Left, Right, or Center, keep out of policy

I don't disagree with the bullet list of points Krattenmaker includes toward the end of "What the Christian Left Can Learn From the Christian Right" but it can all be replaced with one simple point: keep your faith out of my life. Participating in the political process does not mean you have the right to impose personal religious opinions on others. I don't give a shit if a theist leans left or right, faith is a subjective personal matter that should never be imposed on others.

AN answer, sort of

I have a tendency to be more critical of conservative variations of religion but I do not reserve all my critiques for them. Recently there was a post on HuffPo, a liberal and routine target, that clearly demonstrates how clueless left leaning theists can be. Timothy Kurek's "The Answer to the 'Christian Right'" is a litany of liberal Christian ignorance. What makes it truly ridiculous is that the ignorance displayed is of an inward nature. It focuses on a relatively new website, The Christian Left, that purports to be unique. It isn't.

The truth is that Liberal Christians are not new and are not a minority. There are more left leaning theists than there are right leaning ones. It may not always seem that way since the conservatives tend to be louder and more aggressive. The only way both the founders of this site and its followers could have failed to notice this is by not paying attention. I am by no means saying that the site is poorly constructed and run. It is actually somewhat interesting but it is not all that is being made out to be. It is one possible response to Christian Right. A better one is for all liberal theists to wake up and pay attention to details. I'm not going to count on that happening. It would give them the ability to do what they seem to want; counter the conservative version of their faith. However, I can see such theists hesitating to pay too close attention since it would likely lead to more inward scrutiny than they can handle.

A lot of critical thinking will reveal some unwanted truths. Religion, liberal and conservative, is at its heart incoherent ludicrous crap.

Note: Liberal theistic "spokesmen" routinely appear in mainstream media. Two that immediately come to mind are Jim Wallis and Barry Lynn. They have even appeared on such stalwart conservative outlets as Fox News.

Liberal Disconnect on Religion

The September 1st edition of MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry show provided yet another example of where liberal religious perspectives on faith are just as ridiculous, biased, and ill informed as conservatives. On a segment focused on Romney's Religious beliefs within the first minute or so Harris-Perry contradicted herself,

“[45 seconds] I do think certain things are off limits, making fun of magic under wear or odd beliefs.  I mean religion is quirky so lets put that aside … [1:05 seconds] and ultimately how his religious beliefs might influence how he wants to govern…” Huh? So, it's not okay to talk about the individual beliefs that some might find silly within the official doctrine of a given faith but you can talk about the that faith in the broadest terms possible? How does that work? What kind of meaningful analysis can you do with no details? I also find the use of "quirky" to be  a bit cowardly. There are plenty of aspects of religion that are intolerant, ignorant, authoritarian, and destructive. Shrug that off as "quirky" is, quite frankly, a despicable self-serving dodge.

She goes on to further show how truly disconnected this perspective is. She talks about the fact that official doctrine of the Mormon church, or as they prefer Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, endorsed racism right up into the early 1980s without mentioning the origins of that doctrine. It stems from passages within the Book of Mormon. It claims that the dark skin of some was to set them apart as defiant of scriptural revelation and therefore evil. Their holy book sanctions racism. The manner in which those revelations were made would be comical if they did not have such horrible effects. Most rational people should view the creation of the Book of Mormon itself as "silly" yet the faith is built on it. How is that not relevant?

"New Theists"

I appreciate that Michael Dowd has publicly expressed support for science and has set himself up as a sort of evangelical champion of the theory of evolutionary. However, that's no reason to avoid critically reviewing what he says and writes. In a recent HuffPo piece he makes pretty clear a point I have made on more than one occasion: liberal theism is not automatically better than more conservative forms of theism.

In the June 16 piece, "New Theists: Knowers, Not Believers", Dowd seems to alternate between contradictions, fallacies, and absurdities. To start there really isn't anything "new" in it. What he writes about seems to be a rehashing of liberal theism that begins with a string of bullshit.

"A new breed of theist is emerging around the globe. We are religious naturalists: Reality is our God, evidence is our Scripture, integrity is our religion, and contributing toward a healthy future is our mission."

I don't think he fully understands the term "naturalist." Religions are by their nature focused on supernatural rather than natural explanations so the phrasing is contradictory. It is interesting to note that he move from a contradiction to a more redundant choice of wording. For a theist God is real so why state "Reality is our God." It sounds like you are just saying God is our God. If he really means to say that he and others like him worship reality then that is not much better. It's silly. Who worships facts or existence? Why would you? I am happy to emphasize the importance of evidence but comparing it to or equating it with scripture is just plain wrong. Evidence is not sacred. It is not infallible and unchanging and should never go unquestioned. That would defeat the whole purpose of seeking evidence in the first place.

His writing doesn't get much better. Dowd talks about not being believers yet insists on using terminology and concepts that only make sense if you are a believer.

"New Theists are not believers; we're evidentialists. We value scientific, historic and cross-cultural evidence over ancient texts, religious dogma or ecclesiastical authority. We also value how an evidential worldview enriches and deepens our communion with God-Reality-Life-Universe-Mystery-Wholeness."

The use of "theist" and "God" belie the rest of what is being said. And from here it only gets worse. He continues to mangle various terms both religious and secular creating a confusing mish-mash of nonsense. Towards the end he sets out to describe each of the phrases in the first Quotation I excerpted above (reality is our god, evidence is our scripture, integrity is our religion, contributing toward....) but it really is not particularly helpful.

It seems that Dowd wants to be a secular humanist but cannot seem to completely break free of religious doctrines, especially the terminology. I assume he has fallen for some of the same bullshit fallacies that guys like Alan DeBotton keep spouting. Religion has no innate value. There is nothing it can offer that can not be found elsewhere. Even though I do tend to prefer more liberal forms of religion over the more conservative ones, religion as a whole is still worthless crap. Theism is folly.