6 ms·

When I went from being an evangelical christian studying theology to an atheist a whole world of conversations opened up to me. I could suddenly talk to people

When I went from being an evangelical christian studying theology to an atheist a whole world of conversations opened up to me. I could suddenly talk to people of almost any faith about their religion which had been hard before. But only as long as they held their faith kind of loosely as a cultural or philosophical mantle. But I could no longer have the same kind of conversations that I used to with my old theology friends who were all still Biblical literalists. Not that every conversation devoloved into argument nor that I was even particularly insistent on my new view. But after some amount of talking we'd hit a disagreement and quickly find the root of that disagreement was some basic belief we held about the universe. Something as atheological as why people are philanderers comes down to whether you believe in evolution via natural selection or original sin. And that is where America is politically today. There are fundamental facts and values we disagree about. I find writing like this to be incredibly patronizing. As if people aren't already having polite discussions about politics. As if people are voting and do not know what they are for and against. The funny part too is that we are at a point where that is least true. Voter's knowledge of their party's policies is at an all time high. It's hard to accept that we just fundamentally disagree. But that is the fact. Eventually, one side is going to win or we'll remain deadlocked and muddle on with some hybrid policies from both sides. But the polite conversation over the pot roast isn't going to convince Nana that fetuses don't have souls. That's not a simple difference of opinion it's a difference of faith.

ip26 6y ago
There's so many other things that need attention, and I am coming to think our inability to set aside our conflicting basic beliefs is a big part of the problem. Like, Nana, Ok- you and I disagree about whether fetuses have souls. But can we talk about some other incredibly important but less emotionally charged issues for a minute, where we might be able to find agreement and do something good? I point to Colorado 2013 and Colorado 2019. - In 2012, the Democrats got full control & went after guns. They were recalled & lost control. Little was accomplished. - In 2018, the Democrats took back full control. Polis went after instituting publicly-funded full-day kindergarten. This was a real accomplishment for everyone. Basically, if I was a political candidate, my platform would be a ceasefire on the most high-profile wedge issues for the duration of my term!
- eldavido 6y ago
  Completely agree. Buttigieg (Mayor Pete) talked about this a great deal in his book. As a gay man, he recounted working with Mike Pence (Trump's VP) while Pence was governor of Indiana and he was mayor of South Bend. Talk about two guys you wouldn't expect to get along. The key, as you pointed out, as did Buttigieg, is to identify areas where there are shared problems you can work together to solve. There's something about local government that seems to encourage this, in my opinion. Maybe you think gay people are awful and I go the pride march every year. Guess what, the water main is still leaking, and building permits take too long. Maybe we can just focus on working together to solve real problems, and accept that there are a range of social issues where we probably won't ever agree? And that's just fine? I think we used to know how to do this in the United States, but something changed.
  - tayo42 6y ago
    Idk, I feel like that's just conceding on the topic. The modern conservative is just a party of no. I want to do something, they say no. I move on to something else? That's just losing.
    - xapata 6y ago
      No, it's not losing, it's prioritizing.
  - xapata 6y ago
    > something changed It's worth considering what changed. Demographics changed, but we've always had some kind of mixed cultures and ethnicities. The history of it has been an expansion of who gets to be the "majority". Like Rome redefining who is a citizen. Maybe it's broadcast media, but there's been national publications since the founding of the US. Looking back to Antiquity, our situation doesn't seem so abnormal. I think it's just the ebb and flow of how groups of people interact with each other.
    - DubiousPusher 6y ago
rsynnott 6y ago
> When I went from being an evangelical christian studying theology to an atheist a whole world of conversations opened up to me. I could suddenly talk to people of almost any faith about their religion which had been hard before. This is odd to me, in that the theologians I know talk to people about religion a _lot_, and seem to have no issues talking to people with different religions. That said, they're generally Catholic or agnostic, which might make the difference.
- DubiousPusher 6y ago
  Yes and to be clear I'm using theologian loosley here to mean anyone doing deep study on spiritual matters not necessarily someone pursuing a formal education. I will give an example. I can have a conversation with most Catholic theologians about the origins of the Bible for example. We can have a conversation about mistakes in translations, alternative books that might have been canon, the disparate beliefs of early Christians, etc. With an evangelical Biblical literalist? Good luck. The very idea that the books of the Bible were chosen by a council of proto-Catholics might be enough to end that conversation.
  - mistermann 6y ago
    Can you give us an idea of what kind of samples sizes you are dealing with here, and any adjustments you made for confounding variables and that sort of thing?
kbenson 6y ago
> I find writing like this to be incredibly patronizing. As if people aren't already having polite discussions about politics. That's like saying it's patronizing to read someone saying "please don't speed" because there's plenty of people not speeding. There's also plenty of people that are doing it, and it's those people that it's aimed at. > And that is where America is politically today. There are fundamental facts and values we disagree about. There is benefit in exploring what those are. Just because differences are reconcilable doesn't mean there isn't progress that can be made. There's world of difference in a conversation that is about how "you don't care about children/women" and "we disagree on some fundamentals so can't come to a perfect solution, but perhaps some compromise on specifics is possible, even if neither of us is happy". > As if people are voting and do not know what they are for and against. The funny part too is that we are at a point where that is least true. Voter's knowledge of their party's policies is at an all time high. But that's only half of it, it's not always what your group is for or against, but what the other group is for or against. I would hazard a guess that voter's accurate knowledge of the competing party's policies are is at an all time low. Sometimes it's not about what your party will do, as much as what you think they'll keep others from doing, if you honestly believe those others are going to "take all our guns" or the equivalent. There are fundamental differences, but I don't think they are at the policy level, they are far down and inform policies. I've found little at the political level that I fundamentally disagree with anyone. Usually it's a matter of one or both of us not having good data, and instead going on what we think the data is and how policies should affect it. Nobody wants poor people to be in the streets starving and freezing and sometimes causing crime, but most people don't want to devote so much to that issue that others don't get attention or they can't live their own lives. We're not disagreeing on some help to those people, we're disagreeing on how much help and how much money, and the answer to that is highly dependent on what you think works, why you think people are in that situation, whether they can ever get out of it, etc. Those are beliefs, but I think most people would be willing to reassess what they believe based on data, so they aren't fundamental.
- DubiousPusher 6y ago
  Do you have any examples of contemporary issues where an infusion of information has triggered a successful policy reassement and compromise? If not an active success then some areas where it's possible? I'd love to believe this but years of following local, state and federal politics have disabused me of this notion. Especially watching the Obama administration try that approach over and over unsuccessfully. I guess Maine comes to mind but it's small size and idiosyncratic politics don't bode well for expanding that model across the country.
silicon2401 6y ago
I would say this is true in the vast majority of cases, except where the parties involved are intellectually honest enough to really consider different views. I myself have contributed to other people changing their religious views, and my own personal views on things have drastically changed thanks to discussions with other people. However, the key thing is that it's not something you can really aim for. If you're in a conversation where both sides are sincere, each sides will eventually learn something from the other and it may or may not happen to be religious or political or something else. But if you go up to a distant coworker, stranger, or someone like that, you're just going to be a bunch of statements that they reject from the get go. So aside from those few exceptions, you're right, people will just disagree and aren't really open to considering different beliefs.
- DubiousPusher 6y ago
  You know one of those kind of conversations when you're having it for sure.

ip26 6y ago

There's so many other things that need attention, and I am coming to think our inability to set aside our conflicting basic beliefs is a big part of the problem. Like, Nana, Ok- you and I disagree about whether fetuses have souls. But can we talk about some other incredibly important but less emotionally charged issues for a minute, where we might be able to find agreement and do something good? I point to Colorado 2013 and Colorado 2019. - In 2012, the Democrats got full control & went after guns. They were recalled & lost control. Little was accomplished. - In 2018, the Democrats took back full control. Polis went after instituting publicly-funded full-day kindergarten. This was a real accomplishment for everyone. Basically, if I was a political candidate, my platform would be a ceasefire on the most high-profile wedge issues for the duration of my term!

eldavido 6y ago
Completely agree. Buttigieg (Mayor Pete) talked about this a great deal in his book. As a gay man, he recounted working with Mike Pence (Trump's VP) while Pence was governor of Indiana and he was mayor of South Bend. Talk about two guys you wouldn't expect to get along. The key, as you pointed out, as did Buttigieg, is to identify areas where there are shared problems you can work together to solve. There's something about local government that seems to encourage this, in my opinion. Maybe you think gay people are awful and I go the pride march every year. Guess what, the water main is still leaking, and building permits take too long. Maybe we can just focus on working together to solve real problems, and accept that there are a range of social issues where we probably won't ever agree? And that's just fine? I think we used to know how to do this in the United States, but something changed.
- tayo42 6y ago
  Idk, I feel like that's just conceding on the topic. The modern conservative is just a party of no. I want to do something, they say no. I move on to something else? That's just losing.
  - xapata 6y ago
    No, it's not losing, it's prioritizing.
- xapata 6y ago
  > something changed It's worth considering what changed. Demographics changed, but we've always had some kind of mixed cultures and ethnicities. The history of it has been an expansion of who gets to be the "majority". Like Rome redefining who is a citizen. Maybe it's broadcast media, but there's been national publications since the founding of the US. Looking back to Antiquity, our situation doesn't seem so abnormal. I think it's just the ebb and flow of how groups of people interact with each other.
  - DubiousPusher 6y ago

rsynnott 6y ago

> When I went from being an evangelical christian studying theology to an atheist a whole world of conversations opened up to me. I could suddenly talk to people of almost any faith about their religion which had been hard before. This is odd to me, in that the theologians I know talk to people about religion a _lot_, and seem to have no issues talking to people with different religions. That said, they're generally Catholic or agnostic, which might make the difference.

DubiousPusher 6y ago
Yes and to be clear I'm using theologian loosley here to mean anyone doing deep study on spiritual matters not necessarily someone pursuing a formal education. I will give an example. I can have a conversation with most Catholic theologians about the origins of the Bible for example. We can have a conversation about mistakes in translations, alternative books that might have been canon, the disparate beliefs of early Christians, etc. With an evangelical Biblical literalist? Good luck. The very idea that the books of the Bible were chosen by a council of proto-Catholics might be enough to end that conversation.
- mistermann 6y ago
  Can you give us an idea of what kind of samples sizes you are dealing with here, and any adjustments you made for confounding variables and that sort of thing?

kbenson 6y ago

> I find writing like this to be incredibly patronizing. As if people aren't already having polite discussions about politics. That's like saying it's patronizing to read someone saying "please don't speed" because there's plenty of people not speeding. There's also plenty of people that are doing it, and it's those people that it's aimed at. > And that is where America is politically today. There are fundamental facts and values we disagree about. There is benefit in exploring what those are. Just because differences are reconcilable doesn't mean there isn't progress that can be made. There's world of difference in a conversation that is about how "you don't care about children/women" and "we disagree on some fundamentals so can't come to a perfect solution, but perhaps some compromise on specifics is possible, even if neither of us is happy". > As if people are voting and do not know what they are for and against. The funny part too is that we are at a point where that is least true. Voter's knowledge of their party's policies is at an all time high. But that's only half of it, it's not always what your group is for or against, but what the other group is for or against. I would hazard a guess that voter's accurate knowledge of the competing party's policies are is at an all time low. Sometimes it's not about what your party will do, as much as what you think they'll keep others from doing, if you honestly believe those others are going to "take all our guns" or the equivalent. There are fundamental differences, but I don't think they are at the policy level, they are far down and inform policies. I've found little at the political level that I fundamentally disagree with anyone. Usually it's a matter of one or both of us not having good data, and instead going on what we think the data is and how policies should affect it. Nobody wants poor people to be in the streets starving and freezing and sometimes causing crime, but most people don't want to devote so much to that issue that others don't get attention or they can't live their own lives. We're not disagreeing on some help to those people, we're disagreeing on how much help and how much money, and the answer to that is highly dependent on what you think works, why you think people are in that situation, whether they can ever get out of it, etc. Those are beliefs, but I think most people would be willing to reassess what they believe based on data, so they aren't fundamental.

DubiousPusher 6y ago
Do you have any examples of contemporary issues where an infusion of information has triggered a successful policy reassement and compromise? If not an active success then some areas where it's possible? I'd love to believe this but years of following local, state and federal politics have disabused me of this notion. Especially watching the Obama administration try that approach over and over unsuccessfully. I guess Maine comes to mind but it's small size and idiosyncratic politics don't bode well for expanding that model across the country.

silicon2401 6y ago

I would say this is true in the vast majority of cases, except where the parties involved are intellectually honest enough to really consider different views. I myself have contributed to other people changing their religious views, and my own personal views on things have drastically changed thanks to discussions with other people. However, the key thing is that it's not something you can really aim for. If you're in a conversation where both sides are sincere, each sides will eventually learn something from the other and it may or may not happen to be religious or political or something else. But if you go up to a distant coworker, stranger, or someone like that, you're just going to be a bunch of statements that they reject from the get go. So aside from those few exceptions, you're right, people will just disagree and aren't really open to considering different beliefs.

DubiousPusher 6y ago
You know one of those kind of conversations when you're having it for sure.