The “soul” example wasn’t a good one, as what I really meant was a belief in an all powerful God. Once you postulate a guy with a magic wand, anything is possible. And it’s not just fundamentalist who believe in an all powerful God-- that is mainstream Christian doctrine.
My point is that calling someone “stupid” for their “fundamentalist” religious beliefs begs the question: which religious beliefs are NOT stupid in that sense. Saying that a so-called moderate religious belief is OK, but a fundametalist one is not is just a form of personal bias.
Oh, give me a break. Alienating a bunch of strangers, is it? You think that’s a good idea?
This is how I see it: people have all sorts of “irrational,” unprovable beliefs. As John Mace put it, belief in a 7-day creation is as unprovable as belief in a soul. Belief that a man rose from the dead, or being born of a virgin are also unprovable.
As long as people don’t want to have these specific beliefs forced upon the unwilling (at school, etc.) then it’s really nobody’s business.
If someone wants to be disrespectful of anyone who believes in something that can’t be proved, however, they’ll find that there are very few people left to respect.
Also, all people will vote their values, in one form or another. You can’t expect that people will not do that. They can, perhaps, be encouraged to vote for their values and fairness, however. A sense of fairness is a value too, of a sort.
And this is a good insight:
People might come around to your side better and soften some of their more extreme views, if you don’t alienate them.
And another thing: trying to get people of faith to forsake their faith (which some want to do) is often folly. Trying to appeal to their sense of fairness (as in, don’t force ideas down other people’s throats, how would you like that done to you? etc.) is a much better tactic.
In popular media, it is okay to treat conservative concerns mockingly, but not okay to treat liberal concerns mockingly. (Generalization, but I think it generally holds.)
I think this is what alot of conservatives are angry about.
As far as I can tell, the only two possible answers are:
Disallow mockery in the media
Start mocking liberal concerns along w/ conservative ones.
There’s probably much better options than that but I’m tired.
“Why shouldn’t those of us on the coasts feel superior? We eat better, travel more, dress better, watch cooler movies, earn better salaries, meet more interesting people, listen to better music and know more about what’s going on in the world.”
The “watch cooler movies” is my favorite part, along with “dress better.” Hell, the whole paragraph is a scream. And yet liberals still accuse Republicans of being materialistic moneygrubbers
I’m also amused by his assumption that red states=Republican states.
Sometimes I’m amazed at what passes for publication worthiness.
God bless him, though. He’s making my job in '06 and '08 that much easier.
Yes, they are unprovable. That’s not a good thing. Because of the weight of evidence against them (from geology for 7-day creation, to neurology for proof of soul), I see these beliefs as fair game in the fight against ignorance.
All of what you said is true, but irrelevant. The Straight Dope is about fighting ignorance. It doesn’t say “Tolerating ignorance since 1973” up there, does it? So here we fight ignorance. On other message boards, on in real life, feel free to tolerate it, celebrate it, or whatever you’d like to do.
As far as practicing their faith goes, I respect them as much as anybody else. We’re all free to worship as we see fit, and let God sort it out in the end. But this gives them more respect than what they give others. The RR sees religious freedom as the right to practice their religion. The idea that others may feel differently and not wish to participate in a school prayer is utterly beyond their understanding. They think that tenets of their faith should be displayed in public buildings. They think that they have the right to condemn and discriminate people for their sexual preferences, and maintain the myth that it is a sinful choice that these people make. They think a cluster of cells the size of a booger is worthy of constitutional protection, yet it is perfectly acceptable for the state to execute fully grown humans. They think that religious doctrine should be taught alongside scientific theory in school. And they want us to believe that Jesus loves handguns. And so for all their hypocrisy and their continuous crusade to impose their religion on the world, I have no respect whatsoever.
If you decide “not to respect” or to politically sideline them… how do you go about it ? Without committing political suicide ? Pissing off religious hard cores… means you will isolate huge number of voters… even those that aren’t Christian Right.
I’d love to see the religious right implode… but its just not feasible from the outside to attack them… these self righteous bastards relish this kind of attacks in order to unite them even more. 9/11 played right into their hands… and Bush too.
So every darn election for decades will have to pay lip service to these people or at least avoid confronting them.... sad...
The religious right is reviled on this board solely because it’s on the political right. No other reason is necessary.
I notice that Paul Wellstone is admired by many in these debates, and respected be lots more of us. Who here is going to attack him for his “irrational” belief in God, or his desire to place his ideals, founded in faith, into practice as law?
Nobody. Yet he unquestionably and unabashedly did so.
There are lots of other liberals or leftists that do so. The Plowshares antiwar movement is quite Christian. Robert Drinan, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King were all ordained ministers or priests.
I’ll start taking this argument seriously when they’re all singled out as well for mixing politics with religion. I don’t really think I’ll have to do so anytime soon.
Well, Sharpton doesn’t have a great record, on the face of it, in promoting racial justice or tolerance. Jesse Jackson’s record in this area is quite spotty too.
Yet they do get a pass, you’re right. And they get it because they’re Democrats.
Speaking purely for myself I do not respect fundamentalists of any religious or political pursuasion. Why the hell should we respect people whose ‘beliefs’ appear to be cherry-picked from the Bible, the Koran or whatever to support whatever prejudices they want to impose on the rest of us?
Let’s think for a moment. Suppose we want to fight against creationism being taught in schools. That is a worthwhile goal. The question becomes, how do we fight that?
Do we fight it by attacking people who don’t believe in evolution, call them ignorant, stupid, deluded morons who should just shut the fuck up and let their betters decide what should be taught in schools?
It may be true that people who don’t believe in evolution are ignorant. OK, it IS true that people who don’t believe in evolution are ignorant. How is it helpful to say things like ignorant=stupid? Are people who don’t believe in evolution really stupider? You’ve got the causation backwards. Stupid people are more likely to be ignorant, but intelligent people can be ignorant too.
HOW do you stop the teaching of creationism in schools? Respect doesn’t mean that you have to tolerate everything someone does, it doesn’t mean you have to shut up and let me do whatever they like. It does mean that you have to take them seriously. There are millions of Christian right wingers in this country. They aren’t going away just because you managed to keep creationism out of science textbooks in Alabama.
The lasting way to “win” the fight isn’t to shout down your opponents, or to win court fights, or to impose your way of thinking. The way to really win is to get the other side to agree that, gosh darn it, you’ve got a point there. Screaming at a creationist isn’t going to help anyone. It won’t persuade the creationist, it won’t persuade the bystanders, it won’t persuade people who agree with you. The more ignorant, the more stupid, the more backward your opponent really is, the less helpful it is to call him ignorant, stupid and backward.
If your opponent really is ignorant, you can’t win an argument by dismissing him as ignorant. You win the argument by educating him.
Starting with the premise of God and Creation…
Try this “mental exercise” for a bit…
Before the Beginning there is only God. Nothing has been created yet. Is there time? No. It hasn’t been created. If time is simply a sequence of events, then with no substance and no events, no time.
“Let there be light”. An event. The Big Bang, the Genesis, the Word, the Start of Everything.
Still no mention of time.
Separating the earth from the sky, the sea from the land. Events.
Etc, etc, etc. Still no mention of time itself, although our definition of time is a “sequence of events”.
Now add another wrinkle. God is outside of time and completely independent of it. To this God, time has no meaning or importance. So why limit him to calendar days, years or eons? This is a Being, to whom trillions of our years is insignificant.
Toss in Relativity too - Time is mallable. It can be stretched and comressed. It is not linear or constant.
For fun, consider that the length of a day (our day) is nothing more than one revolution of our planet - day to night to day. Due to the action of the moon and tides acting as a brake, our days may have been getting shorter and shorter over the eons.
Now, was each “day” a literal day? Was it a phase of creation instead? Does it even matter? It doesn’t matter in the least. It is a nit and a strawman. It is totally irrelevant.
There is nothing to prove or disprove. Who is to say the biblical “days” were not a few billion of our years each?
Isn’t the fact that anything at all, with all its subtlety and complexity, exists more amazing than the length of a day?
I considered including that thought in my reply, as well. I think you’re right to bring up the concern. But I decided I wasn’t ready yet to get into fine-grained arguments about what constitutes “mainstream”.
I think it can be reasonably argued that parker/stone are sort of “fringe-mainstream” if that can make any sense.
