OK, I admit up front I am an atheist and even more accurately an anti-theist…
I have a hard time respecting the moderately religious. Like, you have enough common sense or intelligence to recognize that the world is not 10,000 years old or that stories of talking snakes and talking donkeys are myths, as well as Noah’s Ark and other stories, but you somehow still think there is only one god, the christian god, and you must believe in him or go to hell. Even harder to understand/respect is the liberal christian, “I believe in Jesus but I think there are many paths (besides Jesus) to heaven”. That is so completely against the bible. Why even bother to be religious if you are just going to make up your own version of the religion? Why not be “spiritual” instead?
I’m about as hard-edged an atheist as you might find in these here hills – okay, I’m no Der Trihs, but I am pretty much his spiritual ally – and the moderately religious are the ones I respect the most!
They’re the ones who don’t try to force their God down everyone else’s throat. They accept the science of Evolution. They have accommodated themselves to Gay Marriage. They understand that morality is nuanced, and that the Bible isn’t the be-all and end-all of moral truth.
They’re the ones who follow their faith more or less the way I follow an aesthetic vision. It gives them pleasure and comfort, but they realize that others have other views, and that ecumenism and tolerance are civilizing values.
Moderation is a civilizing value, one of the very highest.
A hard time respecting moderation? Nay! Moderation is one of the things most worthy of our respect in the whole of the world!
I disagree. Well I agree of course that a live and let live attitude is the best way to be and admit that I myself do not apply this enough to religious people. But, you still haven’t addressed my main point. How can you say that talking snakes and talking donkeys are myths because they are “obviously” a made up part of the bible, but still think other parts of the bible are the complete truth???
How can you say – of an ancient work that was based on oral histories passed down for many generations, written and rewritten countless times, embellished by many and altered in countless other ways, translated to and from many different languages with wildly varying degrees of competence and accuracy – how can you say of such a work that some parts are allegorical, some parts false, and some parts you believe in as truth? Very easily, I’d say. In fact that’s the only possible reasonable interpretation of such a work. It’s the nutbars that consider the Bible to be the absolute, literal, and infallible Word of God that I have no patience for.
I really think Trinopus nailed it in his response. What I’ll add to that is that many of the “moderately religious” I know don’t necessarily either believe or disbelieve any given parts of the Bible, or give it any great amount of analysis, but rather, embrace religion for the cultural traditions that it has institutionalized – the traditions of Christmas and Easter, for example, and the social traditions of marriages and funerals. Those last two are particularly notable: religion is not only a belief system, but also an institution that helps us mark the watershed moments of our lives.
In other threads I’ve argued against special constitutional protection of religious rights that otherwise contravene the law, and nothing I’ve said here contradicts that. Religion is an important social and cultural institution for many groups and cultures. It just doesn’t need any special protections beyond the secular ones we all get.
You can not make the argument that “original sin” and “Christ’s redemption”, is the true word of god, if, you reject Noah’s Ark and the Garden of Eden. Oral history and multiple translations only weigh in against the veracity of any part of the bible, not, in favor of it.
To me, it’s all a matter of faith. If a Christian can devoutly believe that the New Testament is right and the Quran is wrong, why can’t he believe that Luke is right and John is wrong? You believe what you believe and you figure the other stuff is false teachings.
So an individual could believe that God created the universe and communicated with people while also acknowledging that people aren’t perfect. People could have taken God’s message and got it mixed in with a lot of mythology about Adam and Eve and snakes and Noah’s Ark. So they see their personal belief as a case of subtracting out the false mythology and getting back to what they feel is God’s true message.
Yes but you can’t say, for example, that original sin and Christ’s redemption are the only possible answers to the topic of salvation and then in the next breath say Noah’s Ark is a story that got inaccurately transcribed. Sorry, but that just seems like the biggest case of irrational, contradictory thinking.
I’ll take a moderate Christian over a hard core Christian any day of the week.
Still, it is annoying that these moderates are basically embracing willful ignorance. And even more annoying, this apathetic attitude towards willful ignorance is something that get passed down to their children.
Yes you can. Christians cherry-pick their favourite Bible bits all the time. That’s how religion works; hell, that’s how human beings work. What’s wrong with it, exactly?
What’s the difference? Between “religious” and “spiritual,” I mean?
It also enables and justifies those believers who aren’t moderate. It makes the irrationality of religion acceptable, and there’s no logical difference between engaging in milder religious practices in the name of faith and killing people in the name of faith.
“God wants me to give money to the Church”, “God wants me to deny evolution”, “God wants same sex marriage to be forbidden” and “God wants me to kill unbelievers” differ in content, not in their underlying “reasoning”; all are based on faith. On dogmatism, the denial of thought, and of judgement.
And who died and appointed you the sole interpreter of what the Bible means? Declaring that there is only one true orthodoxy and anyone who disagrees with it is a heretic is fundamentalist behavior. It’s perfectly possible to believe (as the current Pope does, for instance) that the parts of the Bible about love, charity, and humility are more important than the parts about sexual hygiene and ancient history.
The thing about atheists who claim they don’t understand moderate religious people - I just know that if some twist of fate made them religious, they’d be utter ISIS-level fanatics. Only fanatics don’t understand moderates.
They may have lot’s of subjective, emotional, or what they think are intellectual reasons for their contradictory beliefs, but that doesn’t make any of their beliefs sound or logical.
This is one of those no win discussions. Atheists and agnostics believe all religious people live breathe and accept the most extreme interpretations of their religion.
For some strange reason its impossible for critics to recognise that most religious people are moderate and its more a matter of culture than to die for.
Some people value evidence and can’t imagine giving in to nonsense like astrology.
Religion is certainly as unfounded as astrology, homeopathy or casting the future in chicken bones.
It’s hard to imagine a successful surgeon that thinks he needs to check the bones to see if he should invest in a mutual fund.
Mind you, I know a lot of religious people, and I do get that they believe because they don’t examine the beliefs. It’s like a painful tooth that your tongue skips over. Especially the weak believers. They want to believe it. It’s comforting, it’s easy. I remember when I believed. For a long time my questions were pushed away by a sensation of dread similar to my fear of heights. I was afraid to question things. Afraid that I’d burn in hell.