The Chalcedon Foundation are a Christian Reconstructionist [1] [2] organization [3], founded by the late RJ Rushdoony.
The Chalcedon Foundation propose
an explicitly Biblical system of thought and action as the exclusive basis for civilization
where
[t]he role of every earthly government including family government, church government, school government, vocational government, and civil government is to submit to Biblical law.[4]
Rushdoony subscribed to the postmillenial notion that Christ will only return to earth when biblical law is the only law throughout the world. In his 1973 890 page effluvium, “Institutes of Biblical Law”, the first of three movements, Christianity and democracy are “inevitably enemies.” Rushdoony envisages the church as the final dictatorship. Nothing less than world domination will do.
In this world of absolute, undemocratic, incontrovertible law where only abject obedience will suffice, segregation is foundational, slavery is acceptable, there can be no tolerance for any other religion, and those who do not follow certain ancient pronouncements in the Hebrew bible shall be executed.
In accordance with the Torah, the death penalty applies to, among others, incorrigible juvenile delinquents, blasphemers, adulterers, homosexuals who engage in anal sex, and the propagators of “false” doctrines (i.e any religious, political, or scientific view contrary to the text of the Bible). The daughters (but of course not the sons) of priests are required to be especially pure. It is perhaps a matter of theological debate if they should be put to death for letting Johnny reach third or even second base, but a home run is certain death.
Homosexual people, women, and cross-dressers can generally expect the worst of the new world order.
War must be waged on the new Amalekites, as typified by fans of Nancy Sinatra’s These Boots Are Made For Walking, until they are eradicated. Yes, this is really part of Rushdoony’s vision. Both female power and the merest hint of sexual sadism are anathema, and Sinatra’s mildly assertive Easy Listening piece is put forward as an example of what Orwell must have been referring to with his image of a “boot stamping on the human face – forever.” Perhaps it is best that Rushdoony never heard Venus In Furs.
In Rushdoony’s theocracy, there will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother… There will be no curiosity… All competing pleasures will be destroyed. [5][6]
The founder of the Chalcedon Foundation cannot rightly be compared to any of the Taliban; what he wanted was a ruling elite far more scripturally orthodox, more fundamentalist, more murderous, more totalitarian, and more ambitious for power.
“Institutes of Biblical Law” is critical of Darwin and the principles of biological evolution, but there is a firmer link between the modern ID movement and Rushdoony. Influential millionaire Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson Jr, on the Board of Directors at The Discovery Institute, and one of their major donors, is also a former director of The Chalcedon Foundation.
Ahmanson was one of Rushdoony’s best friends, and kept a vigil at his death bed.
In a rare interview in 1985 with the Orange County Register, Ahmanson said
My goal is the total integration of biblical law into our lives.
When in 2004 Ahmanson’s extreme views created negative press for some of the Republicans he gave money to (which apparently led to some of them returning the donations) [7][8][9], Ahmanson gave another interview, in which he publicly softened his stance. Not going so far as to condemn Rushdoony’s views, you understand. Just making it known that he doesn’t think stoning of homosexuals is “essential.” An opt-in practice, perhaps.
It would still be a little hard to say that if one stumbled on a country that was doing that, that it is inherently immoral, to stone people for these things.[10][11][12]
Ahmanson is also a major player in attempts to institutionalise second class status for homosexual people. He donated nearly $1.4million dollars in support of Proposition 8.[13][14] [15][16]
Here is another of Ahmanson’s friends:
This is Marvin Olasky. Ahmanson has financed several of his books. Olasky would abolish the separation of church and state. He has written
There’s nothing about ‘separation of church and state.’ That was Thomas Jefferson’s personal expression in a letter written over a decade after the amendment was adopted…. The founding fathers would be aghast at court rulings that make our part of the world safe for moral anarchy. [17]
In his 1992 book, The Tragedy of American Compassion, one of Ahmanson’s favourites, Olasky opines that charitable measures to alleviate poverty are only safe and effective when accompanied by Judeo-Christian theology.[18][19][20][21][22]
In the 1996 book Telling The Truth, Olasky stated his belief that secular journalism cannot be objective, and that news should be filtered through “a biblical lens”.[23]
Olasky is a Christian conservative with clout. Not only was he an advisor to George W Bush, but his writings have been championed and disseminated to members of Congress by Newt Gingrich. In his first address as speaker of the House, Gingrich said
I commend to all Marvin Olasky’s “The Tragedy of American Compassion.[24]
While he would not describe himself as a Christian Reconstructionist, implementation of Olasky’s ideas on the First Amendment, poverty, and the press certainly moves the United States further towards an uncompromising theocracy.
Rushdoony and Olasky. Friends of Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson Jr, Director at The Discovery Institute, bigot, and enemy of democracy.
*
[1] Eyes Right!: Challenging the Right Wing Backlash, ed. Chip Berlet.
[2] Mobilizing Evangelicals: Christian Reconstructionism and the Roots of the Religious Right, Julie Ingersoll, in Evangelicals and Democracy in America, Volume 2: Religion and Politics, eds. Steven Brint, Jean Reith Schroedel.
[3] Chalcedon Foundation Website. Our Ministry.
[4] Chalcedon Foundation Website. Vision Statement.
[5] The Institutes of Biblical Law, Volume 1, RJ Rushdoony.
[6] 1984, George Orwell.
[7] Equality California Website. Press Release October 26, 2004.
[8] The Washington Times. “Gay group urges Wolf to return foe’s donation“. August 1 2004.
[9] “Would Mimi Take Over Michele Bachmann’s Pulpit in Congress?” Orange Juice Blog. July 5 2013
[10] “Anti-gay millionaire bankrolls Caravaggio spectacular” The Observer. March 6 2005.
[11] “The Mystery Man Behind Prop 8″, Max Blumenthal. http://maxblumenthal.com
[12] British Centre for Science Education.
[13] Fieldstead & Co. Website. http://fieldstead.com/default.html
[14] “Proposition 8: Who Gave In The Gay Marriage Battle?”, Los Angeles Times online.
[15] “CA Prop. 8’s Top 10 Supporting and Opposing Contributors”, Maplight: Revealing Money’s Influence On Politics
[16] “A look back at the money in the fight over Prop 8″, Southern California Public Radio, Website, June 26 2013.
[17] “God’s Country”, Joan Didion, The New York Review of Books. November 2 2000.
[18] Book Review, ConservativeHome blog, December 1 2001.
[19] Book Review: The Tragedy of American Compassion by Marvin Olasky, Foundation For Economic Education (an American freemarket organization), Website, December 1 1990.
[20] Book Review: The Tragedy of American Compassion by Marvin Olasky, Geoff Prewett, personal pages.
[21] Book Review: The Tragedy of American Compassion by Marvin Olasky, “Defending.Contending” Website. December 9 2011.
[22] Book Review: The Tragedy of American Compassion by Marvin Olasky, ‘The Price Of Liberty’ Website. January 27 2005.
[23] “News: Dr. Marvin Olasky New Distinguished Chair of Journalism”, Patrick Henry College Website. August 22 2011.
[24] Transcript of Newt Gingrich’s Inaugural Address at the opening of the 1995 Congress. http://www.americanrhetoric.com
Fascinating summary, Dave! Thanks for the terrifying share.
I don’t understand what this has to do ID
The opposite of evolutionism?
Well, I can see that Howard Ahmanson is both on the board of the DI and has some unsavory views and friends.
But the DI has sponsored at least two Fellows to my knowledge who are not even Christian – Klinghoffer and Wells.
To attribute to the program of one organisation the mission of another, merely because there is overlap in support may be indicative of something, but it doesn’t indicate that Intelligent Design Movement has a “totalitarian heart”. It indicates that there is overlap.
The OP is, essentially, and ad hominem argument: ID is wrong because the people who promote it believe some horrible things.
I reject that argument when it is aimed at “Darwinists” (“Darwinism is wrong because, Hitler”), and I reject it here.
This piece strikes me as rather paranoid.
http://godsipod.com/apologetics/intelligent-design/?p=2088
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/francis-schaeffer-expert-offers-the-facts-on-michele-bachman-francis-schaeffer-and-%E2%80%9Cdominionism-%E2%80%9D/
It would take a lot more than follow-the-money, guilt-by-association to convince me that the Discovery Institute is a shill for the Chalcedon Foundation. The connection is interesting, but it’s merely suggestive, not conclusive — and I’m not even sure what it is suggesting!
Lizzie,
I am not saying here that ID is wrong. I am saying that the primary aims of the American ID movement are religious and political. I don’t see how you could be under the impression they were primarily interested in science. Science is useful to them in as far as they can use it, or its language, to confirm the conclusion they have already reached.
Furthermore, I say that their aims are theocratic, which is what we might expect given that the Disco Tute produced the Wedge document.
You will notice that this is only Part One. There is more. More “overlap”. Much more.
My OP is nothing like “Hitler therefore Darwin is wrong.” Firstly, the Discovery Institute have no scientific theories to critique. Neither does Howard Ahmanson.
Secondly, my argument is actually akin to “Hitler. No, seriously, Hitler.”
As for the two people you mentioned, Wells thinks he is a Christian! His doctoral studies in theology were focused on “the root of the conflict between Darwinian evolution and Christian doctrine.”
Klinghoffer is an orthodox Jew. He has expressed no theocratic views that I am aware of, but neither am I aware that he is opposed to Mosaic law as interpreted by Rushdoony.
Most of the noise made for a positive case for ID is of course “not even wrong”, not scientific in any sense, just assertion of design plus bluster.
KN,
I am not saying that the DI is a shill for the Chalcedon Foundation. What I am saying, and what I will be saying, is that the Wedge document means what it says. The DI has theocratic roots, directors and fellows are theocrats. Theocracy is the ultimate goal.
What in my article do you dispute?
And, it’s not “follow the money.” It’s follow the person!
I think there is a great deal of paranoia on both sides. I set this site up precisely for that reason – a place where, by virtue of the rule: “assume the other posters are posting in good faith”, we could try to get past perceived “ulterior motives” and down to the actual scientific validity of arguments about, say, the origins of life, or the nature of consciousness.
I think there is a huge problem when scientific theories are conflated with political, religious and moral positions. Certainly science may inform moral and political debate. If science shows that X is harmful or Y is harmless, or Z cures cancer, then that is relevant to political debate regarding what should be prohibited, permitted, or publicly funded, for instance.
But it doesn’t tell you what the answer is, nor can it tell you whether god exists, or which god, if any, is the right one.
In the US, it seems, there is real fear in some quarters that Darwinist-materialist-atheist-liberal-climate-change-promoting-lefties are threatening to “destroy society” as one UD commentator had it recently. Similarly, there is real fear in some quarters that dominionist-homophobic-far-right-gun-toting-climate-change-denying-anti-science-religious wackjobs are seeking to roll back the enlightenment and replace reason with superstition.
And both “sides” claim evidence to support their fears.
Past time, IMO, to put aside the fears and examine the evidence.
Do you deny that there are dominionist homophobic far right gun toting climate change denying antiscience religious extremists?
Do you deny that Howard Ahmanson is (a) a dominionist homophobic far right religious extremist (b) powerful (c) A director on the board of the Discovery Institute?
I don’t deny that either exist, although I’m constitutionally more skeptical of the former.
My point is not that they don’t exist but that the fear gets in the way of rational dialogue.
Well, political dialogue can be rational, can it not? I am sure you do not think you and I cannot have a rational dialogue.
So far you have taken issue with my title. Which is fair enough, after one article. After I have posted a few more in this series, I will be interested in what you think of my title’s claim.
Is there anything in the article itself you wish to take issue with?
If I have scared anyone with facts, no apology. If I have scared them with falsehoods, I will of course retract.
Lizzie, if you are prepared to discuss politics, I would like to know your assessment of the Wedge document, and also what you think are the roots of the current American ID movement.
Perhaps the biggest problem with an article like this is the “heart” of US ID claim. The thing is that ID is something of a “big tent” in fact, and one might argue that the “heart” is in fact the belief that some aspects of the universe are best explained by design. They aren’t, of course (you’d need a match-up of cause and effect), but it’s not an especially rare anthropocentric mistake, that.
ID isn’t synonymous with the DI, and the DI isn’t synonymous with this or that “enemy of my enemy,” even if some of the associations are less than savory.
On the other hand, I don’t really know how one is to avoid the fact that ID by and large is trying to roll back the enlightenment, at least where it affects their claims. They may not think of it in those terms, but didn’t Judge Jones pretty much rule that way? ID is profoundly anti-science with respect to evolution, and I don’t see how that is an escapable conclusion.
Glen Davidson
Most tents, in my experience are Big, and most conflicts arise from the people in one tent tarring all those in the other with the same brush.
Okay, I have changed the title, to try to mitigate that distraction.
Is that how you think the evolution/ID “controversy” arose?
I agree with some of what Lizzie has said.
I can agree that the ID movement has a religious and political basis. It is funded because of that basis. It is a threat to science because of that basis.
However, those who support ID on the basis of religion and politics are not all theocrats. And at least some of the ID supporters are simply people who have honest doubts about evolution. Some of them accept the evidence for common descent but doubt that the neo-Darwinist theory can fully account for that evidence.
Either way, and regardless of what motivates ID proponents, I am here to support honest evidence-based science.
Well, there have been attempts to argue that the natural world is evidence for the existence of god or gods for centuries of course, and Darwin’s idea was greeted with concern in many quarters for its apparent implications for the idea of a creator god.
And many people regard this as Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. Many people seem to think that without religion, there is nothing to stop people behaving badly, literally with impunity, and find that prospect deeply frightening.
But I think that Behe’s IC idea, and Dembski’s Pattern-that-signifies-design idea were somewhat original approaches to countering the idea that biology can be explained in material terms.
I don’t doubt that ID has been coopted by some as part of a political and cultural agenda, and perhaps that is what most concerns some people here about it.
What concerns me about it is that most ID arguments are simply scientifically invalid. I don’t think that means that there is no god, and it does bother me that people link the two ideas so much as to use “Darwinist” and “atheist” interchangeably.
Spot on – and paranoia is dangerous. That’s why I am joining KN and Alan in dropping out of UD for a bit until it calms down.
Name or describe almost any political or social position and you can find advocates.
I spent ten years arguing evolution at freerepublic before being banned, so I think I can have an informed opinion about dominionism. I think it’s a fringe movement, even in right wing circles. I’ve never met a dominionist in real life, and I’m a southerner who has lived elbow to elbow with all kinds of evangelicals.
I think conflating gun-toting with homophhobia with evolution denying with AGW denying is just as unreal as conflating Darwinism with Nazism or communism. You can certainly find individuals who combine your favorite hate traits, but you can also find individuals who don’t combine these traits.
That said, I’m not going to deny that DI is funded by some nasty people.
ID needs to calm down? I need to calm down! We need to beat people around the head with soft pillows until they understand that “live and let live” is the only practical philosophy.
Hi Vincent
Are you saying the dominionist movement is overblown and is in reality just a tiny number of adherents? All well and good. I hope the same goes for Christian Reconstructionists and the New Apostolic Reformation. For me the issue is peaceful coexistence. I will defend everyone’s right to free thought and expression. I will also defend the right of anyone not to be oppressed or disadvantaged by the imposition of some arbitrary set of made-up rules that somebody has decided to impose on others.
Intelligent Design hasn’t been co-opted at all. “Intelligent Design” as putative “scientific” alternative to the theory of evolution (but in fact a repackaging of “creation science”) can be traced to a small group of neo-conservative creationists, with a first appearance in print in one specific book two years after the Edwards v Aguillard ruling.
That small group of creationists have organized around the Discovery Institute, most of them working for it or funded by it in some capacity.
People could be incredulous of, and motivated to challenge, any number of scientific theories. Yet it is the theory of evolution that gets the fiercest pushback by far. Religion is the reason. There is no Intelligent Falling.
Intelligent Design is a specific movement spearheaded by a very few people. The goal is to suspend scientific inquiry and say that GthedesignerOd diddit. This is true of Behe and Dembski. If they want to do science, they want to do it up to a point, and then insist that science must stop right there, for the answer is theological.
People who promote “intelligent design” have, with the exception of a vanishingly few crackpots who haven’t twigged the “and then a miracle occurs” nature of ID, a religious and anti-science agenda.
It may be easy for a non-American non-evolutionary biologist to express the opinion that there is “paranoia on both sides”, but the fact is that scientists have in the past been remarkably non-paranoid, a naivety which the professional anti-evolution circuit has not been slow to exploit.
I don’t think the theory of evolution means there are no gods. You don’t think the theory of evolution means there are no gods. Well, great for us. Doesn’t change the fact that the theory of evolution refutes the theological convictions of many people, nor the fact that the intelligent design movement is controlled and financed by neo-conservative creationists with an agenda.
I hope that you will continue to patiently explain the science. People like me do at least learn things. However, let’s have the political discussion with eyes open rather than “balanced to both sides” false “objectivity”. There is nothing in my article that has been refuted. There is no guilt by association. There is guilt by virtue of being Howard Ahmanson. He is who he is, and where he is, just as I say in the article.
In the next article I will address the history of “intelligent design” and the prominent role I claim for the Discovery Institute. I will also be talking about some more theocrats associated with it.
It is to be hoped that those with genuine science to contribute to the area of detecting design would have the sense to call it something other than ID!
As if on cue, the DI explains why this thread is relevant. Apologies if I have understated their position.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/09/on_constitution076721.html
Ayep․
Good reason to be suspicious of the DI, anyone whom they employ, and anyone who uses them (ignorantly or deliberately) as source material․
Those guys are dangerous! They can’t be trusted to have anything to do with public education nor public funding of science, medicine ․․ well, anything except christian charity, really․ Their pro-god, anti-secular-society bias makes them the antithesis of any legitimate research – because they cannot trust anyone who comes up with an answer besides “god did it” they must at base disagree with everything more modern than Linnaeus․
That’s no way to run a modern nation․ Funny, they’re the ones who claim to be the true guardians of America․ But the society they would be happy in was already gone long before American independence – long before a citizen-scientist named Ben Franklin proved that you don’t have to wait upon god’s will being demonstrated by god throwing lightning strikes against your church steeple․ At least not if you adopt one of them new-fanged lightning rods!
Me, I’m happy with “materialism”․ I’ll take lightning rods, vaccines, and freedom, over prayer, faith healing, and a vengeful god any day․
․
There is another side to this that almost always gets overlooked in these political battles, and that is the effect it has on the learning of objective facts as well as the education of the next generation about science.
There is a common characteristic that runs through all purveyors of pseudoscience; they want a free ride on the back of a scientist.
It has been the experience of many of us in physics to have some kind of crackpot try to latch onto us during and after professional meetings, colloquia and seminars, and talks to the public.
This often presents a dilemma about trying to be nice to them. If one is nice, they pursue you like a stalker; and soon you find them telling their marks that you endorse their ideas or their perpetual motion machine.
If you brush them off, you risk alienating bystanders looking on.
ID/creationism is a pseudoscience constructed for political purposes. It took the naive science community some time to learn that. As a result of that insight, the science community is generally not responding to the taunts of the ID/creationists and is, instead, taking the lessons from the misconceptions and misrepresentations of science to design better pedagogical strategies to teach the concepts of science.
The political battles are being fought in elections and in the courts; and I think that the science community in general – especially through professional organizations and educational outreach – feels that a better scientifically educated public will make the difference in the political and legal spheres.
I think that has been working. It doesn’t do any good to get suckered into public debates with ID/creationists; that isn’t the way to learn science.
But it does help to study the misconceptions and misrepresentations of the ID/creationist movement in order to build better educational programs.
Historians and other professionals have to deal with the likes of pseudo-historian David Barton, and legal scholars will have to deal with the distortions of law. All responsible professionals are going to be taunted by radicals and fundamentalist extremists; but the response in every area needs to be to study the misconceptions and misrepresentations and use that knowledge to do a better job at educating the public.
Acrimonious public debates get publicity for crackpots but don’t really educate anyone.
I never heard of this group or dudes.
America and the English speaking world was founded and based upon a very Protestant, even Evangelical, foundation.
Everyone in america is living in a biblical system. They just imagine its organic from the soil. Its not.
Morally. intellectually, legally, politically, America is the Cromwellian republic that worked.
Its also about a common man and common citizen getting along together including getting your way or not getting your way.
Thats why we were better then the rest of the world in settling matters without breaking everybody and everything.
The creationist movement is based on very Christian and kind and friendly people at least for YEC folk. In fact we are called weak and nerds and pushed around a bit.
Our ID friends are tougher and more pushy and together we are making a true revolution in origin subjects.
This forum exists because of this revolution. It is a front line and rightly warning the rest of a native uprising.
We are the good guys concerning truth and greatly the good guys concerning how one treats people who disagree with you.
We are not planning a overthrow of laws to kill everyone for real sin.
I haven’t heard anything anyways.
I am going to win a templeton prize.
I don’t believe it is accurate to portray concern about the intentions of the intelligent design creationists as paranoia. It is not paranoid to take the words of the Discovery Institute’s Wedge Strategy at face value:
Nor is it paranoid to take Howard Ahmanson Jr., one of their major financial supporters, seriously when he says “My goal is the total integration of biblical law into our lives.”
To be fair, it is also not paranoid on the part of fundamentalist Christians to conclude that evolutionary biology and other sciences threaten their beliefs. The world is not six to ten thousand years old, Adam and Eve never existed, and there was no global flood. If those beliefs are essential to one’s religion, science does threaten it.
There isn’t a lot of room for compromise with people who hold such beliefs and want to shape public policy around them.
There are at least two levels of conflict with religion. The most serious level is with the literal interpretation of the Bible, which cannot be reconciled with science.
The second is the question of intention, which can be reconciled by invoking fine tuning, or continuous intervention. These can be made logically consistent with science, but add nothing.
More importantly, they block curiosity.
Here is Ken Ham’s perspective; as a perusal of his website and “Video on Demand” series will readily confirm.
Characters like Ham are why ID/creationist pseudoscience needs to be kept out of the schools.
Everyone wants others to validate their own views and beliefs. That is the urge which politics is, at its best, supposed to check. Science is a method. Truth is provincial. Thinking you are right is normal. It is also wrong.
“John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.”
Isaac Asimov, The Relativity of Wrong
I don’t think there is symmetry, but I think there is more than might initially appear. The paranoia is symmetrical (whether the justification for it is or not) so is the perception that the “other side” are deluded by their ideological a priori’s and fear of the Truth.
What isn’t, of course, is the science, nor the willingness to engage debate.
ID really is “cargo cult science” – it has the trappings of science, with peer-review, lots of equations, PhDs and stuff, but none of those things are hooked up to an actual generator. None of it is actual fitting of data to models, which is what science fundamentally is. It’s all a bamboo mockup.
But thinking you are right is still wrong.
Sorry, but not all ideas are equivalent. Asserting that ideas cannot be judged and placed on a continuum of rightness and wrongness is wrong.
In the informal sense,everyone would be just as paranoid of a free Charles Manson as he would be paranoid about everyone else. Justification is everything.
The totalitarian theocratic views, leverage, and appointed position of Howard Ahmanson Jr are a matter of record.
If you want to talk about the evolutionist’s fear of Intelligent Design, perhaps you will start a thread on it.
Is that right?
That isn’t my point. Of course ideas can be judged against a metric of the quality of their predictions. But the urge to have our own beliefs validated is equal among all people. Whether some beliefs make more sense to some people really isn’t particularly important to that point. The problem is trying to force others to validate our personal beliefs through any means. Politics, at its best, is supposed to curb any group’s individual ability to shove their ideology down someone else’s throat.
A problem seems to arise when elements of our modern mythos which come from the practice of science are considered ideology by those whose existing beliefs are contradicted by those elements. Where there is real contradiction, the information has to stand on its own with predictive success as its measure. But in very large part, I agree with the perception by many IDists that most people who ‘believe in science’ are pushing an ideology and are trying to ram it down other people’s throats just as much as any other fundamentalist religion does. It is very difficult not to make a religion of the mythos and the modern mythos bears the imprint of 400 years of scientific investigation.
It is quite common to see people claiming ‘religion is bad’ or evil or stupid or whatever which is actually an untenable position. It is an overgeneralization from a specific point of view. Religion is a category error for one thing, just exactly the same as saying atheists are whatever. But more so, the categories where specific elements of specific religions, i.e. concrete examples, are criticized are exclusively involved with two issues: predictive claims about the material world and specific moral/value statements or behaviors within specific religious texts or by specific religious believers. Those are extrapolated into statements which are applied to everyone who identifies as religious and a war is started. Those who identify as the targetted group fight back.
Unfortunately, that group is already much weaker and less able to cope with such attacks because the mythos has already overwritten much of the material which had supported their ability to describe their identity in language. The words are already hostile to their identity so no matter what they do it looks dumb or dishonest to those who are riding the modern mythos.
But religion has a whole host of complex connections to individuals and can’t be fit into the target pasted up by those trying to shove a materialist fist through the bullseye. Scientific claims by individuals do belong in the domain of science. Moral claims do belong in the domain of politics. But the connection of the two is neither warranted nor justified.
How often have you heard a hateful screed about the immoral behaviors of this or that person and the connection to his or her religion. Worse, how often do you hear ancient abuses cited as examples of the horrors of religion? The Inquisition, the salem witch trials, Charlemagne’s campain of the xianization of europe.
And yet the 20th century saw destruction and cruelty on a scale dwarfing all religious conflict put together much of it in the actual name of atheism. Whether or not the details can be debated, Pol Pot, Stalin and Mao all publicly justified behavior with claims of the evils of religion. Those same details work both ways. There were certainly sectarian reasons for all kinds of religious crime too.
But if the evils or even just the inconveniences created by specific people in the name of specific religious beliefs is ever going to be combated effectively, it must be by denouncing the behavior of forced conversion, not by another forced conversion.
That seems sufficient to make your point. People are not good or bad based on their ideas. I’ve argued that ad nauseum at UD.
I have a bunch of unpopular political ideas. They’re unpopular with the left and the right. Part of my being a total evilutionist. I generally avoid mentioning them because discussions have generally been unproductive, and even if I were 100 percent right about everything, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference to the world. My kids like me. That’s what’s important. They think I’m an obsolete codger, but they still like me.
yeah. it was too wordy. I guess the impact for me is the last paragraph. That could have stood alone. Without the word ‘religious’.
But if the evils or even just the inconveniences created by specific people in the name of specific beliefs is ever going to be combated effectively, it must be by denouncing the behavior of forced conversion, not by another forced conversion.
I agree wtih Neil Rickert’s comment. I believe the support ID receives from non-scientists is largely because it offers protection for certain religious views within an increasingly secular culture, and not as a means of cultural evangelism. Having said that, I do believe it is the intention of some prominent ID promoters, like Phillip E. Johnson, to reintroduce Christian education and practice into secular, public institutions like schools.
I was hoping someone would get that joke. I went and put it inside too much serious bzns post it seems. 🙂
Still meaningless deepities with no reference to our real world.
What on earth does “forced conversion” refer to in the context of a western civilization? Yeah, I get that Stalin and Mao were atheist terrorists – I’m not trying to pull a “no true atheist” defense – but honestly, what’s the relevance of them to the paranoia of American christians? What’s your evidence that American atheists are trying to “force convert” American christians to anything whatsoever?
Really, your “both sides do it” is just stupid and false․
A single data point should be enough as evidence of a trend. But I’ll give a few:
http://newatheism.org/
http://newatheists.org/
and here is a pretty direct statement which could have been written of the french revolution but wasn’t:
Unless, maybe you agree with those sentiments?
Of course I agree with those sentiments. Every rational person does.
It’s obviously a fact that:
“Religious fundamentalism has gone main stream and its toll on education, science, and social progress is disheartening.”
It’s agreed upon by all civilized nations that we have a responsibility to educate the citizens, so I am quite sure that every decent person agrees with this:
“It is the responsibility of the educated to educate the uneducated, lest we fall prey to the tyranny of ignorance.”
The only people who disagree with public education and who wish to enforce ignorance on their citizens are totalitarians and fundies.
Why do you confuse education with “forced conversion”?
You could just admit you’re wrong about your “both sides do it” stupidity, instead of bringing in quotes which do not by any stretch of the imagination support your bizarre idea.
You do realize that PZ Myers is not actually advocating sacking a literal city, don’t you?
Perhaps you need to work on reading without an anti-atheist bias so firmly in place … it turns out that not everything is a manifesto to round up the religious and put them in forced re-education camps. 😯
Uh, yeah, well, I guess you see the forced conversion one way as acceptable and the other way as not. But if you are seriously unable to see those statements from the perspective of the target then I guess that’s a whole conversation itself. I use that pz one as a general go to because it’s so blatant that it’s easy to analyze.
Are you saying that you can’t see those sentimemts as negative from a different perspective?
You’re still wrong.
You’re still claiming that something is an example of “forced conversion” when it is at worst an example of secular propaganda.
Words mean things. “Forced” means something. “Forced” does not mean that a religious person has a negative reaction to hearing that an atheist thinks they are deluded. That’s not what “forced conversion” is.
There are no almighty atheists in western democracies who can impose upon the religious.
You need to start using words to mean what people in genera agree they mean Or else, just admit you’re making up your own bizarre usage for your own propaganda purpose.
But you’d never be guilty of propaganda, would you? I mean, that’s exactly the same as “forced conversion” – and we know you’re against that!