Mayor Pete casts doubt on Trump's Christianity

[thesquanderer]

119. Continuing...

Last edited Mon Apr 8, 2019, 02:57 PM - Edit history (1)

re:

"It was just a way to reference what our society considers "moral" or "good" behavior"

I think that supports my argument that this is a representation of privilege.

This reminds me of the criticism that "Black Lives Matter" was interpreted by some people as being too exclusive, as if it somehow implied other lives didn't matter, which of course misses the point entirely. Saying that a religious believer (i.e. someone who follows the tenets of his/her faith) would be expected to exhibit moral/good behavior does not mean that non-religious people are likely to behave badly. As in the BLM example, this strikes me as implying negatives about alternate scenarios which are not intended. Just like with BLM, I think one should simply take the single scenario as presented at face value, and not read into it what you think the speaker may be saying (but probably isn't) about alternate scenarios, i.e. about groups of people other than the one mentioned.

I like the belief vs. knowledge chart. But to extract from that (as you said earlier) "one either believes there is some kind of god or one doesn't" is like the typical "there are two kinds of people..." generalizations, which are rarely valuable except when the basis of a joke. They often simply group everyone who agrees with your premise in one box and everyone else in the other, without recognizing all the diversity in each. Let's try this small variation from your statement: There are two kinds of people... Christians and non-Christians. From some perspectives, that may sound quite reasonable. But I don't think it is generally really helpful to reduce the group to two categories, when the non-Christian category itself includes numerous sub-groups... Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, Wiccans, whatever... and so the binary distinction really has no value, except perhaps to Christians. (And of course, the Christian box has its own sub-groups of denominations, as well.) So to say there are two kind of people, those who believe and those who do not, even allowing for the belief/knowledge separation on your chart, I think unnecessarily groups together all the different kinds of non-believers there are. Those who allow for the possibility, those who do not, those who just don't care, those who choose to participate in their church or whatever for the sense of community but do not necessarily believe, those who believe there may be something but don't align with any commonly acknowledged belief set and would not call themselves believers. I don't think Pete's proposition--that someone who believes would not be expected to act in a manner so grossly inconsistent with the teachings of his religion--is insulting to all those other groups that make up non-believers, or for that matter, even non-Christians, which one could arguably be another differentiation one could find in his comment. I think his statement stands on its own just fine, and in no way insults all those who do not believe, in all the manners in which they don't believe, nor does it insult those believers who are not Christian. Like BLM, it is a statement that can simply stand on its own, and does not need further interpretation by those looking to be offended.

As an aside, as your boxes kind of show, just as there are agnostic non-believers who allow for the possibility, there are also believers who allow for the possibility that they are wrong in what they believe. There is a kind of "continuum of belief" and people don't need to fall into neat boxes... so even IF some statement toward disbelievers were to be insulting, I think maybe it's not so clear who should be insulted!

At least we agree on the virtue of civil conversation.