me. I agree with you and Orwell that they are wrong about a great many things, but that is not the same thing at all.

Have you ever even met any fundamentalists? All 4 of my grandparents were Southern Baptist, as well as very nice people. If society were made up of people like them, it would be an improvement.


Of course. That was the point. It was meant to point out that the argument the essay made was dependent on its premise. The essay made no attempt to show that fundamentalists are really that bad -- it wants you to take it on faith.

One of my best friends is a fundamentalist. I think his theological views are the height of idiocy, but he's a great guy. Very kind, polite and friendly to everyone, good work ethic, good morals, etc. And he's pretty smart outside the realm of theology.