Reply #171: Noble, but difficult [View All]

[dmallind]

Difficult for several reasons.

Yes it is obviously true that if 86% of the country are Xian then a lot of them (at least 34%!) are going to be true-blue Democrats. Democrat or not, even more of them are going to be kind and reasonable people who don't use their religion as a weapon.

BUT atheists face a lot of obstacles even with this big population of reasonable Xians.

One is that the very nature of theistic belief places it outside rational argument. That's what faith MEANS. If it was a conclusion based on empirical evidence or logically sound inductive reasoning it wouldn't be faith in the first place. What this means is that we cannot communicate in the same language in this area. believers take their god's existence as axiomatic, atheists do not - therefore you start from a different foundation in any discussion.

Another is that if we follow your suggestions, however honorable they may be, we are forced to lie and concede ground unquestioningly to believers without even stating our own case. To any atheist any god IS and MUST be an imaginary friend. We can cloak that in less demeaning euphemistic pseudo-intellectual terms like "unprovable metaphysical construct" but it boils down to the same thing - what else can we call something for which we see no evidence of its existence and yet is so emotionally dear to believers?

The main issue I have with belief per se rather than the more obvious issues with fundies and extremists is that I am leery to the point of fear about ANY belief which places a higher importance on ANYTHING other than the greatest benefit to society. I'll state in advance lest I offend that I'm sure very few to none of the Xians on DU would agree with this example, but it is god belief that allowed Watt to be so cavalier about the environment. Without theism, it is impossible to come to the conclusion he did. Theism introduces something which is higher than and more important than humanity, and since to me as a non-believer any interpretation of any god's will MUST really be a human idea, it opens up the possibility for any screwball idea to be given supposedly divine precedence over all other considerations. Take away god belief and that is not possible. But with god belief anything could be interpreted as being divine will and therefore above question. Surely history has enough examples of this to prove my case.

Now assuming (as I do) that these ideas are unlikely to come from DU Xians why do I still have that fear here? Because DU Xians aren't the norm I suspect. The vast majority of the general population - which must of course also be the vast majority of the Xian population - don't do a whole lot of introspection and critical thinking or debate. If the authority figure they listen to and trust - be that Bill O'Reilly or their pastor - says gays or atheists are evil that's what they'll think. Don't believe me? Then explain why half of the people polled would NEVER vote for an atheist even if they agreed with all their positions? Gays come next at 34% IIRC - nobody else even gets to 20%. Are any of that 50% the DU Xians ? Quite possibly some are. I hope not many are. I suspect it's less than the 50% of the general population by quite a chunk, but nevertheless it IS true of a majority of Xians.

One last issue is much more subjective - and it ties into both points 1 and 3 above. It seems that criticism of any religious idea is taken as criticism of faith as a whole. There is a sizable number of Xians - who hold by the way ALL governmental power in the nation - who revel in the victim role it seems. Some even on DU yes. It seems impossible to explain to these pseudo-victims the difference between neutrality on religion in government (making no statements either way and simply not having prayers or oaths etc - essentially what almost all atheists would prefer) and antagonism of religion in government (which would putatively entail statements negative to belief like oaths to the absence of god - a state desired by no single atheist I know of).

On a final note to this already lengthy post I would add why DU of all the message boards I have read or visited (read DU for quite a while - posted only recently) seems so dismissive of "newbies". Is there a correlation between length of time on DU and political acumen? Intellect? Of course not! The only time when newness is (or should be anyway) relevant is when the discussion is centered on detailed experiences shared only by longer term members - like the old message board format or a poster from long ago.