What's your opinion on Liberal Religion?

[emjay]

I'm glad you said this...

...
But overall I may have overstated my case, for which I apologize. "Exaggerated for emphasis," as the diagrams used to say. I don't mean to claim that there has ever been a hard-and-fast split, in which what one holds to be true is irrelevant. I just think the description of religion as an early and failed version of science misunderstands the role that religion plays in people's lives.

... because this was really starting to bug me:

...
And yes, religion can push bad things. Zen Buddhists in Japan were intimately involved in the pre-War militarism. Zen mindfulness is a useful tool for people about to die in a suicide airplane. But to say that that is intrinsic to religion and the good parts aren't is just lopsided.

... because what you seemed to be advocating was basically the virtue of hypocrisy, but without recognising the disparate negative implications of that... that's what I was calling depressing... ie it has little effect on the good, but makes a bad thing much worse. For instance it's hypocritical in a sense for me as an atheist, not believing in god, to sing hymns/carols at Christmas, but no-one's going to have any problem with that because it's a benign, religious/cultural tradition, done in good spirit. Just as is the case with all your examples of Buddhist traditions in Japan. But not all religious practices and customs are benign.

Where religious practices are oppressive and infringe upon other people's rights, such as Christianity's general treatment of gay people, then hypocrisy only adds insult to injury. I'm gay and if I was in the process of being beaten up on account of religion and asked my attacker 'why are you doing this?' and they said 'because God is against homosexuality, it says so in the Bible'... then that to me would at least explain, if not condone what they were doing to me, but if then I asked 'do you believe in God?' and they said, 'well, no', and I said 'so how do you justify this?', and they said 'I just like being part of the club... it gives me a sense of community... and I like this practice'... you can surely see how that would ring hollow and add insult to injury, kicking me while I'm down metaphorically as well as physically in this case?

Now I'm not looking to get into an argument about this, and I doubt you are either, judging by the sorts of things you've said so far (about your niece's church for instance)... you basically strike me as an idealist, in the intellectual way you approach belief and religion, and generally speaking I personally find that quite endearing, but however lofty ideas may be in theory or the abstract, that doesn't necessarily translate well into reality.

[emjay]

@Belacqua, in case I've offended you by my post (since I seem to have cleared the room, which sadly I sometimes do, not thinking things fully through before I say them), I didn't mean to, I apologise. Hypocrisy is a strong word, and with only negative connotations, thus making it very hard to apply to a positive/neutral case... but I couldn't think of a better word to describe the sort of disconnect between belief and behaviour that we're talking about here (or what I thought we were talking about here). On reflection, since the word hypocrisy is all about pretense, it's probably invalid for at least the positive and neutral use cases; eg I am not pretending to believe in God when I take part in Christian traditions in my country, nor is someone pretending to believe in God if they believe that the path to God is more through ritual etc, nor in the case of people deferring or appealing to the authority of higher ups in their church as per your medieval examples of the Catholic church... none of these are about deliberate pretense, so the word hypocrisy is inappropriate.

Basically as long as someone has some sort of belief in God (or whatever is at the centre of the religion in question), alongside belief in your second sense/behaviour, whatever the ratio is between them in terms of perceived importance, then I have no issues with that. I just had issues when I thought you were advocating a much more binary split between the two... the idea that someone could be part of a religion without any belief whatsoever in whatever is at the centre of that religion. But I think you've clarified that you didn't mean that when you said: "[...]I don't mean to claim that there has ever been a hard-and-fast split, in which what one holds to be true is irrelevant.[...]"? If so, I apologise, it's just unfortunately the way my mind works to be particularly rigid/literal and binary in it's interpretations/categorisations, often having difficulty with context/nuance... so in that respect what you said about 'Exaggerated for emphasis' is probably not the best tack to take with me in particular, going forward, if we have conversations in the future ;-).

Finally, I will say that it still looks like the issue of hypocrisy can still raise it's head here, but it would now seem only in a secondary sense... ie a non-believer appropriating a religion to justify their own, most likely nefarious, ends, such as you can imagine thugs with no belief whatsoever in God still using it as a pretence for justifying homophobic violence... but I accept that that's a separate issue, and not at all what we were talking about here.

[Belacqua]

in case I've offended you

No, not offended at all! Sorry if I went quiet there for a while. It was a busy day yesterday.

Also I'm taking time to ponder all this, because the general subject has been on my mind for a while, but I've never tried to work it out like this. I appreciate the feedback.

Certainly there is plenty of hypocrisy in the world, and we should call it that when we see it. Those who preach chastity while raping children are just evil. 

We could point at two types, maybe: those who pretend to believe a thing and then act against that belief. "God loves poverty so I need a new private jet," etc. 

Then there are people who don't believe but go through the motions as if they did. "I don't really believe there's a God who loves charity, but I give to my church's food drive anyway." Or "I don't believe in God but I had my kid baptized because it makes Grandma happy." 

The former are certainly hypocrites. The latter, if we can even judge that they are acting hypocritically, are doing so in a blameless way, I think. 

Oops, have to go now. More soon.

[Belacqua]

Basically as long as someone has some sort of belief in God (or whatever is at the centre of the religion in question), alongside belief in your second sense/behaviour, whatever the ratio is between them in terms of perceived importance, then I have no issues with that.

Yes, I think that's right. 

Anyone who thinks of himself as Christian, at any point in history, will think that something about Christianity is true. He assents to the proposition that Christian tenets are true. 

And at any time and place, there will be some balance between people who think carefully about the tenets and people who are less interested in that kind of thing. For the former type, assent to proposition weighs heavily, but for the latter, ritual and lifestyle are most important, and the details of theology are for other people to worry about. 

So for example heretics, and the people who want to punish them, place great importance on assent-to-proposition belief. The whole fight about homoousion vs. homoiousian is purely about propositions, since nothing about it would require a change in ritual or ethics. Or there's Isaac Newton, who believed the Arian heresy but knew enough to keep it quiet to save himself grief. 

I guess what I'm arguing is just that most Christians aren't Isaac Newton. They accept the general truth of things but don't worry too much about theological issues. And I suspect that the more Christianity is dominant in a culture, the less people worry about it. If it's the medium in which we all swim, then we are more likely to accept it without sweating the details. 

I think that this is still largely true. As with the Buddhists I mentioned in my city, how they live it is still more important than what the tenets are. People who would definitely want a Buddhist funeral might very well have no idea what's in the Lotus Sutra. Whatever those words are that the priest is chanting, they are for the priest to know, and me to nod along to. If pressed, they might even say that reincarnation is silly, though they still want the funeral service. 

(My wife is a total atheist, but still says a prayer for her late father at our home Buddhist altar every night.)

In our own time, when science is considered the royal road to truth even among most Christians, the ratio of understanding vs. just accepting is probably about the same. The percentage of people in the airplane who can explain how airplanes work is probably quite small.

People like us, who debate on Internet forums  -- for fun -- which propositions we should grant assent to are the oddballs.

[emjay]

in case I've offended you

No, not offended at all! Sorry if I went quiet there for a while. It was a busy day yesterday.

Also I'm taking time to ponder all this, because the general subject has been on my mind for a while, but I've never tried to work it out like this. I appreciate the feedback.

Certainly there is plenty of hypocrisy in the world, and we should call it that when we see it. Those who preach chastity while raping children are just evil. 

We could point at two types, maybe: those who pretend to believe a thing and then act against that belief. "God loves poverty so I need a new private jet," etc. 

Then there are people who don't believe but go through the motions as if they did. "I don't really believe there's a God who loves charity, but I give to my church's food drive anyway." Or "I don't believe in God but I had my kid baptized because it makes Grandma happy." 

The former are certainly hypocrites. The latter, if we can even judge that they are acting hypocritically, are doing so in a blameless way, I think. 

Oops, have to go now. More soon.

Basically as long as someone has some sort of belief in God (or whatever is at the centre of the religion in question), alongside belief in your second sense/behaviour, whatever the ratio is between them in terms of perceived importance, then I have no issues with that.

Yes, I think that's right. 

Anyone who thinks of himself as Christian, at any point in history, will think that something about Christianity is true. He assents to the proposition that Christian tenets are true. 

And at any time and place, there will be some balance between people who think carefully about the tenets and people who are less interested in that kind of thing. For the former type, assent to proposition weighs heavily, but for the latter, ritual and lifestyle are most important, and the details of theology are for other people to worry about. 

So for example heretics, and the people who want to punish them, place great importance on assent-to-proposition belief. The whole fight about homoousion vs. homoiousian is purely about propositions, since nothing about it would require a change in ritual or ethics. Or there's Isaac Newton, who believed the Arian heresy but knew enough to keep it quiet to save himself grief. 

I guess what I'm arguing is just that most Christians aren't Isaac Newton. They accept the general truth of things but don't worry too much about theological issues. And I suspect that the more Christianity is dominant in a culture, the less people worry about it. If it's the medium in which we all swim, then we are more likely to accept it without sweating the details. 

I think that this is still largely true. As with the Buddhists I mentioned in my city, how they live it is still more important than what the tenets are. People who would definitely want a Buddhist funeral might very well have no idea what's in the Lotus Sutra. Whatever those words are that the priest is chanting, they are for the priest to know, and me to nod along to. If pressed, they might even say that reincarnation is silly, though they still want the funeral service. 

(My wife is a total atheist, but still says a prayer for her late father at our home Buddhist altar every night.)

In our own time, when science is considered the royal road to truth even among most Christians, the ratio of understanding vs. just accepting is probably about the same. The percentage of people in the airplane who can explain how airplanes work is probably quite small.

People like us, who debate on Internet forums  -- for fun -- which propositions we should grant assent to are the oddballs.

Thank you for this exposition; it really helps to clear the waters that you helped muddy in the first place (for me), regarding the nature of religion Seriously though, it's a very clear, coherent, and thought-provoking argument, so thanks.

That last line though, was ultimately the crux of this whole discussion for me and why your perspective seemed so strange at first; basically I find it hard to very imagine anyone not giving existential questions like these very serious, basically lifelong, consideration... as opposed to just taking them on faith from the get-go. Ie in my experience, and I assumed, everyone's experience, that inner questioner is not so easy to silence. But that being said, that was not the case when I was a child and young adult, there I pretty much accepted what I was told without question, and coming out of Christianity was a matter of cognitive dissonance, not existential questioning so this is harder to reconcile than it first seemed. Basically that's how I feel now, but it clearly wasn't always the case, and when it wasn't the case, indoctrination aside, then the sorts of arguments you've made about immersion - 'the medium in which we all swim' and deferring/appealing to authority make more sense.

[ToTheMoon]

I'm not an anti-theist, not any longer anyway. "Liberal" I'm not sure is the right word, I'm cool with religion as long as they don't try to use the government to encroach on my liberty. This includes freedom to not live a traditional monogamous lifestyle. Not dissing it, it's just not for me.

[The Grand Nudger]

Unfortunately, that's not how religion works. Religious beliefs are among our most compelling and deeply held beliefs to whomever holds them. They will vote based on their beliefs. They will insist that the proper organization of society is pursuant to these beliefs. That's what it means to have religious beliefs in the first place.

That's why the content of beliefs matter. A person with liberal religious beliefs will, at least, be compelled by the same things you mention above - your freedom. A person with authoritarian religious beliefs will shit on your freedom. In either case, they do so with the full benefit of having satisfied their religious duties and sensibilities. In a world of religion, we'd better hope that they find something decent to believe in.

They aren't looking too swell right now, at least here in the us. I'd even say that they seem to be unwell, coming apart at the seams. I don't envy the task that people who follow a liberal religion will have before them in repairing the reputations and credibility of their umbrella faiths. The Wife, for example, used to bite at every opportunity to witness, but now..she doesn't even mention her beliefs..because she doesn't want to be confused for "one of those people". Fucked up, huh, lol.

[Ferrocyanide]

Unfortunately, that's not how religion works.  Religious beliefs are among our most compelling and deeply held beliefs to whomever holds them.  They will vote based on their beliefs.  They will insist that the proper organization of society is pursuant to these beliefs.   That's what it means to have religious beliefs in the first place.

That's why the content of beliefs matter.  A person with liberal religious beliefs will, at least, be compelled by the same things you mention above - your freedom.  A person with authoritarian religious beliefs will shit on your freedom.  In either case, they do so with the full benefit of having satisfied their religious duties and sensibilities.  In a world of religion, we'd better hope that they find something decent to believe in.

They aren't looking too swell right now, at least here in the us.  I'd even say that they seem to be unwell, coming apart at the seams.  I don't envy the task that people who follow a liberal religion will have before them in repairing the reputations and credibility of their umbrella faiths.  The Wife, for example, used to bite at every opportunity to witness, but now..she doesn't even mention her beliefs..because she doesn't want to be confused for "one of those people".  Fucked up, huh, lol.

I would say that is a good way to define a liberal theist: The live and let live type.

The non-liberal type:
1. If a religion convinces that this book is holy, that it comes from a god, and so on, just the way the Bible does, the believer will think it is his duty that that lifestyle is the only good way.
2. He will attempt to eradicate people who don’t conform, such as homosexuals, polygamists, people who want a divorce, people who get pregnant out of wedlock, people who have sex out of wedlock, people of other faiths or no-faiths (atheists).
3. In such a society, you get blacklisted. You lose your job. They won’t come shop at your business. The doctors are not going to take care of you if you have a problem. These are the passive aggressive attempts of the 20 th century.
4. I think it was in 1692, that the final killings took place by european/USA people for european/USA people. They call it the Salem witch trials.
So, somewhere between 300 to 1692, a lot of cleansing has been performed. They killed people and destroyed statues, writings, temples of their ancestral religions. So, they were killing their own people and own culture.
5. About the native americans. The european/USA people kept destroying them, even after 1692. It has been recently exposed on Canadian news. Between 1890 to middle 1970, the canadian government cooperated with the catholic church. They took native american children by force and put them in residential schools. They reprogrammed them to be christian and to only talk english. A lot of children died from disease and who knows what else. The catholic church did not document what they did. It is estimated that at least 1000 kids died.
^^^^^This was discovered since recently, a company bought an abandoned residential building and started digging the ground and found a graveyard.

Ever watched Louis Theroux from the BBC?
The full episodes were on Youtube but they deleted them.
In one of them, it was about evangelism in the USA. A guy says something like “We, the believers, are the ones keeping the devil, keeping disasters away. If it weren’t for us, the USA would have been destroyed long ago.”

^^^^^This is an example of a guy who thinks that the any disease, any hurricane, any disaster comes from the jewish god as a punishment or the devil as a “devil project”.

[The Grand Nudger]

People are still bombing abortion clinics. The good old bad days didn't end in 1692. The ancient argument between christianity and witchcraft has never been anything more or other than a dispute between service providers, a culture war front.

Personally, I think that any religion that amounts to live and let live is..at least.... a good religion..even if the articles of that faith aren't..strictly or factually speaking...true. The value of liberal religion to authoritarian religion is that of a trojan horse. There's a split in my opinion of the next part, between those who see shitty religion as counterintuitive and those who see shitty religion as the predictable winners in any unregulated economic competition between motivated actors. People who don't understand why anyone would go through the trouble of inventing and ensconcing a shitty religion that will, inevitably, be used as a cudgel against it's own disseminators...and people who understand that the least scrupulous actors are destined to win in such a scenario barring unbelievable circumstance.

I'm in the latter camp. I see it, that, on the one hand, it's ludicrous to build a weapon to be used against you..but..on the other hand, that people in economic spaces who build weapons generally outcompete people who don't. What ends up happening is that the weapons manufacturers succeed in the short term to the detriment of everyone's long term - even their own. A veritable gordian knot. Theistic belief never has lead and can never lead to anything other than human misery...but, at the same time, theistic belief is a pretty good weapon against those human miseries that might be inflicted inflicted upon you...by others....in the immediate sense of the concern.

[Ferrocyanide]

People are still bombing abortion clinics.  The good old bad days didn't end in 1692.  The ancient argument between christianity and witchcraft has never been anything more or other than a dispute between service providers, a culture war front. 

That’s true. It slipped my mind.

There are other such events happening, in various parts of the world.

For example:
1. INDIA. Violent.
Jafar Hussain, from the town of Bareilly, in Uttar Pradesh, India
Has been arrested and accused of killing his 4 year-old daughter because she did not notice her head scarf slip from her head while eating lunch.
Police say Jafar Hussain killed his daughter by throwing her against floor
When her mother attempted to intervene, she was also beaten, it is claimed
Source:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...z3xyVTHbKZ

2. USA. Non-violent.
A Bible-thumping homophobic civil servant has cost the Californian city of San Diego 300,000$.
In the years that followed, Rasean Johnson says Sheila Beale began to “inject” her religious beliefs into him and others in the office.
The first incident, according to the lawsuit, occurred in 2008 as voters were asked to vote on Proposition 8, a ballot initiative which would have prevented same-sex marriage in California.

Source:
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/thefreethi...content=44

3. USA. Violent.
A woman who claims to be God’s apostle was arrested on Easter Sunday for holding an entire church congregation at gunpoint and threatening to blow them up… all while holding her 10-month-old baby.

Source:
https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019...content=44

Source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl8SxFHBN7g
That's a picture of her.
It is her own video.

4. Brazil. Violent.
In Brazil, “Soldiers of Jesus” Are Wreaking Havoc on Non-Christian Communities
Jesus said “turn the other cheek,” but an evangelical Christian group called “Soldiers of Jesus” is taking over large swaths of Brazil, threatening religious minorities with death if they don’t convert. The Washington Post‘s Terrence McCoy has the disturbing story:

Priests have been killed. Children have been stoned. An elderly woman was seriously injured. Death threats and taunts are common. Gangs are unfurling the flag of Israel, a nation seen by some evangelicals as necessary to bringing about the return of Christ.

All of this is bolstered by a right-wing government that came into power on the backs of evangelical Christians who weren’t bothered enough by the blatant cruelty of President Jair Bolsonaro and a rise in Christian programming in the media that routinely paints non-Christians as villains. (It all sounds very familiar.)

These gangs in particular have broken into people’s homes, forcing them at gunpoint to destroy religious items that aren’t Christian. Religious leaders who practice a non-Christian faith have been forced to shut down their houses of worship or face death. So far, over 200 of these temples have been forced to close. There is no sign of this persecution stopping any time soon.

Source:
https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019...uhx5F0A8hk

5. Africa. Violent.
Recent reports by UNICEF, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Save the Children and Human Rights Watch[6][7][8][9][10] have also highlighted the violence and abuse towards children accused of witchcraft in Africa. Accusations of witchcraft in Africa are a very serious matter as the witch is culturally understood to be the epitome of evil and the cause of all misfortune, disease and death. Consequently, the witch is the most hated person in African society and subjected to punishment, torture and even death.[11][12]

Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witchcraft..._in_Africa