of course, this is crap. who would say it's not?
>
> This is par for the course. They have managed to become tolerant of the
> variety of religions, but tolerant of Atheists? Fugheddaboudit. You get the
> seething judgment -- of immorality -- beanth the surface of every
> christianist I've ever met. *Gasp* How can you be moral? How can you not
> desire spirtiaulity or have "spiritual yearnings."
see, now this is also an important part of the issue: the confusion of religiosity with morality, as if only religious people can be moral. that is something where fights really do, imo, have to be fought and won. the other thing about spiritual yearnings is tied to that, because it's connected to some essentialism in which women cook and have maternal instincts, men have martial (not marital) instincts, and all humans have spiritual instincts. to not follow these is to be unnatural.
that's all hogwash. no doubt about it. and it needs to be fought. but my point is that those kinds of things are specific political targets that you can have fights on and win. and that's precisely where the american thing about how you have to respect people's beliefs becomes useful for us.
>
> Yearning? What the HELL is a spiritual yearning? Whatever.
just because you never had one doesn't mean people don't. but i don't accuse you of being inhuman because you don't understand it. i don't know if i understand it, either, and to be honest, i don't know if i have any, myself.
lol.
>
> This is all very nice, but this movement, toward suggesting that it's
> atheistis and agnositcs who are intolerant -- what the hell?
no. certainly we have seen intolerance on this list about religion, but the point i have been trying to make all along is a strategic one. it's about getting along with people who shoudl be on our side.
that's all. it's not about your moral failure to tolerate religionists when they don't tolerate you. it's about bringing the tolerant religionists over to our side to fight intolerant religionists.
at least, i think that's what it's about.
> Gimme a
> flippin' break. I think the things you write are marvelous and thoughtful,
> but the "tender sensibilities" stuff.... people don't get upset because
> someone's religious in public.
i do.
but that's me.
> Testifying in many circles is all about proselytizing. Proselytizing is NOT
> leaving other peole alone to believe what they believe.
true, but do we proselytize about, i don't know, atheism? or labor organizing? or organizing against the iraq war? that people should try to persuade each other of this or that seems like part of discourse in democratic society. we don't have to listen, and people mostly don't, in practice, do they? i absolutely agree that being forced against my will to participate in anything religious is wrong. i have to put up with it at every convocation at my college, recently, and only put up with it because, well, what am i going to do about it? i have registered issues and have been stomped on, basically. already, as an RS-Phil dept., we are in trouble precisely because we are insufficiently religious. i mean, here i am, an atheist teaching bible. there are people who don't like it that people might come out of our classes "questioning their faith." but we persevere.
>
> Reglions and religious adherents have a long, long history of shameful
> intolerance and I see no reason to make an equivalence here.
yes, they do, and the "same" religions and different religious adherents have been able to find themselves tolerant, peaceful, and loving, working for peace and social progress and social justice.
no, there is absolutely no equivalence here with "intolerance" on the part of atheists. i don't think anyone suggested there was.
>
> I also think it is utterly impossible for religions -- as communities of
> identity practice, if you will -- to ever tolerate all that much, btw. By
> their very nature, an identity politics rests -- just as nationalism rests
> -- on an Other and its invariably a denigrated other. Reglions tend to deal
> with the sacred and profance and, by their very nature, are going to define
> the Other as aligned with the profane.
>
> How you can possibly get around that ... beyond me.
>
see my response to michael.
don't we all have to construct an identity? well, then we're all fucking stuck if the only way to do it is by hating people. if it's not, then there's no reason religions HAVE to do it that way, even if many religious people and religious communities have done that and continue to do that. but here my point is that we need to focus on specific people, traditions, and historical times/places, not on "religion" -- precisely because religion is a culturally located phenomenon.
and before doug shuts me up, which he probably should, i'll shut myself up. and, for you who remember, i'll shut up shutting up.
peace
-- http://www.brainmortgage.com/
Among medieval and modern philosophers, anxious to establish the religious significance of God, an unfortunate habit has prevailed of paying to Him metaphysical compliments.
- Alfred North Whitehead