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Popular Thug Drink posted:prove to me that warm climates are not a driver of anti-LGBT bigotry katlington posted:Russia. And on the flip side of the argument, Key West. Also, use your loving shift key, you can clearly manage it for the LGBT acronym, why can't you do it at the beginning of a sentence?
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Apr 12, 2016 15:30
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katlington posted:Russia. yes there are cold weather people who are assholes, that isn't the point. there are a wide variety of climates that fall under "hot weather" some climates have very warm averages while others have very cold averages. my point is that within those regressive groups climate is absolutely playing a role in shaping their views. these people aren't born bastards, they've been brought up this way and climate is very much a part of that upbringing
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Apr 12, 2016 15:33
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VitalSigns posted:The claim that Christianity is the cause of anti-LGBT bigotry seems pretty weird to me considering that bigotry against homosexual sex and cross-dressing in European cultures predates Christianity by like millenia. Not every strand of Christianity has been affected by this particular cultural idea, but I agree that modern christian anathema towards homosexuality uses any passages they can find to rationalize a personal hatred that isn't even that much talked about much in the bible rather than be the outright cause for why they hate. With the way evangelical circles have rallied against SSM or any benefit to LGBT, you'd think homosexuality would have played a more prominent role in scripture, like Eve changed to Steve and God just flipped the gently caress out or Lucifer fell because he convinced a bunch of angel men to have gay orgies all the time instead of doing their heavenly host duties. But its such an inconsequential rule breaking compared to other passages that go great lengths into demonizing lack of true faith or adherence to God and outright murder that it all comes off as pro-slavery apologetics endlessly harping on The Curse of Ham to justify why black people are supposed to be slaves. Because by the color their skin they obviously must have descended from the Canaanites, and just like how the Kingdom Era Israelite, the supposed descendants of Shem, used this passage to say its okay to subjugate and destroy the people of Canaan, descendants of Ham; so too did the western and middle eastern powers of the 17-18th centuries use the Middle Ages idea of "skin blackened by sin" as a convenient excuse to stay their slave trade course. (Also apparently it was a big Babylonian no-no to look at someone's genitals, so its funny that older non Israelite culture can affect one of the most fundamental parts of Judaeo-Christianity, the story of Noah.) There have been anti-LGBT currents in cultures well before even the Greeks and the Romans, and like culture, faiths can be shaped by these same cultural and ideological shifts -- as well as outright steal legends and stories because they sounded cool and Jesus totally did that too, but better. And like any other bigotry, religion is used more as an excuse and a tool wielded by the tools using it for whatever.
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Apr 12, 2016 16:22
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The mindset that idolizes traditions is one that will tend to be both religious and right-wing, and somewhat regressively so. Furthermore, religion communities dominated by people with such mindsets will enculture regression. If you recognize religion as a community as well as a simple set of (vague) beliefs, you can see how it's still okay to say that religion does inform the politics of a vast number of people, and that this is a bad thing, and it should be seen as bad. Being overly defensive here doesn't help explain anything, the people doing the oppressing do so in explicitly religious terms. While it's not correct to say that any particular religion or religiosity necessarily relates to regression, it's also incorrect to say that they're necessarily unrelated, or that the way a religious community thinks about its religion or itself doesn't translate into real world politics. There is ideology at work there, you can look and talk about it, while acknowledging that it's dynamic and contingent. Like I'm not convinced you can disentangle the phenomena of a religious right and bigotry, or that doing so leads to greater explanatory power, because I don't think bigotry is itself a force independent of its justifications/rationalizations. If you do believe that, then I wonder why you think you could ever rid the world of those bigotries. Like the usual excuse here is one of total externalization, i.e. 'abortion is about women not about the fetus', but that's too clunky an explanation because the (projected) reasoning here of pro-oppression isn't capable of surviving on its own, it's needs that cover of legitimacy to protect itself from the light of day, which the religious beliefs provide. That's not even touching how demeaning it is to declare that you know why people think more than they do, not just because you might be wrong, but also because if you're right - you're over simplifying the dynamic of bigotry (think for a second: why does it even need a rationalization?) and, in turn, essentialize the beliefs as 'just what those bigots do', which is then expressed through whatever you declare as transient means to express that - religion, opinions on warhammer, etc. Is that an orientation capable of changing the world for the better? rudatron fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Apr 12, 2016 |
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Apr 12, 2016 16:27
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Who What Now posted:Yes, I'm sure that the religion teaching that LGBT types are vile sub-humans who need to be killed at worst and patronizingly pitied at best has nothing at all to do with them being uncool with LGBT types. Of course it does, but not to some extent that's the only reason why. We've all been exposed to ridicule before when in school. It didn't take religion to finger the oddballs and give them the ire of everyone else. It's just human nature to dislike and fear things they don't understand. But much like racists flock to the KKK or Stormfront, the bastards in politics flock to the party that says the same poo poo they believe. Hell, there's even republican gays that think if they suck hard enough on the party cock they'll somehow avoid the hatred. After all, it's not like the opposing party isn't religious.
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Apr 12, 2016 16:40
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SocketWrench posted:Of course it does, but not to some extent that's the only reason why. Something no one has claimed in this thread.
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Apr 12, 2016 16:50
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HappyHippo posted:Um not really. Their religion absolutely plays a role (although some of the more cynical leaders might just be using it as a tool). To say that religion has no role in shaping the worldviews and ethical beliefs of ultraconservative evangelicalists is ridiculous. It goes exactly the opposite way that you might expect, though. They don't believe things because of their religion, they use their religion to protect their beliefs. One has only to look at how much the awful beliefs people held in the name of religion have changed over time. A hundred-fifty years ago, the Bible Belt believed that black skin was a curse visited by God upon Africans for Biblical sins and basically obligated white people to deprive them of their freedom, and that the US had the God-given right to take all of North America for itself and freely rob anyone in its path. A hundred years ago (and even much more recently), they considered interracial marriage to be a sin and said that segregation was a divinely-ordained part of God's plan. It's local culture and tradition being taught with and masquerading as "religion", the recasting of hatred as heroism (i.e., "I'm not pro-segregation because I hate black people, I'm just trying to do God's will by protecting the divine gift of purity of race that he bestowed upon white people"), combined with a healthy dose of "you might disagree with us but you can't disagree with God - checkmate, you lieberal commie scum  ".At the same time, it's not like all racists were evangelicals or even religious at all, either! The scientific racism that got real big in the early-to-mid 20th century was full of smug atheists, and the eugenics policies they inspired were at least as bad as anything the evangelicals were doing at the time. HappyHippo posted:Edit: also seriously? If someone is brought up their whole life being told that gayness is sinful, and they hate gay people, you think that upbringing didn't cause the hate? They're just intrinsically an rear end in a top hat? No, but I don't think "upbringing" necessarily equals "religion" either. If someone grows up being told by their parents and their teachers and every other adult authority figure in their life that minorities are inferior, then sure, they'll probably grow into an adult who believes that minorities are inferior...but that's not a sincere religious belief, it's just plain old indoctrination, something that even atheists are hardly immune to. At best, it's an aspect of the local culture, not the religion. It's not something that sprang forth from the Bible, it's a local custom that they associated with the Bible because they saw education as something that Bible-centric. MaxxBot posted:There's clearly something special about evangelical Christianity with regards to their views on homosexuality and sexuality in general. With many other denominations of Christianity or other religions there's not such a strong association with anti-gay beliefs. Correlation does not equal causation. In this case, I suspect the correlation is due to other demographic factors - evangelicalism in the US is deeply associated with particular demographics and regions, and I suspect these regional and demographic differences are responsible for those numbers - something that also impacts the other religions listed. For example, in both images you posted, American Jews are by far the most supportive of gay marriage - but they also tend to live in liberal New England cities, are very religiously liberal and consider themselves culturally Jewish rather than religious, and have lived in the US for at least a generation. If their views on gay marriage were purely due to religion, the high level of support would show elsewhere as well, but Israeli Jews have a much lower level of support for gay marriage, with only 59% being in support of either gay marriage or civil unions. Part of this is due to Israel's considerably different demographic makeup from the American Jewish community; the support in Israel appears at first to be divided pretty cleanly among demographic lines, but those religious divides actually line up pretty well with demographic divides as well (to paint with an incredibly broad brush, immigrants from Europe, America, and the Soviet Union tend to be less religious, while immigrants from Africa and the Middle East tend to be more religious). It also ignores local political issues that aren't a thing in the US, since religious organizations in Israel wield a certain amount of civil power that they are absolutely loathe to surrender to the government. In other words, poo poo's way more complicated than "Jews hold this political position, Christians hold that political position". And anyone who thinks Muslims have a monopoly on modern-day religious extremism have clearly never even heard of the Haredi.
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Apr 12, 2016 16:51
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Main Paineframe posted:It goes exactly the opposite way that you might expect, though. They don't believe things because of their religion, they use their religion to protect their beliefs. One has only to look at how much the awful beliefs people held in the name of religion have changed over time. A hundred-fifty years ago, the Bible Belt believed that black skin was a curse visited by God upon Africans for Biblical sins and basically obligated white people to deprive them of their freedom, and that the US had the God-given right to take all of North America for itself and freely rob anyone in its path. A hundred years ago (and even much more recently), they considered interracial marriage to be a sin and said that segregation was a divinely-ordained part of God's plan. It's local culture and tradition being taught with and masquerading as "religion", the recasting of hatred as heroism (i.e., "I'm not pro-segregation because I hate black people, I'm just trying to do God's will by protecting the divine gift of purity of race that he bestowed upon white people"), combined with a healthy dose of "you might disagree with us but you can't disagree with God - checkmate, you lieberal commie scum quote:No, but I don't think "upbringing" necessarily equals "religion" either. If someone grows up being told by their parents and their teachers and every other adult authority figure in their life that minorities are inferior, then sure, they'll probably grow into an adult who believes that minorities are inferior...but that's not a sincere religious belief, it's just plain old indoctrination, something that even atheists are hardly immune to. At best, it's an aspect of the local culture, not the religion. It's not something that sprang forth from the Bible, it's a local custom that they associated with the Bible because they saw education as something that Bible-centric. 1) Religious beliefs can change with time. 2) Culture, tradition and religion are intertwined, and you can't tease them apart so easily. "That's not religion, that's culture" is nonsensical, religion is an aspect of culture, it can easily be both. 3) You seem to be dismissing these beliefs as not being "genuine" religious beliefs. On what basis? This is starting to sound like "no true Christian could believe that! Therefore it mustn't be an actual religious belief. It must be something else." 4) The Bible isn't the start and end of religious beliefs. There are many religious beliefs that aren't part of the bible, and many which contradict the bible. There are whole religions without holy books even. "It wasn't in the bible" has no bearing on whether or not something is a religious belief. It looks like you're falling into the trap of trying to figure out what Christianity "really" is, and dismissing anything that disagrees as being merely cultural.
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Apr 12, 2016 17:17
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HappyHippo posted:It looks like you're falling into the trap of trying to figure out what Christianity "really" is, and dismissing anything that disagrees as being merely cultural. do you have some basis by which we can distinguish between culture, religion, and politics, if we can't go by biblical teachings as a meaningful metric for what is/is not christian?
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Apr 12, 2016 17:52
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The 'Religious Right' being a bunch of rear end in a top hat bigots comes from a weird stew of mangled interpretations, resistance to change, opportunism and a healthy dose of 'gently caress You Got Mine' that stretches back past the Civil War and has been a part of American Politics since the founding. Anyone can be an rear end in a top hat, but the reason you see it so often with the WASP crowd lends more to infrastructure rather than religious thought.
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Apr 12, 2016 18:12
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Popular Thug Drink posted:do you have some basis by which we can distinguish between culture, religion, and politics, if we can't go by biblical teachings as a meaningful metric for what is/is not christian? "Gay sex is sin against God" is a religious statement, in that it invokes the religious concepts of "sin" and "God." Is that confusing?
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Apr 12, 2016 18:18
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Popular Thug Drink posted:do you have some basis by which we can distinguish between culture, religion, and politics, if we can't go by biblical teachings as a meaningful metric for what is/is not christian? Like the very idea of taking the Bible as the chief metric for what is/is not Christian is a divisive issue that has a cultural and political basis! Most liturgical Christians would vehemently disagree with you on this point. Because you just threw out a wide array of millenia-old traditions that have been consciously shaped by local cultures, politics and accidents of history. Instead, why don't you just trust people and take them at their word when they say they are Christian, and are acting according to their spiritual beliefs?
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Apr 12, 2016 18:19
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fspades posted:Instead, why don't you just trust people and take them at their word when they say they are Christian, and are acting according to their spiritual beliefs? that's such a broad acceptance of human behavior as to be useless to describe human behavior and motivations for that behavior. it's a neat concept to think about i guess if people wash their car or mow the lawn religiously, but it's a totally vacant basis by which to examine why people hold the attitudes that they do HappyHippo posted:"Gay sex is sin against God" is a religious statement, in that it invokes the religious concepts of "sin" and "God." Is that confusing? gay sex is also not a sin against god. this means that religion is both for and against gay sex. we can determine therefore that people are approving and disapproving of gay sex because of religion, which demonstrates that both bigotry and acceptance are motivated by religion. in conclusion, we can state that religious people can either support gay sex or oppose it
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Apr 12, 2016 18:26
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fspades posted:Instead, why don't you just trust people and take them at their word when they say they are Christian, and are acting according to their spiritual beliefs? Because when people are being anti-gay and are justifying it using the Bible, they are doing it because it gives them authority. They are being disingenuous, using scripture to perpetuate the narrative their local culture imprinted on them. And "being a christian" is a broad, broad term. Asking one person whether Christianity upholds their view on LGBT doesn't even count as a sample size of 1.
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Apr 12, 2016 18:40
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Popular Thug Drink posted:that's such a broad acceptance of human behavior as to be useless to describe human behavior and motivations for that behavior. it's a neat concept to think about i guess if people wash their car or mow the lawn religiously, but it's a totally vacant basis by which to examine why people hold the attitudes that they do It's supposed to be a starting point for analysis, not the answer to everything. From there you examine where these religious beliefs are coming from, and why people believe in them. The contents of those religious beliefs are not wholly independent from history, but they are also not irrelevant. They mean something. quote:gay sex is also not a sin against god. this means that religion is both for and against gay sex. we can determine therefore that people are approving and disapproving of gay sex because of religion, which demonstrates that both bigotry and acceptance are motivated by religion. in conclusion, we can state that religious people can either support gay sex or oppose it Yes, congrats. You acknowledged religious beliefs differ even among people who share the same religious identity. What a concept! Although, may I remind you that vast majority of Christians, including the biggest churches, both historically and today, believe gay sex is a sin? Now why is this the case? Does this have something to do with influential Church Father's attitude to non-reproductive sex? Is it because it challenges some crucial standpoints Christian tradition had over sexual relationships and gender roles? Nah, it's probably nothing. They are all just bigots.
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Apr 12, 2016 18:44
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fspades posted:It's supposed to be a starting point for analysis, not the answer to everything. From there you examine where these religious beliefs are coming from, and why people believe in them. The contents of those religious beliefs are not wholly independent from history, but they are also not irrelevant. They mean something. like i keep saying, if there's no way to decouple religious justifications for political stances versus religious stances then there's not much point to talking about religion except to express your disapproval with religion fspades posted:Although, may I remind you that vast majority of Christians, including the biggest churches, both historically and today, believe gay sex is a sin? Now why is this the case? Does this have something to do with influential Church Father's attitude to non-reproductive sex? Is it because it challenges some crucial standpoints Christian tradition had over sexual relationships and gender roles? there's a big difference between thinking something is a sin and thinking something is a sin so you support harrasing and discriminatory legislation in the political sphere. if we can't examine why some religious people have the same attitudes as the bigots but themselves are more accepting then this further erodes the idea that religious tenets must somehow be at fault
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Apr 12, 2016 18:57
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SSNeoman posted:Because when people are being anti-gay and are justifying it using the Bible, they are doing it because it gives them authority. They are being disingenuous, using scripture to perpetuate the narrative their local culture imprinted on them. OR they are doing it because they are genuinely, really, honestly scared to poo poo that God is going to punish them and their country for their acceptance of LGBT people. And yeah, maybe it also gives them a smug sense of moral superiority, and a psychological relief from their many failures for not living up to extremely high standards Jesus put on them. That works too.
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Apr 12, 2016 18:58
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Popular Thug Drink posted:like i keep saying, if there's no way to decouple religious justifications for political stances versus religious stances then there's not much point to talking about religion except to express your disapproval with religion  What? Why? Why can't we do both and accept people are complex beings with complex reasons for their political opinions, with religious beliefs being one of them? And why does this require disapproval of religion? Would you be of the same opinion if religious justifications were used for "progressive" causes?quote:there's a big difference between thinking something is a sin and thinking something is a sin so you support harrasing and discriminatory legislation in the political sphere. if we can't examine why some religious people have the same attitudes as the bigots but themselves are more accepting then this further erodes the idea that religious tenets must somehow be at fault Once again you are assuming just because religious beliefs vary over cultures and individuals then all religion must be wholly empty of meaning and just a tool people dress up their cultural preferences. That's not how it works; this poo poo matters to people. Some anti-LGBT Christians literally believe God punishes nations for tolerating sodomy, fire and brimstone style. Where did that idea even come from? Well, that's a complicated story that involves some foundational Christian beliefs that goes back hundreds of years, as well as social and cultural transformations that happened in America in the last few decades, or hell, even the last several years.
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Apr 12, 2016 19:17
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HappyHippo posted:2) Culture, tradition and religion are intertwined, and you can't tease them apart so easily. "That's not religion, that's culture" is nonsensical, religion is an aspect of culture, it can easily be both. If religion can't easily be separated from culture and tradition, but is just an aspect of those two, then how can you say that these beliefs are specifically coming from "religion"? This is particularly the case when different cultures that share the same religion believe different things - it's awfully hard to blame the belief that's different on the religion that's the same, rather than on the cultural differences. On the basis that they believe it because they've been told to and because it's socially expected of them, rather than out of a sincerely-held faith. Take, for example, the abortion debate. There's plenty of anecdotal pieces like The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion that point to the number of pro-lifers, many of whom are evangelical or born-again Christians, who seem mostly concerned about justifying it to their parents or avoiding being ostracized from their church group, rather than fearing divine punishment.
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Apr 12, 2016 19:27
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Main Paineframe posted:If religion can't easily be separated from culture and tradition, but is just an aspect of those two, then how can you say that these beliefs are specifically coming from "religion"? This is particularly the case when different cultures that share the same religion believe different things - it's awfully hard to blame the belief that's different on the religion that's the same, rather than on the cultural differences. Your argument is based on the false premise that just because two people are Christians they must share the same religious beliefs (or be the same religion). There's a wide variety of belief that falls under the umbrella of "Christianity." "Christianity" is a taxonomic label that describes religions sharing a belief in Jesus, don't confuse it with the actual beliefs of the various groups and people who fit that extremely broad definition.
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Apr 12, 2016 20:45
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Edit: long since beaten
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Apr 12, 2016 20:50
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HappyHippo posted:Your argument is based on the false premise that just because two people are Christians they must share the same religious beliefs (or be the same religion). There's a wide variety of belief that falls under the umbrella of "Christianity." "Christianity" is a taxonomic label that describes religions sharing a belief in Jesus, don't confuse it with the actual beliefs of the various groups and people who fit that extremely broad definition. It looks like you're falling into the trap of trying to figure out what Christianity "really" is, and then defining it broadly enough that you can blame basically every aspect of any US or European culture you don't like on it.
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Apr 12, 2016 20:50
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fspades posted:
you can do whatever you want man, it's a free internet. all i'm saying is that if you have no method to distinguish between religious, religiously inspired, political-as-religious, religious traditions with little religious intent behind them, and so on when it comes to determining the relative bigotry quanta inherent in some mix of religious or not religious or sorta religious behavior then you're not really beholden to any sort of actual interesting rational analysis and you might as well just go yell at an empty church fspades posted:Once again you are assuming just because religious beliefs vary over cultures and individuals then all religion must be wholly empty of meaning and just a tool people dress up their cultural preferences. That's not how it works; this poo poo matters to people. Some anti-LGBT Christians literally believe God punishes nations for tolerating sodomy, fire and brimstone style. Where did that idea even come from? Well, that's a complicated story that involves some foundational Christian beliefs that goes back hundreds of years, as well as social and cultural transformations that happened in America in the last few decades, or hell, even the last several years. not entirely, but i do keep saying "religion doesn't matter that much" and you say "yes it does" and i say "no it doesn't" and you say "yes it does" and we're on page three now
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Apr 12, 2016 21:06
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fspades posted:OR they are doing it because they are genuinely, really, honestly scared to poo poo that God is going to punish them and their country for their acceptance of LGBT people. But curiously not scared of God punishing the US for any of its other sins? I mean I'm sure there are some people like this but for most Religious Right folks there is an extremely outsized focus on homosexuality and abortion to the point where it's impossible to view these sorts of arguments as being made in good faith.
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Apr 12, 2016 21:48
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It's also difficult to untangle "gay sex is a sin" from "sex is a sin, and only acceptable to reproduce". Given the number of monks and nuns that described their relationship with Jesus in erotic and same-sex terms, it's highly questionable to describe modern Christian notions about sexuality as somehow directly transmitted purely from Tertullian on down.
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Apr 12, 2016 22:25
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Main Paineframe posted:It looks like you're falling into the trap of trying to figure out what Christianity "really" is, and then defining it broadly enough that you can blame basically every aspect of any US or European culture you don't like on it. 1) "you can blame basically every aspect of any US or European culture you don't like on it" - oh so we're jumping from me saying religion plays a role in the Religious Right to me blaming everything bad on religion? Spend less time trying to zing me and more time reading what I've actually written. 2) This is literally what you said: Main Paineframe posted:This is particularly the case when different cultures that share the same religion believe different things - it's awfully hard to blame the belief that's different on the religion that's the same, rather than on the cultural differences.
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Apr 12, 2016 22:26
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Popular Thug Drink posted:you can do whatever you want man, it's a free internet. all i'm saying is that if you have no method to distinguish between religious, religiously inspired, political-as-religious, religious traditions with little religious intent behind them, and so on when it comes to determining the relative bigotry quanta inherent in some mix of religious or not religious or sorta religious behavior then you're not really beholden to any sort of actual interesting rational analysis and you might as well just go yell at an empty church I'm not interested in comparing bigotry-midichlorians of self-described religious people. Rather I'm interested in why people do political acts that they describe as religiously motivated, and surprisingly enough, it turns out there are specific religious doctrines and traditions behind them. No amount of playing demarcation game with politics, culture, norms and religion will change the fact that the anti-LGBT Christians in America have pretty specific religious justifications they derived from long-standing Christian teachings. I don't see how understanding those teachings is a waste of time if you care about the issue. Popular Thug Drink posted:
The thing is, you haven't proposed a good reason for me to not believe when people say they do X because of Y religious reasons. You keep saying religious justifications are empty signifiers hiding and carrying "bigotry" from person to person. Fine. But then why do we still have religion at all? If bigotry comes from something that has nothing to do with religion, why do these people feel compelled to express their bigotry in religious terms, with arguments backed by (however flimsily) scripture and tradition? Is it just because it gives them spiritual authority to push their cynical political agenda? Then how do you think religion grants this authority in the first place? Who still believes in Jesus anyway?
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Apr 12, 2016 22:30
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fspades posted:I'm not interested in comparing bigotry-midichlorians of self-described religious people. Rather I'm interested in why people do political acts that they describe as religiously motivated, and surprisingly enough, it turns out there are specific religious doctrines and traditions behind them. No amount of playing demarcation game with politics, culture, norms and religion will change the fact that the anti-LGBT Christians in America have pretty specific religious justifications they derived from long-standing Christian teachings. I don't see how understanding those teachings is a waste of time if you care about the issue. however, there often aren't doctrines or teachings that loosely justify political acts which people don't describe as religiously motivated fspades posted:The thing is, you haven't proposed a good reason for me to not believe when people say they do X because of Y religious reasons. You keep saying religious justifications are empty signifiers hiding and carrying "bigotry" from person to person. Fine. But then why do we still have religion at all? If bigotry comes from something that has nothing to do with religion, why do these people feel compelled to express their bigotry in religious terms, with arguments backed by (however flimsily) scripture and tradition? Is it just because it gives them spiritual authority to push their cynical political agenda? Then how do you think religion grants this authority in the first place? Who still believes in Jesus anyway? people tend to describe themselves in the language that they know best. if someone is a very spiritual person, who attends a religious community frequently and understands philosophy as a series of religious metaphors, then they are far more likely to communicate from that perspective
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Apr 12, 2016 22:47
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I find it hard to believe that any Christian, knowing what they know about God, would honestly believe that such an all-powerful being is A) Concerned with the human-created concept of a nation state and B) Invested enough in that concept that they would take the time to specifically punish that nation state for the sins of it and it alone. An all-powerful God would probably gently caress over all of humanity for the sins of a few, given that it would probably view humanity as an amorphous mass. You know, like they supposedly did with the Great Flood. My brother is a Khalsa Sikh, which means he's considered 'baptized' and has to honour all five tenets of the faith at all times as a sworn devotion, and even though he has a literal sword he carries around sometimes, he's probably the most progressive and inspiring person I know. Religion ultimately made him a better person, so I'm slightly biased in my belief that Religion is not the greatest evil that has befallen mankind.
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Apr 12, 2016 23:02
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HappyHippo posted:So are (for example) transubstantiation and purgatory not religious beliefs now because not every Christian believes in them? Or does this argument only apply to religious beliefs that make you feel uncomfortable? If you point to one group that believes in purgatory and another group that doesn't, and say that the group that believes in purgatory believes it because they're "Christian", that would be wrong - since some Christians don't believe in purgatory, obviously some other factor besides Christianity is far more directly responsible for the belief in purgatory. It would be correct, on the other hand, to say that the group that believes in purgatory believes in it because they're Catholic (I assume, anyway). fspades posted:I'm not interested in comparing bigotry-midichlorians of self-described religious people. Rather I'm interested in why people do political acts that they describe as religiously motivated, and surprisingly enough, it turns out there are specific religious doctrines and traditions behind them. No amount of playing demarcation game with politics, culture, norms and religion will change the fact that the anti-LGBT Christians in America have pretty specific religious justifications they derived from long-standing Christian teachings. I don't see how understanding those teachings is a waste of time if you care about the issue. There's always specific religious justifications derived from long-standing Christian teachings. That's something that goes back literally more than a thousand years, dating all the way back to probably the first time a religious institution wielded governmental power (or vice versa). People had specific Christian teachings to point to as justification for slavery, they had specific teachings to point to as justification for colonizing the West and kicking out the Native Americans. You name it, someone's used the name of God to justify it. Even when it's a genuine belief that divine providence favors whatever they think is right, it's often not really derived from religious conception; for instance, there's plenty of Victorian accounts which end up so wowed by the impressive grandness of their army/ships/political party/whatever that they decide such a powerful and organized whatever could only be a sign of divine favor and approval in whatever they were already planning to do with all that power, and then later on when some naysayer says a mean thing in the socialist papers they go digging for Bible verses to back up their feelings as they write a grandiose speech about it. Rejecting change in favor of tradition is literally the definition of conservatism, so it's not shocking that conservatives tend to appeal to traditional values, of which religion tends to be one. Evangelicalism in particular is popular among conservatives because the born-again narrative is all about recognizing the sin in your life and turning away from it to reinvent yourself as a more moral person, and fundamentalism was basically the direct product of rural distrust for city intellectuals and their newfangled progressivism.
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Apr 13, 2016 01:53
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Main Paineframe posted:If you point to one group that believes in purgatory and another group that doesn't, and say that the group that believes in purgatory believes it because they're "Christian", that would be wrong - since some Christians don't believe in purgatory, obviously some other factor besides Christianity is far more directly responsible for the belief in purgatory. It would be correct, on the other hand, to say that the group that believes in purgatory believes in it because they're Catholic (I assume, anyway). Would it be correct to say that they believe in it because of their religion?
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Apr 13, 2016 05:22
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Any definition of religion that involves the practicing community necessarily means that 'religion' cannot be cleanly separated from 'politics', therefore handwaving away any possibility of one informing the other is misguided. Even if you believe that they're 'misusing' scripture (what exactly constitutes misuse as opposed to use is debateable), you're still admitting that the religion and the bigotry are codependent structures - the bigotry needs the religious covering to protect it from criticism, which therefore makes it an functional part of the perpetuation of the bigotry. I think it's possible to be nuanced here in saying that there is a relation, without having to declare that this relationship is intrinsic or essentialist, which it patently cannot be.
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Apr 13, 2016 13:21
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vessbot posted:Would it be correct to say that they believe in it because of their religion? I think it would be more correct to say that they believe in it because authority figures told them to throughout their childhood. I don't think purgatory is the sort of thing devout believers end up having big positive revelations about. rudatron posted:Any definition of religion that involves the practicing community necessarily means that 'religion' cannot be cleanly separated from 'politics', therefore handwaving away any possibility of one informing the other is misguided. Even if you believe that they're 'misusing' scripture (what exactly constitutes misuse as opposed to use is debateable), you're still admitting that the religion and the bigotry are codependent structures - the bigotry needs the religious covering to protect it from criticism, which therefore makes it an functional part of the perpetuation of the bigotry. Sure, but declaring that a relationship exists and that religion plays a part in the structure that they contextualize their beliefs within is much, much different from saying "they believe those things because of Christianity", a statement which displays an incredible lack of nuance.
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Apr 13, 2016 14:06
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Main Paineframe posted:Sure, but declaring that a relationship exists and that religion plays a part in the structure that they contextualize their beliefs within is much, much different from saying "they believe those things because of Christianity", a statement which displays an incredible lack of nuance. Good thing nobody said that then. Could you do everyone a favor and argue with what's written rather what you make up in your head? That goes for this response too: Main Paineframe posted:If you point to one group that believes in purgatory and another group that doesn't, and say that the group that believes in purgatory believes it because they're "Christian", that would be wrong - since some Christians don't believe in purgatory, obviously some other factor besides Christianity is far more directly responsible for the belief in purgatory. It would be correct, on the other hand, to say that the group that believes in purgatory believes in it because they're Catholic (I assume, anyway). Nobody is saying Christianity automatically makes you hate the gays, they're saying religion plays a role in the beliefs of the Religious Right.
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Apr 13, 2016 15:38
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Main Paineframe posted:I think it would be more correct to say that they believe in it because authority figures told them to throughout their childhood. I don't think purgatory is the sort of thing devout believers end up having big positive revelations about. Yeah but is it correct enough to state plainly on its own? That's what I'm asking. (The statement being "they believe in [purgatory or transubstantiation] because of their religion")
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Apr 13, 2016 16:22
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HappyHippo posted:Nobody is saying Christianity automatically makes you hate the gays, they're saying religion plays a role in the beliefs of the Religious Right. Do they have any evidence beyond "well, that's what they said and clearly no one has ever lied in politics"? Because I'm saying that no, religion has not been shown to play a meaningful role in the political beliefs of the "Religious" Right, something that should be utterly obvious from the existence of people who are of the exact same religion but do not share those political beliefs. fspades posted:If bigotry comes from something that has nothing to do with religion, why do these people feel compelled to express their bigotry in religious terms, with arguments backed by (however flimsily) scripture and tradition? Is it just because it gives them spiritual authority to push their cynical political agenda? Because freedom of religion is written into the Constitution, and as a result of that, there are already certain exceptions in both discrimination law and discrimination caselaw for explicitly religious institutions under certain specific circumstances. The precedents suggest that something as broad as the laws being passed now still wouldn't pass the laugh test in a courtroom, but at least it's a legal argument (even if it's a weak, thinly veiled one) nominally based on fundamental US law, whereas "I want the ability to discriminate against LGBT people because I hate them" doesn't have any legal basis at all to point to. The religious freedom argument is an attempt to pretend it's not just all about hate, while simultaneously giving it a constitutional justification that the right can point to so when it inevitably comes crashing down they can blame evil activist liberal justices destroying our good old AMERICAN values, and feed their persecution complexes from multiple angles at once.
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Apr 13, 2016 16:27
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Main Paineframe posted:Do they have any evidence beyond "well, that's what they said and clearly no one has ever lied in politics"? Because I'm saying that no, religion has not been shown to play a meaningful role in the political beliefs of the "Religious" Right, something that should be utterly obvious from the existence of people who are of the exact same religion but do not share those political beliefs. Two people can have the same "religion" with two different beliefs that are nonetheless religious. I don't know how I can put it any simpler. HappyHippo fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Apr 13, 2016 |
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Apr 13, 2016 16:57
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Main Paineframe posted:Because freedom of religion is written into the Constitution, and as a result of that, there are already certain exceptions in both discrimination law and discrimination caselaw for explicitly religious institutions under certain specific circumstances. The precedents suggest that something as broad as the laws being passed now still wouldn't pass the laugh test in a courtroom, but at least it's a legal argument (even if it's a weak, thinly veiled one) nominally based on fundamental US law, whereas "I want the ability to discriminate against LGBT people because I hate them" doesn't have any legal basis at all to point to. The religious freedom argument is an attempt to pretend it's not just all about hate, while simultaneously giving it a constitutional justification that the right can point to so when it inevitably comes crashing down they can blame evil activist liberal justices destroying our good old AMERICAN values, and feed their persecution complexes from multiple angles at once. I think you'd be better served by confronting the possibility that it really is part of their religion to hate gay people. Your claims that it isn't aren't very convincing, and if you're wrong, we don't need an argument that a religion can't possibly be bigoted -- we need an argument that religious bigotry shouldn't be constitutionally protected even though it's religious in character. It would probably take the form of a balancing test vs. the other constitutional values that would be violated by discrimination against sexual orientation, etc.
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Apr 13, 2016 17:15
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Main Paineframe posted:Do they have any evidence beyond "well, that's what they said and clearly no one has ever lied in politics"? Because I'm saying that no, religion has not been shown to play a meaningful role in the political beliefs of the "Religious" Right, something that should be utterly obvious from the existence of people who are of the exact same religion but do not share those political beliefs. So why have special exemptions for religious institutions in the first place? Just because you have a very strong belief in something even in theory shouldn't mean you get to oppress other people over it.
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Apr 13, 2016 17:25
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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blowfish posted:So why have special exemptions for religious institutions in the first place? Just because you have a very strong belief in something even in theory shouldn't mean you get to oppress other people over it. It's actually part of a bargain between the federal government and organized religion. Don't get involved in politics, and you don't need to pay taxes. Granted, the first part could use better enforcement.
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Apr 13, 2016 17:52
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