Why is it more offensive to condemn religious views than political views?

Great Debates
1

In this Pit thread, Fenris asked what I think is a rather interesting question, and it got me thinking.

Briefly, for those of you who’ve somehow missed it, one poster made some comments that were highly critical of conservatives, and another poster took those same comments and substituted the word “Jew” for conservative, in an attempt to point out why he thought the first poster was being offensive. Many people objected to this, so Fenris asked

Most of the few Dopers who addressed this said that they would still object, in essence because making blanket statements condemning members of a particular religion seems more offensive than making blanket statements condemning people of a particular political bent. I happen to agree.

But what irritates me is that I can’t adequately explain to myself why I agree; just what is it that makes people feel this way? So do you agree that making blanket statements (appropriately enough, I’ll call these “b.s.” from here on out) condemning people of a particular religion is worse than making b.s. condemning people of a particular political philosophy, and more importantly, why or why not?

Just to get the ball rolling, Tejota gave an answer to this in the same thread, on the next page.

(NB: I’ve removed some additional statements that, while arguably relevant to the specific incident don’t appear to be relevant in general (that is, I don’t think they apply to all b.s. regarding political philosophy)).

I don’t know that I entirely agree with this explanation. Certainly, making b.s. condemning people on the basis of gender/sexual orientation/ethnicity is offensive, and I agree with Tejota that this has to do with the fact that one doesn’t choose one’s gender/ethnicity/sexual orientation/etc.

But as far as religion being similarly out of bounds because it’s a matter of faith, I have to disagree. After all, I have to imagine that Jack Chick Christians believe what they believe on faith, but I haven’t noticed too many people going out of their way to defend them from blanket condemnations! Further, I object to the complete separation of “faith” from “intellect,” given that people like Polycarp and tomndebb and many others put a great deal of thought into their religious beliefs, and while it IS ultimately a matter of faith, it’s not at all divorced from reason. Moreover, I don’t entirely agree that political philosophy is chosen by intellect alone, either. It has to start somewhere, after all, with some set of basic principles (maximizing individual freedoms or group well-being or whatever else) that ultimately feel like the right axioms; isn’t this a kind of faith?

Anyway, I’d appreciate any thoughts my fellow Dopers might have on this!

2

One possible answer: Politics is, by definition, the realm of public life; it necessarily affects everyone else (you want to raise my taxes or cut the government programs which I benefit from or pass laws criminalizing behavior I indulge in).

Religion, on the other hand, can a primarily or entirely personal thing (or a familial thing or a communal thing, in the sense of a wholly voluntary community); criticizing it or even bringing it up will be seen as an unwarranted intrusion by an outsider into something which is none of his or her business.

Of course there’s an overlap between religious views and religiously-motivated views on politics (or on social standards of morality); note that generally people seem more willing to accept questioning of religious-derived beliefs in those areas as legitimate. Pestering someone about their belief in the Holy Trinity may simply be rude, but questioning them about their belief that homosexuality is condemned by God, if it’s the root of their support for sodomy laws or opposition to gay marriage, is legit.

Note that Christians or believers in other evangelizing religions may bring up the topic themselves. If someone is buttonholing you about your lack of belief in the Holy Trinity, they don’t really have cause to complaint if you in turn question their views. Also, if people voluntarily and deliberately come and hang out at a forum that’s specifically designed for people to talk about (among other things) the Existence of God and the Meaning of Life, that’s a different kettle of fish too.

Given the historically proselytizing nature of Christianity, and given the extent to which all religions (even generally non-proselytizing ones like Hinduism or Judaism) impinge on political and social concerns, some level of public discussion or critique of religious ideas is certainly inevitable.

3

Because religion is one of those protected areas in the U.S., like race, gender, ethnicity, etc. and discrimination on such grounds is prohibited by law, and eschewed by all reasonable people.

Politics is not so protected. Public debate (as MEB says) happens all the time, with politicians accusing each other of every conceivable (and some inconceivable) offense, in a public forum.

4

I happen to disagree, and I already pointed out this paradox in several threads.

Quite often, when one can’t think of a valid reason backing his feelings, it’s because there’s no valid reason…

My guess is that it’s a cultural thing, related to people being on the average very religious in a given country hence having an ingrained respect of religion. I don’t think that blanket statements about a religion would be deemed more offensive than blanket statements about a political party here (at least by the majority of people), since I live in a country where people aren’t very religious (and that’s an understatement).
The only kind of blanket statements I believe are offensive are blanket statements about things you have no control on. For instance belonging to a given race or having a disability. At least in our western countries, people choose to belong to a church or a party. I don’t think I’ve any reason to respect one of these choices more than the other.

5

I’m in the fuzzier area of the “disagree” circle on this hear venn diagram. On the one hand, while I’m sure that many follow the politics they do out of an intellectual choice, I very much doubt that it holds true for many, and perhaps even most. My only cite for this is…well, pretty much most political discussions anywhere; the whole headache of Election 2000™ highlighted already existing trends–of deep prejudice and ill will from both sides towards the other that was anything but “intellectual”. For a great many people, politics is their religion.

On the other hand, there’s C K Dexter Haven’s insight, which is pretty spot-on, I think. Still, b.s. remains BS, and the difference in degree of their wrongness is only slight.

6

See also the related thread Mainstream and NonMainstream Religions and the Parameters of Reasonable Outrage which I started to pose a very similar question.

7

It is always rude to insult anyone, whether the insult is directed at their politics, religion, height, skin color, etc.

Criticizing political views is acceptable because such views are based on facts or values. Those with differing opinions can spar over which facts are relevant (and accurate), though they should be civilized enough to recognize that values are sometimes arbitrary.

Religion, on the other hand, is at its core totally arbitrary. “My God’s better than your God” arguments are pointless, and are properly considered impolite. Since religion is also practically hereditary, it is likewise useless to argue (see height, skin color, etc. above). However, to the extent that religious opinions differ with respect to facts, criticism is allowed. Criticism is also appropriate when one tries to impose values on another, since (as I say) values can be arbitrary. (When one believes that values are objective, we get back into the realm of empirical facts, so criticism is still allowed.)

That said, I should add that your fat Jewish mother wears army boots. :wink:

8

Religion and politics
Often make people
Lose all perspective
And give way to ranting and raving
And carrying on
Like emotional children
They either refuse
To discuss it with reason
Or else they prefer
Argumentum ad hominem
…

(I heard this 20-odd years ago on Dr. Demento. I swear.)

9

Hmm.

MEB, I think you’ve more or less nailed why it is that people make these kinds of statements. Trust me to miss the obvious. So is the reason, then, that many people don’t have as much of a problem with them simply that we’re used to them by now? Has familiarity with such unhelpful statements as “conservatives are hard-hearted bastards” or “liberals are soft-headed morons” bred a degree of acceptance of them?

C K D. H., while I realize that religion is formally protected while political view is not, I should hope that political views are at least protected socially! I mean, wouldn’t you expect a big uproar if someone were to open, say, Moe’s Restaurant: Liberals Not Welcome? Having never seen this experiment tried, I couldn’t be 100% sure, but I suspect that discrimination on the basis of political orientation wouldn’t be much more socially acceptable here than discrimination on the basis of religion. Then again, there was this McCarthy guy… Have things changed in 50 years?

clair, interesting. So in your country, saying something like “Conservatives are hard-hearted bastards” and “Muslims are brain-washed fanatics” would be equally unacceptable? (I agree, incidentally, that it’s quite possible that there isn’t a valid reason for my feelings; that’s why I wanted to discuss this, in fact!)

AHunter3, oops! I started following that thread, but failed to keep up with it long enough to catch that!

10

I think TheeGrumpy gets to the heart of the answer. I see two basic distinctions between religious identity and political affiliation. Religion is a somewhat immutable characteristic and is tied closely to culture and ethnicity, while one freely choses one’s political affiliation. And political view are (or claim to be) based on rationality and are open to debate.

11

Nope. Only Christians can be brain-washed fanatics. Calling Muslims that way would be deemed racist. Of course, in reality, I’m pretty sure that more people would use “brain washed fanatics” for muslims than for christians.
Actually, when I was writing my post, I was thinking that I saw many times people stating that one should respect religion and that blanket statements about religions aren’t nearly as acceptable as the same statements about political opinions on american boards, while I very seldom if ever read such arguments on french boards.
But when I think more deeply about that, and stop considering internet boards, it’s not as simple. First, french people rarely speak or argue about religion, while political arguments are commonplace (if not socially required…can’t remember any family dinner which didn’t include at least one hour of strong political argument). So, perhaps there are no resentment about religious blanket statements because there are rarely such blanket statements at the first place, nobody being really interested in the topic.
However, in real life, I nevertheless heard a lot of blanket statements about, say catholicism, but can’t remember having ever heard someone arguing that such statements were less acceptable than in the political area. Even when believers were present. That could be related to another cultural trait, though. Just thought about it. Being confrontational is relatively well accepted, here, methink, and doesn’t seem to be socially a no-no, in usual circumstances. Actually, thinking about recent occurences, I heard a lot of blanket statements made even to strangers with opposing view (in cafes, for instance), and nobody seemed seriously offended.
Well…your question was interesting. Though I maintain that there’s no common belief that blanket statements are less acceptable about religion than about politics here, the reasons explaining this may be more complicated than I thought when I wrote my first post.

12

I think you’ve got cause and effect reversed there.

Why? Is there something unreasonable about deciding that certain religions are more moral than others? Is a person who oopse Scientology “unreasonable”?

13

The reason is that most people have Political Views , and Religious Beliefs.
Politic’s are constantly changing and are subject to manipulation via media and outside corporations. If you have political belief’s you will end up being disappointed when your belief’s no longer hold up in the current system.
Religion even though it has changed , the same basis remains for centuries.

14

Religion may, in practice for a great many people, be constituted of beliefs which are embraced but not subjected to review and/or the expectation that they be corroborated by experience and data. Nevertheless, insofar as those beliefs constitute assertions, especially about desirable and undesirable human behavior, they intrude into the arena of politics.

If someone’s religion merely makes assertions about God or Heaven that are a very abstract arm’s length away from behavioral imperatives (e.g., “God is Green and has four hands”; “You will go to Heaven and turn green yourself and live forever when you die”), that’s one thing, but most religions go on to encode moral systems (“Only good people go to heaven; people who have sex with the lights on are wicket, not good people; to allow people to do wicked things is to be wicked one’s self”) and at that point it doesn’t matter that many of the religions’ adherents believe and internalize the religion as part of their sense of identity and don’t consider it to be subject to inquiry and question, they are still committing political acts every time they identify themselves as participating members of that religion. And on that basis I am entitled to declare them to be oppressive and/or sanctimonious and/or evil because of that very political act.

15

chula, while I’ll grant that religion is tied to upbringing, can’t the same be said to a (somewhat lesser) extent regarding politics? Certainly there must be some reason that rational people end up with such wildly divergent political views, right? Is it really the case that political views are rationally chosen, or do we just like to make this claim? Even if the former, how does this make it inoffensive to condemn an entire group of people based on their choice? In other words, even if I’ve chosen to be a liberal, what makes it okay to say “liberals are all soft-headed morons with water on the brain?”

clair, I find that really interesting. I would have expected that the distinction, to the degree that it exists, is cultural, but I guess I’m a little surprised at how large the cultural differences are!

I don’t think I buy this one. While the implications of a political philosophy might change, the principles remain the same. Communists a decade from now will agree philosophically with the communists of a previous decade; libertarians a decade from now will agree philosophically with the libertarians of a previous decade as well.

AHunter3, I’m not entirely sure I follow you. Yes, fine, so my religion tells me that having sex with the lights on is evil. So what? It’s only when I try to force you to have sex only with the lights off, and to do that by legislative fiat rather than by convincing you that turning the lights off is a moral imperative, that I’ve done something political. While there certainly are people out there who try to legislate a morality based on their religion, I would contend that it is both offensive and, frankly, idiotic to condemn all members of that religion for the follies of some subset thereof.

16

Well, that depends. If your religion says having sex with the lights on is evil but does not go on to say that all true believers should do what they can to spread the word and to stop evil behaviors such as having sex with the lights on, and your religion’s followers do not, in general, tend to react to this moral assertion of your religion by concluding that they should spread the word and/or attempt to stop evil behaviors like that–then you have not performed a political act merely by identifying yourself as a follower of that religion.

Otherwise, you have. Certainly the act of trying to convince me that turning the lights off before having sex is a moral imperative is a political act, even if it is yet more so a political act for you to try to get legislation passed that would make it a crime.

17

Umm… define political for me, please; I don’t think you’re using it in the way I intend it here. Because I’m sorry, but trying to convince someone that something they’re doing is immoral doesn’t scream “politics” to me whatsoever. Standing on the street corner yelling “repent because the end is at hand” doesn’t scream “politics” to me (it does, however, scream “nutjob”).

There’s a difference between expressing a religious opinion and expressing a political one, is there not? Fer Chrissakes, there’s liberal Catholics and conservative Catholics, and liberal Protestants and conservative Protestants, and liberal Jews and conservative Jews, et cetera, ad nauseum. “Catholic” is a religious designation, not a political one.

Yes, yes, fine, so I’ve identified myself as a member of a particular group by calling myself, say, a Baptist. But except in the sense of stating that I am part of that group, I still fail to see how I’ve made any statement of my political views whatsoever. I have indeed made a statement about my moral views, but my politics? I think that would be a major stretch.

18

Here, let me add a clarifying example. Suppose I belong to some religion that believes, among other things, that driving SUVs is immoral. I can identify myself as a member of religion X, and you can immediately conclude that I believe that driving SUVs is immoral. I have now made a statement about my moral views, as well as my religious ones.

However, I further add that I am not only a member of religion X, I’m also an anarchist, and my political view as such is that you can do as you damn well please, including driving an SUV, even though I disapprove. I’ve now made a political statement (and also a second moral statement). The latter is the one that actually has any impact on you; the former is completely irrelevant except inasmuch as you find my moral stance on SUVs to be ridiculous/insulting/whatever else. Having moral views, in other words, is not necessarily the same thing as having political views, although it certainly CAN be.

19

I have to agree with clairobscur, and even expand it to a general standpoint. It’s OK to debate, even criticize a political view just as much as a religious view but to throw around blanket statements about someone else’s views is just as offensive independent of if the nature of belief. Anyone that might have bounced into political threads were I have posted might see that I do indeed fly off the handle pretty fast at offensive, simplistic, populist political statements as much as I do at religious bigotry.

I’d say that the big difference is not the level with which we should or do accept blanket statements and offensiveness. The big difference is the form with which we are allowed to argue. Religious debate would typically take a more subdued form, respectful of the fact that the people involved have accepted that the base is faith and that reason comes second. Political debate should be allowed and needs to be more direct in its form of rhetoric. In both cases intolerance of anybody else’s views is unacceptable. It’s alright to say “Typical conservative balderdash to ask for less state intervention in the healthcare sector even when people are suffering from poor healthcare due to greedy health insurers,” while saying “You conservative asses don’t give a shit if people die from poor healthcare as long as your buddies in the health insurances can enrich temselves,” would not be kosher (well I’d take issue with both, but then again that’s due to my political views he, he). True to this I seem to note that both religious bigotry and xenophobic bigotry or political intolerance will engender a rather harsh rebuke here at SDMB.

I think that what Polycarp said in a thread about the tolerance of intolerance recently applies to both religion and politics.

Sparc

20

This struck me after I posted;

We are talking about freedom of religion and freedom of speech. Both are inalienable rights in the EU and the US, but therefore restricted in as much as being inalienable only as long as they do not alienate the same right for anyone else.

Sparc