November 07, 2004

• I read this on MeFi and it is very interesting - I reccomend it to everyone. As I have commented in other threads the "oh those dumb rednecks" stuff gets us nowhere- it only feeds the sense of persecution the author talks about. If we on the left are too arrogant to even try to understand the other side we deserve to lose every election for the rest of the century.
• drjimmy11, while I see where you're coming from, I think the reason why so many people are angry is that we have tried to understand the other side. I've tried. Many of us have tried and tried and tried. People of the religious right live in a country that has allowed them to practice whatever religion they want, and now they've turned around and said, "fine, but if you don't believe what we believe you're evil and immoral." And now they've passed legislation that directly fucks with many of our lives. All I wanted to do was live and let live, and now I feel kicked in the face. I feel like my mind is open enough to empathize with their situation. Why are they completely incapable of empathizing with anyone but themselves? I hear religious conservatives talking about forgiveness, but I have never seen such unforgiving people in my entire life. I hear them talking about unifying peoples, and yet they're afraid of people who look and act differently from themselves. Sorry, I don't mean to perpetuate the quagmire. I desperately want to understand this situation, but I find myself running out of patience with a population that seems to continually push itself (and the rest of us in the process) back into the dark ages, at least to my way of thinking, to my values, to everything that I hold dear. If lefties are supposed to respect the righties' point of view, why shouldn't that respect be reciprocated?
• Disclaimer: Am Not Ameican. Claiming "persecution" or a feeling/sense of it when one doesn't live in fear of physical violence and discrimination (the kind that loses you jobs and apartments) is, well. Silly is the kindest word I can come up with. Several states can lawfully jail people for having anal sex in their own home, for crying out loud. Speak "persecution" to me when a blue state outlaws home prayers. There's no lack of attempt by people on either side to understand the other. I don't need this article to tell me the religious conservatives' need for spiritual warfare; I doubt many liberals do. The problem has always been how best to deal with it. People around the world have known this type of aggressive Christianity for centuries. It's one of the many aggressive ideologies we must live with. We get it.
• I don't need to read stuff like this on someone's blog. I'm related to people who believe this stuff. Once you've become familiar with the belief system (world created in 7 days, you must accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior, angels and devils are real, so is hell and you are probably going there), what else is there to do? These ideas are either patently false or completely unverifiable. What more is there to understand?
• Thanks, Shinything-- If lefties are supposed to respect the righties' point of view, why shouldn't that respect be reciprocated? Once again, I need to ask the apologist crowd: When did not holding conservative moral values mean not holding any (meaningful) moral values whatsoever?
• shinything - I couldn't agree more. I don't believe in God, never even gave it much thought. But I always made room for the idea just so I wouldn't be in danger of insulting the multitudes who are religious. After all, why should I pass judgement on them? But they have clearly not done the same for me. And now they have me feeling like America is screwed - on it's way down from greatness. So, that is the end of my consideration. If christian conservatives are going to treat liberals like enemies, I'll just have to learn to act that way myself.
• kenshin - I know that Texas struck down it's sodomy laws - which states are left? Alex - No one has said, here or in the post, anything about non-conservatives lacking morals. That's a bit off-topic. What I was struck by in the article was the way that the author wants us to realise that these are people who hold deep beliefs, but are also smart, loving, have family, are someone's mother - they are real people. I know I hold deep beliefs many of which are not provable by rational observation or fact, or are subject to debate with no clear answer. My belief that gayness is innate, and that gay marriage would be a blessing to society is such a belief - I have no scientific or rational proofs (science doesn't understand it yet). But believing so doesn't make me stupid or irrational; we all have the right to hold beliefs others disagree with. But if you sincerely believe that these beliefs are harmful to society, what are you going to do to try to reach the people who hold them? Posting angrily on the internet does little; it just alienates the few of different opinions who read it, along with anyone who simply cherishes harmony in conversation.
• I've tried for years to bring up xtians apocalyptic beliefs in political discussions with my lefty-lib friends. I point out that about 50 million(!) copies of Tim Lehaye's "Left Behind" novels have been sold in the US, to a segment of the population that hardly ever reads books. I remind them that the US heartland has a long history of infatuation with Israel and its supposed role in the apocalyptic xtian "end time" scenarios. I try to put across just how attractive apocalyptic xtianity is to the PWT out in the middle of the country whose lives are generally dull as dishwater, and how that apocalyptic mode of thought offers a dramatic "xtian warrior" role ready-made for the simple-minded. I am given a polite smile before the conversation returns to whatever we were talking about before.
• Um, the polite smile is due to the fact that it all sounds a little D&D. Ooooh! I'm the brave warrior taking on the dragon heathens! God and my +5 Sword of Apocalypse will protect me!
• ...we all have the right to hold beliefs others disagree with. Some of us even get to write those beliefs into law, or practice them on everyone, regardless of equal protection under law. I believe that's the point I was trying to make. I wasn't clear, so: There's a large divide between believing in God and setting up the rules to make sure everyone else does, too. Would you really disagree that the conservative Right's position (whether this is your personal view or not) has been that government should be more involved in promoting one particular religion in state functions that were previously secular?
• i.e. the Left Behind series, and the like, sound so ridiculous that non-religious people can't believe anyone thinks it is real. I recently read in Natl. Geographic that 45% of Americans believe in seven days of creation. Compared to 12% who believe in evolution. I was floored, but the election backs those numbers up. I just can't fathom the creationist mindset. This post helped, but I still don't get it, and I'm pretty through trying.
• I used to work in a Protestant church in the English-speaking part of Montreal as a youth. A common tactic to get kids to show up during the summer school break would be to offer a "candy" lottery, with winners announced after the sermons. Indoctrination starts early with these manipulative monsters.
• That's great! I was just saying how we should have had an iPod lottery to get out the youth vote. Turns out to be just a little bit completely illegal. Oh well, it's not like we needed them...never mind.
• I remember candy lotteries from when I was forced to go to church, and a Baptist one at that. More often, though, candy was offered for rote memorization of scripture, with the winner announced near the end of the class, if it can be called that. I understand this worldview because, like the writer of the linked post, I was raised to believe it. I never quite bought into it, and now I have a very tough time respecting both the methods and the message. But this LJ post does a very good job of describing it.
• yentruoc, you may be interested to learn that apocalyptic xtians take scoffing at their beliefs as a sign that the "end times" are definitely imminent.
• The author writes that to classify the latest wave of religious ideologues as stupid and ignorant is wrong. I think that's half right, possibly less: these people may not be stupid, but by his/her own admission, they are ignorant. Saying that someone needs to be "turned around" is essentially saying they need to be exposed to new ways of thinking they are currently ignorant of. (In this case, ignorant shouldn't have the stigma the term "stupid" has.) Whether these people are also stupid depends on how willful their ignorance is. I had a couple of friends who would push me towards one side or the other of the political spectrum by virtue of their aggressive stances. One of them was a fairly intelligent conservative whose thinking I could understand except when it came to his position on the U.S. versus the international community. He pushed me towards the left. I also had a friend who half-jokingly suggested the Canadian government subsidize European vacations for high-school graduates because the trip was such a life experience. She pushed me to the right. I'd echo all the others in this thread who say they've tried to see the other side's point of view, or at least to let things lie and not bother the neighbours. But when your neighbours are convinced they're fighting a holy war and that you must either be saved or destroyed, it's mighty hard to do either. So in the past week, I've found myself pushed again; I'm scared of Christians again. I'm afraid, as I was afraid when I was a teenager, that they'll want to convert me. That they'll want me to throw away logic. And worse comes to worst, that if I disagree with what they say, they'll want to save me—or annihilate me. I don't know whether to batten down the hatches or wage the holy war the religious ideologues so desperately want to see.
• They know what's best for the people of Iraq and they know what's best for you. Now report to camp for bible study.
• I think the point of this post (``A human face of religious conservatism'') is that, no matter how much we* disagree with the political and religous views of these people, we cannot demonize them. They are not demons; they are not aliens; they are not morons. They are not our enemies. Now, I'm not defending their views. I disagree vehemently on many issues. Take gay marriage: I believe that governments should allow gay marriage as a matter of basic human decency, or else have no legal recognition of marriage at all. I hold this belief dearly. But that doesn't mean that all the people who voted for anti-gay marriage amendments are instantly evil. Sure, I think they're wrong, but it's a human wrong. It's something that, hopefully, can be worked past so that in the future the mistake can be corrected and not made again. I understand that a lot of the vitriol from the left comes from a bitter disappointment with the outcome of the US election. But lefties--and people who oppose Bush in general, within the US and without--are going to have to face the fact that the Republicans have been legitimately elected by a majority of the American electorate. We're going to have to work with both the elected officials and the people who voted for them for the next two, four, and six years. It sucks, but that's the way it is. We're not going to get anywhere by treating them as subhuman or evil or anything like that. It will only lead to more polarization and less understanding. It will hurt our causes. I am sick and tired of the politics of hatred. It's bad enough when I see it on my opponents' side; when it's on my own, it fills me with alarm and dread. *`We' being liberals and/or nonreligous people.
• Disclaimer: I used to be a Christian (and a rather devout, if shit-disturbingly progressive one if I do say so myself), before doubt ripped that apart. A lot of the anger/confusion about the worldview held by Christians here brought back a lot of those arguments I used to shield myself with, so for the sake of the discourse here I'm allowing that repressed part of myself to speak here. Ok, I just can't fathom the creationist mindset. This post helped, but I still don't get it, and I'm pretty through trying. Everyone needs something. Once you reach a certain level of understanding about the world, and you realize that it's not a simple, straightforward place, you need to put something between yourself and the confusion around you to interpret that reality into something you can live with. In order to maintain any kind of sanity, you have to believe in something greater than yourself, be it the power of God or of nature or of humanity as a whole. Each of these interpretive screens makes sense of reality, and in the process determines what is and is not 'good' aka provides morals. For someone who believes in a world ulimately guided by nature, ultimately the preservation of life and life systems will be good, while the destruction of those same will be bad. For those who believe in humanity as the guiding force, the advancement of mankind and its rights will be the greatest good, while the devolution into savagery and self-destruction will be bad. For those who believe in God, however, the focus is not on the environment, or the people in it, but rather on something beyond it, something unknown. While the previously mentioned belief systems will either attempt to ignore or explain the unknown, the belief in God (and for my purposes here, Christianity) embraces the unknown. That which we do not know or understand is not some quiet little corner of reality: it's a vast, gaping maw which whether we know it or not we all confront and navigate in our own ways. For Christians, the way through this void is not to force it into our own systems of knowledge, but rather to give it its own system and name: God. (to be continued)
• The ultimate view of reality which Christianity embraces is that there is a lot we don't know. There's a lot we do, especially when it comes to technology and stuff like that, but when it comes to how to treat people and live in the world, if there's anything the course of human progress so far (and the many, many different failed attempts at societies) have shown us, it's that we really have no idea what we're doing here. We think we do, all of us, but we don't. Some have had a better grasp than others, but ultimately all have failed, and are all incapable of making the external realities of our situation fit totally with our interpretation of it. To be a Christian is to admit that you have no idea what the hell to make of it, but that something, something out there does. So what do you do? You follow that something. You devote your life to it. You look through the pages which it left you, trying desperately to find out what it is you should do. That's what Christianity is (...was) for me. Is Christianity perfect? No - because it relies on essentially stupid, fallen people, it cannot be perfect. Is God perfect? Yes. It's like trying to copy a Van Gogh with crayons: you're not good enough and it won't look right, but dammit, you've got to try, because that picture is so good, that picture is so perfect, that you want to take it home with you in some form. So do the crazy doomsday stories, Jesus tales, and Eden creation stories make sense? No. But neither do a lot of things. You take those and deal with them, along with all the other inconsistencies of Christianity, because something at the centre, something at the core keeps pulling you towards it, showing you that there's a better way of being. A lot of people get caught up in the outer trappings of it (ie: get rid of gays, follow these rules, join this church etc.) but it's only because they're trying desperately to get to the light at the centre, which will make sense of a world which they see as being too full of the unknown to be able to interpret themselves. Being a Christian isn't a binary state, it's a life-long process of moving towards that centre - God. It's unfortunate that so many people (quite understandably, from my point of view at least) get caught up in these stupid little details along the way. So, this has been a RIDICULOUSLY long reply, but I hope I was able to give you a glimpse of the kernel (as I saw it) of Christianity which attracts so many people towards it, and can create a mindset which will allow for such seemingly intolerant attitudes. These are people who are looking for something deep and meaningful, and have gotten caught along the way. It's hard to rationally explain what is essentially irrational, but I think it is possible to at least explain why I at one point put so much faith in it at one point, and I hope I've helped somewhat, yentruouc (and others). Sorry again for the post length.
• thanks, the meh.