The idea of "culturally Christian" or "culturally Muslim" is misleading since such religions can be found in many different cultures.
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Posted by Carstonio
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I think it is understood that it reflects the culture in which it is found. My experience of christianity is purely midwestern and I'm sure that is fairly different than the experience of it in, say, the southern states, even South America.

I would speculate that every christian on every continent has some element of its dogma rooted in the gospels of the new testament and that would be, perhaps, the only familiar "constant". For example, I have no idea what eastern orthodox christianity is like in terms of its beliefs, habits, or calendar, or liturgy. But I think it's a safe bet to say that they believe the christ was god's sacrifice for Man's salvation.

Anyway, thread seems dead, so I'll waste some time and space.

As far as secular wins and losses, repeal of DADT seems underwhelming, especially when you consider how hard Clinton had to fight to get it enacted in the first place.

The school board thing is most troubling because it ruins the dialectic approach to knowledge. How can you discredit Marx without teaching Marx? How can you appreciate the deist founders without contrasting with the religious ones? The agenda of christian homogenization is just plain bad science, bad history, and bad for our future.

As for as secular politics, we are stuck in the middle of a spectacular epic fail. The right has gone off the rails with its dancing Palins and Huckleberry Romneys leading the pack for 2012. The left, with Obama spouting god and faith at every turn, appears so insecure that it can't find any actual *reason* to support his agenda.

But hey, at least we know God won't let us destroy the world, before He does. Some jag jonesing for government power actually said that in front of a committee.

There must be some comfort in that.

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Is winning an argument with a teenager the measure of one's effectiveness as a thinker, a person, or a parent? I suspect that most parents, whether theists or atheists, are resigned to not "winning" any arguments until their teenaged children turn into adults.

Leeh1,

"I have never met an atheist who can win an argument with their teenaged daughter using only logic and common sense."

So how do theists "win" such arguments?

Quote scripture that says children should obey their parents?

Apply preacherly manipulation?

Demand of the shrill girl "What would Jesus do?"

Tell her, "Let's commit that to the Lord in prayer"?

I daresay the responses of atheists in such situations are as varied as those of theists - from the skilled and effective to the inept and inflammatory.

No Jesus trump card is necessary for good parenting.

There is simply no authority they will accept to test their belief against.

That's a false dichotomy that wrongly assumes that the only alternative to authority is narrow-minded belief. Testing belief against authority is not testing at all. In the case of any particular religion's scripture, it's not even authority but claimed authority, where believers ask everyone to accept that the scripture was authored or inspired by deities. There's no reason to take the believers' word for it.

Real testing of belief is done using evidence, and that's not unique to either religion or skepticism. Even John Wesley acknowledged the importance of reason and experience in theological reflection. Obviously, using evidence as the standard for one's positions doesn't make one immune to irrationality. It's really about setting a goal of having one's positions confirmed by evidence and then doing one's best to live up to that goal. As a matter of principle, everything should be questioned and nothing taken for granted, including the truth of one's positions.

Ha! Ha! Ha! So, Susan Jacoby doesn't think atheists are bigoted, homophobic or tribalistic? Think again.

While relgious people can quote scripture and God's word as the basis of their belief, the atheist has nothing to go on but their own belief, which can be just as rationalizing and just as narrow minded as anyone else.

The major difference is that religious thinkers can also reconcile scripture to be more inclusive, and to make mankind better. Wilberforce, for example, fought against the current belief that slavery was correct and that trade unions were wrong. Martin King decided that inspite of many passages in the Bible, that all people were equal and should be equal under law.

Atheists, however, have no set ideas to go back to and check out and to re-interpet. Logic does not help in dealing with emotional issues- I have never met an atheist who can win an argument with their teenaged daughter using only logic and common sense.

Once an atheist accepts a bigoted concept, it is really, really hard to make them change their mind. There is simply no authority they will accept to test their belief against.

Meanwhile mostly Christians continually cherry-pick their ancient scriptures or those of their enemies to look for huge globs of poop to through at the other.
Muslims are unable reign in their murderous terrorists and not enough denounce this.

They deny a relationship with the other through Abraham but by their actions ye shall know they are the same evil spawn.

Ms. Jacoby, you should not forget that when most religious people talk about their compassion, tolerance and regard for others, that applies only to members of the same congregation. They are typically quite willing to attack and hate those who don't believe in the same God of Peace and Love.

The idea of "culturally Christian" or "culturally Muslim" is misleading since such religions can be found in many different cultures. Those terms sound like euphemisms for "Western European culture" and "Arab culture," or attempts to characterize other cultures as less authentically Christian or Muslim. An Christian Arab in Lebanon or the West Bank has more in common culturally with other Arabs than with non-Arab Christians.

I don't think the gay rights movement would have been as successful without the growing strength of the secular movement in this country and the emerging relationship between secular values and liberal religious denominations that have rejected biblical literalism and opened the ranks of their clergy to both gays and women.

Jacoby is right to emphasize this. I would add that some denominations that oppose homosexuality, like Catholicism, aren't relying strictly on literal readings of Leviticus but on teachings about what they believe to be the designated purpose of human sexuality. While I disagree with the premises of the teachings, I can appreciate their internal logic.

That's not the case with fundamentalist churches that claim to be biblically literalist. Their readings are no less interpretive than anyone else's, and much more selective and inconsistent. They disregard explicit statements about the poor while insisting they know who will be saved and who won't.

WMarkW,

"BTW, my closest believing blood relative thinks that Christianity is not a code of conduct."

Yup, your blood relo is right about that. In Christianity, just about any old "conduct" can be "forgiven", so long as you persuade yourself convinced about the correct set of metaphysical notions. Essentially, these are a cluster of mental hurdles that must be cleared for the anyhow-behaved to get saved, including such necessary truths as three-in-one all-male godheads, dead-men-walking, and doom for the unsaved. Unfortunately, there are many ostensibly correct sets to choose from, but only one that's really, truly, 100% effectively correct...

"All those rules the televangelists quote are mostly from the Hebrew scriptures. Christianity is about acknowleging that everyone sins."

Nice false dichotomising wedge-work there, Mark:

BAD: Rule-hurling, obviously odious televangelists = "Hebrew" scripture strictures

Versus

GOOD: Gracious true Christianity = acknowledges that we all stuff up

"HEBREWS" 0
CHRISTIANITY 1

WMarkW,

"Christianity was a good idea for its time. Up until then, just about all religion was nationalistic and/or tribal."

If you think early Christianity, in "its time", was not tribal or nationalistic, think again.

The major patriarchal sees of the late Roman world - Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, and Rome - which became Christianity's dogma factories, were intensely "tribal" in their approach to doctrine. The creeds now accepted as God's truth by most Christians were forged in a veritable hurly burly of political, cultural, and ethnic rivalries.

For instance, a succession of proudly Alexandrian Egyptian patriarchs (virtual neo-pharaohs in terms of sway and ambition) carried out a vendetta generations long against the patriarchate of Syrian Antioch, pitting hair-splitting "One Nature" Christology against Antiochene "Two Nature" Christology in the starkest terms and for the highest stakes. In the first half of the 5th century, the Alexandrians succeeded in deposing three Antioch-flavoured patriarchs of Constantinople through intimidation, bribery, riot, affray, beatings, and murder. That suite of horrors was played out even in "ecumenical councils", where rival patriarchs turned up surrounded by fanatical bodyguards and noisy, volatile partisans. The architects of today's orthodoxies were all-too-ready to deploy these pious mobs to win theological control. Regime was pitted against citizenry; theologically inflamed gangs (ever heard of the Greens and Blues?) menaced the capital, where they would brawl and riot in a way that makes today's soccer hooligans look tame; Christians martyred Christians. Cities and provinces were riven by tribalistic fissures, ultimately making the Roman East easy prey for Muslim invaders in the 7th century.

"Jesus taught that you can do religion yourself without a state or temple infrastructure to support you,"

Exactly what Jesus taught is still debatable. And without "state or temple infrastructure", there would be no Trinity today for Christians to rally around. That there are any Trinitarian believers at all is due in no small measure to long-ago ecclesiastical mafiosi like Cyril of Alexandria and Pope Leo I, and imperial manipulators like Theodosius I, Pulcheria, and Justinian.

"which emerged 1800 years later as the separation of church and state, practiced today in most of the West."

It's a distortion of history to claim that Jesus/Christianity originated, incubated, and hatched church/state separation. The attempts to realise this separation in some states from the 1600s onward was driven in part by a disgust with the sectarian violence that had been part-and-parcel of Christianity from the start.

Jesus has ever proven highly adaptable to the ideological requirements of his tribalising followers, whether they be grassroots Levellers or the most imperious Caesaro-papists; whether they be Athos Hesychasts or Fred Phelps' fag-haters.

WmarkW

"The United States educates every ethnic group as well or better than their ancestral homelands. It's only the diversity of our population that holds the aggregate score down."

I am not sure what your point is, unless it is to say that all these ethnic groups are holding "us" back. (I use quotes, because "the" are part of "us").

The diversity of our population is what defines America, and if the "aggregate score" is down compared to other countries, then that is THE score that counts.

Actually, sorting out the many different scores, according to ethnic group, is an appeal to political correctness that you seem to hate so much, that America is not really doing such a bad job at educating people, if you don't count everyone.

"Most secularists in the West are cultural Christians, whether they use the term or not."

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There are "cultural Muslims", those who don't care to practice the faith as in prayers, fasting, belief in God etc, but celebrates Muslim holidays with equal zest as do practicing Muslims. And there are "political Muslims" who write more stinging pieces against the "west" even if they are agnostics or atheists.

Interesting that your closest "believing blood relative" thinks that Christianity is NOT a code of conduct - as in not committing the deadly sins, being charitable in words and deeds, loving thy neighbours etc.

For most traditional and conservative Muslims, the Sharia is a code of conduct for the individual and community. And therein lies the problem - whose interpretation and whose implementation of such "code of conduct".

Deciding WHAT a "sin" is, is a NOT a matter for just secular study. "Sin" is another word is for what is not as crimes and transgressions (by consensus and law) in a particular group or society as per its extant ethics, morals and values.

Deciding and determining what is "sin", and its impact should cover the whole sphere of social studies, history and culture, including beliefs. It does makes a difference in regarding everyone is born sinless, commit and are personally accountable for their sins; and in considering there is original sin, everyone is born in sin and/or others died for their sins.

It makes me wonder if such "cultural Christian" values coloured the consistent and persistent "western" refrain that all Muslims are in "sin" and be held accountable for the actions of Muslim terrorists, while Muslims held those terrorists to be personally responsible and accountable for their own actions.

And then, there is the "sins" of the fathers, or the forefathers, or the founding fathers. Say, a group of Baptists against the American natives in tales of "how the west was worn" and "trials of tears" etc being leveled against the descendants as THEIR sins to bear.

That an "original sin" of one's ancestors one has to bear for generations too? This is the sort of "original sin", the first "sins", the crimes that is constantly invoked and leveled against groups one loath - due to such sins/crimes or due to digging up such historical sins/crimes for contemporary reasons to loath.

Most secularists in the West are cultural Christians, whether they use the term or not. Dinesh D'Souza makes this point that Christianity has become so internalized to everyone in our culture that we practice it constantly, even when not being religious.

Christianity was a good idea for its time. Up until then, just about all religion was nationalistic and/or tribal. Jesus taught that you can do religion yourself without a state or temple infrastructure to support you, which emerged 1800 years later as the separation of church and state, practiced today in most of the West.

The doctrine of original sin and hellfire makes some sense AS METAPHOR. Original sin means that being human we're all imperfect. But we don't need to beat ourselves up over this, because we also have a divine part that can forgive other people their transgressions, so ours can be forgiven too. Contrast this outlook to Aristotle's Magnanimous Man.

BTW, my closest believing blood relative thinks that Christianity is not a code of conduct. All those rules the televangelists quote are mostly from the Hebrew scriptures. Christianity is about acknowleging that everyone sins. Deciding WHAT a sin is, is a matter for secular study.

The United States educates every ethnic group as well or better than their ancestral homelands. It's only the diversity of our population that holds the aggregate score down.

******************************************

We should all be mostly monocultural, minimally diversified societies then, like China, Japan and South Korea in East Asia. Oh, and to study by rout learning as allegedly done by East Asian students making them know stuff but not being "creative" or "original" in their thinking.

By the way, there were reports that some Japanese and Chinese schoolchildren are so pressured to perform well, including by their parents, that when their results are not to expectations, they committed suicide.

We've heard of American schoolchildren committing suicides because they are gays, but not because they scored less then desired on the SATS.

Happy New Year to you too my favourite self-designated "cultural Christian". :)

I wish you all the best in 2011--even those of you in thrall to the the absurd belief that an atheist must possess a heart of stone. If you prick us, do we not bleed...?

- Susan Jacoby

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Baby boomers (including atheists, secular humanists, agnostics) should know this song by Neil Young then..

Heart Of Gold

I want to live,
I want to give
I've been a miner
for a heart of gold.
It's these expressions
I never give
That keep me searching
for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old.
Keeps me searching
for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old.

I've been to Hollywood
I've been to Redwood
I crossed the ocean
for a heart of gold
I've been in my mind,
it's such a fine line
That keeps me searching
for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old.
Keeps me searching
for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old.

Keep me searching
for a heart of gold
You keep me searching
for a heart of gold
And I'm growing old.
I've been a miner
for a heart of gold.

Happy New Year Ms. Jacoby

However, the influence of anti-intellectual school boards over curriculum, at both the state and local level, is unknown in the Asian and European countries whose students regularly outperform Americans in science, mathematics, and history.
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Steve Sailer analyzed the results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 reading scores, comparing American performance by ethnicity to countries around the world:

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/101219_pisa.htm
(scroll briefly to large chart "2009 PISA Reading Scores")

The highest scoring countries on earth were those of East Asia, and ethnic Asians in America outscored all the full countries of Asia, losing out only to Shanghai-China. The next highest-scoring countries were those of Europe or settled by them, and American whites outscored all the European or derived countries except Finland. USA Hispanics outscored every Latino nation, and African-Americas outscored every other country with a substantial black population (Brazil, Trin-Tab, Tunisia, Panama).

The United States educates every ethnic group as well or better than their ancestral homelands. It's only the diversity of our population that holds the aggregate score down.

Happy New Year Susan.
Wow! I pity the poor Texas school children. In Australia, we are moving towards a national curriculum which has caused a bit of debate but only in the history area, due to various interpretations of our colonial past and treatment of this land’s original inhabitants. The curriculum teaches that evolution is the best explanation available for the origins of the vast diversity of life on this planet – I often wonder how those silly enough to believe in Noah’s ark cope with Australia’s rather unique wildlife. Even religious schools have to tech this curriculum particularly if they want any federal funding. I guess I am lucky that my children are schooled in a system that places reason over superstition and ignorance for the most part anyway. The US could do worse that adopt a national curriculum.

Now that Congress has voted to repeal "Don't Ask Don't Tell," there is a controvery within the military about how to implement this "program."

How about this?

Just stop mistreating gay people for being gay.

Was that so hard?

It's as simple as that.