Can I Piss Off a Moderate? by Hambydammit, ModGod of Rational Response Squad Forums
Today, I will attempt to piss off Moderate Christians. This is going to be a difficult task, because one of the primary reasons I’m calling them out is their obstinate refusal to be offended. I had a long conversation tonight with one of my friends, who is some variety of theist, although he’s very difficult to categorize. He was relating to me a dilemma he’s going to face this weekend when his Moderate Christian family is going to ask him to go to church. The question of whether he should go, even though he disagrees strongly with many of the Christian church’s teachings, is very close to me.
Earlier today, I read a blog on an atheist forum, and then spent a good hour of my life trying to convince a fellow atheist that he should not wear a yarmulka to an orthodox wedding just because it will upset his girlfriend if he doesn’t. Her family had invited him to the wedding, but only if he would wear the yarmulka. He is neither Jewish nor religious.
I had to go to court earlier this month, and when the judge asked me if I swore to God that I would tell the truth, I had to bite my tongue before saying yes. This is something that comes up a lot in our religiostupified (Thanks for the new word, Byron!) country. It may not seem like a lot to you if you happen to believe in god, but for those of us who don’t, the signs of Christian infiltration into society are everywhere, and it is very difficult for us to live a life free from religion. Separation of Church and State was meant to provide both freedom of religion and, equally important, freedom from religion.
The fact that atheists butt heads with religion too much for my comfort is not the topic of this essay, though. I mention it to illustrate my gripe with moderates. Without spending thirty minutes finding statistics that will be debatable, I’m going to hazard a guess that maybe 20% of Christians in America are either fundamentalists or evangelicals or both. It doesn’t really matter. The point is, they’re the minority of Christians. Most are moderates. They believe in some version of Christianity, most likely one that leaves out the nastier elements like stoning homosexuals, and the unscientific elements like a 6000 year old cosmos.
These moderates, in my view, are the ones directly responsible for the decline of America into quasi-theocracy that has occurred in the last 30 years. Their complicity is a result of at least two things: first, they defend fundamentalists as “slightly misguided, but genuine, honest people,” and second, they defend “faith” as a legitimate source of knowledge.
The first defense is maddening. In any other discussion, moderates would most likely not advocate letting people continue to do harmful things just because they are well intentioned. Imagine an alternative medicine guru who advocated a return to the use of mercury to cure various illnesses. Suppose that he had been living by himself somewhere for the last thirty years, and was simply unaware of the mortal danger involved with mercury. Would moderate Christians say that he should be allowed to continue with his recommendations simply because he had a genuine desire to help people?
At this point, moderates, and probably even some left wing wackos, might be balking at my comparison. After all, we know that mercury kills, and advocating taking poison is not the same as letting people have their religious beliefs, is it? Well, in the case of right wing fundamentalism, it’s not really much different. After all, it is right wing fundamentalists who refuse to permit stem cell research, effectively killing people who would benefit from cures available only through this new research. If that’s not concrete enough for you, think for a minute about abortion clinics. They have security systems that would make a Guantanamo Colonel swell with pride. Need I remind you that there are dead doctors who would be happy to attest to the mortal harm that right wing fundamentalists do — if they didn’t happen to be dead.
Still, you may object that most moderates are vehemently opposed to right wing violence. They detest it as much as us non-theists. It’s unfair to say that they are not opposed to such things. This is where I, along with Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and other atheist activists, part company with even the majority of atheists. I say that not only is it fair to say they facilitate violence, I also say that they are actually causing much of the violence because of their refusal to examine their own beliefs and reject the very foundation of religion itself!
Moderate Christianity is deceptively alluring because of its seemingly scientific basis. Most educated Christians have no problem admitting that there’s something to evolutionary science, and they have no problem admitting that the earth is very old, and that dinosaurs once roamed about. In fact, if you get a good Moderate Christian into a theological discussion, they will almost inevitably tell you that they believe questions are good, and that any thinking person ought to question what they believe. Forgive me, but the devil is in the details, and they’re missing a very, very important detail.
The admission that questions ought to be asked makes it seductively simple to believe that moderate Christianity is ok, and doesn’t hurt anyone. Maybe it’s even helpful in some way. The problem, and the main point of this essay, is that questioning is not ok for moderate Christians. I can prove it.
Next time you’re talking to a moderate, try getting them onto the nature of god. If you’re any good at debate, you can quickly steer them to one of the half dozen paradoxes inherent in god belief. Once you get them there, note how quickly they will revert to the position, “There are some things you just have to take on faith.” The simple, indisputable fact is that any god belief requires faith, and if you follow my writings at all, you know that “faith,” properly defined, is “belief in a thing despite evidence to the contrary, or a total lack of evidence.”
Once you get them to the point of admitting that they hold a belief despite it’s opposition to reason, you can see that the facade of moderation is just that – a facade. At their core, they are exactly the same as fundamentalists. They just pick a more socially acceptable irrationality. What they really mean when they say you should question everything is that you should question everything – except for the validity of faith as a means of acquiring knowledge. This is why I don’t let spiritualists off the hook, either. They advocate the same thing. There are some things that are true because they just feel true. It’s exactly the same foundation, and it leads to exactly the same place.
If we, as skeptics and atheists, allow this hedge-bet to go unchallenged, we are also complicit in the religiostupification of America. In the case of both fundamentalists and moderates, the individual’s own sense of morality determines how much “faith” they need, or in other words, how much irrationality they will accept. Another way of saying this is that allowing a little irrationality is no different from allowing a lot.
This point is so important that it needs to be made again. Accepting the belief that some things are true and irrational is what gives a perception of validity to every religious belief. Right wing fundamentalists are crazy. These are people who are out of touch with reality The reason they are not either publicly ridiculed or maybe even forcibly medicated is that they are given a free pass — because it’s religion. If they believed some of the crazy things they believe because the Jolly Green Giant spoke from the side of a can of beans, they would be institutionalized. But, because the Mean Old Sadist in the Sky told them to blow up buildings, they’re encouraged to be a little more moderate.
The primary reason that moderates refuse to come out publicly against fundamentalists is the vulnerability of their own position. The really smart moderates know this, and I suspect that the rest sense it even if they can’t put their finger on it. The only way to effectively call out the fundamentalists is to challenge them on rational grounds. So, you see, the lie in Moderate Christianity is that it is moderate at all. It is not. It is, however, to use the colloquial term, chicken shit. Moderates are too intellectually dishonest, or too scared, to apply logic to all questions, lest they have to give up the illusion of a sky daddy that makes them feel better about the world. They are also too scared to take a stand against those of their own faith who are using faith as a weapon, and causing untold suffering among gays, women, atheists, and, dare I say it… Iraqis. They cannot, in good ecclesiastical conscience, take a firm stand against those within their order who eschew science, for if they did, they would be opening the door to the scientific scrutiny of their own beliefs.
Moderate Christianity is a lie. While moderates do not have a political agenda advocating taking America two hundred years backwards, they allow those who do to go about their work unimpeded Worse, they very often vote based on their religious ideology rather than their rational beliefs. I suggest that it is time to stop giving moderates a free pass just because they embrace a softer, gentler version of a hateful, misogynistic, authoritarian religion. People of reason will never have a rational leg to stand on until we challenge the very foundation of religion – all religion – that is, the errant belief that “faith is a virtue.”