A Christian Urges Atheists To Not Make it Harder for Her Side To Support the LGBT Community

This is really thought provoking. I’ve heard this kind of argument (if you’re not a Bible literalist, you’re not a Christian) from Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. While I agree with Dawkins and Harris that faith is harmful far more often than even some atheists will admit, I sometimes wonder if their tactics for convincing people are effective. I think that sometimes they put Christians on the defensive, which stops a reasonable discussion.

In what way are atheists making is “harder” for Christians to not be bigots? That is entirely your responsibility as Christians. There is nothing I, as an atheist, can do to make this harder for you. I am not responsible for your beliefs, and this attempt to blame us for your failure to evolve past the straightjacketed bigotry which your faith has saddled its adherents with is laughable.

As for not being “true” Christians, it’s not us atheists who say that, but your own people; I see little difference between you and the FRC; it’s up to you Christians to define your religion, and right now, the conservatives are winning, hands down. If you want the public face of your faith to not be so bigoted, YOU SHOULD WORK TO MAKE IT SO, instead of complaining that atheists point out the simple fact that the large majority of Christians are *not* like you, that they *are* bigoted. Until the bigots are no longer a majority within the Christian community, you will have to live with the fact that your faith has a stain on it, whether that’s your fault or not.

You complain about us reminding you that most of your brethren are still stuck in the dark ages, while at the same time they call us baby-killers, immoral, or even worse, “Commies”. Please forgive me if I don’t feel any compassion for you in this matter.

“I regularly see atheists telling affirming Christians that they’re not really Christians” PLUS
“but when you see another group denigrate you for seeking to make right a past wrong”

Dear Author,
you have misunderstood. When an atheist tells you that you are ‘not really a christian’ this is not denigration, it is intended as a complement!
have a nice (only) life.

 Not only that but it brings up something they also don’t want to hear. The Bible has been used for centuries as an
excuse for homophobia, misogyny, slavery and all other sorts of ills.
When this is pointed out, most of the time, people say what has been
said here (paraphrasing): “Oh, that’s not what the Bible meant”.

The problem is… that’s what the Bible SAYS. It clearly supports
slavery, it clearly says homosexuality is an abomination and people practicing it should be put to death, it clearly
says women should shut up and let men rule them.

I note that most people have repudiated what a lot of bigots say when they use the Bible to excuse their hatreds. And that’s good. But I also note that they have NOT repudiated
what the Bible says. And unfortunately, ignoring it only helps
perpetuate that bigotry.

So here’s a simple test: is what the Bible says about homosexuality
wrong? Is what the Bible says about women being subservient to men, just
because they’re men, wrong? Is what the Bible says about other
religions, about atheism, about stoning people to death who work on the
Sabbath, about being able to sell daughters into slavery, about making a
woman who was raped marry her attacker… not are these concepts wrong,
is the BIBLE wrong for encouraging/promoting/saying them?

If the answer is in the negative, then this is merely perpetuating the
bigotry and hatred espoused by fundamentalist hate-mongers. It isn’t that people don’t think they’re wrong in their bigotry. It’s
that people don’t think the Bible, which supports their claims, is wrong.

And until THAT changes, the bigotry excused by the Bible won’t change.

Sorry Erin, but I don’t think you read carefully enough.  Right at the top of the article Alise says:

I have been open about my beliefs about whether or not I think homosexuality is sinful (I don’t) and whether or not I support marriage equality (I do).

and later:

I understand the questions that are a result of progressives saying one thing (I support LGBT people) and doing another (I oppose marriage equality). I think this kind of calling out is entirely reasonable and I add my voice to yours.

But her book, on which Christianity is based, does say that homosexuality is a sin.

“This is just a nice way of saying you’re picking and choosing from the bible. If this book is the sacred word of God, why is it so flawed or incorrect in places that you can discount outright passages as being unimportant?”

This is essentially why I stopped considering myself a liberal Christian– my teenaged daughter noted that I didn’t take much of the Bible literally, and asked me how I could tell the difference between the passages I thought were true and those I thought were mythology. I couldn’t come up with a good answer. I also couldn’t justify my conviction that a loving God would save everyone on Earth in the end– the Bible didn’t support that belief, and Jesus himself talked quite clearly about hell. Eventually I had to admit that if I didn’t believe that much of the Bible, I couldn’t reasonably believe any of it.

(from the OP) “Instead, I regularly see atheists telling affirming Christians that they’re not really Christians.”

This sort of response may come from people like me, who’ve analyzed their own religious beliefs and found them lacking. Or it may come from lifelong atheists who have followed the same sort of logical process. I personally think it’s rude to tell someone they’re not “really” true believers, and I won’t go there. I would suggest to Alise, however, that if  she finds it necessary to discard that much of the Bible, it’s worth some serious thought as to why any of it is worth holding on to.

I think the problem is that people think that “Christian” is a good thing. 

For it’s really pretty obvious that evangelicals follow the Bible more closely than liberals do. Just read the Bible. In that sense, they ARE “more Christian”.

But why be Christian? What’s so great about being Christian, especially if it means that you say nice things about a book as terrible as the Bible?

except that this argument doesn’t originate with our side. When an Atheist makes the “not a true Christian” argument, we’re not advancing a new idea; we’re echoing what we hear from Christian pastors, bishops, and media figures.

The argument described by the author *is* intentionally provocative. And I imagine it is very uncomfortable for pro-equality Christians. But I think it’s a valid point. We’d question an anti-gun member of the NRA or an anti-pedophilia (warning! Provocation) Wisconsin Catholic. That was YOUR $20k Cardinal Dolan used to pay off pedo priests; if you keep funding the beast without fixing what it does wrong, are you not responsible for its actions? Likewise if you show up to an anti-LGBT church every Sunday and pay in to the collection plate, don’t you have to take some ownership in what they do with the money?

If this argument puts Christians on the defensive, maybe we’re not the ones who are doing the wrong thing.

Fair enough.  It’s not for us to tell Christians what their religion consists of, especially when there are thousands of versions of it and it has been constantly changing from the very outset.  

If I could keep major public atheists stop making one argument, it would be the argument that only biblical literalists are Christians.  The slightest historical awareness would demonstrate the absurdity of claiming that there were no Christians until the last two centuries.

From dollie “cherry picked it to make yourself feel better. Why not just chuck the whole thing?” Concur. Why bother? The whole idea of “progressive christian” is silly, as Dawkins discussed in TGD. 

Christ-stains, 

Accept the the very real LGBT Community into your make believe club.

Or we will continue to grow in numbers by just collecting your rejected masses.

Signed, 

Atheists

It’s a tough decision for me:  Do I want to work with progressive Christians to convince more people that LGBTQ equality can be embraced by Christians, or do I want to use it as a wedge to drive more progressives and LGBTQ people away from religion and churches? I wrestle with this question a lot.

If the way this needs to work is:

Step 1) Ignore parts of the Bible that go against the principles of love, equality and fairness that are most important to me.

Step 2) Begin to question my need to cherry pick from the Bible

it’s all good as far as I’m concerned.

For the record, there are no “True Christians” because Christianity isn’t true. The same goes for Islam and Muslims and Judaism and Jews and whatever else you care to name.

I think doing the former can lead to the latter

MB, I completely agree.  I wrote about the same subject here:

http://heretichusband.blogspot.com/2012/06/will-real-christians-please-stand-up.html

What good is a word that you can’t define?

Would you be fine with your hypothetical KKK member continuing to call herself a KKK member and claiming that the KKK didn’t actually support lynching?

Alise Wright, I’m sorry that what you said has been demonstrated perfectly in these very comments.  I think you are following Jesus’s doctrine of “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” And “love thy neighbor.”
I don’t think this is the time for people to condemn your beliefs. You are an ally. There is a time and place for everything. Picking this battle with you at this time is not the right time or place. 

 That’s not how it works. People in the Soviet Union were Communists, but there was no Communism in the Soviet Union. When they collapsed, they were still at the Socialism stage. The reason they were called Communists is because they were working(supposedly) towards Communism.

Same with this. People aren’t Christians because Christianity is true, or Muslim because Islam is true. They are Christians or Muslims or Whatever because they believe in whatever. Its truth state doesn’t alter that fact. True Christians or not notwithstanding.

Not exactly. It says men sleeping with other men pretending to be women is a sin, and on the magnitude of eating shellfish, something Christians have already ditched. Hell, they’ve ditched things far more emphatically stressed than that. Progressive Christians certainly have ground to affirm their LGBT brothers and sisters. Like Alise said, don’t make it harder for them.

My question for more liberal Christians is this: Do you actually BELIEVE in a virgin birth  and that  Jesus died  for your sins? Or do you accept it because love is nice and the community and comfort found in religion is beneficial to you?

I have met a few self described liberal Christians who are definitely more like deists or humanists in their world view, they just like the label because of the community or that is what they always called themselves.

Christians call each other out on their level of “Christian-ness” – I have seen both fundamentalists and more liberal Christians do this (Real god is love and affirming, people who hate gays aren’t truly Christian or otherwise).

 How’s that?

No, what you are saying is that there are many definitions of what a Christian is. If you want to write people who claim to be Christians out of Christianity you need to make a convincing argument that a definition that excludes them is correct.

 LOL! Those evil teenaged daughters, always ruining it for everyone else. No wonder the Bible authors hated women.  We need more of them.

I would suggest to Alise, however, that if  she finds it necessary to
discard that much of the Bible, it’s worth some serious thought as to
why any of it is worth holding on to.

Which is basically what the atheists are saying.

Is this really the fault of the atheists? It’s not even our argument. Christians have been slaughtering one another for over 1,500 years, because other Christians weren’t Christian enough, or didn’t believe just the right interpretation, or well, we don’t really like those people and they don’t believe the same Christianity we do, so great, we have an excuse from God to go wipe them out.

People focus on the Crusades to the Holy Land, but Christians have instigated crusades within the confines of Europe, targeting other Christian groups. So if atheists pick up on an old Christian argument,  don’t blame us.

Besides, if a bigot whines that the non-bigot is not making it easy for him to drop his bigotry, is that really the fault of the non-bigot? Besides, isn’t it a commandment from Christ to revel in all forms of persecution, even imaginary ones?

Well yes, there are many definitions of what a Christian is,
and each group that has a definition to it usually says the others are wrong.
So if each group of Christians is saying that the others aren’t true Christians,
then how are we supposed to know what is or isn’t one?

Also to have a definition that excludes you have to first agree on one
that includes, which as previously mentioned Christians don’t.

If we take a definition I can find in a dictionary;

chris·tian/?krisCH?n/

Adjective:
Of, relating to, or professing Christianity or its teachings.
Noun:
A person who has received Christian baptism or is a believer in Jesus Christ
and his teachings.
Using that one, are those that cherry pick which teachings of Jesus they believe true christians? Can we call them non-christians, or maybe Christians lite? Diet Christians?Or do the teachings of Jesus change, or are some of his teachings incorrect? hence the bible itself is flawed?

Annie: “Thesis: No Christian can support marriage equality.”

Betty: “Counterexample! Over here! I’m a Christian, and I support marriage equality!”

Annie: “No _true_ Christian can support marriage equality.”

My issue here isn’t that your’e enlightened enough to accept homosexuals as full human beings.  My issue is that you think there is divinely inspired wisdom in the Bible.    That basic assumption is why I will argue against you.   If there is divinity there, and that divinity is open to interpretation,  then we will always have the Fred Phelps’ to go along with the  Alise Wrights.   As long as we give that silly book any respect at all, people will use it to support hideous and barbaric beliefs.  If were going to get past ignorance as a species, we need to give up these fairy tales.

Interesting how this relates back to the post about the communion wafer.

I for one have never told anyone they weren’t a real Christian, now would I (I’ve made slightly different arguments regarding Catholics, but that’s a case with very specifically encoded beliefs). I don’t doubt the veracity of the average person’s faith in God. But it is also rather obvious that progressive Christians selectively ignore huge swaths of the Bible. I would not generally make this argument with regard to homosexuality, since the commandments against it are pretty minor bits. The Bible is far more pro-slavery than it is anti-gay, for example. But it is true of that and many other clearly written commandments, if you are progressive you simply don’t believe most of the Bible. That’s fine, but just as with the wafer, it makes us wonder how you can have faith in the Biblical God when you would condemn the vast majority of what the Bible says he has said and done. Does it not make one question his infallibility when he suddenly changes all of his behavior and commandments sometime around the year 33? 

I believe you’re a Christian. I wish more Christians were like you. But you’re also choosing to lump yourself in with all the other Christians. Your giving legitimacy to them, and you’re saying that you believe in a book that condones and gives rules for slavery, commands genocide, commands the stoning of disobedient children, condemns tattoos, shellfish, cheeseburgers, bacon, and poly-cotton blends, and describes in graphic detail how God exterminated the entire population of cities, peoples, and ultimately the planet.

And so ultimately, I want your kind of Christianity to be a first step. I want most Christians to take that step, but then I want you to recognize the inconsistency between what you believe and what is contained in the book that has been passed down for generations as the document that “proves” there is and describes, God.

That’s what I did.

Just as a small note, some people often feel belittled by being referred to as a plural noun of their identifier. “Gays and lesbians”, as opposed to “gay and lesbian people”. To put it another way, whenever I hear someone say something like “The gays in our country…”, it is somewhat dehumanizing. Same thing would go for “the blacks” or “the autistics”, and so forth.

This is laughable. Check your privilege or get off this blog Alise.

 A very sensible and Humanist attitude AxeGrrl.

Teach a Christian to be a decent human being when it comes to gays and lesbians and you’ve fed him for a day.   Teach him that Christianity is a load of nonsense, and you’ve fed him for a lifetime.

 The odd thing is that there is no “love is the highest law” in the Bible. It’s all about immediate and unquestioning obedience to authority with threats of dire retribution and perpetual torture porn fantasies. At least for all brutality of the  OT, once you were dead, you stayed dead. The NT introduces us to the exciting new concept of death won’t release you from suffering.

 But does Christianity make any sense without a literal resurrection? I mean, without that, all it is is a morality tale, and not even a profound one, at that.

I guess it´s only a matter of definitions. If you define “christian” as someone who believes in Christ as the son of god, then you can be called a real christian independently of your views over gay marriage.
You probably wouldn´t be called a catholic, or evangelical, or whatever other subdivision of christianity they have that is against it, but why would you care to belong or not in a group that doesn´t have the same moral principles and beliefs that you have?
I may believe in aliens, for an instance, but if a group of “alienists”, or the majority of them, decide they are against black people voting, for example, I wouldn´t bother not be called an “alienist” anymore if I disagree with that, even though I would still believe in aliens…
Ok, not the best example… but I hope you get the point…

Oh, I had no idea that you were a MIND-READER! How brilliant. You’ve looked into the thoughts of all these many people and seen their true purpose.

Your attitude is honestly disgusting.

 I would like to see evidence (quotes, video) that “major public atheists” have actually made that argument. I don’t believe you will be able to produce any. If you do, I will stand corrected, but I honestly don’t think you will be able to.

 It takes guts to admit a mistake and apologize. Kudos, Erin! This kind of honesty is what the world needs more of.

“Instead, I regularly see atheists telling affirming Christians that they’re not really Christians.”

I see why this would be annoying, and I have to say that I’ve never liked this sort of argument. It always seemed presumptuous to me to tell another group of people what they believe when I don’t even identify as one of them myself (also annoying: “I don’t know why anyone gay would be a Christian…”, which says a lot more about the lack of understanding of the speaker than about gay Christians).

At the same time, it’s important to make two distinctions. Firstly, there’s a difference between saying “you’re not a real Christian” and saying “I don’t think your interpretation of the Bible makes sense. While I don’t believe in a god behind the Bible, I do think that the authors of many books were homophobic themselves, and that there’s very little real solace to be found for a supporter of gay rights there. That has nothing to do with a cultural Christian identity and everything to do with how the actual text presents itself to me.

Secondly, the religious right has been speaking for True Christians for years, and this is where this idea that Christians are homophobic comes from. Keep in mind that, outside of a few select contexts, atheists have little power over the way Christianity is perceived and defined. Christians themselves, from the pulpit and through the media, have always worked hardest at maintaining this connection.

 Alise is a guest on The Friendly Atheist. Perhaps you might check yourself.

 There’s a word for people who think that the Christianity is a series of metaphors.  “Atheist”

“The most vocal populace of atheists (the people who can be found at
internet forums, conventions and rallies) tend to hold the destruction
of religious institutions and religious belief as their primary
objectives. ”

Oh? Is that what I want? All this time I thought I was fighting for equality but it seems I had an ulterior motive. (insert evil laugh here)

There is a problem with this theory. This is the internet, I can say & do what I want here; anonymity. Therefore IF I truly wanted the “destruction of religious institutions” I can voice it, with impunity. Yet I don’t. Why is that? I think I know why, but since you know me better that I know myself, feel free to answer for me.

Ron’s upset because this blog doesn’t cater to his needs. I know we’re super-heartbroken about it.

Etymologically speaking, “Bible” basically comes from the word for “assortment of papyrus scrolls.”  It was written by multiple authors over a long period of time and originally stored in multiple volumes.  In both the new and old testaments, there was debate about which scrolls were and weren’t part of it.  I don’t know whether Alise would describe her positions as some variant of “cherrypicking” (possibly one involving less biased vocabulary) or not, but attacking her for that is just as silly as criticizing one book in a library based on the content of another on a nearby shelf.

@Alise: Glad to have you on our side on this and thanks for your well-written and thoughtful piece.  My apologies for the kneejerk tribalistic responses from many of the commenters here.

 This is bullying behaviour, Ron. Who are you to demand an ultimatum? I think you need to look up the word ‘privilege’.

Seeing as the KKK still exists and lynchings are rare to nonexistent, I would suggest that the KKK today doesn’t actually support lynchings.  And why wouldn’t we be happy about this?  Is a KKK that lynches people preferable to a KKK that doesn’t?

And comparing Christians to the KKK is absurd.

 Alise, I am sympathetic to your thinking and it looks like you are on the way to seriously question the religious doctrine you have been bombarded with.
I wish you good insights and interesting discussions.

That said, the problem you have is that there is no justification for your particular brand of weak Christianity other than you saying that it feels right.

I have yet to talk to a “proper” Christian. None of them believe in all the tenets of their faith,
which is weird:
Apparently the god you are worshiping doesn’t really seem to care.
What does that say about the authority of Christian priests/bishops or other people wearing silly hats?
Your god left you with arcane texts and supposedly said that these are the ‘truth’ for all eternity. Would any intelligent being do that?
It gets so much weirder from there…

Phones are hard to search with, so I don’t have a link, but I’m surprised that you’ve never seen this. Usually there’s someone who says something about how the Bible is clearly anti-gay, and Christians follow the Bible, so therefore people supporting gay rights are not Christians. It’s not a majority opinion, but I see it about once a month; you’re sure you haven’t?

“but attacking her for that”

Attacking? I don’t see anyone attacking. I see criticism, yes, but not attacking. Criticism =/= attacking.

“My apologies for the kneejerk tribalistic responses from many of the commenters here.”

Many? I don’t see this ‘many’ you are speaking of. I see a few, a handful, no more than is typical of any online forum. But I definitely don’t see ‘many’.

This is something I have experienced, and I am not even a Christian. As an avowed agnostic, I have a G+ circle I call “atheists”. One of its members recently posted a call to,pharyngulate a poll that ostensibly was a Yes/no question about whether evolution is real. However, the poll was badly written by a religion columnist and had extraneous qualifiers: “yes, evolution is true and creationism has no place in science” and “no, religion and evolution are compatible.” As I know Christians who believe in evolution and do not want creationism in science classes, I said I could not choose; both are accurate (minus the yes/no). I was told those “Christians” were actually closer to agnostics. When I questioned who these guys were to declare what others believed, I got a line about their expertise and the accepted vocabulary etc.

All due respect to the academic community, that is horseshit. On the one hand, we mock Christians who treat the bible as the unerring word of god. On the other hand, we tell Christians who recognize it as just a book of parables and analogies that they can use to guide them to a closer relationship with god that they are not really Christians. Where do we get off, anyway? When I see people gathering regularly to talk about what they believe and how to be better people through their belief in god and the teaching of Christ, I see religion. When I see some of them setting aside the truly messed up parts of the book and trying to live their lives as closely as possible to how Christ lived and taught, I see the real Christians. The ones who use their book to pick and choose verses to use as wedges to separate the people they don’t like from the rest of society, those are the people that I am inclined to call false Christians. But, ultimately, belief is personal, and we should accept whatever label people choose to attach to themselves. Maybe they remain far fro. What their god wants, but they are trying, and isn’t that all any f us can do?

I call on my fellow nonbelievers to tweet this: “I support the efforts of Christians who refuse to accept the hateful Christianity of the right wing. Christ taught love, not hate.” anything less is hypocrisy.

While this conversation can be interesting at times I find it can be a great distraction to gay rights. I think the most important point is lost when having it. That point is PEOPLES RIGHTS ARE NOT BASED OFF WHAT YOU THIINK IS A SIN!

I couldn’t care less if progressive christians think homosexuality is a sin, if they don’t great, if they do, fine, either way they have no right to use the law to force another person to live by their religious standards of what a “sin” is. 

While you may be converting a few progressive christian to the cause, I think people who make these types of arguments set the whole secular movement back by reenforcing the idea that sectarian religions sects get to use the law to ban everyone else from doing what they consider a sin. 

I think a lot of atheists akin something like that to say, Nazism. “I like everything that the Nazi party does, except the killing of Jews. But I’m still going to call myself a Nazi.” You are associating yourself with the worst of the lot by keeping the same label. – and atheists don’t see how that is any different than when you are a Christian. If your religion says one thing and you disagree with it, why would you still be a part of that religion? Then it comes down to religion being a salad bar where you take what you like and leave the bean salad. People justify their hypocrisy all of the time. 

I think you are getting at the part where liberal Christians are sort of accomplices to the conservative Christians.  Conservative Christians use liberals’ support to justify their work.  “More than 1 Billion Christians can’t be wrong.”

Still, I do support AxeGrrl’s message, at least Alise is starting.

 And that’s all atheists mean when they tell Christians they aren’t real Christians.

No, it’s the fear that might be right.

 But that’s like saying that the Roman Catholic Church exists today and witch burnings are rare to nonexistent, so that would suggest the RCC doesn’t actually support witch-burnings. While true at the moment, that’s only because the current secular environment forbids it and condemns it. The old laws are all still on the books, and even more importantly, still in the Bible. It wouldn’t take much. We saw it 30 years ago, with the Satanic Ritual Abuse moral panic. In Africa they’re still burning children for being witches, and arresting goats and accusing them of being shape-shifting robbers.

Ummm, people who believe homosexuality is a sin tend to *vote* that way.  Prop 8, anyone? Recent history lesson required?

Beliefs influence actions. It’s a simple fact. Without addressing the *root cause* of the actions, namely the *beliefs*, we will be less than fully effective at overcoming bigotry.

What is making things hard for you isn’t atheists, it is your attempt to  to hold two contradictory positions. The obvious answer is to drop the absurd position and hold to the rational one. If it is hard to support LGBT rights while being a Christian, and support for those rights is a good thing, then there is only one obvious answer.

Exactly, the OP seems just like a weak rationalization to me.

 It’s a shame that she needed the first step.  I sure didn’t as a kid growing up forced to attend Catholic church and religious education.  I thought it was obvious that people deserved equal rights.  Who cared what the bible said or the opinion of the church?

It’s great that as a Christian she supports equal rights.  But I’m not exactly sure why she wants a cookie for having empathy and being a decent human being.  If people won’t do the right thing because people criticize their incorrect beliefs, then they aren’t good people.  Sure, I’ll accept their support but they aren’t very good allies.

Exactly. Words have meanings. The word Christian has a meaning. If you do not believe that Jesus was the son of god and is also god and died for our sins to save us from the hell that god damned us to, then you are not a Christian, whether you want to say so or not. 

Further, if you cherry pick your own holy book, you are admitting that it is faulty. Why is the word of god faulty? Why does it say rape is okay? Killing your children is not only encouraged, but part of the law. It is a terrible book, maybe if you read the whole thing, you will understand why I don’t like “liberal Christians”. More like lazy Christians. 

Don’t you know, if you can’t back up your statements and other people comment on them, it is an attack. A war on baseless claims. 

I agree with a few other posters here. Organized religion actively opposes human rights on many levels. If you belong to an organized religious group, you support the opposition of human rights. It is not complicated. You cannot dance around your association with such hateful human beings and ask me to ignore it.

I applaud your efforts to be a decent human being. However, your own religion condones (and actively supports in many cases) things that are contrary to your efforts. Stop clinging to your absurd and unfounded belief system. Stop cherry picking things you like from your dogma and pretending the bad inhumane things are not there, they are. People have been hurt by them and continue to be hurt by them every day.

I will not absolve you of your guilt for being in a group that is so full of hate, misogyny, racism, and superiority. You are guilty of belonging to this group and will continue to belong until you no longer support them, via money, words, or actions. This may seem very harsh to YOU but this has nothing to do with YOU. It has to do with the victims who have fallen prey to your own flock.

Well, Atticus Finch never existed either, but we regularly use _To Kill a Mockingbird_ as a lesson in racial hatred and standing up for one’s beliefs. If someone claiming to be Christian wants to view the bible as parable rather than literal word of god, why should we dispute that?
And maybe you are allowing the right wing to influence your interpretation of christ’s message, because I do not accept your distorted view of it.

As to the quote, I’ll let you read as much of the discussion as you like: https://plus.google.com/app/plus/mp/715/#~loop:aid=z12yw30azq2ljdnwp04cfjlr5niqudebku00k&view=activity

Not really sure that link will work, as G+ and iPad don’t play well together, but it seems
like it should.

 Based on your answer, you’re assuming that all Christians must assume the Bible is the “Word of God.” Personally (as a self-identified Christian), I don’t think that viewing the Bible as the Word of God is healthy or realistic. The Bible doesn’t even make that claim about itself!

Also, there are scores of Christians historically who do not view the Bible as the Word of God (right now I’m thinking of Karl Barth, the leader of the neo-orthodox movement, who claimed the Bible was a “witness to the Word of God”). When we don’t view it as some heavenly instruction manual, but rather as human attempts to understand something supernatural, it becomes much easier to allow for the Bible to say some things that aren’t applicable today, or are simply outright wrong.

How is “I support gay rights despite what some purported christians say about my religion” not a moral stance?

If there is a Toastmasters group somewhere that routinely has a speaker saying the moon is made of cheese, would we say Toastmasters is an organization that believes the moon is made of cheese, or would we say that guy (or maybe even that chapter) is wrong?

Don’t they get to try and influence the world that christianity is not what the right wing says it is? If I am a pro-choicer who believes in the economic tenets of the republicans, do I have to vote for democrats, or can I go to GOP meetings and vote to remove anti-choice language from the party platform?

 Don’t be surprised if Betty replies to the latter with:

Betty: How dare you say that I’m not a real Christian?!

You can phrase it however you want; odds are high that some Christian somewhere will interpret it as an accusation of not being a real Christian. Some such Christians might even write blog posts about the topic. Not saying that’s definitely what happened. Just saying it’s not implausible.

I remember when I was a christian. I supported LGBTQ rights (not much choice, since I myself am bi/queer). 

But knowing what I knew of the Bible, I had to concede that yes, homosexual sex was a sin. The way I got around it was not to deny that it was a sin; but to say “yeah, it’s a sin, but so is gluttony, premarital sex, lying, lust, greed, laziness…and I don’t see people being shunned from the church for those things.”

As someone who has now embraced reason and reality, I see the problems with that argument. But in my mind, it still makes more sense than saying “Nope, I think it’s okay, so it isn’t a sin.”

 Toastmasters is a group where people practice public speaking. If a member is making a speech to the group about the moon being made of cheese, I would say the guy isn’t wrong, he is just purposely making stuff up in an environment where people expect it, just to have something to make a speech about.

Christianity’s claim for validity is largely based upon the bible

*shrug* As a former Episcopalian, I would say that the validity of Christianity is based on Tradition, of which the Bible is just one creation.  And that the two, mediated by Reason, make up the three foundations of Christianity.

Honestly, I wonder if some folks here have ever spoken to a Christian that wasn’t a conservative Evangelical.  “Sacred” can just mean “set apart,” as in the Bible has to be dealt with in a way different from other books.  It doesn’t automatically mean that it has absolute authority which has to be interpreted in a woodenly literal, context-less way.

Are you deliberately missing the point? The bible is a book. Some Christians believe it is the unerring word of god, but not all of them do.

 But nobody claims that Atticus Finch was the Son of God who died on the cross and was resurrected to Glory so that we could all be washed of our sin of Racism, and that _To Kill A Mockingbird_ is a fount of all knowledge and goodness and the will of the Almighty Creator who will perpetually torture you if you disagree with what meaning of the words contained therein, and that its most faithful readers should make life unbearable for the rest of humanity.

Bad analogy, then. How about the NFL. Some members of that group believe black people are not smart enough to play quarterback, but they make excellent running backs because of their physical traits. Yet some teams have black quarterbacks. Are those teams bigots because some of their colleagues are bigots?

“you aren’t going to find many like minded people siting in the pews of your church.”

This statement is patently false if you speak of at least two churches I am aware of, and I avoid churches as much as familial obligations will permit.

 You are missing the point. The sticking point you seem to be overlooking is the BIBLE. This is the go-to reference for any hate monger justifying his position. If the NFL has a rule book that says Black Men are not capable of playing QB, I would equally condemn the NFL as I do Christianity. If the organization as a whole supports hate, I will not support said organization. If a person PERSONALLY is hateful, they are only a hateful person. If they justify their hate with a publication distributed, sign/stamped/approved, by their group, then I will assume that group approves of the message of hate.

Yes, I know.

The Unitarian Universalists and the United Church of Christ are both very accepting of gay people and gay rights.

I should have clarified my statement a bit more than I did.

I will grant you that you are a Christian if that’s what you want to call yourself, but I’d be hard pressed to accept that as a sect of Christianity unless/until you get thirty or forty people to meet with you regularly and teach that dogma to yourselves and your children.

Bottom line: I am neither Christian nor religious, so I have no standing to say what Christianity is for other people.

Oops—also the go-to reference

Nobody does? Are you sure? If they did, would that mean everyone who reads TKAM is as loony as that guy?

A. The main thesis of The God Delusion is that evolutionary biology has shown us that “there almost certainly is not a God.”

B. Telling a Christian who is on the fence about evolution that accepting evolution includes rejecting God is going to resolve the issue for her…and not in favor of evolution.

” And comparing Christians to the KKK is absurd.”

Although I generally agree with your objection to using the KKK to compare to Christians in general, you are aware that the KKK is a Christian group, right?

 And vice versa.

The fallacy here is the idea that words have individually mutable definitions. In other words, you’re claiming that every person gets to define a word as they see fit. In yet other words, you’ve just eliminated language as a tool for human communications.

If someone claims they believe in a god who doesn’t create the universe, doesn’t answer prayers, can’t cause miracles, doesn’t leave any evidence of its existence and can’t alter the course of history, I am justified in asking why call such a being a god, and then why you believe in such a thing.

It’s true that you have the right to define a word as you see fit, for your own purposes. But in communicating with others in good faith, I have the right to smack you with my 1000 page dictionary.

 I actually prefer to being called a Commie, seeing as I don’t support killing babies, I support people ending a pregnancy, which isn’t a baby, it is a fetus.

 “… to hold the destruction of religious institutions and religious belief as their primary objectives … support the destruction of religion … religion is further destabilized … ”

I think you don’t really know what atheists want, what motivates them, what drives them to be vocal. Not. One. Little. Bit. And if you’re operating under the assumption that atheist = pro-lgbt rights, again, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Atheists can be just as bigoted as theists. Just ask Rebecca Watson …

Being personally accepting does not absolve the organization one belongs to of promoting bigoted viewpoints. Regardless of the author’s personal interpretation, no matter how commendable it is (and it truly is), it does not change the fact that the Catholic Church opposes LGBT rights. 

The real problem is fear of rejection. If you (or any religious individual) accepts that their religious hierarchy is wrong on a certain issue, the fear of pulling on that logical string leads one to fear that they might one day lose their faith entirely, and in so doing be cast out by those that once shared your view. The author sums it up here, “When you’re facing rejection from your own camp, that can be enough to keep people from choosing to support others, but when you see another group denigrate you for seeking to make right a past wrong, it can inadvertently create a scenario where people choose the path of least resistance and continue to support bigoted ideas because they see no other option.” 

 The need for validation, and fear of rejection, is one of the strongest motivators known to mankind, but the beauty of being a free thinker is that you can hope to one day truly not care what others think. I don’t support gay rights because someone told me it was the right thing to do or because my friends all feel the same way and therefore I can earn some validation there. No, I  support LGBT rights because I have partied with, drank with, argued with, smoked with, studied with, talk with, shared with and empathized with gay people, and they are just that, people. And the idea that people just like you and me are denied right for something as trivial as sexual preference disgusts me. And if it disgusts you too, don’t fear rejection from those that’d disagree, but rather embrace it.

What a bag of dicks! Sorry guys, as an atheist with many liberal Christian friends, I’m embarrassed that my “group” has so many close-minded folks in it. I’m sure they will  just dismiss me, because clearly, I’m not a REAL atheist if I have Liberal Christian friends. I’ve used all of these arguments in the past, and I’ve found that it hinders rather than helps people see the hypocrisy. How about we work together instead of pouncing on people when they take positive steps?

You don’t speak for all atheists and the religious right does not speak for all Christians.

 Bingo.

The democratic party in the US states in its platform that democrats are pro-choice, but some democrats are not. Does this mean they only think they are democrats, or does it mean that no group can be viewed as uniformly in agreement about everything? We each align ourselves with the community that emphasizes most of the values we believe are most important. Some of us then try to persuade the others to agree with us on other issues where we disagree. But we are still members of the group if we pay our dues and attend the meetings.

But I know Christians who did not give any money to that Wisconsin church. Also, the money they gave their own church was not used for such despicable purposes (I might not agree with how they spent every dollar, but I am confident they did not support such despicable actions). And, since they are not catholic, I am hard pressed to blame them for the pope’s actions.

 This is a plausible hypothesis. However, a hypothesis without evidence remains simply a hypothesis. Do you have evidence to support the claim that it is true that “Dawkins makes it harder for Christians to accept evolution.”

Please note that while the hypothesis you state is plausible, there are many many other hypotheses which are at least as plausible that would argue oppositely, that Dawkins makes it easier for Christians to accept evolution: by helping them to give up Christianity and their only roadblock to learning the evidence about evolution in the first place. In order for your hypothesis to win over the others, you can see that the only real way to resolve the question would be to provide actual evidence that it truly is the case, right?

What does Catholicism have to do with liberal Christians?

 They can do that with a couple page ripped out of the bible and discarding the rest. If they did so, this entire argument would drop like thermite through an engine block.

This seems to correlate with another posting in the blog about the KKK adopting a highway.People throwing trash out on the side of the road … that ain’t right.
Baseless hatred of black people? They’re fine with it.

Let’s not make it difficult for the KKK to hate black people.  After all, they are picking up trash on the highway.

Let’s not make it difficult to religionists to spread ignorance and irrational ideas.  After all, they acquiesced that an oppressed minority should have the rights that the constitution already guarantees.

 If anyone does, then they’re loony fringe and are irrelevant to the argument. Everybody else reads it as the literature with a message that it is.

That’s not the same thing as the Bible. You’re trying to conflate the two and I’m sorry, but that’s unacceptable. Sure, there are Christians out there who believe the Bible is nothing more than a collection of parables and morality tales and none of it is to be taken literally. Good for them. But every one of the them there are a dozen others in government who take the view that it’s the inerrant word of god, except for those pieces that they don’t like or are too lazy to follow.

The first group gives cover to the second.

The Bible is not just literature that can be dismissed out hand at any given person’s say-so. If a man calls himself a Christian, but doesn’t believe in the Bible, doesn’t believe in the Resurrection, doesn’t believe in angels, doesn’t believe in the devil, doesn’t believe in hell, maybe doesn’t even believe that the man called Jesus the Christ was the Son of God or in what the Book of Revelations says, why is this man calling himself a Christian? If a Catholic doesn’t accept that the cracker and the wine is the flesh and blood of Christ, why is he calling himself a Catholic? Wouldn’t Christian be a better label?

You can’t just claim that the bible means nothing but broadly-painted metaphors and morality tales. You’d need more justification than “Oh I don’t really believe in that but I’m still Christian.”

That’s like saying, “I’m not religious, I’m spiritual.” A sentence without meaning.

Once again, you ask me to apply the beliefs of one sect to another which specifically has said they are not aligned with that other sect. You don’t believe the bible is a holy book, yet you use its holy scriptures to support your arguments. Picking and choosing, indeed.

 “If someone claims they believe in a god who doesn’t create the universe,
doesn’t answer prayers, can’t cause miracles, doesn’t leave any
evidence of its existence and can’t alter the course of history, I am
justified in asking why call such a being a god, and then why you
believe in such a thing.”

Totally agree. Happens all the time. There are about 7 billion definitions for the word ‘god’, give or take. That’s a perfect example.

“It’s true that you have the right to define a word as you see fit, for
your own purposes. But in communicating with others in good faith, I
have the right to smack you with my 1000 page dictionary.”

No, actually, you don’t. That would be assault, which is illegal in most (if not all) countries, and is certainly protected against by internationally agreed upon human rights.

In communicating with others in good faith (I presume you don’t mean the same ‘faith’ that Paul means when he talks about ‘faith’ in his epistles), if there is miscommunication going on, and you are interested in clearing it up, the effective thing to do would be to ask for clarification, and either a) learn their variant definition and adopt it for the conversation, b) teach them your variant and request that they adopt it, c) build a conceptual ‘bridge’ in your mind, as I explain in the video, or d) decide it’s not worth your time or effort, give up on the conversation, and move on.

You’re missing the point that the atheists are making, Alise. They’re not saying you’re wrong to support LGBT rights. They’re not denigrating that position. They’re saying you’re not thinking things through and taking the issue to the inevitable reasonable conclusion. If you want to take a revisionist approach to the scriptures you don’t like, fine. But you’re not holding yourself to a very high standard of intellectual integrity.

One must apply the same method to the rest of the book: slavery? immoral; misogyny? immoral; racism? immoral; torture? immoral; animal and human sacrifice? immoral; genocide? immoral; crimes of ancestors transferring to descendents? immoral; substitutionary atonement? immoral; valuing ignorance and obedience over knowledge and liberty? immoral.

Once you do that, what’s left? A few passages that might have a modest amount of laudatory content. You’ve not got an inspirational holy scripture anymore, you’ve got a pile of immoral crap that you should be ashamed to associate yourself with. A person who merely thinks there might be a modest amount of laudatory content in the thing shouldn’t be supporting the whole edifice by identifying as a Christian. It’s like calling yourself a fascist because you like the trains to run on time.

Now from another angle: If you get to individually pick and chose what parts of the Bible you think are valid, you’re undermining the whole foundation of your belief system. If the writers of the scriptures were wrong about men having sex with men, what else were they wrong about? If the men who chose what writings belonged in the canon were wrong in their selection, why should you trust that they got the rest of it–any of it–right? If all the Fathers of the Church were wrong in their formulation of doctrine on this issue, why are you assuming that they had special insight about the nature of God or the teachings of Jesus?

Again, once you start dismantling parts of the religion, you’re really dismantling the whole thing (if you’re honest). You can cling to a remnant, prop it up with rationalisations (likely personal experience of some “spiritual” altered state of consciousness) and call it Christianity if you like, but once it’s reshaped to such an extent, isn’t that misleading and dishonest to continue to use that label? Moreover, why would you want to?

Let’s say your parents were members of the Patriotic party. They brought you up to be a Patriot too. Going to party events, rallies, protests, and fundraisers formed the core of your childhood experiences. You had a great time and as you grew up you internalised the party doctrine and thought (without looking into it too much) it was unadulterated brilliance. Then you went away to college and met up with some people who (horror!) didn’t belong to the party. They started asking you questions about the Patriotic party platform. Uncomfortable questions. Soon, you felt like you had to read the platform for yourself. To your dismay, you find out that you can’t agree with several core planks of the platform. Can you still be a member of the party if this is how you feel? Sure, the party doesn’t care as long as you’re paying your dues. You can try to change the party from within. You and the few who agree with you can keep pushing over the next few decades to try and upset the platform, remould it so it accords with your new views. Or you, and the people like you, can agree that being a Patriot member means  accepting the core philosophy and at least most of the policy positions of the party. If you don’t accept them, you aren’t really one of them. Don’t keep the membership card, don’t keep the label. Get out.

Since Ms. Cowardly Nicety-Nicety Xtian deleted my comment at her blog, I’ll repost it here:

So it’s all atheists’ fault that xtians are bigots.

Fuck. I hate smarmy, whiny liberal xtians like you as much as I hate the fundies. At least THEY don’t pretend to be “allies.”

 “Luke seems to be the closest we have to a researcher among the authors
of the New Testament, and that’s the conclusion his research led him to.”  Are you kidding with this stuff?  How would Luke “research” this anyway?  Do you think he interviewed the elderly Mary somewhere?  Would she necessarily tell the truth anyway?  You really need to ask yourself why you want to believe this and how that is clouding your ability to think about evidence clearly.

You know, a good number of the negative comments here exist because the piece above amounts to an accusation: atheists tell us we’re not Christians if we support gay rights, so atheists are to blame for Christians failing to support gay rights. It’s natural that people would become a little defensive about that. I’m sure some people would have nasty things to say no matter what, that’s the nature of the internet, but I have a serious problem with this piece having been written to blame atheists.

What I wonder is, how accurate is the accusation. Aside from the defensive comments in response to this accusation, can you point to prior instances of atheists saying Christians who support gay rights aren’t really Christians? In significant number? Or from prominent atheist blogger? Let alone both?

Do you actually have friends who identify as atheists who’ve said this sort of thing? Personally to a Christian supporter of gay rights?

That would at least establish the premise. But what of the conclusion? That Christians are afraid to come out in support of gay rights because of what atheists might say.

How many Christians care? How many Christians even know they have atheist friends, let alone talk religion with them? How many Christians are busy reading atheist blogs hoping for reinforcement for their views? How much of the responsibility do atheists bear when Christian bloggers, preachers, officials, and ordinary Christians are doing far more to stigmatize their fellow Christians who support gay rights?

I find the premise unlikely, and the conclusion laughable.

“Do we really need to go around convincing fundamentalist Jews that it’s not a sin for me to plug in my TV on a saturday? No.”

 If you were living in certain parts of Israel, you would. No joke.

“We just need them to understand that they have no right to force that ridiculous belief on anyone else.”

I agree with almost all of your points. My only contention is that it seems to me that the easier path is to teach:

“The Bible is not a universal moral authority” ==> “The Bible’s teaching that you should impose your beliefs on others is baseless.” ==> “You don’t have a right to force your beliefs on others.”  ==> “Don’t vote against LGBT folks.”

Than it is to teach:

“You don’t have a right to force your beliefs on others.”  ==> “Don’t vote against LGBT folks.”

The former argument addresses the core belief that is influencing their actions. The latter argument does not.

I do not believe one would get very far with the latter argument, for those people who believe that they are morally obligated to force their beliefs on others.

I could easily be wrong, but the way I’ve seen it happen usually is that people give up religion (and hence their dogmatic beliefs) gradually, in stages, starting with the cracks in the foundation (perhaps nudged to start looking at the foundations when something in reality clashes with their outer dogma; for example, learning that a good friend is gay can cause cognitive dissonance, forcing them to examine why their dogma is anti-gay in the first place). Once they start to explore those cracks in the foundation, the whole dilapidated house eventually starts to crumble.

Ms. Wright, that was refreshing in its clarity and ethical strength (ethics are for atheists what “moral values” are for Christians). I thank you, as a queer person, for your support. You have mine, in the sense that I am always respectful with people I believe embrace the positive and only positive elements of Christianity; it seems you are. I also defend you guys in some of these atheist hellholes when my fellow ungodly say you don’t exist. 😉

However, I am also a scholar of religion and I have heard this argument in many forms, and it fails at a fundamental level in terms of logic, example and history. The short version is that very few people who can’t “come out” as you put it, right now, in favor of gay rights and equality in general, never will. I have no interest nor do I think it a useful application of time and effort to coddle them because their faith is not strong enough to realize what you have: if religion is any good at all, it is because “love is the highest” commandment. Any person who can’t say all beings are equally deserving of love, freedom and opportunity has, in my opinion, a problem. 

I also think that you should more closely examine the tenants of your faith. Ask yourself honestly about its history, about how different beliefs and creeds have risen and fallen, no pun intended. Your faith is an ancient one, and the farther back you go, the more you realize that what defines “a Christian” has changed and warped and been destroyed and reinvented so many times that it’s ridiculous to say that any one of them is “right.” So if an atheist wants to say “she’s not really a Christian because she believes _____,” be that believer pro or anti gay rights, that atheist has just as much reason, history and logic as any believer to say so. I’m sorry, but it’s true. Intellectual Christians such as yourself often stumble with this point. But there is no one always-valid definition of “Christian.” There never has been.

Finally, as both an atheist and as a person who has a great deal of archaeology and scholarship behind this opinion, let me say that I cannot believe that an historical “Jesus Christ” ever existed. I am happy to share with you my own opinions on the origins of the Christian faith at another time. I say this to you not to denigrate your faith and belief nor to insult you. Instead, I hope to open your mind, as I suspect it already is, to the notion that Christianity is a constantly evolving *idea* in the minds of humanity, and you are your “own god,” if I may blaspheme. I admire you for what you are doing, because it is people like you that bring glory to your faith, so much more than a being who very few can honestly claim to have spoken with and been guided by, if any truly can. 

I think you are confusing analogy with something else entirely. No, I do not think Finch taught love, not hate (not directly, anyway). I do think many Christians believe that’s what Christ was all about (and my admittedly cursory reading of the bible tends to support that). I also think it is a good standard to live one’s life by. And I think those Christians have just as much, if not more, right to the name Christianity than the right-wing selfish bastards that would tell you Christianity is something else. And I support them in their efforts to persuade more of the latter to believe the former.

And so I have proved for you that at least one atheist said that once. I don’t know why you doubted me, honestly, or what that really adds to the discussion, but I don’t want to leave you hanging.

 “Personally, I’m finding the ‘so what if this Christian is making progress towards a less fundamentalist/more Humanist position? they’re still religious!’ complaint rather tiresome……..”

Got a quote for that? I don’t see anyone arguing that.

 All good questions. You said it far better than I did.

“No, actually, you don’t. That would be assault,”

No, it would be battery.  The assault is the threat, the battery is the contact.

“The same way Dawkins makes it harder for Christians to accept evolution.”

That’s a load of nonsense.  You shouldn’t go blaming anyone else if you refuse to accept a fact because you want to maintain self-delusions that that fact makes more difficult to entertain.

The fact that Dawkins isn’t into coddling people by suggesting that evolution is compatable with Christianity isn’t a problem of Dawkins’s, but of the person who wants to continue believing the Christian nonsense and is willing to disbelieve fact to do so. 

and it turned out to a boy. And a vampire. And evil.

well, you just answered your own question there. /scampers naughtily away

that’s a good comeback, strongest i’ve seen in blog form in a long time. but it still fails. here’s why: change has, and does, and *will* happen. i’m big into super-ancient history. i’m telling you: humans do this over and over. the Big Idea comes along, and Everything changes. xtianity is one such example; it destroyed countless thousands of years of established theology almost overnight, historically speaking. an amazing human evolution of the mind. we’re in the midst of the same today. it feels slow to those of us already living in the New Age but to those in the majority it’s tough to give up so much history and tradition. but people die. and children are born free of since lost ancient and impractical “traditions” as a result. 

shorter me: dino museums and WoW beat the buybull every time, as a video product. this alone kills much religion.  

 Depends on where you live, doesn’t it? Where I live, ‘assault’ is partially defined by contact.

See? Same word, different meanings. The sky is not falling. Life goes on.

😉

simply: if you reject parts, how do you know you’re ‘right’ to reject those and not others? that’s all we’re saying. 

1) “The Bible” is composed of multiple texts, and there are other early Christian writings that claim to be independent accounts (e.g. the apocrypha). It is entirely possible for someone to believe some parts of some texts without believing the whole of all of them. (For example, some people believe that the Gospels carry more weight than the writings of Paul.)

2) Many (perhaps most) Christian sects believe that God has sent other messages (e.g. through prophets, saints, popes, whatever), or that all Christians can have personal experiences talking to God. Some even believe (however wrongheadedly) that science or rational philosophy can prove the existence of God. These would all be sources outside the Bible.

3) I wasn’t defending the *rationality* of a Christian that doubts parts of the New Testament. I was simply pointing out that such people exist, and that it seems that they should still technically be considered Christians. If you want to talk specifically about Christians who are particularly orthodox, or traditional, or literalist, or view the Bible as infallible, maybe you should use those words, rather than depending on the generic term “Christian” to get your meaning across.

4) I legitimately cannot understand what your second paragraph has to do with anything I said. I’m not suggesting that the word “Christian”, or any other label, is meaningless. I’m pointing out that the way you define the term seems to be different than the way I use it, and the way I think most people do as well! That was the point of my counterexample: I suspect that most people would consider someone who believes in the divinity of Jesus, but is not an infallibilist, to be a Christian, and that the main exceptions would be hardcore fundamentalists.

If that’s too vague or unsubstantiated for you, why don’t you try finding (or doing) some research into the matter. Until then, there’s no reason for either of us to change our minds from whatever seems superficially more plausible.

…and what about someone who doesn’t believe that homosexuality is a sin?

(Yes, such people do exist who call themselves Christians, whether or not you’d grant that they are correct to do so.)

Ask and you shall receive!

The entire argument from evolution rests on the most important form of this argument.  I would like a clip with better context, but here is an example of Dawkins making a statement to this effect that is actually being used as ammunition by one of the less reasonable types of Christian.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJM8EdYZpls 

Now, strictly speaking, Dawkins does not claim that Christians who accept evolution are not Christians but rather that “evangelicals” (which here can only mean people who take Genesis 1 quite literally) have a clearer understanding of Christianity than Christians who accept modern science but claim that there is a god that made the rules and occasionally intervenes.  But the significance is the same: you get a nicely edited youtube video for fundamentalists to tout as evidence that Christians must literally accept Genesis or they are “deluded.”  Encouraging people to believe that they should disbelieve empirical evidence if they really believe in their religion is not likely to improve attitudes towards science.

Faith is not about knowing facts. It is about accepting . . . Oh, he’ll, I’m not the one to say what faith is, as I have none. But I do not think many liberal Christians would claim to know with certainty what god wants from them. Like all of us, they look at what’s out there, examine their choices, and make the one that seems most likely to help them be better people. Maybe they are wrong, maybe they are kidding themselves, and maybe there really is a god who will one day condemn them for what they chose, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t trying their best to be good Christians.

Alise! I was planning on writing a post just like this but hadn’t gotten around to it. Great minds, great minds. 

But yeah, I get so fed up with the idea that secularism is the only way to fight injustice in the world. There are Muslim feminists who are gaining rights for women in the most patriarchal of countries, and there are LGBT affirming presbyterian groups that do more for LGBT rights than some secular groups (I did research on The More Light Presbyterians, who supported the inclusion of trans people in the 2007 version of ENDA while the HRC did not). 

Also, let’s not forget that for decades, Western science was used to support homophobia as well. It’s not just religion that is sometimes a tool of oppressors. Secularism has also been hijacked in the past (and present) by oppressors to support bigotry. Both sides need to be vocal about defending the oppressed and opposing the oppressors that use their world view for evil. 

How have LGBT issues/rights been harmed by atheists?

As long as you’re asking, how have Christian (or any religions’) rights been harmed by LGBT equality? I agree with what you’ve said, I am not using these issues myself to destroy religion. In a perfect world, I think people could believe what they wanted and have nothing to do with me. If Alise is a Christian who isn’t a bigot, I mean, good? Like many other people, I don’t see what’s so great about defining oneself as Christian, the cherry-picking, whatever. Seems to me believing what you want means finding something, or even forcing something, to agree with what you already think. That means if you hate gay people, you can find a belief to justify it and let you off the hook for being mean. If you have to figure out a way to manipulate what you believe to support not hating gay people, you are inventing a religion. God agrees with me, no matter what I think, right? I put the words in his mouth, I tell him what to tell me is the right thing to do, whether that’s hating or not hating. I don’t have to take responsibility for inventing those thoughts… this is the problem I have with cherry-picking.

To admit that the book might have gotten some or a lot wrong and say, well I still think Jesus died for my sins and was resurrected and I’m going to meet him someday? That’s magical, really unbelievable. So god didn’t write the book or he didn’t mean some of it that way – did any of it really happen? He’s really not a bad guy, see, I’m still a “true” Christian since I freely ignore god’s heinous cry-baby petulant violent ridiculous ways in order to presume that he loves me and has a special plan for my life! Atheists, stop making it so hard to delude myself!

Anyway, it would be ok with me if religious people even had the freedom to believe whatever contortions they want as long as it doesn’t affect other people. I was going to say LGBT rights do not affect religious freedom at all, so I don’t know what the fight is about, but “true” Christians are losing people like Alise, and people like their children. Unless they can make hate a law, people will continue to come around, yes, from having been exposed to gay people, meeting them, making friends with them, and accepting that they aren’t perverts like they’d heard, and showing their acceptance by supporting causes, equal rights, and voting for these changes to occur. Maybe bit by bit and not all at once. At the very least, I wish gay people could get married anywhere they wanted, live as married couples anywhere they wanted, Christians could just admit this doesn’t affect them. Alise goes a little further, but I don’t know why she’s addressing this with us. Unless she’s evangelizing her faith to us, or telling us we should be supportive of LGBT rights as she is, what does her difficulty in doing so have to do with atheists? Between nice people and mean people, I like nice people better, so why if one calls oneself a Christian, bring this message to other Christian people and try to justify what you tell the god to tell you is ok to think – I know, backlash, but well. I know, being a Christian is too hard, and you get a clap-clap-clap for persisting. Why do moderate/liberal/progressive Christians argue with atheists about their own shit?

TLDR: If you make people like me choose between our faith and being a decent person, we’re worried some of us might pick our faith.  Please don’t make us choose.

…and that’s the problem.  That’s why your faith is the problem.  That’s why pointing out that your faith is incoherent is worthwhile.  Its making you worse people than you’d otherwise be, in the most direct and literal sense.  Our message isn’t that you must choose between your faith and your moral beliefs, its that you CAN’T choose your faith… because your faith is wrong.  So just stick with the moral beliefs, because the alternative is an intellectually vapid shell.

No, not really. Christians call for the death or forceful removal of anyone who disagrees with them all the time. Just like the KKK did with blacks. 

And the common thread amongst the religious and non-religious people supporting those laudable goals are the shared understanding of the human condition, the desire to alleviate suffering, and the sense of duty to make the world a better place.  The common thread amongst the religious and non-religious people supporting evils, the back-peddling of human rights, and generally despicable behavior is some kind of myopic irrational sense of entitlement that is built upon greed and a lack of empathy.

Christians have been behind abolition.  Christians have been behind slavery.  Christians have been behind civil rights.  Christians have been behind denying people basic humanity.

Atheists have been behind abolition.  Atheists have been behind slavery.  Atheists have been behind civil rights.  Atheists have been behind denying people basic humanity.

My problem with your statement is with the phrase ‘religion as a tool for good’.  Basic human desire to be moral was all that was needed.  I fail to see what religion has to do with it.

I see a lot of this attitude on various atheist blogs, especially on pharyngula.  There is validity in expecting people to accept responsibility for the practical outcomes of their actions/inaction, and beliefs.  However I find that those who espouse this attitude completely and dogmatically are showing a blind spot of privilege themselves.   I was raised in a time and place where my unpopular opinions could only get me in very little trouble in any sense.  It has never cost me much to be pro-equality for everyone, or to be a liberal, or to be an atheist, and what is has cost was a bargain to me, since I have never needed much social support or approval from others anyway.  But my(or any one person’s) experience isn’t the whole story.

We should keep in mind that oppressive and bigoted attitudes are a product of a whole society, and that many individuals come from a background that is steeped in ugliness and nonsense, closed off from new ideas, and nowhere near as open-minded or tolerant as other societies might be.  For some people, it is extemely expensive to have unpopular attitudes or beliefs.   It can cost people jobs, money, happiness, family harmony, friends, necessary social support…it is unfortunate that bigotry in many forms has such deep ties in human society, but it does whether we like it or not. 

I get really tired of this attitude on some blogs.  It gets to the point where a formerly religious, self-righteous, and extremely bigoted, blinkered person may have overcome huge personal hurdles, changed who they are and the way they think, lost friends, had life-changing decisions to make, or even had to rethink or even give up their entire former life…and all too often, the first thing that atheists and “skeptics” have to say is “Oh goody for you, you’re not a facist bigot anymore, what do you want, a f#cking cookie?” (direct quote from multiple pharyngulites directed at multiple people struggling with equality or bigotry issues)  This attitude seems to come mostly from people who have never really sacrificed much or been heavily penalized by society for their causes and beliefs.

I think that my personal battle for independent thought was hard won, and took a lot of time and energy on my part.  It was well worth it and I am proud of what I accomplished…but because of my beginning circumstances, I never had to give up everything I held dear to make this change for myself.  It couldn’t hurt to have a bit more sympathy for those who don’t have it so easy. 

So, how much have you had to give up for your beliefs?  Ironically, there is a valid lesson from the new testament story here…doing what is right can be the hardest thing to do, and many never even try.  The level of sacrifice sure doesn’t make a belief right or wrong, but it can surely keep a belief from being popular or easy, even when it’s right.      

It’s progress of a kind as Hitchens would say.

People don’t change their entire ideology at all if society makes ideological compromises tenable.  

A good story that seems relevant to this discussion can be found here. It seems this evangelical Christian community put their money where their mouth is. It also seems some commenters here would rather things like this not happen so they can continue in their doctrinaire rejection of all things that go by the name Christian.

I don’t see where anybody, even those attacking Alise’s religious beliefs, has said that “secularism” is the ONLY way to fight a social injustice.  Many of us think it is the best way, not fraught with internal contradictions and religious baggage.  We all know that more liberal members of religion have done a lot of good within the religious population.  Some atheists choose to use the fundamentalist definition of christianity to point out the absurdity of liberal belief when it contradicts supposed articles of faith.  Two different things.

Also, while some aspects of science have been abused to enforce a cultural bigotry, what does that have to do with “secularism” or “hijacking secularism”?  Most liberal chrisitans are as “secular” as most atheists…we do not believe that society should be ruled by any one religious belief or religion in general. 

Unless you are referring to something specific that I’m missing, I think you need to check your understanding of what “secularism” entails.      

I see no benefit in this type of squabbling.  When it comes to people’s beliefs about unanswerable musings, how accurate can any one understanding be?  Why is it important to you to tell other people what they believe, or what category of believer they are, especially when most people never even get so far as defining their own beliefs?

What are the criteria?  What matters most?  Public professions of faith?  Internal belief?  Visible actions?  Some churches lay out a specific “belief plan”, some don’t.  They all change over time, usually because of the actions of people who weren’t happy with the previous definitions, but never left the group.

I think I get what people think they are doing…trying to expose the absurdity of belief by showing how little any reasonable person can truly follow the beliefs that their religion has been based on…but I know a lot of christians, who apparently get something they consider worthwhile from their beliefs, yet who are not fundamentalists.  Almost every chrisitian I know is some form of modern, liberal christian…their beliefs, and their organized religions, change over time.  Unless you are part of a church with a specific, unchanging dogma of belief (that is also actually honored in practice), who is anyone to tell you you are or aren’t a christian, except yourself, or the particular group to which you try to belong?

I was once a christian who didn’t believe in virgin births, predestination, prophets, miracles, biblical infallibility, church authority, or hell.  I did believe in universal salvation, jesus as a representation of the eternal, and the spiritual evolution of humankind .  I was on the fence about heaven and a personall god, but I still prayed and meditated with jesus in mind.  Was I a christian? I sure thought I was, and nobody else complained either.  Jesus never issued a ruling.   

Some groups say you have to believe in the virgin birth, some don’t.  Some say you have to believe in physical ressurection, some don’t.  Some say that prophets are still active today, some don’t.  I would venture to say that MOST christians do not believe everything their church or pastor says they are supposed to.  Give it long enough, and the pastors will be the ones who change their tunes.  A religion is what it is made by those who claim it, and with such an open-ended scheme as christianity, there will always be continuous dissent.

If we’re going to play the game of telling other people what they are, we should at least play it fairly.  You would need to know what the other person thinks they need to believe to be a christian, and then ask honest questions, and then have enough patience to get to the honest answers.  Even so, all you will be able to do is scratch various denominations and philosophies off of a list.  And if you ever get to the bottom of that list, there will still be people who believe in SOMETHING, vaguely jesus or bible based, that is close enough for them to claim the title christian, or “follower of christ” or whatever the hell they call themselves these days.  

I’m not saying don’t have the discussion…just make sure it’s a discussion, and not you making declarations about the contents of another person’s mind.  You may find that the beliefs are so ill-defined that classification is pointless or impossible, but the discussion can still be enlightening.    

I can understand your feelings, but don’t go telling lies.  It’s not appreciated.  I’ve read all the comments on this post, and didn’t see ONE SINGLE PERSON claiming that it would be better if all christians were obnoxious fundamentalists, or that good acts were not welcome from christians.  Some have chosen to use this opportunity to try and explain the absurdity of all religious belief to a person who is clearly having issues with the larger christian society.  Those are not the same things.

You may not appreciate the arguments, or think the timing is appropriate,  but dishonest accusations of “doctrinaire rejection” (aka”atheist dogma”) will not get you very far with this crowd.  While some here will always take an opportunity to criticize lazy thinking or unfounded belief, I haven’t seen anyone complain about the fruits of liberal christians doing what they feel they can.  Some complain that it isn’t enough…but you can’t please everybody all the time.       

Neil, no lies here, as I only stated what it “seemed like” to me after scrolling through the comments section. An argument repeatedly made goes something like this:

(a) True Christianity is fundamentalist Christianity (i.e., taking everything in the Bible literally, not using any kind of nuanced hermeneutic, etc.)
(b) Support for LGBT rights is incompatible with fundamentalist Christianity. 
(c) Therefore, support for LGBT rights is incompatible with true Christianity (from a and b). 

Then it is argued based on the above argument (or something like it) that one must choose between being a true Christian and supporting LGBT rights. Thus, when a story like the one I linked to describes ostensibly true Christians (and rather conservative ones at that ) actually supporting LGBT rights, it serves as a counterpoint to the above argument. But, since a number of commenters want the above argument to be true, they *seem* to not want such counterpoints to exist. That’s all I meant in my original comment. My apologies if my rhetoric (“doctrinaire rejection”) overshadowed my basic point. 

Further, since there is a rather large community of LGBT Christians out there, claiming that true Christianity and support for LGBT rights are incompatible ironically only further marginalizes and discriminates against the very folks those making this argument are trying to defend.

Thank you.  

 
To clarify what  I meant: she said she studied the Bible, so I would like an explanation of how she has decided that her studies are more important than the official stance of the Church she continues to support, despite the bigotry that she herself condemns. This explanation would serve to answer both the Christians’ and atheists’ questions. However, I understand that this is not the focus of the article, and think it is very good that she supports gay rights, but I find it hard to congratulate someone for being a decent human being. 

He has a point. She’s whining about someone calling people who espouse her views out to make good on it like it’s some actual form of harm or persecution. 

Meanwhile, she enjoys massive privilege simply by being a Christian in America.  And the people she’s advocating for are repeatedly denied rights and threatened with death. By people from her religion.

She’s not suffering. And the fact that she’s acting like she is is a bit of an insult. 

Edit: I’m not saying I support his attitude. I’m just saying that the point he made is true.

Now you’re deliberately misreading, since it was pointed out that your interpretation was incorrect. It’s like a creationist claiming that we’re saying that there are no scientists who believe in God. Sure there are, but they are compartmentalising their religious belief and not applying the same standards of evidence and scepticism to that belief as they would to any other claim about reality.

No one is saying that people who self-identify as Christians can’t hold progressive views about LGBT rights. That would be stupid. There are whole denominations that endorse gay marriage.* Just like there are some that allow women to be ministers despite their Big Book of Misogyny commanding that women be forbidden from teaching in church. But those Christians are using gymnastics to distance themselves from one specific turd while wallowing in a sewer.

Please do disavow bigotry against gay people (or slavery or forcing women to give birth or a belief in eternal torture or any of the other vile doctrines of the religion), but don’t stop there. Once you’ve thrown all the immoral teachings over the side, move on to discard all the nonsense. What you’ll be left with isn’t what is usually meant by the term “Christianity” anymore.**

* The Metropolitan Church in Toronto was the site of the first legal same-sex marriages in Canada back in 2001.

**As an historian, for practical purposes, I tend to go with the Nicene creed as a basic definition. If a person doesn’t accept those basics, I wouldn’t use the word Christian (at least not without a qualifier–e.g. Arian, docetist, unitarian, gnostic) for them, no matter what term they’re using for themselves. Go too far beyond that standard definition and the word loses all meaning.

Oh, and just for those playing at home, that’s not a No True Scotsman fallacy. If someone is born on a remote Polynesian island, has never lived nor even visited Scotland, and has no Scottish ancestry, and has never heard nor spoken a word of Scots or Gaelic, and has neither met nor married a Scottish person, then they really are no Scotsman, even if they like to wear a kilt on special occasions.

 It seems, Ibis3, that your comment simply reinforces my point. You claim that unless one is (a) misogynistic, (b)  bigotrous against gays, (c) believing in slavery, and (d) believing in eternal conscious torment in hell, then they aren’t a true Christian (i.e., what they are “left with isn’t what is usually meant by the term ‘Christianity’ anymore”). This is the most uncharitable understanding of Christianity possible. Sure, there are fundamentalists who hold to (a) – (d)–though not even all fundamentalists do–but Christianity should not be defined by its fringe elements any more than any other belief system should.

In other words, in response to my argument, you are arguing that:

(a) Fundamentalist Christianity = true Christianity;
(b) Fundamentalist Christianity is incompatible with gay rights (and other moral viewpoints); therefore,
(c) True Christianity is incompatible with gay rights, etc.

You even go on to inform me that if I believe in women’s rights, gay rights, abolition, etc., that I should leave Christianity behind–the exact argument I just described in my previous post.

Moreover, none of (a) – (d) are contained in the Nicene Creed, so it is a bit confusing how you can use the Creed as your basic definition of Christianity and yet think that it entails (a) – (d). As a theologian, it is difficult to overestimate the apparent lack of understanding (or is it willful misrepresentation?) of the historic Christian faith displayed in your comments.

In short, it seems my comment was a quite fair (if not somewhat generous) interpretation of the kind of arguments being made here. But I trust you’ll excuse me if I don’t continue a conversation with persons who choose to describe others’ belief systems via scatological language.

By the same measure, anything that Pat Robertson says on his TV show is just a comment, too.

I don’t know where to draw the line, but I would say you’re over it when it gets personal. Telling someone who was born in Scotland that they’re not a True Scotsman (or woman, in Alise’s case) is personal in a way that merely saying her argument is bogus is not.

Saying that a progressive Christian is not a Christian is pretty much the same as saying that homosexuality is a choice, or that atheists don’t exist. You’re denying someone’s very identity, and it doesn’t get much more personal than that.

In communicating with others in good faith (I presume you don’t mean the
same ‘faith’ that Paul means when he talks about ‘faith’ in his
epistles) […]

Actually, that is the same “faith”. The word that Paul used which is translated “faith” (pisteo in Greek) means “trust” or “loyalty”. No more, no less.

At some point in the last few decades, it’s come to also mean “belief held in the absence of evidence”, which makes reading theologians from previous eras, including Paul of Tarsus, more than a little confusing for the modern reader. Sam Harris did the world no favours by adopting the confusing definition.

In the sense that you mean it, religion has nothing to do with it. I agree with that.

If I’m reading Alise correctly, that’s also part of her point. Telling people who support LGBT people and LGBT rights that they’re not really Christian is precisely the kind of making-a-big-deal-of-religion that you object to. Isn’t it?

I didn’t spend any time looking for quotes, but this is the one I’m always reminded of:

I find very few Christians actually live the New Testament morality,
they cherry pick.  Unkind people would call that “hypocrisy.”  At the
other end of the scale, however, are those who take their religion
extremely seriously, the extremists, we call it them.  The point about
the extremists is that they are the most honest of the people who have a
religious view because they commit themselves to what their tradition
tells them, and they stay closest to the texts.  Now, if that’s real
religion, that’s honest religion, the world is very much better off
without it.  And if the world is much better off without the true and
the honest form of religion, why not put the hypocrites in with them,
too?

— A.C. Grayling

He didn’t say “not really Christian”, but he did say that fundamentalists are more honest and unkind people would label moderate-to-liberals as “hypocrites”. That’s pretty close.

And, of course, from last week on this very blog:

Maybe you call yourself a cultural Catholic, or a non-practicing
Catholic, or a bad Catholic, or just a run-of-the-mill Christian, but you’re not a True Catholic if you deny one of the basic Sacraments.

— Hemant Mehta

 “Now, strictly speaking, Dawkins does not claim that Christians who
accept evolution are not Christians but rather that “evangelicals”
(which here can only mean people who take Genesis 1 quite literally)
have a clearer understanding of Christianity than Christians who accept
modern science but claim that there is a god that made the rules and
occasionally intervenes.”

So, what you’re telling me — what you are admitting, if I may call a spade a spade — is that this is not actually the evidence I asked for, of “major public atheists … making … the argument that only biblical literalists are Christians”?

In other words, someone who sees this as such an argument would actually be misinterpreting Dawkins, right?

Which is what I (later in this thread, but earlier in time) predicted would likely be the case, correct?

 Here’s another one, while I think of it:

Loathsome as Robertson’s views undoubtedly are, he is the Christian who
stands squarely in the Christian tradition. The agonized theodiceans who
see suffering as an intractable “mystery”, or who “see God” in the
help, money and goodwill that is now flooding into Haiti, or (most
nauseating of all) who claim to see God “suffering on the cross” in the
ruins of Port-au-Prince, those faux-anguished hypocrites are denying the
centrepiece of their own theology. It is the obnoxious Pat Robertson
who is the true Christian here.

— Richard Dawkins

 “That’s pretty close.”

But not *actually* the same, as I requested evidence for. In fact, he begins the paragraph by speaking of them as “Christians”. His point is not about their identity, but about their hypocrisy. Very different arguments, in fact.

As for the Hemant quote:

1) Needs more context (such as a link). Is Hemant voicing his own opinion that they are not ‘True Catholics’, or is he voicing the official dogma of the Roman Catholic church.

2) This is not an example of saying that people are not actually *Christian*. It’s talking about the official definition/dogma of an institution, the RCC. Like, for instance, you’re not actually a True Mason(tm) if you don’t know the basic handshake (or whatever). Or you’re not actually a Scientologist if you don’t practice e-meter auditing (or whatever their official threshold is for membership).

It is not talking about a self-chosen identity (note that he says you may call yourself various kinds of Catholic), but of an official, institutional  membership group identity. It’s not up to the individual to define whether they are officially recognized as a Roman Catholic. It’s up to the RCC.

So. Once again. Mis-remembering. Misinterpretation. Again. As I predicted.

You were right about the usage of the word ‘religion’ in that thread. HIM2 was full of it, IMO. His claim to ‘well documented facts’ and ‘vernacular’ was simply false.

I reacted to your comment (above) because you said, “All due respect to the academic community, that is horseshit.” You’ll be glad to know that the ‘academic community’ does not match HIM2’s description of it, and in fact more closely matches what you were saying. And so, my reaction to that comment is no longer relevant. (Thanks for following through and posting those links, by the way. 🙂

 “It seems, Ibis3, that your comment simply reinforces my point. You claim
that unless one is (a) misogynistic, (b)  bigotrous against gays, (c)
believing in slavery, and (d) believing in eternal conscious torment in
hell, then they aren’t a true Christian”

Actually, that’s pretty much the opposite of what she said. You are ‘reading into’ her comment things that aren’t there.

Well, there’s an example (actually two, by my count) in this very thread. I responded to it above, (regarding “words have meaning”). But generally, yes, as Akita Mix just before you wrote, “IMO majority of atheists rarely use this fallacy.”

Since I’m going off second-hand info, I will assume you are correct about Paul. However, I only used him as an example. I could easily have chosen some other random person with a different meaning of the word faith. My point was simply about the fact that the word ‘faith’ means different things in different contexts, and according to different people. It was simply an example. Any word with multiple meanings would do in its place.

Care to elaborate? What am I “reading into”? She plainly states:

“But those Christians [i.e., progressive Christians] are using gymnastics to distance themselves from one specific turd while wallowing in a sewer.”

That *sounds* like she is saying that those Christians who don’t take everything in the Bible literally–as extreme fundamentalists say one is supposed to–by definition aren’t true Christians, i.e., they have to use “gymnastics” to justify their progressiveness vis-a-vis Christian scriptures and doctrines. 

Or again: 

“Please do disavow bigotry against gay people (or slavery or forcing women to give birth or a belief in eternal torture or any of the other vile doctrines of the religion), but don’t stop there. Once you’ve thrown all the immoral teachings over the side, move on to discard all the nonsense. What you’ll be left with isn’t what is usually meant by the term ‘Christianity’ anymore.”

To me, that sounds as though she is saying that the essence of Christianity (i.e., that which Christianity can’t cease to have and still be “‘Christianity’ anymore”) boils down to the nasty things she described, such that progressive Christians–or just average Christians who don’t believe in those nasty things–aren’t adhering to the true Christian faith. 

If that’s not at least close to what she means, then I fail to see what her argument with progressive Christians is. But if I’m reading into her argument things that aren’t there, please explicate it or restate it more clearly (perhaps without reference to feces this time, which might be obscuring the point she is trying to make . . . ).

The claims “only fundamentalists are Christians” and “only fundamentalists properly understand Christianity” are effectively identical here: both accept the claim that believers must disrespect empirical evidence where it conflicts with the most literal reading of texts.  If you want to hang your hat on the distinction between the difference between “only fundamentalists are Christians” and “only fundamentalists are proper Christians,” knock yourself out with that.

I don’t see how your conclusion follows from your premise. Dawkins is, as the OP claims, delineating the content of someone’s theology (he is making the claims for what they believe, and I certainly don’t recognize them from actual theodicies I’v eread) and claiming that they don’t follow it. There are plenty of people with a rather complex theodicy, one that encompasses both an omnimax god and the fact of suffering. I think they’re wrong. But Dawkins decides they’re hypocritical and not true Christians. That is exactly the point, surely. You don’t get to decide whether someone’s Christianity is ‘true’ on the basis of what you judge to be their logical consistency. Those who do, who decide they’re perfectly equipped to pass judgement on the self-identification of others, come across to me as dicks or bigots.

I’ve been told much the same myself. That I’m not a ‘true’ atheist because I think there was a historical Jesus at the core of the Christian myths. That I’m not a true atheist because I use the term ‘spiritual’, even though I define it specifically, non-theistically and naturalistically. The people making such claims about my atheism like to bombast about my logical inconsistencies too, but like Dawkins, they rarely demonstrate that they actually know what they’re talking about.

 Ummm… I don’t see “the hell that god damned us to”, actually, anywhere in the Christian Testament, methinks,

 How so? Dawkins just states the facts of evolution, and the fact that they do contradict some of the core beliefs of Christians. That’s a simple fact. It may be possible for Christians to twist their worldview to accept evolution, but how is stating basic facts “making it harder”? If anything, the facts themselves make it hard for Christians to accept evolution, not Dawkins.

 Yeah, well: when it comes to Catholicism, there is a clear definition of what consitutions a true Catholic: it’s the Catechism and the teachings of the Holy See. You don’t get to define what Catholicism is: the Pope does. That’s the whole point of the Catholic church. That is different from Christianity as a whole, where there are in practice as many Christianities as there are Christians.

But for Catholics, you’re absolutely, 100% wrong. If you don’t want to follow the Pope, don’t call yourself Catholic. It’s really that simple.

 Excellent points all around.

 “…or an anti-pedophilia (warning! Provocation) Wisconsin Catholic. That
was YOUR $20k Cardinal Dolan used to pay off pedo priests;”

I believe the original comment was specifically referring to Catholics.

Thanks for the sincere response, David. 
To be honest, I think your interpretation of the basic argument some are using is just about right, and it is a flawed argument in its imposed limitations.  While I can spend all day debating the truth or usefulness of religious ideas, I don’t bother trying to define christianity as one monolithic entity.  As much as I am not a fan, there are many, many different variations, with millions of different personal interpretations in each, and there has been for centuries.  I don’t waste my time trying to argue that any one of them is the “true” christianity that others must live up to in order to claim the title.   

However, much as I was put off by your rhetoric, I think the same may be happening to you.  Because at the root of it, there is a valid question there, but the ones asking it are doing the framing of the question, and demanding a simple answer to a possibly complex question, which puts people off. 

 The point being made(as I see it) is that many modern, liberal christians are in direct opposition to both the words of certain passages in the bible, and centuries worth of long-standing majority interpretation among thousands of churches and  millions of individual christians.  This seems like a lot of contradiction for a religion or  believers in a holy book that is supposed to be somehow timeless, perfect, or even just “inspired” by god.  They are trying to point out that liberal christians have already deviated, by investigating their own consciences, quite far from both long-standing traditional christian beliefs, and in some cases, the direct words of the bible itself.  They are looking for a clear and hopefully rational explanation for the discrepancies, or an admission that the believer is more inspired by their own conscience than by jesus or the bible. 

They seem to think (and I agree) that there isn’t any real explanation that doesn’t pretty much show that people are just picking and choosing what they like in religion, like they would in any other human enterprise like politics, except that believers still want to retain some sense of entitlement for their beliefs…that, despite the readily available evidence, there is something “godly”, or “eternal”, or “supernatural” about their beliefs, more than just the apparent human social construct.  Some of these questioners go further, hoping to use this obvious discrepancy show that the religion is the unnnecessary part of the equation, often serving only to stunt the personal moral and intellectual growth of believers.  The most complimentary reading I can see is “hey people…you’ve already decided to be better people than your religion wants to allow by its own rules…why not drop the pretext and own your morality?  It’s already yours, anyway!”   

As far as that goes, I think they are correct.  But I do agree with you that using the argument to say that “you don’t follow every word of the bible, therefore you can’t call yourself a christian” isn’t very convincing or true to life.  Partly because personal religious belief is a very personal journey, with internal and external conflict being an unavoidable part of the process, and also because there has never been a perfectly biblical christianity to compare others to.  It’s always been a mish-mash of interpretation and circumstance, like most other human enterprises.  Nobody gets to define another’s subjective experience and require that that their definition take precedence over the experience itself.  I see people asking a fair question, but trying to limit responses to what they deem proper, in order to force a “deconversion” on logical grounds, but without being willing to take the other person’s personal experiences seriously.  If some want to criticize the religious sentiments of individuals, fine…but they owe it to them to listen to what their experience is, not just declare what it must be.   If there’s a discussion to be had, or even a deconversion to be made,  it’s not going to get very far if we ignore what religious people tell us about themselves and their beliefs.  It looks like some want a short cut, so they can do away with all that tedious “talking to people”.
I’m not a fan of christianity or religion in general, and I think the arguments made around the obvious contradictions are valid ones that beg for a clear response(or at least careful consideration)…but I’m never going to try to tell you what your experience of christianity is like, or that you can’t be a “real believer” or “true christian” because of some definition I impose from outside.  That’s all yours, and all up to you.      

THANK YOU SO MUCH.  

“So far in this thread they’ve been steadily on the mark” Can you actually hear yourself? Seriously? You can’t be that much of a parody of yourself, surely?

The Dawkins quote is clearly using the phrase ‘true Christian’ in a mischievous way (clearly to me at least, and it seems to you), but he does so based on exactly the kind of argument that the OP here is pointing out. By building an argument which is a ‘real Christianity’ is what I say it is argument (in this case it is having what Dawkins considers to be consistent theology, presumably).

“[Pat Robertson] is the Christian who  stands squarely in the Christian tradition. The agonized theodiceans who see suffering as an intractable ‘mystery’ … , those faux-anguished hypocrites are denying the centrepiece of their own theology.”

So these agonized theodiceans who see suffering as an intractable mystery are denying the centerpiece of their theology how? What is the centerpiece of their theology? Who, even, are these people? Are they just an abstract category Dawkins has made up with potentially no members in it? Where do they state this centerpiece, and claim it is the center? And where further do they deny it? Is it seeing suffering as a mystery which consititues the denial? In what way can seeing suffering as a mystery be considered a denial of anything? Can we have some actual quotations, please? I *predict* not.

You say that like it’s a bad thing.

Hold on a minute there. The Roman Catholic Church only believed in witches for a very short period in history. Indeed, the Canon Episcopi not only denied the existence of witchcraft, it considered it belief in witches to be heresy.

The words “witch”, “witchcraft” or any variant thereof do not exist in the current Code of Canon Law. The word also does not appear in the Bible.

(OK, the KJV, written as it was during the height of the witch hunt craze, does use the word “witch” to translate words like mekhashshepheh. Modern translations, based as they are on better linguistic evidence, correctly use words like “medium”, “spiritist” or even “poisoner”, alluding to people who dealt in lethal “remedies”.)

I don’t mean any disrespect. I don’t know you, and I don’t mean to play armchair psychologist. But I strongly suspect that had you not come to the US and saw what religion has done to the place, you may not have come to the conclusion that “true Christian” meant “US-style bible belt protestant evangelical”.

(You might still think that religion is responsible for a lot of
oppression in the world, of course. That’s some fruitful discussion to be had there on another occasion.)

As others have noted in this thread, the premise that the Bible must be interpreted as some kind of infallible, inerrant text handed down by a deity otherwise you’re not a “true Christian” is only held by fundamentalists and antitheists. If that’s how you define a “true Christian”, then it trivially follows that progressive Christians are not “true Christians”. That’s circular reasoning.

That’s fine, but I’m unsure why you’d accept such a premise. I’m sure that you don’t believe that the Bible is infallible, inerrant etc. Why should Christians believe it?

To be fair, Alise didn’t ask for a cookie. She merely asked that LGBT allies not attack each other while there’s work to be done. I don’t consider that an unreasonable request.

When LGBT people get full legal protection and acceptance in mainstream society, maybe then we can bicker over who is and isn’t a true Scotsman. Or maybe we can move on to another common cause.

The problem here is that Christianity is a socio-cultural movement with a long history, and has undergone considerable evolution. Pat Robertson’s position on most theological issues barely resembles that of Paul of Tarsus, yet they are both “Christian” by any reasonable definition.

Almost all non-technical words defy the kind of precise definition that you seem to want. Every linguist since Wittgenstein has known this, and most before him intuitively knew but didn’t articulate it quite as well as he did.

The ambiguity is inherent, because we’re trying to come up with a way to categorise things found in the wild. Reality invariably doesn’t fit into neat hierarchies and ontologies. Any attempt to impose one will be an approximation at best.

Incidentally, have you ever looked up the biologist’s definition of the word “species”? I should actually say “definitions” plural, because there is no single agreed-upon definition. Plant biologists tend to avoid the word completely.

Dear Anti-Theists,

We happily and eagerly accept any LGBT person, practicing or not, who feels that they are a Christian. We have been doing so for decades.

We’re also far happier for an LGBT person to lose their faith completely than to suffer in a Christian community which doesn’t love and appreciate them for who they are.

I think you’d really like us if you got to know us.

Yours faithfully,
Progressive Christians

P.S. Our club isn’t make-believe. It does exist.

P.P.S. What’s wrong with make-believe anyway?

 This is very helpful, Neil, as it lays out the real issues quite well. In fact, as with many of the commenters here, I too am critical of much of mainstream Christianity–historic and contemporary–but at the same time I wouldn’t consider myself “liberal” in the typical theological sense of the term, as you have well described, which trumps tradition with individual, personal religious experience. Instead, I come from a long tradition of those called the “radical reformers” (or “Anabaptists” or sometimes “Mennonites”) who were very critical of Christendom (from the time of emperor Constantine on), which wed Christianity with political power, thus leading to many of the ethical pitfalls described by others in this thread: misogyny, homophobia, violence, etc. But, while the radical reformers were critical of Christendom, they didn’t throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. Instead, they took the life and teachings of Jesus himself as definitive of Christianity, in which they found a solid basis for egalitarianism, social justice, and nonviolence. Such a biblical hermeneutic is fully aware of the so-called “texts of terror” (or other colorful descriptions of those texts offered on this blog), but it views the Christian scriptures as a product of both divine revelation and human culture. And, since the cultures from which the scriptures were written were often mired in patriarchalism, violence, xenophobia, etc., it is no surprise that some of that is reflected in the scriptures. Thus, taking both the divine and human elements into consideration, one can distinguish between the redemptive elements and the regressive elements without simply “picking and choosing” parts of Scripture one likes and discarding the rest. Of course, biblical hermeneutics is a very complex subject that I am not doing justice to in this short post. But I hope that I’ve said enough at least to explain how one can be fully and truly Christian–in the most basic sense of the term, i.e., a follower of Jesus Christ–without taking the entire Bible to be a “timeless and perfect” text and thus without blindly endorsing many of the unethical practices described therein. For more on such a redemptive hermeneutic (also sometimes called a progressive or Christocentric hermeneutic), see John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus or Willard Swartley, Slavery, Sabbath, War, and Women: Case Issues in Biblical Interpretation, for starters, both written by Anabaptist theologians. Finally, I don’t expect that one who doesn’t believe in God will find the above explanation compelling, what with its talk of divine revelation in Jesus, etc., but hopefully it will contribute a bit toward greater mutual understanding. Peace.

What did Alise ever do to you?

nicely done, Ian.  I’m not trying to nitpick the writing or thinking skills of the christians who have commented on this thread, but this is the first comment that I’ve seen that lays out the problem so well, and doesn’t just jump to the claim “That’s not MY Christianity” without even attempting any explanation. 
 
I see another side to the same problem…I think that christian/atheist discussions are fun, enlightening, useful, and necessary.  I wish more christians would share the reasoning they use, or at least give a better account of their experience that leads them to a liberal approach.  And I wish that more atheists were interested in addressing the issues as they come up in such discussions, instead of  pressing a logical point that most christians simply won’t think applies to them.  Some atheists here have seemed a bit gung-ho in trying to get people to admit that their faith seems to have immediate logical problems.  But at the same time, when pressed, the christians do seem unwilling to get to the nitty-gritty of what they really believe and perhaps more importantly, why they believe it. 
 
  As a lifelong skeptic who was raised vaguely christian, turned liberal christian, turned “don’t give a shit agnostic”, turned vocal anti-religious atheist, I really like seing the conversation happen, involving people of differing outlooks.  I can see a lot of my younger self in the comments from christians, and that’s not a bad thing…just a bit vague, defensive, and unfocused.     
 
At the risk of encouraging comments as long and boring as my own, I would like to see more of the christian commenters engage themselves in the discussion, instead of  just denying being a fundie then moving on.  While I realize that many millions of people are fairly rational, liberal christians like I think Iwas, I think that they could do a better job of examing their beliefs, and honestly reporting their findings.       

I would love to read another guest post by Alise that goes a bit deeper.  Maybe she could respond to some of the issues raised in the comments here. 
I would ask any liberal christian:  How do liberal christians really justify ignoring what the bible clearly says and/or what a majority of christians have traditionally preached on a large number of moral, sexual, and social issues?  How can you get past the inconsistencies while maintaining belief?  Specifics,please!  How do you justify it to yourselves, and to other christians who disagree?            
More importantly to me:  How willing are you to work with us heathens on political issues?  Are you willing to be a  Secularist, which so many great Christians and atheists and others have been?  Are you willing to vocally oppose your brothers and sisters of the faith, and visibly side with non-believers on political issues?  I can guarantee you that most atheists that I know or interact with online are perfectly happy to  work with you.  We have no choice – moderate and liberal christians are now the “silent majority” in many places in the world…so why not take the chance to speak up?                    

It’s really not difficult to understand that doing “gymnastics” i.e conveniently ignoring some of the bible’s many contradictions does not equate to not being a true Christian. She never claimed to be able to define a’ true’ Christian. There is no set of requirements a person can meet where they shift from a rainy-day Christian to a ‘true’ Christian.

And where did their biased opinions come from in the first place? Most likely religion. The bible and other sacred books are what have been deeming women, LGBT and black people as inferior for thousands of years, not science.

The whole point of science, when practised correctly, is to analyse results without bias or preconceptions.

 This is a MUCH better response than the posts I’ve seen so far which do not go beyond the surface.

But without taking the bible as some sort of sacred text, I fail to see where there’s any basis for Christianity. It’s just a bunch of baseless and pointless superstition of an ancient people without the claims put forth in the bible which has no relevance to modern society.

I don’t want to beat a dead horse into the ground, so I’ll say (hopefully) just one last thing and then maybe we can call this thread done:

It’s not difficult to see the implied value judgment in saying that those who approach the Bible with nuance and subtlety (or “do gymnastics” as seems common parlance around here) should give up Christianity since there isn’t much that’s recognizably Christianity anymore, as Ibis states above. That, to me, sounds a lot like saying “true” or “real” Christianity = fundamentalism and progressive Christianity has deviated from the true faith. But if that’s not how her argument is supposed to be understood, that’s fine. I just fail to see what her argument would be at that point. 

Moreover, all this talk about the Bible “contradicting” itself seems to be a category mistake, as though the Bible was written as a philosophical syllogism or algebraic proof. The reality is that the Bible was written by dozens of authors in multiple languages and genres over the course of a millennium or more. Of course there are going to be competing ideas at play. It’s primarily a narrative of a people as they grow and develop in their understanding of themselves and their God. Narratives have twists and turns and don’t always describe just the good stuff. 

Was it Walt Whitman who said, “I contradict myself? I’m a large man; I contain multitudes!”

You seem to think the main purpose of Christianity is supporting gay rights. Isn’t it spreading the good news that Christ died so that people can be forgiven for their sins, and be freed from bondage to all their sins?

It seems implicitly that you have already abandoned Christianity for an arbitrary secular cause, and that that cause trumps whatever Christianity might say about sin, or about what is central to Christianity.

Perhaps you need to rethink what is most central to your belief system.

 Pseudonym, after I put your latest claim to rest, will you do me a favour and simply ask yourself these questions: “What if I’m wrong?”, “How do I really know that?”, “Is it possible I could be wrong?”, “Is it possible I have an unconscious bias in my thinking and/or memory?”

Because I do this *all the time* to myself. It’s a great way to detect and weed out unconscious biases, and a great way to remind myself to double-check the reality of the situation before I make potentially false/mistaken claims.

And, given your track record on this thread of finding quotes to support your position, I think that would serve as some objective evidence for you to ponder, “If I was wrong about those quotes, maybe I was wrong about the other stuff I read that I thought was saying ‘they aren’t real Christians’ at the time. After all, every human on the planet has biases; maybe this is one of mine.”

Let me quote (actually, re-quote, since I’m getting it from what *you* already quoted, but didn’t notice) A.C. Grayling:

“Now, ***if*** that’s real religion, that’s honest religion, the world is very much better off without it.  And ***if*** the world is much better off without the true and the honest form of religion, why not put the hypocrites in with them, too?” ~ A.C. Grayling

I highlighted the important, overlooked words in that quote.

A.C. Grayling, a professional philosopher — well-immersed in logical arguments and their various modes of reasoning — is making a *hypothetical* argument.

*If* X, then Y.

In symbolic logic form, his claim is of the form:

X ==> Y.

You are saying that he is arguing X. In symbolic logic, that would be of the form:

X.

I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but

“X ==> Y.” is not logically equivalent to “X.”

Example:

A: “If it is raining outside, then I don’t want to go to the beach.”

B: “How arrogant and presumptuous of you to argue that you know for certain that ‘it is raining outside’!”

A: Umm, I’m not. It’s a hypothetical.

 “Where do they state this centerpiece, and claim it is the center?
…
Can we have some actual quotations, please? I *predict* not.”

Ian. Please. Think about it.

The claim is that Dawkins argues that people are not real Christians. I have not made the claim. Pseudonym made the claim. And now it seems like you are trying to defend the claim.

But *I* have not made the claim.

The burden of proof is on the one who makes the claim. I hope you are familiar with this basic rule of discourse.

I’m not going to do your research for you, because *I don’t have the burden to prove anything*. Just like atheists don’t have to prove that God does *not* exist. Or do you think that they do? (That would surely be telling.)

I am simply rebutting the evidence that was put forth to me. I find it wanting. I find it a little bit ‘convenient’ that the all important context was snipped off from the beginning: “What hypocrisy.” This is a quote mine. Unintentional or not, it was presented in a way which was not representative of Dawkins’ actual argument as *he* originally published it.

Given this context, I see zero reason to pursue this further, unless *you* try to defend the argument. That is entirely up to you, but I’m not going to do your homework for you.

I repeat: Burden of proof not met. Obvious quote mine is obvious. Feel free to provide more convincing evidence if you can find it.

 So in other words, you admit that your memory of the quote was biased?

I would agree that the majority of Christians do believe in a kind of literal second coming.

The vast majority of progressive Christians (if the church I grew up in is anything to go by) either don’t believe it, or don’t think it’s important enough to care about one way or the other.

“Dawkins says he is judging their *hypocrisy* by *their own* theology. ”
No, he’s judging them hypocritical based on *his assumptions about their theology*. He provides no evidence that they hold these views, nor that the views are contradictory, nor even if they were that this would ‘deny’ their theology, as he claims it does. 

So his call of hypocrisy is just the same as the call of hypocrisy against the OP. They both start with the assumption that they know enough about the person’s theology, and what a correct theology should be like, to make that judgement, without giving any evidence that they do. As such Dawkins is a prime example of the OP.

I think you should read my use of ‘presumably’ in my comment again. It was an aside unrelated to my argument , and thus your response seems rather bizarre, as if you didn’t understandd the argument I was making. Which, in my book, is ultimately the responsibility of the speaker.

So I get you’re big on blustering about other people not meeting the right standards of evidence, and not reading what is written, but you’re not very good at recognizing both traits in yourself. This, I suspect is common to all of us, but hypocritical when you make a big point of condemning others on that basis. And those biases in you, as in me, nobody else can cure.

 “He provides no evidence that they hold these views”

He *defines* who he is talking about. I don’t think you understand this point.

Who *specifically* are the ‘they’ you are saying are the victims here?

Can you please identify any Christian who Dawkins is talking about (by their inclusion in his definition as per his argument), and who he is simultaneously saying ‘is not a Christian’? A single name would suffice, with a link/quote to their stated theology. Even a person from ancient history would suffice. Please show how this person(s) matches his definition of the theodiceans he is targeting.

If you cannot do this, then you have failed to demonstrate that Dawkins is calling any Christian ‘not a Christian’ solely by his own standards. It’s really that simple.

I used to have a Darwin fish on my car, before I swapped it out for a Flying Spaghetti Monster.

I’m puzzled by your statement about them. The Darwin fish is pro-evolution; it has nothing to do with the bearer thinking that all Christians are creationists. However, the types of Christians who put Jesus fish on their cars are, at least in my neck of the woods, likely to be creationists.

If someone is insulted by a Darwin fish, I’m afraid I’d have to tell them to get a thicker skin. The religious double standard is terrible in our country. Christians can put all manner of bumper stickers and symbols on their cars, erect billboards, display messages on church signs, and no one ever calls them out on it. No one tells them they’re arrogant or presumptuous, or worries that they might be hurting the feelings of non-Christians. Yet if an atheist expresses an opinion that gods aren’t real, it’s perceived as an insult. That’s religious privilege for you. The majority can do what it wants, but the minority is expected to keep silent.

The bible is only ‘evil’ when one takes it as the perfect, infallible truth… like any religious text. 
When read with the understanding that it was a book created combining somewhat relevant stories from the past few thousand years, written by people trying to understand God-it becomes simply a book with many inspirational passages.

At the time of composition, both orally and literally, the idea was that God needed to be more fierce than the gods worshipped by local tribes-as such God often took on a very violent nature. Such was the way of story writing at the time.

But there is also many, many beautiful phrases and passages of grace, forgiveness, love, wisdom and more. 
The core part of the bible that talks about the most condemning bits is in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, and quite old. 

Likewise, the other often considered damaging writings are written by others (Paul for example – someone who never even actually met Jesus)… but NOT accredited to Jesus.
Many people who consider themselves Christian follow the words of Jesus and not the words of those who proclaimed to spread his teachings later. Jesus taught many good things, as ‘wisdom teachers’ are prone to do. And as humans do, they portray it based on their own biased understandings-just like I’m doing.

The ‘book’ is not evil, but ‘evil’ people use it to propagate their hate, while ‘good’ people use it to find inspiration in the passages and the life of Jesus.
(I will add that while I enjoy the wisdom of many religions, I am not Christian-it is in fact due to the idea that Christians are all fundies, and in fact crossing paths with so many fundies, that makes me far too uncomfortable to ever label myself as such-rather I am a seeker of Wisdom)

 So you’re all going to pretend that you’re not being snarky and sarcastic? That you’re not talking to Alise as though she’s an ignorant child? That’s not happening??