Are people of moderate religious beliefs responsible for extremists?

[Jon Flow]

DireWolfSpirit,


Hey... I'm worse than you... I drive a six cylinder VOLVO in a temperate climate. If I was 100 percent morally consistent I'd have a hybrid. Hell... I'd ride my bike to work. I realize that not all the decisions I make are good ones but I move forward and try my best to make a good decision next time. An Unhealthy Guilt Complex would be if one were to use cognitive dissonance to let themselves off the hook. I.E. I drive a big ole gas guzzling truck, but it's okay cuz climate science is a big hoax!


I feel you on the military (or the last true bastion of American excess). However, just bringing up the military is a form of cognitive dissonance. It's like saying "Yeah I litter... But my neighbor is a serial killer so I think I'm Okay." Yeah... what you are doing pales in comparison... but it doesn't alleviate the original sin.

[Wise Fool]

Well... If you consider empathy a cognitive impairment. I don't understand what is so stupid about taking responsibility for the actions of your community/family/nation. All I am saying is that shit doesn't occur in a vacuum.

Because again you're moving the goalpost. What I said was taking responsibility for the actions of "anyone whose beliefs, personal information, place of origin, ethnicity, race, religion, culture, gender or sexual orientation is similar to mine" and your response modifies that to community/family/nation. You do see that these are not the same? That one of them, if accepted as a premise, can be used to justify various forms of xenophobic ideology - and is?

And if that were not the case, then how come in an argument ultimately about whether to assign collective blame to Muslims, you are arguing in favor of collective responsibility in general?

When "my heritage" is defined by my enemies, in order to assign negative traits to me based on the actions of others, then no I don't believe in, as you say, "owning your heritage." If, of course, I were to define my heritage as my local community, family, or nation-state, that might make sense. But the first is what's going on here: blaming moderates for the extremists. Is it not?

[Mladen]

Mladen,

What about the hypothetical I laid out? I will repost it incase it was missed:

A father teaches his son that woman are inferior and chattle to men. The son goes to college and ends up date raping some poor girl.

Now... Are you saiying that because the father didn't rape the girl directly, that he shouldn't feel guilty?

The father most certainly should feel responsible because he shaped the mind of his son. But, for the purposes of this debate, that is quite inadequate example and poor comparison. Simply, most people, those we call moderate religious people, don't take various Churches' preaches as undeniable truth. For instance, I support LGBTQ rights, I call myself some sort of feminist and so on... Each person ultimately decides what they should believe in. You seem to have problems to comprehend that religious people, even of the same religion, significantly vary in what they believe in, what they feel about certain issues. We don't live in bubbles where religion is the only influence in our lives.

[Jon Flow]

Consider that I didn't create the sub... It was actually written by someone taking the other side of this argument so it isn't how I would have framed the debate to be sure.


Sorry for not translating your argument perfectly in my head, let me take another whack: (I'm sorry, please forgive the use of another hypothetical:

Your religion says: God created this world for man to enjoy....

Your interpretation is: ... so man should be steward of the earth.
Others interpret: ...so all women should die.


Where is the harm in eschewing that argument all together? Lets stop basing things off of what god says and instead try and treat everyone based on a system of logic and respect?

I am not blaming moderates for extremists actions. I am saying however that by giving credence to religion as the ultimate arbiter and keeper of morals, you are giving cover to evil people who manipulate and use religion to do horrible things. I guess what I am asking is, why have religion? Is there a reason we shouldn't all be glad when Religion finally fades away?

[Jon Flow]

Mladen,

This is the concept that I have the most trouble with. You believe in religion right? You believe that there is a god and a heaven?


See.... If I was religious and accepted the above as fact, then religion would be the BIGGEST influence in my life... so big in fact that all else would be trivial.


Let me just say this... and I REALLY don't mean to sound dickish, but I am talking about dyed in the wool religious people. I am not talking to people who merely 'like fruit punch and waifers"


That is a totally different argument.

[Rorshach]

The idea that society evolves isn't a religion, it is a science.

No, it's pseudoscientific superstition: Historians have a term for it "Whig History". It's fairly pejorative. "Society" is not an "organism" it does not "Evolve". That simile is a perfect example of the error of taking a simile too literally.

I'm not really sure if my post is needed, but I'll throw it in for my own sake. Perhaps it will be of help for someone :)

To the first quote: written like it is, it makes no sense. If we assume that you claim that "society evolves towards the better, constantly", then I think Galactus is absolutely right in mocking your assertion. However, just reading it at face value, it simply states that society (which society?) evolves - changes - and that is basically a tautology. Not interesting.

We could read it in the context of your other posts. If so, it seems you are claiming that religion is constantly holding progress back, and science (I assume you use that as shorthand for "natural sciences") drive progress. That assertion is ... more or less impossible to defend if you look at the history of science. You may try, of course.

As for the Galactus quote, I just hung on to that because I was - and is - unsure if what Jon Flow does here is Whig history. The wiki indicates that Whig history has a more or less standard usage - that's not really the case. If I'm right in my reading of Jon Flow (previous paragraph), I'd say that it's not all Whig - because Whig is generally seen as a straight march with a single, determined outcome. In a way, I think it makes more sense of thinking Whig as "starting with the situation as it is perceived today, and showing through history that it had to get to this point".

As I said, I don't know if JF does Whig history or not.. I think it's more a case of not having read history properly (or, indeed, read much of it at all).

[Jon Flow]

Rorshach,

Two words... Dark Ages.




Wow... that was a lot easier than you thought huh?

[Rorshach]

Rorshach,

Two words... Dark Ages.

Wow... that was a lot easier than you thought huh?

Actually, you just proved my last sentence true.

[sologdin]

Wow... that was a lot easier than you thought huh?

this manner of interaction not only fails to persuade, but also suggests a sum certain of lumpenized antisocial nihilism.

[Jon Flow]

So you are saying that the economic and social decay... the persecution of De Molay, the Spanish inquisition, and the rampant anti-intellectualism of the time wasn't motivated at least in part by religious factors?

[Jon Flow]

Sologdin,

Wow... you are so humorless you managed to suck all the fun out of a religious argument. Kudos! That is like sucking a ray of sunshine out of a black hole!

[Rorshach]

So you are saying that the economic and social decay... the persecution of De Molay, the Spanish inquisition, and the rampant anti-intellectualism of the time wasn't motivated at least in part by religious factors?

You do realize that you are lumping together a rather strange mishmash here?

Economic and social decay is generally today (not really strange) seen as a result of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Also, it didn't really last until Enlightenment. If you think there's a religious element in it, please feel free to argue the point - but with a tad more detail.

de Molay and the Knights Templar is not something I'm all that familiar with. Religion may have entered into it, but as everyone involved were Catholic, I'd wager that politics and power struggles were more important. The Knights Templar were becoming both rich and an independent factor - rather powerful - so that some felt threatened by them should come as no surprise.

The Spanish Inquisition does not belong to the Dark Ages, even if we accept that such a thing existed. It is found in the Early Modern Period. Also, your claim wasn't that religion do happen to do bad things. My interpretation (which you did not challenge in your previous) was that (paraphrasing): religion fought progress at every turn. The Spanish Inquisition can't prove that point. In fact, as long as you don't follow up with examples of them working against science, it doesn't support your point at all.

"The rampant anti-intellecutalism of the time" is ... well, something you have to document. As an assertion, I guess you feel it works fine. But I have this nagging feeling you won't be able to support your assertion if you turn to historians who study the period(s).

[sologdin]

like sucking a ray of sunshine out of a black hole!

quite a compliment, the ability to outsuck a quantum singularity. thank you kindly!

[Jon Flow]

Allow me to discuss De Molay. I come from a family of Masons so I had to study this period of History.


De Molay was the first Mason. He was a knight who fought in the crusades, but a funny thing happened. De Molay ended up befriending the Moors he was sent to conquer. In fact he was taught about science, engineering, and architecture. When he came home, he taught these lessons to his friends and they all started cleaning up as highly skilled craftsman. Now his big issue was that he kind of did this in secret. No one knows why for certain... some scholars think that he was afraid of the anti-intellectual stripe growing in the church or, others think it was a business decision.

Either way the Church saw the secrecy, they heard of his radical ideas, they labeled him a heretic and a sorcerer. He was tortured and then burned at the stake. I know... this could just be an apocryphal story but it fits with the other information I know about that time.


Now let me be clear... I am not an expert. I may very well be wrong and I am certainly open to that possibility. Open my eyes... please.

[Rorshach]

For now, I see a poster claiming a lot and substantiating very little. As far as I'm concerned, it's up to you to make good on your claims, rather than others to do all the legwork for you.

[Jon Flow]

Rorshach,

I'm sorry... the sight must not be working because It is obviously omitting your careful and considerate referencing and footnoting of your own assertions.


I mean obviously, because like, there is no way you'd be the kind of jerkwad kettle to call a pot black...

[Rorshach]

..and you wonder why people don't react well to your posting style..

So, it's simple:

- you made the claims.

- you didn't really substantiate them.

- nor did you show any familiarity with history - in fact, you have already made quite a few blunders on basic stuff (like knowing when your Dark Ages was).

Instead of doing any of this, you choose to ask me to provide footnotes for my claims. So let me say I will - when you start doing it for yours. After all, as I said, the claims are yours, not mine.

[Crom Dubh]

Any link between Freemasonry and Jacques de Molay is spurious, for what it's worth.

[Rorshach]

Any link between Freemasonry and Jacques de Molay is spurious, for what it's worth.

As I said earlier, I don't know much about him. But his wiki page has four paragraphs devoted to the Masons linking themselves to him.

Also, him being dead some 400 years before the formation of the Masons - it seems that's the kind of historical accuracy we can expect from JF, sad to say.

[Galactus]

So you are saying that the economic and social decay... the persecution of De Molay, the Spanish inquisition, and the rampant anti-intellectualism of the time wasn't motivated at least in part by religious factors?

A) You're conflating several different timeframes (De Molay is High Medieval, the Spanish Inquisition is renaissance/early modern, "rampant intellectualism" is hard to say anything about) none of your examples is actually about the Dark Ages per se.

B) Gibbons aside, the Church clearly had very little to do with the fall of the roman empire. (what contributed to the Fall was largely processes that were already going on) what the early medieval church was, is essentially the continuation of roman administration. (Constantine literally appointed christian bishops as administrators, this continued after the "fall" of the Western Empire) What happened is that all people in late antiquity/early medieval era were adopting to a set of changed circumstances. (many of which had started, eg. depopulation of cities) long before christianity became influential, or the roman empire fell. Cities declined as people moved out into the countryside (or simply died, population declined pretty radically) what intellectual life remained in the West (the East was slightly different, as the roman court and intellectual life at the capital remained for some time) was largely decentralized to the clergy, not becuase of any serious attempt but becuase the clergy (and especially monks) were the only ones with any serious time on thier hands to learn how to read, eg. (much of course, remained in the East, either under byzantine or arab aegis, largely becuase these areas remained urbanized to an extent the west did not)

Once the High Middle ages comes around, population starts to increase and we start seeing towns and cities grow again, we start getting a more hybridized intellectual culture. Still largely dominated by clergy, but significantly more varied becuase we now have people (urban merchants, the nucleus of royal administrations, etc.) who need to be able to read, hence universities, etc. Still, most of the things actually done intellectually in the middle-ages is done by clergymen (and what is done is definitely not insignificant,

So, in short, there is no "anti-intellectualism" (at least not as a dominant current) in the middle-ages.

C) De Molay was not a mason. How de we know this? Because the first masons show up in the 18th century. (Despite claims by masons to the contrary) De Molay was the Grandmaster of the Knights templar, who made the mistake of loaning money to the King of France, when said king had no interest in paying it back. (and had his own pet pope in Avignon at the time, always useful) Any connection to the freemasons is entirely fabricated (and doesen't show up until the 1760's)

The Knights Templar were simply another victim of Philip IV's centralization of France.