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RasperFat posted:I'm personally an atheist but I'm not going to push away allies because I think supernatural things are all silly. Protecting LGBTQ people, minorities, immigrants, the environment, the poor, and stopping bombing and shooting people halfway across the world are of far more immediate importance. Hmmm yeah, but that's not really the issue here. The beliefs of individual people, you are right, are largely irrelevant. If someone chooses to believe in the existence of this or that God, or believe that this or that text was divinely inspired, or believe that this or that holyman is a manifestation of God's power, then that is a matter of little consequence. If all you have is a list of someone's theological or metaphysical beliefs, that's not likely to tell you very much about that person's political beliefs or their ethics more generally. Assholes are equally well represented in all religious (and non-religious) traditions. So individual theologies do not matter - and I'd even go so far as to say that institutional theologies don't matter so much, either - but what does matter is the invariably negative emergent effects that insitutional religion has on social progress. On all the issues you mentioned, institutional religions are at best of no great help, at worst an active obstacle to progress being made. This is not necessarily a consequence of theology or doctrine - the world's religions have a great many (often conflicting) things to say about all of those issues. The problem, though, is that all religions aspire to be totalising (applicable to all areas of an individual's life) and universalising (imposed upon all of society) and these, inevitably, have led religions always make good friends with the ruling powers and with an interest on preserving the status quo, both of which are obviously anathemas agasint progress. No matter how many good things a religious doctrine teaches, or how many nice things a religious practitioner says, religion is just simply the best tool there is for obscuring people to the need for earthly progress. Historically, the last bastion of every form of bigotry and oppression in every society you care to mention has always been found in the sanctuary of some house of worship. Exceptions can be given of course, such as the liberation theology that was mentioned earlier. All I need to ask is 1) what the attitude of institutional religions were to such movements and 2) what influence such movements have succeeding in having over mainline versions of the faith. The fact is that liberation theologies - or any other religious movements geared towards social progress - succeed in spite of religious rather than as a consequence of it. Ultimately, the Left should be indifferent to God, but it should definitely be hostile to religion.
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Mar 6, 2017 13:44
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