^ Riverrunner, yes, I think that’s a pretty good explanation of the main opinions. For myself, yes, against abortion, against legalized prostitution (although I do see possible arguments for it), capital punishment, I’m not against it in theory, but there are serious problems with its application in the U.S., so no clear opinion.
On a lot of policy issues today, my opinion is being more and more guided by, “That sounds like a great idea. How are we going to pay for it?” Our government is broke, and we’re continuing to borrow money at a terrifying rate. Yes, we can increase taxes on the wealthy, but there is a limit to that, and our problems are very real and very severe. I look at Greece and . . . I get pretty scared for our future.
It’s tangential to the discussion as a whole, but there’s a documentary coming out called “We’re Not Broke” that is reported here (Democracy Now, very liberal slant, so fair warning given I hope).
What, are you trying to juxtapose Jesus’s message with the teachings of the church?
Many christians take as much from the Old Testament as the new, and hang their social viewpoints on the foundation of moral absolutism. If God said it’s wrong, then it’s WRONG.
Along similar lines, here is a recently published paper-
Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes
Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low Intergroup Contact http://pss.sagepub.com/content/23/2/187
Who does these studies anyway? Say we had an imaginary group, the purple people (not eaters, just the people). The purple people are widely known for disliking green people. Let’s say these purple people get together into groups and decide to systematically study and come to conclusions about the green people. It seems like people belonging to neither group would have reason to be suspicious of the purple people’s conclusions, especially if they’re consistently negative about the green people.
So we have (mostly liberal) academics making systematic studies about people with conservative mindsets. Is it possible their conclusions are biased? Even for people trying to be scrupulously honest, there are a hundred ways to unintentionally introduce bias. Slight changes of wording with theoretically identical meaning can produce very different results. Significantly more people would be in favor of “gay” marriage than “homosexual” marriage. Similarly (in the other direction), simply changing the Defense of Marriage Act to the Protection of Marriage Act garnered more support. I suspect (but have not seen actual results) that asking about “legalization” and “decriminalization” of drugs would also have significantly different results.
This is what I was going for. The Bible explicitly states that all sins are equal in the eyes of God. Christians, particularly American ones, said “Naaaah, but those gays are just gross”, so they are all about forgiveness and living with their own flaws, but legislate against gay marriage since it is such an abomination before God.
James 2: 10
How conservative Christians can spend all their free time judging gays as sinners, when the Bible explicitly says ALL men are sinners, and that all sins are equal in the eyes of God mystifies me on a daily basis. There is a huge disconnect between what is in the Bible, what Jesus said, and American “Christendom”.
“Such and such person is terrible and should be excluded and persecuted” is incompatible with “Do not judge, lest you be judged.” “Such and such activity is wrong and should not be condoned” is not, and, must be part of any functioning society.
And to say that two men “marrying” is in any way compatible with historical Christianity is to presume an absurd level of carelessness on the part of the early church. “Sex belongs in the bounds of marriage . . . except for homosexuals who we absent-mindedly forgot to add to that institution.” If you want to re-write things that much, why pretend to bother with the original documents at all?
We’ve moved on from Biblical marriage, methinks. The word, which is derived from Latin, predates Christianity as far as I’m aware - the convention certainly does. It’s also protected as a right regardless of religion or race by the Declaration of Human Rights, to which the United States is a co-signer. Of course, they’ve ignored the precepts before in regards to laws against racial miscegenation (as in, people of various races can get married, but only within their race).
There are also a few things that we no longer condone for which our condemnation for has no Biblical basis. For example, slavery: the Biblical exhortation is for slaves to obey their masters. Likewise with paedophilia: Jesus was very specific in saying that there’s no point to washing hands before meals, but neglected to mention an age of consent. This is simply because the concept of consent in marriage is a relatively recent one.
^ Gamerunkown, I’m aware that this standard isn’t considered universal today (although I’m unaware of any historical definition of marriage that recognizes a homosexual version), I only brought it up in this context because rogerbox was talking about what Christians should believe.
The whole “all sins are equal in the eyes of God” thing is true in a particular sense, but it is worth noting that Jesus himself states otherwise. John 19:11: Jesus answered, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.” As always, it helps to have context and an interest in understanding.
“All their free time?” Hyperbole much?
The notion that it is verboten to consider sin to be sin does not follow from the realization that all people are sinners. It is certainly true that it is incumbent on all Christians always to remember their own sins, but there is nothing in the Bible that says to pretend that something is OK when it isn’t. Now, if you want to argue that homosexuality is or is not sinful, that is a whole different discussion, but I’m not buying your current train of reasoning.
Re the ‘huge disconnect between what is in the Bible, what Jesus said, and American “Christendom,”’ it is certainly possible to make that case, but only by lumping all of American Christendom into one group, which works about as well as lumping any large group of people together usually does.
I’m not terribly sure how most of this is relevant to the whole “blue vs red” state thing anyway. I thought Cecil’s column covered that whole nonexistent “issue” well, and I really haven’t seen anything in this thread that improved on what TPM said.
^ Riverrunner, A) Yes, the thread has drifted significantly from the original topic. Apparently a passing mention of christian media touched a nerve with some people. B) Yes, “Judge not lest you be judged” is today one of the most ridiculously abused scriptures. How “don’t look down on others because spiritually, your state is no better (and whatever improvement exists is to my (God’s) credit, not yours)” turned into “you’re not allowed to have a clearly defined moral code” I don’t know. It’s a strange logical leap.
Just to be entirely clear on what I think, the Westboro Baptist Church (a.k.a. “God hates fags” people) are completely outside the spirit of Christianity. So is “free love” and “whatever makes you feel good”. (By the way, “free love” is an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one. What person in love ever was free or wanted to be?)
Strangely enough, I’ve never heard anyone invoke “Don’t judge” in favor of WBC. Their bile-spewing judgementalism is sinful, but I’ve sinned enough that I have no standing to judge their souls. And calling this to their defense makes just as much sense as anyone else’s. Honestly, having heard an interview with one of the members, I mostly feel sorry for them. The world they live in (by their own perceptions) is so entirely bleak and dark. Yet God loves them, and loves those they hate as well.
A few are listed on wikipedia. Worth noting the Native American custom of “two-spirits”, so gay marriage is an older tradition in the US than Christian marriage.
ACLU doesn’t distinguish between their right to free speech and anyone else’s. In fact, they’ve even advocated for corporate free speech.
He also said the most vehement should inform people when they had sinned, which seemed to be his strategy in life. When he was at his most vituperative he cast out the money lender and refused to talk to someone (not throwing his pearls before swine).
It’s funny you should mention this, because I just read something relevant: Jesus was reported to have condemned divorce on any grounds other than adultery in every gospel. Apparently, the states that have legalised gay marriage have among the lowest rates of divorce. One of the highest on the list, Alabama, had 40% of its residents voting to keep the unconstitutional unenforceable law against racial miscegenation on the books in 2000.
“McDaniel thereupon produced his own more plausible set of average state IQs, ranging from a low of 94 for Mississippi to a high of 104 for Massachusetts. At first glance numbers like that might seem to support the red-states-are-dopes hypothesis.”
There’s a huge confounding factor that Cecil didn’t touch: race. For whatever reason, whites and Asians tend to have higher average IQ scores than blacks and Hispanics. In Massachussetts, nearly 80% of the population is white and another 5% is Asian. Compare that with Mississippi, which is nearly 40% black (the highest such percentage in the country). Given that black people, on the average, score lower on IQ tests than white people, it really shouldn’t be surprising that the state with the highest percentage of African Americans scored lowest, while one of the whitest states scored highest. And anyway, black Mississippians don’t vote Republican much, either.
Cecil seems puzzled by California’s comparatively low IQ (96), but again racial factors can explain it: in California, Hispanic and black people together make up nearly half the state’s population.
(To be clear, I’m NOT arguing that IQ is an infallible measure of intelligence. Far from it.)
But again there’s a racial confounding factor here. African Americans are more likely to divorce than whites. Accordingly, the states with the highest percentage of African Americans invariably have the highest rates of divorce. There’s a clearer correlation between the size of the black population and divorce than there is between legalizing gay marriage and divorce.
Studies that control for race generally find that white Southerners don’t live their lives much differently than whites elsewhere. What really differentiates the South from the rest of the country is simply that its black population is much larger than everywhere else. Because African Americans are unfortunately overrepresented on pretty much all negative social factors, the region with the largest African-American population (the South) will reflect this.
Exit polling data going back several years pretty much confirms what you are saying. While Democrats like to portray Republicans as illiterate knuckle-draggers, the fact is that their ***average ***education levels are about the same, with some studies putting GOP supporters a few months ahead.
Democrats do disproportionately well among post-graduates ***and ***high school drop outs. Republicans get their support from high school graduates, and those with some college (despite the student vote tending to go to the Dems). It’s pretty much a wash among those with a 4 year degree.
You can also look at income and see the same pattern, at least with respect to the 2008 presidential election. McCain supporters had higher average incomes, but Obama got his support from the poorest and the richest.
While there can be problems with associating education or income with intelligence - in the IQ sense - there is a statistically valid corelation and there is no reason to think that the intelligence distribution among voters - en masse - would differ much from the known patterns of education and income related to political affiliation.
To put my conservative spin on this, if you are normal (in a statistical sense that we could define as being within 2 standard deviations of the mean) then it’s more likely that you are a Republican.
What gives liberals the perception of being smarter is that their leaders, by and large, probably do have higher IQs. Look at their voter support: they aren’t going to try and push a high school dropout into high office; they have a larger pool of intellectual elites to draw on. The problem is that politics is a practical endeavor, and if you follow the link regarding “If Liberals are more intelligent, why are they so stupid”.
I suppose I would have to cite Aristotle and such to equate “practical endeavor” and “evolutionarily familiar domain” and then claim that politics is one, but I hope you can see what I am getting at.
Republican political leaders are smart, but rarely geniuses. Even George Bush probably has an IQ well over a standard deviation above the mean. However, it is easy for liberal intelligencia, with IQs well above his, to make him look like an idiot to the masses, and the dull in particular.
I read a study once that tried to peg the typical IQs of professionals, at the top of their game, sorted by profession. Philosophers came in the highest at 180. Military Leaders were listed at 135. In other words, a military “genius” was a full 10 points behind those who barely make the grade as a regular genius. I would think that it would be the same in politics.
Statescraft, in peacetime or in war, seems to have harshly diminishing returns to IQ past 2 standard deviations above the mean.
As a final note:
Ya, but social scientists are academic elites, and academic elites are disproportionately liberal (disturbingly so) and thus it is not a stretch to suggest that maybe there is a bit of bias in their research. So when you read a “study” that basically tries to justify their political preferences as being the smart way to go, be wary.
