The New Atheists

[MattZ]

Nothing to do with land disputes, then?

 

I don't mean to suggest it was the only reason. Of course land was an important factor. All these issues and examples are complicated and have myriad factors. I think the fact that Indians were viewed as savages made it easier to collect their scalps. Do you disagree with that?

[ikol]

And Christianities discriminatory attitude towards women, I suppose that has very little to do with religion as well? Are we simply afraid of them too?

 

Yes.

[Good Old Neon]

Religion is the conduit for fear and hate in this world. If we were in another world without religion, there would be another conduit for it. I don't see what's so hard to get about this. Yes, blame religion for it, but don't ignore that religion simply provides close minded, dumb people an outlet for their fears and prejudices. Yes, those prejudices may come from religion, but history has shown that people will always find a new group to fear.

 

Look at the history of the US. We've had a long line of replacing one group with another on our hatred and fear and repression list:

 

Witches

Indians

Blacks

Italian and Irish Immigrants

Women

Blacks again

 

And now it's the homosexuals and hispanics turn. Soon, we'll be like Europe and turn our ire towards Muslims on a grand scale. History moves towards greater and greater acceptance and rights for all, but the majority will always fight against allowing others into their group. And then, when the tides of history turn against that majority and allow the minority into their ranks as equals, the next group gets it.

 

Witches – religion (heretics and devil worshipers)

 

Indians – religion (not Christian)

 

Blacks – religion (kept as slaves in the bible)

 

Irish – religion ( from wikipedia - Negative English attitudes towards Irish culture and habits date as far back as the reign of Henry II and the Norman conquest of Ireland. In 1155 the Papacy purportedly issued the papal bull Laudabiliter which granted Henry II's request to subdue Ireland and the Irish Church:

 

(we) do hereby declare our will and pleasure, that, for the purpose of enlarging the borders of the Church, setting bounds to the progress of wickedness, reforming evil manners, planting virtue, and increasing the Christian religion)

 

Italians – the mafia (I originally intended to write that as a joke, but according to what I just read, it’s true!)

 

Women – religion (Eve, the apple, you know the rest)

 

Just saying...

[Guest Speed Racer]

I think the fact that Indians were viewed as savages made it easier to collect their scalps. Do you disagree with that?

 

Religion is the conduit for fear and hate in this world. If we were in another world without religion, there would be another conduit for it. I don't see what's so hard to get about this.

[bjorn_skurj]

Nothing to do with land disputes, then?

That case is a good example of religion being used as a rationalization, or a dehumanizing agent, with greed being the primary driving force.

[Guest Speed Racer]

Witches

Indians

Blacks

Italian and Irish Immigrants

Women

Blacks again

 

To piggyback on Bjorn's point, each of these groups were widely discriminated against at times when their equality would have had profound economic or political implications (with the exception of witches, though there's the whole "women in a position of power" thing). Regardless of the root cause (which we can simply refer to as the "conduit"), social, economic and political stakes were often most salient while these groups were/are still being attacked.

[Good Old Neon]

 

 

bobbob1313, on 02 December 2009 - 12:36 PM, said:

 

Religion is the conduit for fear and hate in this world. If we were in another world without religion, there would be another conduit for it. I don't see what's so hard to get about this.

 

Isn’t this statement every bit as presumptuous and sure of itself as your claim that I know exactly what a world without religion would look like? As you’ve stated, we’ll never know, and I agree - but maybe the world would have been a very different place without the concept of sin, and that certain behaviors, some of them biologically based, would be punishable by an eternity spent in hell. Perhaps the concept of religion is a dangerous one, one we would have been better off never developing.

 

I agree that religion often acts as a conduit, but perhaps the world would have been better place without another conduit. Assuming something else would simply take its place is every bit as speculative as anything I’ve had to say.

[bjorn_skurj]

One thing you can say about atheists is that they have a much sunnier and optimistic view of human beings' ability to regulate themselves than people who believe the threat of damnation is necessary for human beings to regulate themselves. (I am on the fence myself - I have hopes that we can transcend our darkness, but I am not really sure that is what will happen.)

[Moss]

Religion is the conduit for fear and hate in this world. If we were in another world without religion, there would be another conduit for it. I don't see what's so hard to get about this. Yes, blame religion for it, but don't ignore that religion simply provides close minded, dumb people an outlet for their fears and prejudices. Yes, those prejudices may come from religion, but history has shown that people will always find a new group to fear.

 

 

The fact that religion gives people an outlet or excuse for fear and hate gives me little comfort because it seems to be a socially acceptable outlet. The fact that religion justifies some of this behavior is what is so wrong to me. Without religion, would people have that socially acceptable justification?

 

I am squarely on the side of religion having caused more harm than good in the world but as has been stated, we will never know.

[Atticus]

Although I think that all hate is rooted in fear, fear and hate are two distinct things.

 

Imagine a hypothetical island inhabited by white, blond-haired men and women, all heterosexual, who have never seen or heard of dark skinned people or homosexuality.

 

Scenario 1: a couple of blond-haired white men, similar to the natives by all appearances, visit the island and openly engage in homosexual sex acts.

 

Scenario 2: dark-skinned visitors appear

 

In both scenarios, I could envision some amount of initial fear from the natives, because they've been exposed to things they've never before seen, things for which they have no readily-available explanation.

 

After the initial fear, I can envision at least 2 possible group reactions: one in which the respected elders advise that while both groups of visitors are different from the natives, their similarities as humans merit respectful treatment; another in which the elders, overcome by their fear, advise that the differences are somehow evil, and thus hate evolves.

 

Either of those reactions could be indoctrinated into or justified by some form of religion (one primarily based on love, one primarily based on hate), and with either religion, some amount of fear could still be understandable until the differences become familiar.

 

This is a pitifully simplistic hypothetical, but I think it shows the prospect that not all fear of "the different" has to be grounded in religion. I started to say that maybe then hatred does come from (skewed) religion, but apparently atheists engage in hatred, so I think not.

 

pick away!

[bjorn_skurj]

It may be impossible to separate xenophobia and the religious impulse. I suspect both are part of the fundamental human psychology.

[Guest Speed Racer]

Isn’t this statement every bit as presumptuous and sure of itself as your claim that I know exactly what a world without religion would look like?

 

True enough.

 

Long before we start parroting our parents or modeling by other behaviors, we (as children) have a tendency to pick on people and separate different people and exclude others. As adults, we want to find a way to rationalize evil and bad in the world - especially as it manifests in ourselves.

[Atticus]

xenophobia

 

fear of warrior princesses?

[bjorn_skurj]

fear of warrior princesses?

I am both drawn to and afraid of Lucy Lawless' thighs.

[Guest Speed Racer]

fear of warrior princesses?

 

In a thread full of uncertainty, our fundamental fear, as humans, of warrior princesses, is one of the few things we can be sure of in this world.

[u2roolz]

Alright, I'm kind of fascinated by what people think of the Adam & Eve story and Pandora. Bear with me I'm going to try and connect these ideas with a recent film that received some misogynistic reviews.

 

OK. Adam & Eve. Eve is offered fruit from the Tree of Knowledge from the serpent. She takes it and eats from it. I'm sure anyone at that point would eat from it, since it was the Tree of Knowledge. I guess the problem with it is that certain groups use it to put down women. I know that one woman named Eve is not indicative of any other woman's actions, but let's play along. What if Adam was offered the fruit first instead of Eve? Would he have accepted it? I think he would have. He did accept it when Eve offered it to him. Then he blamed her and she blamed the serpent. So I guess my question is "what is the big deal with her wanting to gain knowledge"? Curiosity? I'll get to Pandora in a bit. I know that I'm not the only one who sees the irony and beauty that Eve is the one to eat the fruit first and she is also herself a creator of children. It's almost really empowering if you think about it. She has eaten the fruit and can bear children. Of course, God banished them from the garden and then Adam lives for over 900 years? On a side note I came across an interesting site that claimed that liquified gold can bring about an extended life. (I won't get into who came here to mine it ) Anyways, it seems that this story kind of put women in their place for the course of history.

 

Pandora's Box. Pandora is the 1st woman in Greek mythology. Pandora opens the box or a jar against Zeus' wishes. She opens it out of curiosity and not malicious intentions. And much like in Adam & Eve, evil is released into the world. She closed the box after seeing what she unleashed onto the world and hope was left lying at the bottom of the box. Were these myths created to blame women for evil? I think there's more to it than that. In both situations the woman was tricked it seems. The jar was a gift given to her from Zeus. The fruit was offered by the serpent.

 

SPOILERS:

The Box. ( a remake of an old 80s Twilight Zone)I don't think anyone saw this film. I remember going onto the IMDB to read what people thought about it. I remember one woman was furious that the film was misogynistic. The premise: In 1976 a creepy disfigured old man shows up to this couple's house with a box. If they push the red button they receive a million dollars. And one person that they don't know will die. The husband has serious reservations about the man and the box. His job promotion is also in jeopardy. He doesn't want to push it. The wife wants to push the button because she wants to pay for her son's tuition and figures it will help them out in the long run. She is a school teacher. She pushes the button.

 

This is where the woman on IMDB got pissed. She was upset that a woman was portrayed in this light again as in Adam & Eve and Pandora's Box. In this instance I see things a bit differently. I felt that it was that woman's maternal instinct to provide for her son and family that made her push the button. Also, it may have been her frustrations for having the salary of a school teacher and not something more due to the times in which she lived. The fact that someone else will die is huge, but keep in mind that it was 1976 and people were less connected for obvious reasons. Still it's no reason for someone to have to die, but it does create interesting moral questions and dilemmas.

 

But as the film went along you noticed that it seemed to be women that pushed the button. Hmm. Interesting. I guess being a guy I can be upset that that man wouldn't want to receive a million dollars to provide for his family. Especially since his promotion didn't come through. He seemed a bit passive on the decision almost like you could say Adam in the Garden. Where was Adam in the Garden? Was he not wandering around? Was Eve the one wandering around the Garden because she was curious?

 

I will say that The Box is a psychological philosophical religious thriller. It's pretty obvious that the red box is an allusion to the fruit in the Garden of Knowledge. So is the mysterious man. He could be the devil or something completely different.

 

I won't spoil the ending of The Box, but I just wanted to know what people felt about these stories. And if anyone has seen The Box did they feel similar and ask questions.

 

 

Women – religion (Eve, the apple, you know the rest)

 

I'm bumping this up since Good Old Neon brought this ^ up. Since I don't remember every single teaching in Catholic grade school or high school, I was wondering how that particular story is told.

I don't remember what angle my religion teacher took in the 80s. And I'm quite curious how this is taught nowadays. I suppose I could Google it but I'd rather hear what other people have to say.

Plus, I assume Good Old Neon is blaming women's mistreatment on the Adam & Eve story. But from what I posted above it could be seen in a different light. I'm just not sure if it's taught that way in certain places.

 

Edit: To clarify I'm beginning to question myself as to when I started to see this story in the negative light as a kid/teen.

[Good Old Neon]

From Andrew Sullivan, today:

 

Cardinal: Gays "Will Never Enter The Kingdom Of God"

 

In direct violation of Catholic doctrine, a leading cardinal has insisted that being gay is a choice and that those who choose to be gay are thereby excluded from God's kingdom. Benedict's church is slowly reversing the reforms of the 1970s that saw gay persons as made in the image of God and inherently not sinful, as long as they remained celibate and lived alone their entire lives. It began with Benedict's own policy of insisting that even celibate gays cannot become priests because they are mentally or psychologically "disordered." The creation of a class of sub-human humans - the early medieval Catholic approach to Jews and sodomites - is making a comeback.

 

One also notes that the new Ugandan bill that would begin to treat gays as sub-human threats to be identified, informed on, jailed and executed has met no resistance from Pope Benedict XVI. Since the largest religious group in Uganda is Catholic, one has to take Benedict's silence in the face of this proposed Nazi-style law against homosexuals to be consent. The Ugandan Anglican church - closely allied with American Christianists - has this position:

 

The Anglican Church of Uganda on Nov. 6 issued a press release saying that it is studying the bill and does not yet have an official position on the proposed legislation. However, the release restated the Ugandan church's position that "homosexual behavior is immoral and should not be promoted, supported, or condoned in any way as an 'alternative lifestyle.'"

 

And AllAfrica.com reported Oct. 29 that the church's provincial secretary told the Monitor newspaper in Kampala, Uganda, that jailing homosexuals was preferable to executing them. "If you kill the people, to whom will the message go? We need to have imprisonment for life if the person is still alive," said the Rev. Canon Aaron Mwesigye, according to the website.

 

The origin of this law came from American Christianists as much as Ugandans:

 

Both opponents and supporters agree that the impetus for the bill came in March during a seminar in Kampala to 'expose the truth behind homosexuality and the homosexual agenda'.

 

The main speakers were three US evangelists: Scott Lively, Don Schmierer and Caleb Lee Brundidge....

 

The seminar was organised by Stephen Langa, a Ugandan electrician turned pastor who runs the Family Life Network in Kampala and has been spreading the message that gays are targeting schoolchildren for 'conversion'. 'They give money to children to recruit schoolmates – once you have two children, the whole school is gone,' he said in an interview. Asked if there had been any court case to prove this was happening, he replied: 'No, that's why this law is needed.'

 

(Scott Lively is the author of a book claiming that Nazism itself was a homosexual plot. But he insists that he believes the Ugandan law is too punitive and opposes it, which gives him more moral authority than Rick Warren.)

 

In the West, core constitutional protections prevent the rounding up, jailing and execution of a tiny minority simply for being public or for mere touching of one another. In a country like Uganda, no such protections exist. And so you see what many Christianists really believe: the terrorization of a minority that offends religious authority and majority prejudice.

[yermom]

Hallelujah for this sort of thing:

 

October 15, 2009

 

A Manifesto! The Time Has Come!

 

I have made a decision. I will no longer debate the issue of homosexuality in the church with anyone. I will no longer engage the biblical ignorance that emanates from so many right-wing Christians about how the Bible condemns homosexuality, as if that point of view still has any credibility. I will no longer discuss with them or listen to them tell me how homosexuality is "an abomination to God," about how homosexuality is a "chosen lifestyle," or about how through prayer and "spiritual counseling" homosexual persons can be "cured." Those arguments are no longer worthy of my time or energy. I will no longer dignify by listening to the thoughts of those who advocate "reparative therapy," as if homosexual persons are somehow broken and need to be repaired. I will no longer talk to those who believe that the unity of the church can or should be achieved by rejecting the presence of, or at least at the expense of, gay and lesbian people. I will no longer take the time to refute the unlearned and undocumentable claims of certain world religious leaders who call homosexuality "deviant." I will no longer listen to that pious sentimentality that certain Christian leaders continue to employ, which suggests some version of that strange and overtly dishonest phrase that "we love the sinner but hate the sin." That statement is, I have concluded, nothing more than a self-serving lie designed to cover the fact that these people hate homosexual persons and fear homosexuality itself, but somehow know that hatred is incompatible with the Christ they claim to profess, so they adopt this face-saving and absolutely false statement. I will no longer temper my understanding of truth in order to pretend that I have even a tiny smidgen of respect for the appalling negativity that continues to emanate from religious circles where the church has for centuries conveniently perfumed its ongoing prejudices against blacks, Jews, women and homosexual persons with what it assumes is "high-sounding, pious rhetoric." The day for that mentality has quite simply come to an end for me. I will personally neither tolerate it nor listen to it any longer. The world has moved on, leaving these elements of the Christian Church that cannot adjust to new knowledge or a new consciousness lost in a sea of their own irrelevance. They no longer talk to anyone but themselves. I will no longer seek to slow down the witness to inclusiveness by pretending that there is some middle ground between prejudice and oppression. There isn't. Justice postponed is justice denied. That can be a resting place no longer for anyone. An old civil rights song proclaimed that the only choice awaiting those who cannot adjust to a new understanding was to "Roll on over or we'll roll on over you!" Time waits for no one.

 

I will particularly ignore those members of my own Episcopal Church who seek to break away from this body to form a "new church," claiming that this new and bigoted instrument alone now represents the Anglican Communion. Such a new ecclesiastical body is designed to allow these pathetic human beings, who are so deeply locked into a world that no longer exists, to form a community in which they can continue to hate gay people, distort gay people with their hopeless rhetoric and to be part of a religious fellowship in which they can continue to feel justified in their homophobic prejudices for the rest of their tortured lives. Church unity can never be a virtue that is preserved by allowing injustice, oppression and psychological tyranny to go unchallenged.

 

In my personal life, I will no longer listen to televised debates conducted by "fair-minded" channels that seek to give "both sides" of this issue "equal time." I am aware that these stations no longer give equal time to the advocates of treating women as if they are the property of men or to the advocates of reinstating either segregation or slavery, despite the fact that when these evil institutions were coming to an end the Bible was still being quoted frequently on each of these subjects. It is time for the media to announce that there are no longer two sides to the issue of full humanity for gay and lesbian people. There is no way that justice for homosexual people can be compromised any longer.

 

I will no longer act as if the Papal office is to be respected if the present occupant of that office is either not willing or not able to inform and educate himself on public issues on which he dares to speak with embarrassing ineptitude. I will no longer be respectful of the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who seems to believe that rude behavior, intolerance and even killing prejudice is somehow acceptable, so long as it comes from third-world religious leaders, who more than anything else reveal in themselves the price that colonial oppression has required of the minds and hearts of so many of our world's population. I see no way that ignorance and truth can be placed side by side, nor do I believe that evil is somehow less evil if the Bible is quoted to justify it. I will dismiss as unworthy of any more of my attention the wild, false and uninformed opinions of such would-be religious leaders as Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Albert Mohler, and Robert Duncan. My country and my church have both already spent too much time, energy and money trying to accommodate these backward points of view when they are no longer even tolerable.

 

I make these statements because it is time to move on. The battle is over. The victory has been won. There is no reasonable doubt as to what the final outcome of this struggle will be. Homosexual people will be accepted as equal, full human beings, who have a legitimate claim on every right that both church and society have to offer any of us. Homosexual marriages will become legal, recognized by the state and pronounced holy by the church. "Don't ask, don't tell" will be dismantled as the policy of our armed forces. We will and we must learn that equality of citizenship is not something that should ever be submitted to a referendum. Equality under and before the law is a solemn promise conveyed to all our citizens in the Constitution itself. Can any of us imagine having a public referendum on whether slavery should continue, whether segregation should be dismantled, whether voting privileges should be offered to women? The time has come for politicians to stop hiding behind unjust laws that they themselves helped to enact, and to abandon that convenient shield of demanding a vote on the rights of full citizenship because they do not understand the difference between a constitutional democracy, which this nation has, and a "mobocracy," which this nation rejected when it adopted its constitution. We do not put the civil rights of a minority to the vote of a plebiscite.

 

I will also no longer act as if I need a majority vote of some ecclesiastical body in order to bless, ordain, recognize and celebrate the lives and gifts of gay and lesbian people in the life of the church. No one should ever again be forced to submit the privilege of citizenship in this nation or membership in the Christian Church to the will of a majority vote.

 

The battle in both our culture and our church to rid our souls of this dying prejudice is finished. A new consciousness has arisen. A decision has quite clearly been made. Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state. Therefore, I will from this moment on refuse to dignify the continued public expression of ignorant prejudice by engaging it. I do not tolerate racism or sexism any longer. From this moment on, I will no longer tolerate our culture's various forms of homophobia. I do not care who it is who articulates these attitudes or who tries to make them sound holy with religious jargon.

 

I have been part of this debate for years, but things do get settled and this issue is now settled for me. I do not debate any longer with members of the "Flat Earth Society" either. I do not debate with people who think we should treat epilepsy by casting demons out of the epileptic person; I do not waste time engaging those medical opinions that suggest that bleeding the patient might release the infection. I do not converse with people who think that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans as punishment for the sin of being the birthplace of Ellen DeGeneres or that the terrorists hit the United Sates on 9/11 because we tolerated homosexual people, abortions, feminism or the American Civil Liberties Union. I am tired of being embarrassed by so much of my church's participation in causes that are quite unworthy of the Christ I serve or the God whose mystery and wonder I appreciate more each day. Indeed I feel the Christian Church should not only apologize, but do public penance for the way we have treated people of color, women, adherents of other religions and those we designated heretics, as well as gay and lesbian people.

 

Life moves on. As the poet James Russell Lowell once put it more than a century ago: "New occasions teach new duties, Time makes ancient good uncouth." I am ready now to claim the victory. I will from now on assume it and live into it. I am unwilling to argue about it or to discuss it as if there are two equally valid, competing positions any longer. The day for that mentality has simply gone forever.

 

This is my manifesto and my creed. I proclaim it today. I invite others to join me in this public declaration. I believe that such a public outpouring will help cleanse both the church and this nation of its own distorting past. It will restore integrity and honor to both church and state. It will signal that a new day has dawned and we are ready not just to embrace it, but also to rejoice in it and to celebrate it.

– John Shelby Spong

 

You probably already know about Spong, Joe. He says

[Atticus]

Does Sullivan really think the Catholic church is going to come around to his point of view on homosexuality?

[bjorn_skurj]

I think Sullivan and many other gay people would settle for the Catholic Church stopping trying to demonize them and oppose their being treated like everybody else.

[Good Old Neon]

Hallelujah for this sort of thing:

 

 

 

You probably already know about Spong, Joe. He says

 

Awesome! Thanks Llynn - I'm not familiar with Spong, but I am now

[Beltmann]

I'm not familiar with Spong

I'm genuinely surprised by this (and I mean that as a compliment). Spong is definitely a guy who I think you would respond to.

[Atticus]

stopping trying to demonize them and oppose their being treated like everybody else.

 

I guess I have trouble understanding one wanting to be a member of an organization that can't even achieve this stance on one's existence.

[bjorn_skurj]

I guess I have trouble understanding one wanting to be a member of an organization that can't even achieve this stance on one's existence.

Me neither. Maybe we can work out a trade where all the gay Catholics join the Anglicans and all the anti-gay Anglicans join the Catholics.

[Good Old Neon]

I guess I have trouble understanding one wanting to be a member of an organization that can't even achieve this stance on one's existence.

 

I don’t understand why anyone would want to be a member of a religious organization that would jail or execute or condemn someone for their sexual orientation.