Brian K
Member
http://newhumanist.org.uk/2267/battle-of-the-babies
Not a new argument...fundamentalists (of almost religions) have more children. Many more.
One interesting argument is that the more hermetic faiths and cults are better at keeping their children "in the faith". It is the liberal, less dogmatic churches who are losing their populations. So...basically a (minority) of strong atheists versus a collection of dogmatic and fundamentalist "faiths" is the future battle.
Brian K
Member
Nox: I certainly hope not. Yet some "faiths" retain most of their children for generations. And one of his major points appears to be that some of the new far right churches are copying the structure and (succesful) practices of sects like the Amish.
As for Christian rock...yes. The world's worst musical form. And I appreciate "traditional" church music, so...
Except for the mighty TROUBLE! Listen Psalm 9 some time! And the fantastic My Silent Wake, which is definitely Christian but frankly amazing. Or, finally, the inimitable Virgin Black.
Right, but who the f*ck wants to be amish?
That's why I mentioned christian rock. Not just because it will always suck but because its very existence is an open admission that they must borrow from the Devil to remain relevant to even their own children (and even then their version will always suck).
Cults which manage high retention rates usually do so by denying their children other options (or denying them awareness of their other options). The kids have to stay on the farm, so they stay on the farm, so they stay amish.
Mormonism and islam have been very successful in exploiting this mechanic.
The more hermetic cults will generally be more successful in keeping their children in the faith (at least in the short term on a case by case basis). Kaufmann isn't exactly wrong about that.
It's a pretty straightforward observation that people from more liberal sects are embracing secularism in greater numbers than people from more insular sects. This is true and hardly surprising at all. People who aren't homeschooled, who go to secular universities, who have friends outside of church, who partake of art and entertainment that isn't specifically christian, who have enjoyed the fruits of secularism and subconsciously absorbed many ideas which conflict with the traditional positions of their church, are more likely to not bother going to church and eventually not bother calling themselves christian.
Many of those who would have been the moderates in the near past will be the nones in the near future.
Those people just rely much less on their religion than their counterparts in Kansas. It is less of a leap for them. It is less to give up. So if larger numbers of them should make the smaller leap, that would fit with everything else we know of physics.
But this does not happen in a vacuum. The factor Kaufmann does not take into account (or does not recognize the potential of) is cultural disparity.
He acknowledges that secularism benefits from conversion. But he concludes it isn't enough to tip the scales ("Against what we might expect, the closed sects manage to cling on to their kids despite the temptations of mainstream society"). That's the part where he's wrong. He's wrong in at least two other places. Israel is not a representative sample of global trends, and where did liberal christians come from in the first place (from fundamentalists rejecting fundamentalism). But it's the overlooking of cultural disparity that leads him to the wrong conclusion.
Theocracies are not merely oppressive. They are f*cking boring. These people will be left behind by the world. And the more that happens the more temptations mainstream society will be able to offer. Keeping your kids unaware of their options is going to be a lot harder in the digital age than it was in the 1800s.
Not all will choose (or even understand) the principle of secularism (which you don't even need to be an atheist to dig, just someone who prioritizes the individual's expression of faith over church rules). Nearly all will choose the benefits of secularism.
Think for a moment of all the people in the current generation you have seen complain about the scientific method leaving god out. Then think of how many people you've ever seen complain about the existence of computers. Everyone wants the products of science.
In many ways religion behaves like a genetic trait. Faith is passed somewhat reliably from father to son. But this is through inculcation, not heredity. Remove the reasons to believe and the belief goes away. And the fact is, even though there are things we can do to hasten the process, those reasons to believe are rapidly going away on their own.
The church knows this and they have gone to great efforts to prevent it. This is why they have apologetics. This is why they have christian rock and christian movies and christian young adult fiction and christian universities. This is why they have f*cking Kirk Cameron.
Because even though many christians have animosity toward secularism, and even though their book kind of tells them not to be part of unchristian society, most christians really do want to participate in the wider culture. They want to see the same movies, listen to the same music and read the same books as their friends. And even among those who choose a traditional path, the desire to choose their own path (or at least feel like they're choosing their own path) is becoming more widely valued. They may still be attached to christianity, but they want secularism.
And christianity is just not well suited to coming up with new ideas. It is built on a dogmatic framework that allows very little room for innovation. This doesn't prevent copying what has already been proven to work, but they can't come up with new things. They can only come up with inferior and slightly less real versions of what others have already done.
They can hire youth pastors and stage events to convince kids that christianity is cool. They can appropriate science, philosophy or pop culture, and tell people they invented it.
But christian rock will always suck.
And deep down, most christians already know that.
Being insular and shutting out the outside world is a good strategy for maintaining an unaltered group identity. But it generally does not lead to overall thriving. Groups which are too insular tend to die out.
That is not to say fundamentalism will completely go away. It will just become less of an issue. It will always exist in the sense that there are still people practicing voodoo. But it will be a less appealing option. Mainline baptists will be seen the way snake handlers are now. And it will become even less fun to be in Kansas.
Children will continue to be dissatisfied with the choices of their parents. Fundamentalists will continue to be dissatisfied with fundamentalism. And some number of them will abandon it for some more liberal form of their religion, thus shoring up the numbers of the liberal sects who will continue to lose numbers to atheism and eventually to apatheism.
Most of the next two centuries of western christianity will be dominated by the pasty americanized theology of the megachurches. Nonthreatening, borderline secular, feelgood sermons by Joel Osteen types combined with walmarty shopping convenience. Eventually the mall churches will drop Jesus altogether and become simply malls.
The future battle, the last real battle of this war, will be against the most dogmatic fundamentalist faith of them all. The mother church is resilient, and she will outlive most of her children. The catholic church, who held the exclusive copyright on christianity for over a thousand years, and forced catholic belief on countless people during that time, is still doing most of the work of keeping people believing in this sh*t (I don't just mean catholicism. I mean the logical presuppositions which allow anyone to accept any form of christianity). The main reason why people still believe in the christian god is the influence of the catholic church. And we are already seeing them lose their influence.
They will continue to issue edicts as they have always done, and increasingly people will ignore them. They will continue to try to convince people life was better in the 1300s, and increasingly people will not believe them. When the vatican finally shuts their doors, some four hundred or so years after the fall of the mall churches, it will be with a wimper, and hardly anyone will notice. And when the last stone of St. Peter's collapses, the last thing keeping people believing will be gone.
FO
Member
Awesome post Nox, I really hope you are right.
There seems to be a fracture in Europe, between the virtuous Lutheran countries of the north and the Catholic Piigs (eh! ^_^) of the south.
The same disparity can be seen in the percentage of religious people, northern countries being overall less religious and southern countries being more religious.
I wonder if Lutheran denominations are weaker?
Surely the Catholic Church started ahead and has a lot more experience about retaining its sway, but I wonder if there something else inherent to the doctrine that makes Lutheran denominations easier to leave.
Still, in Italy it is very difficult to be sheltered and yet Catholicism is still going strong, even if most Catholics I know don't recognize the Church of Rome. Sorta.
And what about Muslims?
In many (poor, shitty) countries Muslim resist secularization.
The only relevant Muslim country is Saudi Arabia, and as long as they have oil it seems that they are going to be very solid.
Thank you FO. I hope so too (of course I don't exactly know any of this stuff as data from the future is hard to access, but if it's any comfort, there is a very high probability that I am right).
"The same disparity can be seen in the percentage of religious people, northern countries being overall less religious and southern countries being more religious."
Which is oddly similar to how it breaks down in the U.S.
"I wonder if there something else inherent to the doctrine that makes Lutheran denominations easier to leave."
Probably. Maybe inherent to the denomination itself more than inherent to the doctrine. Any denomination of protestant christianity has the built in precedent that you can leave and start your own church. The lineage of protestant churches is through a series of schisms and disagreements. Their journey is marked at every stage by the denouncement of their predecessors. If you disagree with the pope, it may be that you are right and he is wrong (which is of course the complete opposite of what the catholic church teaches).
And it has that precedent because of the protests of Martin Luther. Luther's precedent applies to all protestant churches. Particularly the lutheran church(es) where he is particularly revered. Though it's not so much that he's particularly revered as that he's their origin story. His story is told more, and his name is more seared into the collective consciousness of lutherans. In all protestant churches (though not all know about or talk about their genealogy) Luther is a part of their history. In lutheranism he is the guy who started your church.
The most obvious lesson for anyone to take from the story of Martin Luther is that you can make your own god. If you can start your own church, why stay in a church you don't like.
Skipping forward a few years we can now see a couple thousand protestant denominations whose founders have followed this lesson and made their own god. The branch of christianity descended from Luther has seen rapid and constant mutation in all directions. It is here where we find what is known as christian fundamentalism as well as all the more lovey fluffy variations of christianity (it is also the ancestor to deism and modern atheism). Don't like the church you're in, find a different one. Can't find a church that will allow what you want allowed or forbid what you want forbidden or teach the version of Jesus you think is the right one, just start your own church. Start your own new version of Jesus. If the highest christian authority is your own personal interpretation of scripture then maybe your pastor is misguided.
The weird part is, probably less than half of that is conscious dishonesty. In the absence of a corporeal god showing up to give directions, believers have learned to identify that still soft voice in your subconscious as the voice of god. A person's god usually desires what that person desires. But people have different desires, and their voices of god desire different things.
It is only a matter of time until Calvin disagrees with Luther. If the god one man believes in disagrees with the god another man believes in, then by protestant logic they are both right and each one should form his own church (where they preach that their version of god is the one true god and the other is false). This is also why we see so much scotsmanry in christianity. Some of it is from a desire to avoid blaming the church for the actions of the church (or blaming god), but in a lot of these cases there is an already existing belief that the christians in those other churches aren't really christians anyway.
Catholics have preserved their identity more successfully than lutherans or any of their protestant spinoffs. Unsurprising as the church of today is descended from those who didn't leave the church. The catholic church has always discouraged (with force whenever possible) catholics from straying. And now catholics have the precedent that you stay in the church. Whether you like it or not, you stay in the f*cking church.
I don't think this precedent will ever quite be overturned (large numbers of people are leaving the church right now, but those numbers are not large next to how many catholics there are), but catholics will find it increasingly inconvenient to actually live like a catholic. The church will not willingly make concessions to secularization. Just as it did with Vatican II, it will make all it's greatest concessions to keeping people in the church. Every doctrine of catholicism is secondary to keeping people in the church, and any doctrine which threatens this enough will be quietly uncanonized. Within 200 years the official catholic position will be that they never said there was anything wrong with gay sex or abortion (and that's just something atheists made up to discredit them) (and catholics already have a procedure in place for changing their religion if they need to, which at least in theory should make them more suited to adapt to a changing market than their lutheran cousins). They will throw out the virgin birth and the magic cookie and ordain female cardinals before they'll let the last catholics walk out the door.
And for a time, they will successfully keep some people in the church. In doing this they will be forced to make it easier to be a catholic. And in making it easier to be a catholic, they will be forced to change what catholicism is. They will change beliefs. They will lessen restrictions. They will allow things they currently condemn. They will beg people to come to mass. In their final days they'll be handing out indulgences like f*cking restaurant flyers.
In time, catholics in all parts of the world will behave the way most catholics in Europe and the U.S do now. By which I mean they will call themselves catholic, some of them will baptize their children, they'll go to mass on christmas and easter, and in their day to day lives, they won't really give a f*ck about anything the church says.
For the current and upcoming leadership of the catholic church, there are basically two paths going forward. They can modernize, or they can ancientize. The path they must choose leads to a watered down catholic faith, and a church that eventually becomes completely irrelevant. And here's the beautiful part. The only other choice available to them, is to become irrelevant even faster.
Counting the nones and agnostics, the religious category which includes atheists has over a billion people now. If you count all christians as one group, secular/nonreligious/atheist/agnostic is the third largest religious population on Earth.
We didn't get those numbers mostly through our own victory. We didn't get them by winning a great war or winning any one particular debate or outbreeding the mormons and catholics. We had those numbers handed to us by default because the churches sh*t their own bed. They designed religions unsuited for the modern world, and they became obsolete. The reason the atheist community now exists is because the believers within those religions found those religions unbelievable.
This will keep happening. And this is secularism's secret weapon.
The religious institutions we are trying to oppose are already destroying themselves.
"And what about Muslims?"
I think what you said at the beginning of this thread applies to islam. But it's a little harder to see how that's going to go down.
I don't really know enough about islam to make such confident predictions for them. And what I do know does not point clearly to any one outcome.
This gets back to something we were talking about on the "Hey Qu'ran burners" thread. You asked me a question there about five months ago. I hinted at an answer and then sort of dropped off the thread.
I am really sorry about that FO. It was inconsiderate of me, and I wasn't intending to do that. As time went on, I should have said something rather than sitting in silence and as far as you could reasonably tell, just ignoring your question (which was not what I was trying to do).
I've done this to a few people around here. Always unintentionally. Just couldn't find a good enough way to make my intended point. And then other sh*t came up, and to be honest, I kind of let it. I owe a few apologies for this sort of thing (probably most of all to JonJon if he's still around) (oh and Elemenope, I did see this, and I will have a response for you as soon as I can give it a proper response).
That's sort of what happened this time. I started writing out my answer and ran into the problem that I didn't really know what the answer was. There were many factors I could point out, pointing in many different directions. But no clear answer. No preponderance of evidence. Just static. I was intending to come back when I had something clearer.
That hasn't happened yet. I'm still nowhere close to having this islam situation completely figured out. Every available action still has an unacceptable cost. But inaction has greater risks than action. We can't risk letting ourselves be paralyzed by a lack of good options.
So here's what I can tell you (and it's gonna be a little disjointed and rambly even by my standards):
Islam is having its greatest clash with modernity right now!
Muslims are the big field test for the secularization of an insular society. We are just beginning to find out what will happen to islamic society when the tenets of islam are called into question.
All the long term predictions I've made here for christianity will be partially validated or mostly invalidated (in the somewhat short term) by what happens with islam. Their ancient traditions are in fierce competition with worldly temptations. And in some ways they are losing. Islam is resisting secularization. And to a degree, islam is still being secularized.
There is a precedent we can examine. No guarantee it turns out exactly the same (and many factors are different this time), but there is a previous case study that can give us some idea of what happens when a religion resists secularization while its adherents are exposed to the benefits of secularization.
It's not like christianity ever set out to get enlightened. It was dragged into modernity, kicking and whining at every f*cking step.
The christian churches had their greatest clashes with modernity over three hundred years ago. There are strong parallels between what happened with christianity after the Renaissance (classical christianity did not survive the Renaissance, and it could not have survived the the 20th Century) and what is happening with islam right now. That war ended with christians forcing their churches to modernize (see above). This one has the potential outcome of muslims forcing their churches to modernize.
The basic core of fundamentalist christianity is an effort to cling to the beliefs that more liberal (or "mainstream") christian churches used to believe before they had to get rid of those beliefs to make their belief systems believable to a more modern audience. Vorjack recently described it as a rejection of modernity. It is that, but not directly, and that's not how fundamentalists would describe it themselves. It is a rejection of being told not to believe things they were previously told to believe. From their perspective those other churches have abandoned the word of god. Fundamentalists are in disagreement with mainstream christianity only because they still believe the sh*t mainstream christians believed and propagated for hundreds of years.
Something very similar to this happens within islam, and the result is what we now call fundamentalist islam.
Fundamentalist christians will attempt to shelter their children from outside influence. Some portion of their children will accept their parent's ideas and will teach their children in the same way, thus keeping fundamentalist christianity in existence. Some portion of their children will reject their parent's ideas and seek some different way, thus creating a challenge to fundamentalist christianity in a christian space.
Fundamentalist muslims will attempt to shelter their children from outside influence. Some portion of their children will accept their parent's ideas and will teach their children in the same way, thus keeping fundamentalist islam in existence. Some portion of their children will reject their parent's ideas and seek some different way, thus creating a challenge to fundamentalist islam in an islamic space.
In both of these scenarios, keeping one's children unaware of their options will be a lot f*cking harder in the digital age than it was in the 1800s.
Faith is not genetic, and people choosing fundamentalism now does not necessarily mean their descendants will continue to choose it in the future (everyone here is descended from religious fanatics). It is because of this that I believe secularization will probably win in both scenarios.
There are some key differences. And islam has some defense mechanisms which make it more resistant to change than christianity.
So far, islam has had to give up less ground than christianity, consequently the gap between fundamentalist islam and moderate islam is now much narrower than the gap between fundamentalist christianity and moderate christianity.
In many islamic countries, the religious leaders still have real power. Not just the power to influence legislators and issue orders to whoever feels like following them. The power to directly write laws and kill anyone who doesn't follow their orders. People vocally criticizing islam is strongly discouraged in the places where it is most needed.
And islam shuns apostates. In christianity, if someone leaves the faith, you are supposed to go talk to them, reach out to them and bring them back into the fold. In islam talking to someone who has left the faith is exactly what you are not supposed to do. Even if you don't take the Qu'ran literally and kill them, it's still a pretty strict rule that you are not supposed to talk to ex-muslims. And if you do end up talking to one, the book has already told you to expect them to lie.
So muslims being directly exposed to reasons to disbelieve islam (a very different thing from insults to islam) is something that is going to happen less than christians being directly exposed to reasons to disbelieve christianity. And there are objectively fewer reasons to disbelieve islam than to disbelieve christianity anyway.
The bible is proved untrue by things everybody knows (hence all the efforts to reinterpret it). The Qu'ran does not have this weakness. The bible is consistent with the observations of cavemen. The Qu'ran is at least consistent with the observations of Aristotle (probably because Muhammed straight plagiarized Aristotle), which means it is consistent with common sensory data. If you've kept up on the last thousand years of scientific advancement, you could find many wrong statements in the Qu'ran. But nothing screamingly obviously wrong. Nothing that just flat out disagrees with your own five senses and basic human reason the way so many things in the bible do.
On top of this, many islamic countries have no educational system or an educational system based entirely on islam. In the latter, science classes (if they exist) are consciously designed not to teach anything which contradicts the Qu'ran. The only types of error that would be obvious to someone who only knows one book are conflict with sensory data and internal contradictions within the text. The Qu'ran being written by one person gives it a considerable advantage in lacking internal contradictions. Believers in the Qu'ran being sequestered from science keeps it consistent with sensory data.
Christianity makes certain claims which science has shown to be untrue. A lot of the church's worst atrocities (not just the parts where they murdered millions of people, I also mean most christian apologetics, the entire creationist movement, and the catholic church's index of prohibited books) were intended to slow or direct the growth of human knowledge in order to keep this from happening any more than they could avoid. There's some of this with islam (salt and fresh water, that sort of thing). But with islam it's not that specific tenets are wrong so much as that the entire islamic worldview is woefully out of date.
This is a point that muslims need to be confronted with. And it is a point that needs to be made very delicately. And I can't think of any way to make the point as delicately as it needs to be made (see anything Sam Harris has ever said about islam for an example of what is not helpful).
The thing is, I don't think you can entirely separate religious islam from political islam. Which means you can't really look at what's going to happen with islam without looking at what's happening in the middle east. And that place is being massively affected by religion while simultaneously being massively affected by a lot of things that have nothing to do with religion.
One of the main reasons secularization can not currently get a foothold in islamic society is that a lot of those islamic societies are in islamic theocracies. In nations where islamic clerics wield state power the public will not be widely exposed to anything which could challenge islam. One of the main reasons theocracy is such a popular form of government in the islamic world is because various western powers have propped up theocracies and helped them eliminate the moderates (fundamentalists anywhere are small minded, as a rule they will let you plunder their country if you give them some guns and let them play leader).
A lot of islamic countries are currently in the middle of having their infrastructure destroyed. For the foreseeable future, this can only help the fundamentalists over there.
But it's not just the fundamentalists on their end I'm worried about. Where I live palinists are more of a problem than mahomeddans. A lot of my day to day slog involves trying to convince people that my country's current series of wars in the middle east are unjust unprovoked invasions based on misinformation, or that muslims are not all evil people bent on the destruction of Israel and America, or that muslims should be able to build a mosque without being protested, or that even though our president probably isn't a muslim it really shouldn't f*cking matter if he is, or that the atrocities in Gaza are a real thing that's actually happening and should be opposed, or that maybe we shouldn't be so eager to jump into a war with Iran, or that torturing people is neither an okay thing for civilized humans to do or a particularly good way to get useful information.
So there are certain things that I think someone needs to say, that I personally am very, very hesitant to say in the current climate (and not for the reasons people are usually afraid of pissing off muslims). I am afraid, literally afraid, of giving any philosophical shelter to the actions of my nation's government.
Narratives which paint muslims as savages make it easier for people to accept what is being done to muslims. And some f*cked up things are being done to muslims. The solution isn't a hard rule against insulting muslims since we're talking about people who would have a persecution complex in the best of circumstances. Still, in many real ways, muslims are being persecuted right now. Criticisms of islam should be sensitive to that (and the most useful ones will bring muslims face to face with reasons to doubt the tenets of islam, not just reasons to have hurt feelings).
Anything that could come across as calling muslims barbaric runs into the problems of hurting islamic feelings (with the risk of triggering avoidable violence over there) and encouraging racists and neoconservatives (with the risk of triggering avoidable violence over here). And a lot of the criticism of islam that needs to be made is that it makes people f*cking barbaric. The important goal of humanizing muslims is at odds with the important goal of pointing out how much their own religion dehumanizes them.
To think we should give islam a pass or ever censor ourselves to avoid insulting any religion (particularly one that is programmed to use acting insulted as a silencing tactic), is exactly the wrong kind of thinking. But anti-muslim bigotry is a real thing. And any criticism (any criticism, even completely legitimate and necessary criticism, this is the f*cking problem) of islam risks furthering the anti-muslim bigotry that allows people in the U.S. to approve of our abuses in the middle east (and makes up most of the platform of one of our "two" political parties).
In the broader context of living in a culture where the (sometimes accurate, often overblown) portrayal of islamic violence (or the general meme of muslims as evil people) plays into the hands of powerful factions with less than enlightened reasons for wanting to intervene in the middle east, I'm personally kind of uncomfortable with portraying islam as the barbaric, reactionary faith it often is.
So no, I definitely wouldn't ever use the Qu'ran as a doorstop. That is not what I would call productive blasphemy. I'd neither advise you to nor advise you not to. But I would say the only people who will notice such a gesture will be muslims passing by your door. There will be no clear specific criticism of islam. It seems like for the muslim viewer it will simply fit in with an overall pattern of muslims being disrespected in general society.
If you have a door you need held open, it could work. If you get the right printing it's a fairly large book. I think the best thing to do with the Qu'ran is use it as a piece of evidence that the Qu'ran is not the special perfect book some people think it is. Use the Qu'ran to show muslims where the Qu'ran is wrong. Inspire them to burn it. That is productive blasphemy.
Insularity is their root problem. They already feel like the world is against them. They already feel they are under attack. They often are under attack. On balance, muslims have a lot of legitimate reasons to feel like the world is treating them unfairly. They have a lot of reason to feel that they are being disrespected and dehumanized. They are people who would have a persecution complex under the best circumstances. And as it happens a lot of them are being persecuted right now. Whatever messages we send them will exist in the same space as the hostility they are already experiencing. And those messages will be taken in that context.
That is not to say straight shock value can't have any value. It can. Even blasphemy without criticism can be valuable (can be valuable, can not be our entire f*cking plan). Especially that which clearly sends the message 'get used to the fact that we will not censor ourselves for you'. Anything that cracks the shell may be helping. In some way even this sh*tty film may have some positive effect (still comes off as petty and still counterproductive overall). There is an inherent positive effect to breaking taboos (particularly in taboo based cultures).
Simply disrespecting symbols can be have some benefit. Particularly in cases where someone finds the idea of someone not following their rules as inconceivable. Much of the problem is that islam is mostly practiced in a space that islam has not had to share. It is accustomed to blasphemy laws, mandatory respect, forbidden words and forbidden images. Other gods are the enemies of allah (and no god is not on the table any time soon), and allah owns everything (and as the Qu'ran mentions a few times, allah doesn't share anything).
Gods get their power from people believing in them. Anything that knocks the abrahamic god down a bit has an inherent positive effect. Anything that says allah is not great, or the Qu'ran is just a book (and not a great book), or that islam needs to learn to share the world, has an inherent positive effect.
One thing can have both positive and negative effects.
And something which says 'f*ck muslims' will come bundled with negative effects. Those negative effects should be taken into account in deciding how we engage islam. I'm not saying insults shouldn't be used. But the fact that they will need to be used is a problem because of other factors.
Anything that makes muslims feel disrespected is going reinforce the edifice of islam. It might have positive effects. It might even have some effects in the direction of weakening islam. It will also have the effect of reinforcing islam. I think this is something we should be trying to avoid.
Being offended is islam's whole schtick. In western media they're mostly known for blowing things up. But if we didn't have our vast propaganda machine dedicated to portraying muslims as scary savages, they would be mostly known for being needlessly offended by everything.
If you leave out the oil, and leave out Israel, and leave out the effects of western imperialism, and just look at what islam basically is on its own terms, islam is mormonism.
The extreme muslims are just ultraconservatives. Their particular flavor of rhetoric may be Qu'ran based, but what they are saying is the same sh*t the ultraconservatives are saying in every society.
Psicop was half right. A lot of these people (and keeping in mind the 'they' here is a much more diverse group than he gave them credit for, including some unknown number who go along with their cultural trends out of necessity, but would love to walk away from the whole thing) are not looking for free speech in any meaningful sense. If given free speech the first thing they'll use it for is probably to say the same stuff that has already been drilled into their heads their entire lives. They have internalized the tool of their oppression. But that is the first generation. They will get over that.
You were right, but your idea won't really take off within the first couple generations. It will still start to catch on once given the chance. People in islamic countries are starting to recognize they can criticize their political leaders. This is a key part of the process which will lead to them criticizing religious leaders.
When more muslims have the choice to walk away more will.
When more muslims get internet access they will start meeting more atheists.
Also (and this is going to sound silly, but it's a serious point) when the general population of islamic countries starts to get access to porn, it is going to break their bubble in ways you or I never could.
"Also, the overwhelming majority of the Muslim I know (just like the Christians) are very nice people. And according to these, uh, "moderates", they DO speak against the crazies, but their appeals don't make much audience."
Their complaint that the existence of moderate islam is completely ignored by the media has some basis. Moderate islam exists and is completely ignored by the media. In most of american media and a lot of european media "muslim" is treated as synonymous with "terrorist".
A lot of what western media portrays as religiously based, specifically islamic rage, is anger at the actions of western governments. But mentioning this would be in violation of our own taboos.
It is not as violent of a religion as often portrayed (though to be clear, islam as a nonviolent religion is a historical oddity). A lot of that portrayal is from media outlets with a bias for promoting America's war of the week. And nearly all of it from media outlets with a bias for sensationalism.
While it is not exactly the violent aggressive religion it is often seen as, it is still an insular, repressive religion. That does not get nearly as much general attention. Partially because narratives of scary brown people tie in so well with other narratives that dominate our media. Partially because there's not really any way to criticize religious insularity in the U.S. without offending insular viewers on this side.
From the perspective of a moderate muslim, they do criticize the crazy ones. They are not lying about that. But what do they criticize them for? Having the wrong god? Having the wrong understanding of the Qu'ran? How is that actually different from what the crazy ones criticize them for? How will that help? As long as that book is seen as god's mandate it will be corrupting human thought.
Moderates do enable fundamentalists. Most moderates would see that as a ludicrous statement. Not just from self deception. From where they're standing there would be no reason to believe it. They devote quite a bit of effort to opposing these extremists.
Every time the extremists make embarrassing headlines, the moderates are there to remind us that this isn't really what islam is (even though it kind of is).
From a moderate perspective, they are the ones trying to improve islam. They are declaring at every opportunity 'we are not all like that'. And many of them are well mannered, basically nice people.
And these well mannered basically nice people are propagating belief in the inerrancy of the Qu'ran, a book which explicitly tells all muslims to do all the worst things fundamentalist muslims do. Moderates add legitimacy to the institution which causes all this sh*t in the first place. That is what gives extremists their power.
So maybe the situation is just a little more complicated than can accurately be summed up as 'moderates enable fundamentalists'. But there is still a definite mechanism in play where moderates totally do enable fundamentalists.
Brian K
Member
Nox...that was a fantastic summary of many of the issues. Thanks for the thought put into this.
An interesting blog I might recommend, posted by a young English student, is Back to the Locus.
Ben, being English, is more epxosed to the more radical, noxious side of Islam (some of the people brought into speak at PUBLIC universities believe and promulgate horrifc things!) but his thinking parallels SOME of your thinking (he is less secular than you or I).
Elemenope
Moderator
(oh and Elemenope, I did see this, and I will have a response for you as soon as I can give it a proper response).
Oh, hey. Cool. I'd forgotten about that thread. Yeah, I'd enjoy a response, if only because those points seem to be ones that atheist communities, at least in my experience, desperately avoid confronting. Rhetoric is all fun and games, but words mean things.
I literally haven't visited in... It feels like a year. I don't actually know how long it was. And I check for the first time in forever, and here's Nox talking to me! It feels like a cosmic coincidence. :P
No apology necessary-- I haven't been around either.
Maybe I'll stop by a little more than once a year.
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