Well, once more into the breach ...
On Jul 3, 10:53 am, Drafterman <drafter...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jul 3, 10:28 am, MrCool <tarj_saho
...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > I agree with your first sentence but it all goes wrong from there.
> > Secular morality isn't about respecting each other's wants. People
> > have all sorts of crazy wants. Nothing in game theory suggests that I
> > should respect a paedophiles want to rape a child. So your argument
> > rests on a faulty supposition.
> Actually I'm ok with most of it. The problem lies in what is are
> "benign theist beliefs"? Walt assumes they exist because he shuts his
> eyes to the ways that the mere belief in god is faulty and malicious.
> Also, Walt over simplifies the relationship between moderate theists
> and extreme theists and misses how the former lends support to the
> latter.
> Take the most extreme fundamentalist Christian and the most liberal
> unitarian Christian. You might not expect the fundamentalist to be
> able to derive any sort of support of the liberal. Yet it is easy to
> imagine:
> Let's say fundamentalism can be rated on a scale of 1 to 100 with 1
> being theists you never hear about because they aren't being rabidly
> evangelical and generally keep their religion to themselves and 100
> being Falwell.
> Now, putting a 1 and a 100 together will highlight obvious differences
> and they probablly will argue and fight as much as any atheist vs.
> theist. But that's not how it works, despiute Walt's attempts to
> depict it that way.
> Distribution of theist population on this scale would most likely be a
> bell curve, putting more people in the center (50) than at either
> extreme.
> Another concept to introduce is "birds of a feather flock together"
> Religion is a social group and groupings will most likely have those
> of similar fundamental ratings.
> And finally there is the fact that the fundamentalists get a
> disproportionate amount of media. They are more vocal and active.
> Put these together and you have a 100 in a group with some 99's, more
> 98's, even more 97's, etc. etc. Now, the 99 won't agree with
> everything the 100 says, but 99% of it. The 99s lend support to the
> 100s, the 98s to the 99s, the 97s to the 96s, and so one. Since the
> higher up you go the more vocal you go, it will appear that the 100s
> are in charge.
> But that's all just appearances, right? No. Being so alike in thought
> a 99 will agree with, and pretty act in according with the beliefs of
> the 100, because their beliefs are pretty much the same. Where they
> differ the difference is slight and, being more vocal and active, it
> is no small task for the 100 to convince the 99 that his way is right,
> even if only temporarily. This goes down the chain from 99 to 98, from
> 98 to 97, etc. etc. Now, at some point it fizzles out, but by that
> time you will have had an extreme minority (the 100s) having had
> influence a larger, less extreme population (99-).
> The problem is, given the smooth, gradual spectrum you just can
> eliminate one portion. Take away all the 100s and you've just merely
> created NEW 100s (the old 99s) on a recalibrated scale.
So let me simply address this part for an instant: so let's assume
that the 1's are, generally, good and reasonable theists who cause no
problems for anyone else, and whose beliefs you'd consider odd but no
odder than, say, people who like to watch American Idol (you seem to
argue against that in your first paragraph, but I'll put that aside
for a moment). Now, imagine that we take away all the 100s and 99s
and so on until we're left with ONLY the 1s. You can argue --
reasonably -- that we could then create new 100s on a recalibrated
scale. However, if we accept that these 100s don't change their
behaviour at all from when they were 1s, these recalibrated 100s
aren't problems for anyone
and there's no reason to be anti-theist about them.
So when we recalibrate the scale, we also have to recalibrate whether
or not the behaviour is still harmful. This paragraph doesn't do
that.
> Lastly, appearances are significant, especially in the views of the
> 100s. Even if their extreme directives do not filter down to the 1s,
> the lack of response (positive or negative) from the lower extremes is
> simply assumed to be tacit consent. They think themselves as having
> the support of all, and act accordingly.
Which is a common concern, and a general mistake. Everyone listens to
the vocal in politics and everything else because they think that if
the others disagreed, they'd speak up. But note that in large part
your 1s aren't saying anything because it's part of their belief that
they NOT say anything; they don't evangelize about their beliefs and
make them strictly personal. This would include not criticizing other
religions for their beliefs. So assuming that they agree because they
don't say anything -- from either side -- is simply wrong; their real
intent is entirely different. So no one can read support from the
100s from the silence of the 1s; they do the same thing whether they
agree or disagree with the 100s.
When this crosses sect boundaries, it gets even worse; people who are
1s on the religious scale will feel little reason to criticize other
religions openly if religion is a personal choice to them, and it is
well-known that different sects don't agree with each other, even to
the point of war at times. So anyone -- on either side -- who assumes
that if an Anglican doesn't openly argue against a Catholic on a
matter of doctrine that they agree with the Catholic reveals nothing
more than that they don't understand the history of religions in
general.
Knowing this, is advocating to eliminate all theism/religions the
answer to your continuum problem. No. At best, it seems that the
anti-theist should be railing against the malicious religions and
promoting -- in a "If you have to have a religion, pick this one!"
sense -- the benign ones, and encouraging the 1s to speak out and
demonstrate their religion more publically (without having to
aggressively advocate against others). Only if one thinks that there
are NO benign religions -- even to the extent of feeling towards them
the same way they feel towards people who watch American Idol -- can a
strong anti-theism be justified, but that is a completely different
story.
