{"id":30562,"date":"2015-06-11T06:14:16","date_gmt":"2015-06-11T10:14:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=30562"},"modified":"2015-06-11T06:14:16","modified_gmt":"2015-06-11T10:14:16","slug":"neither-side-will-be-happy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2015\/06\/neither-side-will-be-happy.html","title":{"rendered":"Neither Side Will Be Happy"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-30563\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2015\/06\/MAD-cartoon-wont-make-either-side-happy.jpg\" alt=\"MAD cartoon won't make either side happy\" width=\"463\" height=\"361\"><\/p>\n<p>Reality often challenges our assumptions. Sometimes evidence strongly favors one conclusion over another \u2013 there is no need to be a relativist. But\u00a0just as often, we pigeonhole and stereotype when\u00a0people and things are much more complex. I\u2019ve been delighted to see some great instances of members of groups objecting when the group that they are a part of caricatures others \u2013 for instance, two prominent atheists have\u00a0challenged the way <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/quranalyzeit\/2015\/04\/03\/non-believers-and-the-quran-an-atheist-examines-a-stupid-meme-kile-jones\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">Muslims<\/a> and Christians are depicted in certain popular atheist memes. And <a href=\"https:\/\/newhumanist.org.uk\/articles\/4889\/can-you-be-a-scientist-and-have-religious-faith\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">an atheist scientist made progress in understanding his religious colleagues<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Let reality in all its complexities challenge your assumptions, your biases, your prejudices, and your caricatures.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reality often challenges our assumptions. Sometimes evidence strongly favors one conclusion over another \u2013 there is no need to be a relativist. But\u00a0just as often, we pigeonhole and stereotype when\u00a0people and things are much more complex. I\u2019ve been delighted to see some great instances of members of groups objecting when the group that they are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":30563,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127,131,149],"tags":[753,872,1597,1625,1848,4871,6833,7815,9447],"class_list":["post-30562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atheism-religion","category-christianity-religion","category-islam-religion","tag-archaeology","tag-atheists","tag-caricatures","tag-cartoon","tag-christians","tag-humor","tag-mad-tv","tag-muslims","tag-prejudice"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Neither Side Will Be Happy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Reality often challenges our assumptions. Sometimes evidence strongly favors one conclusion over another - there is no need to be a relativist. But\u00a0just\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2015\/06\/neither-side-will-be-happy.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Neither Side Will Be Happy\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Reality often challenges our assumptions. Sometimes evidence strongly favors one conclusion over another - there is no need to be a relativist. But\u00a0just\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2015\/06\/neither-side-will-be-happy.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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