This is it exactly, for Christians at least. Christians are supposed to accept and love everyone and only judge themselves and other Christians.
In the past a part of the problem was the majority of Americans claimed to be Christians when in reality it was more like 10%. But mostly it is because the majority of those claiming to be Christians (including a large part of the 10%) are judgemental asshats.
So what I’m getting from this thread is that a lot of the people on this board hold the attitude, “Bigotry is any attitude that contradicts majority opinion in society.”
Thus, we see that refusing to make a cake for a gay wedding is bigotry, but refusing to make a cake for a wedding between a 40-year-old man and a 13-year-old girl is NOT bigotry. The only clear difference between the two is that one is accepted by the majority, and other is not.
No, one is based on bronze age mythologies, and the other is based on the fact that a 13 year old child cannot give meaningful consent.
For the most part which biblical laws to follow for Christians was settled at the Council of Jerusalem in 48 AD. It is written about in Acts and in several of Paul’s letters. The idea that Christians are ignoring rules against mixed fabrics for the sake of convenience is just ignorance.
Hmm. How about this?
stubbornly intolerant
adjective
to be persistent and unyielding in one’s unwillingness to tolerate differences in opinions and beliefs, especially religious beliefs
bigoted
adjective
to be partial to one’s own protected classes and stubbornly intolerant of others, especially due to prejudice
~Max
Let’s say you love someone, your spouse, sibling, parent, child, whoever. They do this one thing though that is really annoying and you hate it. Maybe they’re a registered Republican they leave the seat up. Does that imply that you hold this person in contempt overall?
I don’t think so. There might be a hundred thousand other things that you love about this person. There might be things you love about all people. Just because they do something that you hate, does not mean you hate the person.
~Max
I’ve never liked ‘No True Scotsman’ definitions. If 70% of Americans claim to be Christians (and apparently that is the case), I’m fine generally accepting those claims. They’d have to get pretty far out into the heterodox before I’d personally disqualify them. Simply being a lousy Christian doesn’t necessarily make you a non-Christian.
Yeah? What about the rest of it? The divorcees? The fornicators? The ones who let their women talk in church? The ones who pray in public?
I agree it’s a problem to try to exclude a part of the group claiming membership. If someone wants to call themselves a Christian they certainly can and no one can stop them. But the description of a Christian written in the Bible is someone who chooses to make God the most important thing in their life. God becomes their king and makes the important decisions in their lives. That certainly doesn’t describe 70% of the population. It’s no wonder there are so many misconceptions around Christianity.
First, I don’t think that description of a Christian in the Bible. Second, I don’t think close to 1% of people would meet that definition. Third, since I don’t believe God exists, your next sentence (“God becomes their king and makes the important decisions in their lives.”) is IMO literally impossible. So, not a useful definition.
“Christian” is one of the most amorphous words in the language. If someone’s sincerely calling themselves a Christian, I’ve yet to meet the person I’d gainsay in that matter.
If a steadfast refusal to tolerate literal Nazism makes a person a bigot, the term is made useless. So no, I’m not down with that definition at all.
I don’t hate something merely becuase I find it annoying.
I hate things that cause harm to myself or to the society that I live in. I hate the murder of the innocent or the abuse of children, and I would say that I am at the very least contemptuous of those who would do those acts, and very well could be said to hate them for committing them.
There are a number of things that many people in my life do that I would rather that they didn’t, but I certainly would not say that I hate their actions, nor do I feel contempt for them for performing them, as I’m sure that I do things that they would rather I not do either.
Many relationships have been ended, going from love to hate, over the actions of one or both of the participants, and that is usually over small petty things like leaving the toilet seat up.
If you feel that an act is deserving of scorn, then by definition, you would be feeling contempt for the one that you scorn.
I truly do believe that I am better than the people that do things that I hate. I am a better person than murderers and child abusers. If I felt that homosexual acts were deserving of hate, then I would feel as though I were better than those who perform them.
If I want someone to stop doing something that I think is a sin, then I want them to be better than they are, which means that, by not doing the sin, I am better than they are.
I’ll happily sit on that pedestal above murderers and child abusers, but I don’t think that I deserve a place above those who have simply done things that I find annoying.
The most “Christian” people I’ve ever known have been atheists.
I’ve long been fond of the saying, “You going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than me parking in the garage makes me a car.”
I’m making post #94 in this 2-day old thread and the OP has yet to return to comment. Which is not his usual MO.
From the OP:
That in effect assumes a fixed definition of “bigotry” then tries to hold this scenario up to that template and assess the fit. IMO that’s backwards. It’s superficially attractive; after all words have meanings. But it’s ineffective in this case because the fuzziness of the meaning is larger than the fuzziness of the behavior. IOW, there’s more noise than signal when looking to the definitions.
Accordingly, most of the respondents have taken the tack of trying to define “bigotry” first. Which makes sense, because, particularly at this charged juncture in US history, there isn’t any definition that most Americans already agree on. Regardless of what any dictionary may tell us.
So I’d like to ask @Velocity the OP about the meta-question behind his question. What does it matter to you, or to us all, if the scenario you describe fits under, or doesn’t fit under, the best available definition of “bigotry”? Or of your personal favorite definition of “bigotry”, whatever that may be?
And are you really looking to discuss the term, or the behavior, or the motivation for the behavior, or the motivation for choosing the religion that encourages (encompasses?) the behavior? As I parse it, those are the underlying issues in sequence from most direct to least direct.
Throw us a bone here.
Other people are treating the ‘genuine religious belief’ argument as solid, but I have never bought it. Bigots routinely pick and choose which parts of their religion to have ‘genuine religious belief’ in and somehow, coincidentally, their genuine, religious belief compelled by God himself exactly matches their personal prejudices so well. Somehow God somehow guides the believer to pick a few specific passages to follow while telling them to ignore most of the rest of the admonitions in the same list, and to completely ignore all of the stuff that God himself (in the form of Jesus) explicitly and outright stated in the New Testament, which is the portion of the Bible that is specific to Christianity.
If ‘Christians’ who feel compelled to be bigoted assholes by the Bible shows a similar compulsion to follow the teachings of Jesus, then I could at least not dismiss the claim outright. But these same Christians who supposedly just can’t help but follow the Bible somehow ignore passages that clearly contradict taking any bigoted actions, like “Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of my brethren you did it to me”. They’re fine with treating immigrants horribly despite “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.” Justify hoarding and idolizing wealth, sometimes to the point of coming up with the Gospel of Prosperity, when Jesus said "And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
If someone is capable of ignoring pretty much the entire New Testament and all of the teachings of Jesus because they don’t fit the traditional conservative mindset of hurting minorities and hoarding wealth, then the whole idea that they have some sort of genuine religious belief compelled by God himself falls apart.
‘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
I think there’s a certain fallacy afoot here - don’t know if there’s a term for it, maybe a version of No True Scotsman - but the fact that someone doesn’t adhere 100% to something doesn’t mean they don’t belong to that category. Aren’t there Muslims who drink alcohol, or fail to perform Hajj?
That may be, but, to @Pantastic’s point, if someone who believes themselves to be a Christian feels “compelled” to act in a bigoted manner towards homosexuals because of their religious beliefs, but does not feel similarly compelled to follow half of Jesus’s “Great Commandment” (which is, generally, seen to be one of Jesus’s most important teachings), is that not problematic, at a minimum?
Sure there is, but from a religious standpoint, the logical thing would be to adhere more to the whole package, not less.
If someone claims that ‘My religion has one or two passages in books that have been explicitly deprecated by God himself, therefore I am compelled to treat these people that I was already prejudiced against badly but I’m not a bigot because it’s compelled by religion’ but also that ‘My religion has multiple passages in the major book that distinguishes it from other, similar religions and multiple admonitions directly from God to do a variety of things that I don’t like and that don’t support me bullying weaker people, so I just ignore those’, it’s not a fallacy to point out that the person’s ability and willingness to pick and choose which of God’s words they’ll follow undermines their claim that they are not making a choice. The fact that US RepubliChristians act in direct opposition to multiple, clear, not repudiated statements said to be from God himself (in his incarnation as Jesus) in the Bible makes this argument even stronger, as it’s not just a matter of ignoring one or two minor points made by a human writer.
No True Scotsman is pretty much the direct, polar opposite of anything being argued here. A “No True Scostman” fallacy would be trying to argue that ‘No Christians are bigoted’ is true by claiming that any bigoted Christians someone points out are not actually Christians. But we’re not talking about whether someone can correctly be identified as a Christian, just whether the excuse of ‘compulsion by religion’ stands up to scrutiny.
It’s not surprising that someone who tries to defend religious bigotry would claim that it’s a fallacy to point out that their claims are contradicted by their own actions, though.