" ... think that Barack Obama is a looney because he's a practicing Christian ..."
Many people deride Sarah Palin for assorted religious beliefs (such as the co-existence of people and dinosaurs) yet there is next to no deriding of Obama for believing that there lived a man who could bring the dead back to life, and who was himself killed and then rose from the dead.
How and where do people draw the line for acceptable bizarre beliefs?
Too many people confuse faith with the idea of absolute belief. It's one thing to be faithful to a set of teachings and it's another to believe a particular set of statements to be literally true.
I'm no great fan of religion because most require the suspension of inquiry into their core principles when really that's exactly what they should encourage.
Too many people confuse faith with the idea of absolute belief. It's one thing to be faithful to a set of teachings and it's another to believe a particular set of statements to be literally true.
I understand the wish to be diplomatic & uninflammatory. After all, a lot of wars have started over these kinds of things but.. I think that statement doesn't make much sense. I think that making that statement is confusing religion with scripture. If you take Christians as an example, many do not believe various elements (eg Adam & Eve) to be literally true. OK. I understand.
But all that means they are essentially reading a different text. One is reading a history & rule book. The other is reading a book which contains high level principles in the form of stories, some of which may be based on real events. There are lots of variations.
What they have in common is that both are receiving information from a divine, supernatural (unless you do semantic cartwheels) source. Both believe this information to be definitively true. To me (an atheist) the distinctions seem less significant then the commonalities. The religious have a source of information that I do not have.
The words faith, belief, god, religion etc. are very hard to generalise. But the idea behind them is often simply information
It makes the distinction between making an attempt to reconcile a set of moral and spiritual concepts with our scientific knowledge of the world, and rejecting scientific thought in favor of literal interpretation of a scripture.
If you think of it as a Venn diagram, religious belief and scientific knowledge are, for the most part, disjoint, but overlap (which usually means "conflict") in certain areas. The distinction is between people who, in that area of conflict, tend to give precedence to either belief or science.
"The distinction is between people who, in that area of conflict, tend to give precedence to either belief or science."
I think you're wrong here. I think few give precedence to science. They find a way to work around the conflict. Giving precedence is along the lines of 'I see a green sheep so I know they exist' taking precedence over 'I read on wikipedia that all sheep are white.'Generally, the latter set of believers interpret 'wikipedia' in a way that does not cause conflict or minimises conflict.
Obviously there is a practical distinction between various points on the scale between Obama & Bin laden (with Palin somewhere in between). But the scale is not about how they deal with 'conflict.' It's about how often the conflicts occur & where. That's the practical scale that affects what people do & how they vote.
On the more fundamental scale of how they deal with such conflict, the variations tend to be much smaller.
Although it may not have made much sense to you, you seem to have captured the gist of what I tried to say. Even athiests can appreciate the Beatitudes.
A common apologetic for Christianity is that you either believe Christ was God, or that he was a lunatic. The middle ground (that is, Christ wasn't God but merely a brilliant moral philosopher) is hard to defend given what the Bible says Christ did and said.
It's not a "middle ground" to suggest that the core beliefs of a religion are false. I'm not saying you have to accept Christianity or Buddhism or Zoroastrianism, but you might be a bit more self-aware.
"Middle ground" is just not a great way of looking at things. It's nice to be able to put things on a scale of
Jesus was a nice guy--->The bible contains divine guidance--->The Bible is infallible
That's fine for practical reasons (eg politics). But those are essentially different beliefs. They're not on a scale in the same way that Christianity, Buddhism or Zoroastrianism are not on a scale.
I give Jesus the credence I would somebody I met at a bar --->I admire his teachings and do the best I can to emulate him-->I treat all the information I can gather about him to be divinely inspired
What something is, that's dogma and inflexible. How I treat it is human nature, and infinitely scalable.
As a personal note, I think I'm somewhere between 1 and 2.
I suppose I did if the Gist of "Too many people confuse faith with the idea of absolute belief" is "Too many people assume that faith = literal belief in Genesis, Leviticus or Luke"
Certainly absolute beliefs matter in a practical sense. If I were in The States, Obama's beliefs wouldn't worry me. Palin's might. In the very theoretical sense, they both worry me a little. But even Palin's beliefs are probably less likely to affect anything to the degree that her social conservatism (related but not equivalent) is likely to have.
I'm no great fan of religion because most require the suspension of inquiry into their core principles when really that's exactly what they should encourage.
I agree here. Religion encourages you to stop looking for answers and to just believe what you're told. Where did the Universe come from? "God made it." Where did God come from? "He has always been."
I agree that those answers aren't good enough when stopped there. But it's not merely limited to religion. How many people understand the evidence of evolution being true, and are able to apologize for it when challenged? There are easy answered for everyone: Evolution made animals; the big bang made the universe. Most people stop at the first reasonable idea passed onto them from authority because it is widely accepted. Don't credit religion for creating in man what was there to start out with, please.
Don't be satisfied with easy answers: alway dig deeper for reason. The easy answers to "Why the central basis to every single religion is wrong" is temptingly easy as well. (hint: "it's impossible") What is the basis for ethical behaviour? (hint: "herd instinct/evolutionary advantage") What keeps humanity "going" in the face of understanding that each of us and the universe will die one day? (hint: that "something" will continue on.) Look deeper, keep asking.
Jesus' first and greatest commandment, contrary to popular belief, isn't love your neighbour. It was 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ Christians are required to use our intellects as part of worship. The first step to understanding anything is to find out what it's all about; making insulting blanket statements and feeling condescendingly superior without actual knowledge is something "the other camp" does, no?
First, the other comment in this thread, where the commenter talks about all the conversations they have with Christians that are useful and don't wind up offending people? I'm guessing they don't start by calling people's beliefs "bizarre". Bizarre means "strikingly out of the ordinary"; Christianity is one of the most common belief systems on the planet. Just a thought.
Second, Palin's beliefs are far outside of the mainstream. Mainstream Christians don't reject the most basic findings of science; plenty of mainstream Christians believe in evolution, the big bang, and quantum mechanics. Palin's beliefs are, by modern standards, eccentric. They also directly impact her job: I have zero problem with a President who believes in the Ten Commandments, but a lot of problems with a President who believes who should ban books on evolution from the libraries.
" I'm guessing they don't start by calling people's beliefs "bizarre". Bizarre means "strikingly out of the ordinary"; Christianity is one of the most common belief systems on the planet. Just a thought."
If you say, "I am a Christian", few think that bizarre. If you say, "I believe it that someone could bring the dead back to life just by willing it so", many more will think it bizarre.
The mundane ubiquity of various religions seems to have shielded people from any real scrutiny of what those religions ask one to believe. And many of those beliefs, common or not, are just plain bizarre.
I don't disagree that that Palin's beliefs would have a sooner, greater impact on national life, but do you not think that a president's belief in an afterlife or almighty creator will also effect executive decisions?
How far out of the American norm would Palin's beliefs be?
I understand there is a constant debate about teaching evolution in the States. Presumably this is backed up with a substantial minority. Certainly it is not Bizarre enough to exclude her from gaining traction in a mainstream party (Governor, VP). If a Salafist became a VP in Iraq (a formerly relatively secular country), we would take that of evidence of a move towards more conservative religion.
Maybe that's a bad example because at the moment, a Salafist politician in the middle east probably has more immediate political consequences. But all the same, I couldn't imagine a Scientologist VP of the US.
I am genuinely asking here. Is the fact that Palin is an acceptable politician a hint that the beliefs are 'mainstream' or does it just mean that religion is really a non0issue in US politics.
Take any large group of people, and a large fraction of those people will not care enough to understand natural selection, the role of chance in nature, or the implications of genetics. They may maintain piecemeal understanding of facets of these issues --- for instance, noticing that their children share their eye color, and that there's a non-supernatural reason for that --- but they're going to lack the big picture. The big picture isn't their problem. They have better things to deal with. This is just specialization of labor.
To that significant portion of the population, the word "evolution" is just a buzzword, and a political football.
Most of the people who have a problem with the teaching of evolution don't really have a problem with evolution per se; they have a stake in a culture war that our media and our politicians are stoking up to serve their own interests.
I don't think this has anything whatsoever to do with religion. If I had to guess --- just totally off the top of my head --- the people who really commit themselves to believing in the literal truth of the Bible are probably far more "reasonable" in arguments than the Colorado Springs megachurch set is.
Either way: rejecting evolution is far outside the mainstream.
I grew up in a community not unlike Palin's home town. In my youth I spent a lot of time traveling to other similar towns.
Her beliefs and attitudes are very similar to the mainstream in the rural communities I am familiar with. I will go out on a limb and say that there are quite a few people in rural Montana, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Minnesota, and Idaho who would be Palin supporters.
I'm not sure if this can be extended to 'mainstream' in the rest of America, because more people live in big cities and suburbs, which are much different than the rural areas. Even rural areas in other parts of the country seem wildly different. Rural New Mexico, "the South" and Oregon all seemed very different from each other and from anything that I experienced growing up. I'm not sure how Palin would fare in those places.
Mainstream Christians don't reject the most basic findings of science; plenty of mainstream Christians believe in evolution, the big bang, and quantum mechanics.
Is that really so? I think the majority of Christians aren't familiar enough with any of those things to really know if they believe them.
As far as Palin is concerned, after hearing the kinds of bullshit answers she's been giving I've come to think she is a typical ignorant american hypocrite at her core and it would not surprise me if she knew less about specific Christian teachings then she knows about scientific ones.
Jesus once told a parable about sheep going to heaven and goats going to hell. The meaning, I think, is that in the end the church* will be judged by its works: the disciples who fed the poor and did nice things to the least of society were promoted, while the "goat" disciples who refused to be kind to others, were sent away.
Most people don't really care whether Obama believes in Zombie Jesus, but they care about whether his interpretation of believing in Jesus leads to actions which they deem unacceptable or unkind to themselves or others. Obama, McCain and Palin are all judged by their actions, not their faith.
[PS: Jesus never said anything anyone who wasn't already "part of his flock" to begin with. He judges his own Church the harshest out of anybody. Don't let anyone tell you the fire and brimstone is meant for the unbelievers -- it's always been meant for the flock]
Many people deride Sarah Palin for assorted religious beliefs (such as the co-existence of people and dinosaurs) yet there is next to no deriding of Obama for believing that there lived a man who could bring the dead back to life, and who was himself killed and then rose from the dead.
How and where do people draw the line for acceptable bizarre beliefs?