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Religion does a lot of good in people lives. Fundamentalist Christians have very strong views on certain things that you and I may disagree with, but that does

Religion does a lot of good in people lives. Fundamentalist Christians have very strong views on certain things that you and I may disagree with, but that doesn't mean that Christianity or religion itself more broadly is a cancer. For instance, they hate abortion because they view it as murder, which is itself a morally consistent position to take. If you believed abortion was murder I'd hope that you would hate it to. We just happen to disagree with them on the status of a fetus. Now their intolerance of certain groups (LGBT people most prominently) itself cannot be tolerated, but their intolerance is more a result of religion being influenced by the status quo of old world values. As society as a whole becomes more accepting of different people over time, religion will also adopt those values just as successful religions have always done. Viewed in this light organized religion is not a cancer but simply something that must be refined a bit in the context of our changing society.

threatofrain 9y ago
There are lots of organizations that do good in people's lives. I don't see why that needs to be tied with bigotry. I hope we don't accept a concept of a moral debit card, like a doctor who can save many lives, so we should tolerate a little abuse. When we can't stop abuse, we will endure it, but when we can, we ought not. I find it also surprising that the Christian muscle in this country is immense, they could move mountains, but for over 20 years the only issues which has captivated their national attention have been sexual ones. And now there's this transgender business. Is there no Christian political consensus to be had on the poor? Why was there national discussion on a constitutional ban for gay marriage during the presidential elections? Did the thought of stopping gay marriage rally the base?
- acdha 9y ago
  Two bits of history which helped me understand that more: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-ri... https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/books/review/one-nation-under-god-by-kevin-m-kruse.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/books/review/one-nation-u...
- meri_dian 9y ago
  Social issues like marriage that can be easily legislated about are much easier to deal with than systemic problems like poverty, therefore people will give more attention to the social issues. It's just an example of bike-shedding. Talk about the small scale things you can control rather than the large complex issues that are more intimidating. But attitudes about marriage and sexuality are really very small and insignificant aspects of religion as a whole. Politics and culture war have inflamed certain issues in America, but those issues will resolve themselves in time. Once they do people will have less of a reason to be mad at religion. What I'm cautioning against is conflating frustration towards religious attitudes about particular things that are slowly changing in the present with thr idea that there is something fundamentally wrong about religion itself. If you made a mistake about something, I wouldn't automatically assume you yourself are broken. I would just help correct you then wish you the best.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
Retric 9y ago
Being morally consistent has zero value for third parties. You can be morally consistent and commit genoside. If your viewpoint creates hate then their is no excuse, that's inherently bad. In terms of LGBT hate, that's largely an outgrowth of the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam etc and their cultural influences. For comparison you need to look at what they replaced, and that's very much a mixed bag. I would suggest that when you have a large number of options the bust by metric X (Morality) is unlikely to be chosen if it's Metric Y that's used. For the same reason the gold metal winning sprinter is unlikely to also be the best looking.
- naasking 9y ago
  > You can be morally consistent and commit genoside. I don't think that's true. At some point, an abhorrent moral code is going to entail a proposition that is either factually incorrect or inconsistent with itself.
  - Retric 9y ago
    How so? People disagree to the degree killing cows is OK. But, both sides can be consistent based around what lives matter. Classify Group X say Murders, Outlaws, Nazi's, white people, or even humans outside the tribe in the killing allowed category and everything can stay consistent.
    - naasking 9y ago
      > Classify Group X say Murders, Outlaws, Nazi's, white people, or even humans outside the tribe in the killing allowed category and everything can stay consistent Except it's not consistent with basic facts, like the fact that the differences between any group of humans is non-existent. There's also a Kantian argument to be made that killing period, is inherently logically inconsistent.
      - Retric 9y ago
        differences between any group of humans is non-existent That's clearly a false assumption. As long as I can identify a group say people who's social security numbers end in 7 then their exists a difference between them and all other groups. Now placing any real value on having a SSN ending in 7 may seem meaningless, but the difference exists. PS: It could even be useful as a means of load balancing.
dcow 9y ago
Yes. Indeed most of the religions practiced in America preach, above all other things that you think matter, putting your fellow humans first despite their background, race, social status, etc. I know Catholicism (despite some of its institutionally conservative warts) explicitly preaches tolerance, the prerequisite for social diversity. What I've observed in America of late is a lack of religions maintaining social relevance and so increasingly becoming scapegoated by the crazies that hold out. I also consider scientific method to be an unconventional "religion" insofar as it's proliferated enough to have crazies of its own telling people how to live their lives and making dogmatic claims it itself cannot even support (your god isn't real we haven't observed it yet--would sound petty and absurd were the same argument made to counter theorized atomic particles). It's hard because religions need to take the more difficult moral and ethical stances that no (faction balancing federated democractic) government should take, and like you mention with abortion some of those end up leaking out into the legal system. Marriage is another thing that's danced the line but I think it falls on the other side: people let it leak into laws, or more accurately it existed in laws as the status quo, when it doesn't belong there. Two gay peole who are truly e.g. Catholic can happily live together and love each other. If they believe the Catholic criteria and definition of marriage they do not seek it. Yet they are fully allowed to openly share their love in any way the church allows for any other unmarried couple. Sexual intercourse, a beautiful enjoyable act in the church's eye, remains for the purpose of procreation and is respected not as a lustful act of pleasure, but as an intensely spiritual experience under the pretext of two married humans creating a child. In practice and due to it being socially progressive and now very safe (old "status quo thought" of abstinence is a good way to prevent spread of disease), of course people have lots of extramarital sex. But those people are not to be shunned, or excluded in most Christian sects. Extramarital sex is no more grave a sin if it between two members of the same sex as were it between a happily engaged heterosexual couple. So marriage is a religious concept that should mostly remain religious. Legally as a society it's probably in our interest to subsidize couples or parties living together (sharing space and resources) and then further subsidize those parties who choose to raise children (of their own or by way of adoption). But man it kills me how many people on both sides brought religion into what was largely a social topic during the whole marriage equality push despite the fact that I agree with the outcome. So what is the problem? Globalization exposes fundamental radicals easier? Perhaps, but I think in America it's our ingrained social willingness to yield to "prosperous" economic policy that ends up causing the economy to ehm trump human rights. IMO it's a slow trickle of those decisions that has caused us to regress. Why is healthcare expensive, because it must prove its value economically. We don't value health enough (or we value the healthcare industry too much) to make sacrifices required to legally mandate socialized care (we would kill a huge industry, and then it's just a huge expense the government incurs that didn't exist before, lose lose). It's really that simple albeit no less unfortunate, and I personally have the health care industry to thank for most of what I've been given in life. A true doctor will take care of all patients who stumble into the ER whether they get paid market rate or not, it's part of their ethical code. So in that sense we have some sort of basic level of universal healthcare. We just haven't all agreed whether we should pay for your weed and contraception and experimental procedures and more reasonably your preventative medicine (although the business model discourages prevention while selecting for continued consistent doctor visits—another problem) too. And we certainly have failed to convey to the less fortunate an attitude of openness and acceptance and assure them that they will be taken care of to a reasonable extent by our doctors and hospitals. Insurance companies with convoluted policies and systems designed to minimize their payouts certainly don't help paint that picture. The same thing has happened to education. Both "industries are seen as businesses and expected to run like one (make money). As long as the peripheral participants in these industries (hospital/school executive staff, insurance/loan agencies, etc.) keep demanding we run things like a business, and as long as we as Americans are okay condoning said behavior directly or by proxy of hyper economic political focus, nothing will change. Call me crazy but since when is caring for the health of your neighbor or raising the next generation to be better than the current iteration about making money? Sadly in America, it is.
CaptainZapp 9y ago
Ok, here's a question that bugs me for decades (literally) For instance, they hate abortion because they view it as murder, which is itself a morally consistent position to take. If you believed abortion was murder I'd hope that you would hate it to. How is it that the most virulent abortion haters are such staunch believers in the death penalty? While I'm aware that this statement is not 100% true it significantly more often than not seems to be the case. Note that I don't intend to provoke, or get into a flame war, but I'm really curious about this utterly inconsistent view.
- meri_dian 9y ago
  Many religious people don't think the death penalty is a good thing. When I questioned a Catholic monk about this very issue he told me that while the Church condemns both the death penalty and abortion, because abortion affects tens of millions of "people" each year it's given more attention by the Church than the death penalty which affects many less people per year. However for those that do support the death penalty while at the same time condemning abortion, it's important to realize that for them there is no inconsistency. It goes like this: abortion is bad because the unborn are morally equivalent to birthed people (by virtue of their souls), and they are essentially innocent beings. Criminals are not innocent, and therefore killing them is excusable. Their belief is not inconsistent because of the role innocence plays. Now you may disregard the importance of innocence here, but that doesn't make their views inconsistent.
  - CaptainZapp 9y ago
    Thank you for the great response. Much appreciated. Their belief is not inconsistent because of the role innocence plays. Now you may disregard the importance of innocence here, but that doesn't make their views inconsistent Well, what about a significant number of people executed, which were completely innocent? There are some absolutely galling stories out there about innocents being executed despite the fact that there were huge doubts on their guilt or on the verdict as such due to the conduct of the proscutor (withholding evidence, using known liars as witnesses, relying on more than dodgy "scientific" evidence, recanting of witnesses who had a personal motive to snitch in the first place, etc). In that view the possibility of one innocent person being killed should automatically illegitimze capitol punishment. Apparently it does not. While I can understand the stance of the catholic church I still think that logically you cannot oppose abortion, while supporting the death penalty. You made me understand, however, that this inconsistency is not applicable to a lot of those people. It doesn't make it logically less inconsistent in my view. Anyway, thanks for the insight. It's at the very least, very interesting.
scarface74 9y ago
It's mostly the older generation. Younger people seem to be more accepting of everyone. Even the ones that call themselves conservative, when you talk to them, there more Romney, Bush conservatives than Mike Pence conservatives and definitely not Trump faux populists.

threatofrain 9y ago

There are lots of organizations that do good in people's lives. I don't see why that needs to be tied with bigotry. I hope we don't accept a concept of a moral debit card, like a doctor who can save many lives, so we should tolerate a little abuse. When we can't stop abuse, we will endure it, but when we can, we ought not. I find it also surprising that the Christian muscle in this country is immense, they could move mountains, but for over 20 years the only issues which has captivated their national attention have been sexual ones. And now there's this transgender business. Is there no Christian political consensus to be had on the poor? Why was there national discussion on a constitutional ban for gay marriage during the presidential elections? Did the thought of stopping gay marriage rally the base?

acdha 9y ago
Two bits of history which helped me understand that more: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-ri... https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/books/review/one-nation-under-god-by-kevin-m-kruse.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/books/review/one-nation-u...
meri_dian 9y ago
Social issues like marriage that can be easily legislated about are much easier to deal with than systemic problems like poverty, therefore people will give more attention to the social issues. It's just an example of bike-shedding. Talk about the small scale things you can control rather than the large complex issues that are more intimidating. But attitudes about marriage and sexuality are really very small and insignificant aspects of religion as a whole. Politics and culture war have inflamed certain issues in America, but those issues will resolve themselves in time. Once they do people will have less of a reason to be mad at religion. What I'm cautioning against is conflating frustration towards religious attitudes about particular things that are slowly changing in the present with thr idea that there is something fundamentally wrong about religion itself. If you made a mistake about something, I wouldn't automatically assume you yourself are broken. I would just help correct you then wish you the best.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

Retric 9y ago

Being morally consistent has zero value for third parties. You can be morally consistent and commit genoside. If your viewpoint creates hate then their is no excuse, that's inherently bad. In terms of LGBT hate, that's largely an outgrowth of the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam etc and their cultural influences. For comparison you need to look at what they replaced, and that's very much a mixed bag. I would suggest that when you have a large number of options the bust by metric X (Morality) is unlikely to be chosen if it's Metric Y that's used. For the same reason the gold metal winning sprinter is unlikely to also be the best looking.

naasking 9y ago
> You can be morally consistent and commit genoside. I don't think that's true. At some point, an abhorrent moral code is going to entail a proposition that is either factually incorrect or inconsistent with itself.
- Retric 9y ago
  How so? People disagree to the degree killing cows is OK. But, both sides can be consistent based around what lives matter. Classify Group X say Murders, Outlaws, Nazi's, white people, or even humans outside the tribe in the killing allowed category and everything can stay consistent.
  - naasking 9y ago
    > Classify Group X say Murders, Outlaws, Nazi's, white people, or even humans outside the tribe in the killing allowed category and everything can stay consistent Except it's not consistent with basic facts, like the fact that the differences between any group of humans is non-existent. There's also a Kantian argument to be made that killing period, is inherently logically inconsistent.
    - Retric 9y ago
      differences between any group of humans is non-existent That's clearly a false assumption. As long as I can identify a group say people who's social security numbers end in 7 then their exists a difference between them and all other groups. Now placing any real value on having a SSN ending in 7 may seem meaningless, but the difference exists. PS: It could even be useful as a means of load balancing.

dcow 9y ago

Yes. Indeed most of the religions practiced in America preach, above all other things that you think matter, putting your fellow humans first despite their background, race, social status, etc. I know Catholicism (despite some of its institutionally conservative warts) explicitly preaches tolerance, the prerequisite for social diversity. What I've observed in America of late is a lack of religions maintaining social relevance and so increasingly becoming scapegoated by the crazies that hold out. I also consider scientific method to be an unconventional "religion" insofar as it's proliferated enough to have crazies of its own telling people how to live their lives and making dogmatic claims it itself cannot even support (your god isn't real we haven't observed it yet--would sound petty and absurd were the same argument made to counter theorized atomic particles). It's hard because religions need to take the more difficult moral and ethical stances that no (faction balancing federated democractic) government should take, and like you mention with abortion some of those end up leaking out into the legal system. Marriage is another thing that's danced the line but I think it falls on the other side: people let it leak into laws, or more accurately it existed in laws as the status quo, when it doesn't belong there. Two gay peole who are truly e.g. Catholic can happily live together and love each other. If they believe the Catholic criteria and definition of marriage they do not seek it. Yet they are fully allowed to openly share their love in any way the church allows for any other unmarried couple. Sexual intercourse, a beautiful enjoyable act in the church's eye, remains for the purpose of procreation and is respected not as a lustful act of pleasure, but as an intensely spiritual experience under the pretext of two married humans creating a child. In practice and due to it being socially progressive and now very safe (old "status quo thought" of abstinence is a good way to prevent spread of disease), of course people have lots of extramarital sex. But those people are not to be shunned, or excluded in most Christian sects. Extramarital sex is no more grave a sin if it between two members of the same sex as were it between a happily engaged heterosexual couple. So marriage is a religious concept that should mostly remain religious. Legally as a society it's probably in our interest to subsidize couples or parties living together (sharing space and resources) and then further subsidize those parties who choose to raise children (of their own or by way of adoption). But man it kills me how many people on both sides brought religion into what was largely a social topic during the whole marriage equality push despite the fact that I agree with the outcome. So what is the problem? Globalization exposes fundamental radicals easier? Perhaps, but I think in America it's our ingrained social willingness to yield to "prosperous" economic policy that ends up causing the economy to ehm trump human rights. IMO it's a slow trickle of those decisions that has caused us to regress. Why is healthcare expensive, because it must prove its value economically. We don't value health enough (or we value the healthcare industry too much) to make sacrifices required to legally mandate socialized care (we would kill a huge industry, and then it's just a huge expense the government incurs that didn't exist before, lose lose). It's really that simple albeit no less unfortunate, and I personally have the health care industry to thank for most of what I've been given in life. A true doctor will take care of all patients who stumble into the ER whether they get paid market rate or not, it's part of their ethical code. So in that sense we have some sort of basic level of universal healthcare. We just haven't all agreed whether we should pay for your weed and contraception and experimental procedures and more reasonably your preventative medicine (although the business model discourages prevention while selecting for continued consistent doctor visits—another problem) too. And we certainly have failed to convey to the less fortunate an attitude of openness and acceptance and assure them that they will be taken care of to a reasonable extent by our doctors and hospitals. Insurance companies with convoluted policies and systems designed to minimize their payouts certainly don't help paint that picture. The same thing has happened to education. Both "industries are seen as businesses and expected to run like one (make money). As long as the peripheral participants in these industries (hospital/school executive staff, insurance/loan agencies, etc.) keep demanding we run things like a business, and as long as we as Americans are okay condoning said behavior directly or by proxy of hyper economic political focus, nothing will change. Call me crazy but since when is caring for the health of your neighbor or raising the next generation to be better than the current iteration about making money? Sadly in America, it is.

CaptainZapp 9y ago

Ok, here's a question that bugs me for decades (literally) For instance, they hate abortion because they view it as murder, which is itself a morally consistent position to take. If you believed abortion was murder I'd hope that you would hate it to. How is it that the most virulent abortion haters are such staunch believers in the death penalty? While I'm aware that this statement is not 100% true it significantly more often than not seems to be the case. Note that I don't intend to provoke, or get into a flame war, but I'm really curious about this utterly inconsistent view.

meri_dian 9y ago
Many religious people don't think the death penalty is a good thing. When I questioned a Catholic monk about this very issue he told me that while the Church condemns both the death penalty and abortion, because abortion affects tens of millions of "people" each year it's given more attention by the Church than the death penalty which affects many less people per year. However for those that do support the death penalty while at the same time condemning abortion, it's important to realize that for them there is no inconsistency. It goes like this: abortion is bad because the unborn are morally equivalent to birthed people (by virtue of their souls), and they are essentially innocent beings. Criminals are not innocent, and therefore killing them is excusable. Their belief is not inconsistent because of the role innocence plays. Now you may disregard the importance of innocence here, but that doesn't make their views inconsistent.
- CaptainZapp 9y ago
  Thank you for the great response. Much appreciated. Their belief is not inconsistent because of the role innocence plays. Now you may disregard the importance of innocence here, but that doesn't make their views inconsistent Well, what about a significant number of people executed, which were completely innocent? There are some absolutely galling stories out there about innocents being executed despite the fact that there were huge doubts on their guilt or on the verdict as such due to the conduct of the proscutor (withholding evidence, using known liars as witnesses, relying on more than dodgy "scientific" evidence, recanting of witnesses who had a personal motive to snitch in the first place, etc). In that view the possibility of one innocent person being killed should automatically illegitimze capitol punishment. Apparently it does not. While I can understand the stance of the catholic church I still think that logically you cannot oppose abortion, while supporting the death penalty. You made me understand, however, that this inconsistency is not applicable to a lot of those people. It doesn't make it logically less inconsistent in my view. Anyway, thanks for the insight. It's at the very least, very interesting.

scarface74 9y ago

It's mostly the older generation. Younger people seem to be more accepting of everyone. Even the ones that call themselves conservative, when you talk to them, there more Romney, Bush conservatives than Mike Pence conservatives and definitely not Trump faux populists.