The debate centers around how to criticize Islamic fundementalists who promote violent views. New atheists point to the role of religion as a motivating factor, but multiculturalists and theists on left don't want to hold religion accountable for the evil it motivates. Kwinters
The human brain is necessarily a belief processor. See The Believing Brain by Michael Shermer. Even those of us who claim to have no beliefs, at best know what know what beliefs we have that are important and try with varying levels of success to compensate when necessary.
New atheists want to destroy religion and just like any extremists don't care what collateral damage results. Progressives have no issues with holding religion accountable for evil, they are just trying to rescue the good from all the wreckage. New atheists seem to believe that carpet bombing religion is necessary to get rid of the evil, and while it is true that carpet bombing will get rid of evil, the question remains is the cost/benefit ratio positive? Progressives say no. Believers will believe in something anyway, see any deconvert. If the whole belief system is destroyed, good and bad, they will cling to some of the beliefs usually the bad ones that feed their ego, and the result may be worse than the religious belief system that was destroyed.
Fundamentalist Christianity has some saving graces. Even though all are sinners and need to be saved by Christ they must be aware of their sins and beg for mercy. Fundamentalist Christianity was destroyed in part not by attacking the beliefs but by reinforcing the dysfunctional ones: We are all sinners and forgiven by grace so let's just wallow in sin. The worst is the sin of Bibliolatry.
Notice that Pope Francis is attacking specific sins leaving the Belief System intact. A much more difficult row to hoe, but then he can't use the carpet bomb strategy. His target is Christianity and fundamentalist Christianity at that, but by focusing on and admitting to the evil that is part of Christianity. Whether he will survive the campaign is an open question but that is par for the course for progressives.
2 comments:
You'll no doubt know that we are all atheists in some form or other. i.e. the followers of a doctrine will reject the doctrines (or gods) others follow. For me, atheism is an honest response to the evidence, in the same way, that a scientific theory is the best explanation of the observed facts, and it remains open to improvement as new observations are made. We could argue all day about what constitutes 'Reality' but to the rational mind, it's the observed facts which describe it to the best of our ability.
Blind faith is our best guess in the absence of evidence which supports a particular belief.
As for feminism, militant anything isn't the way forward in the longterm, but it can get the ball rolling. Women have been treated as second class for too long especially by religions and I do support the struggle for women's rights. Why would we not?
Welcome to the Blue Roads Paul!
Yes we are all atheists with respect to all Gods other than the Gods usually of our fathers. Doctrinaire atheists seem to believe the Gods of their fathers but believe that those Gods represent bad things for people and rail against them.
Yet blind faith when examined from an atheist perspective usually turns out to be a result of a long, but subtle indoctrination by parents and other mentors. It may be useful or not, but to fit in with our peers it is at least in part useful. The trick is sorting out the useful features from the dysfunctional ones.
One that is extremely dysfunctional in the modern world is the patriarchal view of women as property. This may have been useful when women had no control over their reproductive systems, but now with control women can take their place as productive and if desired reproductive members of the society.
Due to the blind faith in some aspects of belief systems, militancy is sometimes needed just to get people to examine those dysfunctional unexamined parts that need changing due to the observed facts on the ground in the real world.
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