Religion is about control, that seems to be the nutshell here. — Darkneos

:clap: Absolutely! and often it's about malicious and evil control. I don't blame any god for that as
1. There is no evidence that they exist and 2. If they do exist, they, or it, seems to have no ability to control the bad behaviour of horrible theists such as Kent Hovind and Ken Ham and sooooooo many others, in those 'in the name of god' factories, who have duped their followers out of millions and became rich themselves.

That’s kinda ignorant of how religious texts are actually used by people. They make references to it all the time, the issue though is that every group thinks they’re the one that has got it right about what it says. The interpretation AND the text are important. The difference here is that atheists IMO have broken free of the need to follow it.

Interpretation necessarily involves imposing some sense of wisdom and logic upon the text in order to obtain palatable results. Do you not impose your wisdom and logic when describing your ethical conclusions? Can't you manipulate whatever secular means you use in determining your ethical conclusions to justify whatever result you want? It's not like religion has a monopoly on justifying bad acts. — Hanover

Wrong. Religion tends to have a monopoly on justifying bad actions. It’s kinda where that quote “religion can make good people do bad things” comes from. It’s also why there’s no real arguing with them because when your ethics are divinely inspired you can’t logic it. Why do you think they default to “god works in mysterious ways”. The majority of negative events in human history can be traced back to religion. The current trend of homophobia for one, nazi Germany, etc.

I don’t manipulate secular means. I don’t have the heart to contradict and lie like religious people tend to do.

You really do seem to be ignorant about human history.

None of this is the fault of atheists. — Darkneos

Of course not, why suggest it? It is a very common reaction, in my experience, when someone attacks one's way of life, to become defensive and reactive. You can see it happening in this thread, and a glance at history will yield many examples. It's not a matter of blaming atheists, but of a misdirected argument that leads to an unnecessary conflict. It is perfectly possible to be a Christian atheist.

. "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
— Ciceronianus

Notice here that "truth" is represented as a way of life, a way of being, instead of as fact . — Metaphysician Undercover

If that's so, there would be no need to make reference to "the way" or "the life." They become mere surplusage as we lawyers would say; irrelevant and unnecessary. It would seem kinder to the author to assume he wasn't claiming that Jesus said "I am the truth, the truth and the truth" but drew a distinction between "the truth" and "the way" and "the life." Regardless, though, it's clear that Jesus is portrayed as claiming he alone is the way, the truth and the life. I don't think it's possible to reasonably construe these statements otherwise, so I don't believe this is the result of a literal, fundamentalist interpretation which can be considered a reaction to "atheist dogma." It isn't necessary to be an atheist to maintain that such statements are the foundation for the intolerance which has characterized Christianity during the 20 centuries of its existence (which is also characteristic of other religions which make claim to being the one true faith).

It’s also not a good mark on religion when historically people have been horribly punished for going against it. Like it wasn’t even an option to pick anything else.

Even today it’s sort of like that. Try running for US president while being an atheist. In fact it was only recently that being atheist was not considered some moral failing or black mark on a person.

Like OP just seems woefully ignorant, same with a lot of others in this thread, about what religion is and has been historically. You can’t blame atheism for what religion does. Religion wants control, plain and simple. And it has punished those who want other options.

Like…my existence would not have been an option solely due to religion.

None of this is the fault of atheists.
— Darkneos

Of course not, why suggest it? — unenlightened

How atheist dogma created religious fundamentalism. — unenlightened

Indeed, why suggest it unenlightened?

Of course not, why suggest it? It is a very common reaction, in my experience, when someone attacks one's way of life, to become defensive and reactive. You can see it happening in this thread, and a glance at history will yield many examples. It's not a matter of blaming atheists, but of a misdirected argument that leads to an unnecessary conflict. It is perfectly possible to be a Christian atheist. — unenlightened

Uhh you suggested it.

Also Christian atheist has to be the most laughable example of how nonsensical religion can be.

No one is being defensive and reactive, though that seems to have been your goal. IMO atheism hasn’t really done anything but exist. So there really was no need to include it, but you did because you knew what it would do.

It was fairly obvious.

It seems fairly obvious to me why.

Interpretation necessarily involves imposing some sense of wisdom and logic upon the text in order to obtain palatable results.

Why interpret the text with a goal of palatable results? Seeking palatable results sounds to me like a recipe for appeals to consequence.

this thread was just bait from the looks of it, even the op’s wording seems to suggest it

So many people rely on duped followers for the status, power and wealth they have been able to amass.
Becoming a religious authority is one way to become very rich and very powerful and once you have established your 'holy', 'sacred' and downright pernicious 'god buildings and structure,' they can become an 'empire' that lasts at least a thousand years, just like the organisation that inherited the legacy of the Roman empire, ie, Vatican City, in, no surprise, Rome!
The rise of theosophist horrors such as scientology, demonstrate how the system works, from inception to rich and powerful.
Yes, they will (or at least would like to) kill/destroy anyone who they think threatens their wealth, power and position. Religion is not the only such pernicious structure but it's certainly in the top 5 of the most dangerous threats to human freedom and human progress imo.

I don’t know, I think religion is a special breed compared to others.

It makes a difference when you divinely chosen as opposed to elected

The majority of negative events in human history can be traced back to religion. The current trend of homophobia for one, nazi Germany, etc. — Darkneos

You really do seem to be ignorant about human history. — Darkneos

The Nazis didn't murder the Jews because of religious differences. A Jew who disclaimed his Judaism was no safer than a devout one.

Nazi Germany is a good example of a war that was not about religion. It was about ethnicity.

Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Un, Putin, all devotly religious folks I suppose, trying to impose their brand of religion on the masses. I'll have to read up on that. I wasn't aware of that.

Alexander the butcher, Julius Caesar the butcher, Napoleon the butcher, and more modern butchers such as Stalin. Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, and the current wannabee butchers such as Trump, Putin et al, have and still do employ religion, to move towards their narcissistic, autocratic, totalitarian wet dreams but not exclusively.

I know you probably will easily see through such as:

I'll have to read up on that. I wasn't aware of that. — Hanover

most of those were religious though, trump too (or at least uses it well)

The Nazis didn't murder the Jews because of religious differences. A Jew who disclaimed his Judaism was no safer than a devout one.

Nazi Germany is a good example of a war that was not about religion. It was about ethnicity.

Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Un, Putin, all devotly religious folks I suppose, trying to impose their brand of religion on the masses. I'll have to read up on that. I wasn't aware of that. — Hanover

Factually incorrect. Nazi ideology was religiously motivated, as fascism tends to do. Also I said most not all.

Also you don’t have to believe the ideology just weaponize it, trump is an example of this. They invoke religious language with their message. Stalin did it too, though he was kicked out of the orthodoxy for stealing for the church.

Like I said before, folks here seem ignorant of how this works in real life.

If you're coming at this thread as if it's a wholesale attack on atheism / defence of religion and therefore you have to take a side, you're demonstrating a problem rather than addressing one.

Factually incorrect. Nazi ideology was religiously motivated, as fascism tends to do — Darkneos

This is spectacularly ignorant. Up your game.

Is it something like "the importance of truth is not at issue" (which I agree with)? — Ludwig V

Yes! Not an abandonment of truth or anything like that, only a difference in emphasis. One can believe, for instance, that Jesus did not rise from the dead, and yet believe that the Christian way of life is a good way of life regardless, and feel a connection to it through the stories and community.

The power of the stories to enhance people's lives and give them meaning -- that's what's important. And upon finding out they are somewhat fantastical stories that doesn't mean one has to put down what is good in them.

With ancient texts I'd say that this is close to a kind of truth. Not the kind of truth we mean when talking about the fact/value distinction, or the kind of truth we mean when talking about propositions -- but this more fuzzy notion of truth that dithers facts with values.

But surely it's obvious that what is true - whether a particular proposition is true or not and even which propositions are capable of truth or falsity - is often at issue?

Well, yes.

And truth is still important.

There's just more to these texts than a literal grouping of facts. They are products of the human imagination and will, and so speak to those parts of us.

It seems to me that the distinction between religion and science is usually over-simplified. Religion often includes claims that are supposed to be facts about the world which provides what is most important to it - an account of the world that provides purpose and meaning - I prefer structure - to life. Science includes ideas about what is valuable, primarily truth, of course, but a great deal about how to live life, what is worth pursuing and how it is to be pursued (which, of course, is the stock in trade of religion). Incidentally, how far modern capitalism is an outcome of science is unclear to me, but I would like to think that alternative outcomes of the primacy of science are available. — Ludwig V

I agree that the distinction between religion and science is usually over-simplified. There are overlapping concerns of both human practices. As science has become more predominant (I don't know about primacy, but the church certainly doesn't have the primacy it once did either) so religion has changed. The literal truth of the scriptures is often very important to people, and that literal truth cannot be preserved in the face of a scientific worldview.

But for some that literal truth is entirely missing the point.

For that viewpoint I think I can see what @unenlightened is getting at. Atheists have a dogma, and that dogma is that scripture must be interpreted in accord with scientific truth.

But surely that's false.

I'll also note that with the preponderance of biblical literalists who are theists there's something understandable in taking this tactic. There are dogmatists who are theists, too. The version of Un's story which is more sympathetic to the atheist points out that this dogmatism was transferred from the theistic literalists to the atheistic literalists, which is often the case.

But anything that provides a basis for a way of life and justifies certain practices and is available to large numbers of people, is going to find lots of different kinds of people amongst its followers. So whatever was originally proposed or recommended is going to find different tendencies developing. So all religions have fundamentalist tendencies, liberal tendencies, intellectual tendencies, practical tendencies, missionary tendencies, quietist tendencies, and on and on. That includes the way(s) of life that exist around science. So I'm inclined to see dogmatic atheism as a tendency within the practice of science which is bound to develop.

I find grand narratives like the conflict between religion and science very difficult. They tend to evaporate when looked at too closely.

I agree that the grand narratives evaporate upon close inspection. It's too big to make anything but a hasty generalization

I like your notion of tendencies. I'm not sure that I'd put dogmatic atheism with science -- usually my feelings on dogmatic atheism is that it's anti-scientific. But the notion of tendencies is really helpful, I think, in this conversation in particular between all of us. Dogmatism as a tendency that spans the human spectrum means that neither theist nor atheist are somehow exempt from that tendency. Under this rather idealistic model it's the theist that should be most concerned about theistic dogmatism, and the atheist that should be most concerned about atheistic dogmatism.

Alain Badiou wrote an interesting study of St. Paul, presenting him as a contemporary in terms of the dynamic where values are lost or established. Badiou does not view this as connected to the religious content itself but how it breaks with both Greek and Jewish traditions. From the introduction:

For our own part, what we shall focus on in Paul's work is a singular connection, which it is formally possible to disjoin from the fable and of which Paul is, strictly speaking, the inventor: the connection that establishes a passage between a proposition concerning the subject and an interrogation concerning the law. Let us say that, for Paul, it is a matter of investigating which law is capable of structuring a subject devoid of all identity and suspended to an event whose only “proof” lies precisely in its having been declared by a subject.

What is essential for us is that this paradoxical connection between a subject without identity and a law without support provides the foundation for the possibility of a universal teaching within history itself. Paul's unprecedented gesture consists in subtracting truth from the communitarian grasp, be it that of a people, a city, an empire, a territory, or a social class. What is true (or just; they are the same in this case) cannot be reduced to any objective aggregate, either by its cause or by its destination. — Alain Badiou, SAINT PAUL, The Foundation of Universalism

The tension between a self that decides what is true and institutions that constrain it is never completely released and becomes a catalyst for change at different moments. In the Reformation, for example, the primacy of divine judgement in each personal soul freaked out Luther when his followers saw that as a green light to topple their rulers. For the Americans who appealed to the equality of all men as creatures made by God, a universal principle could restrain the necessity for Hobbe's Monarch.

From Badiou's perspective, 'scientific truths' are a restraint upon valuation recognized as personally meaningful but that this process takes place in the larger context of the struggle for this ground supporting the universal and forces that would dismantle it. Badiou points to right-wing identitarians who want to depose the equality for all with the privilege of being a certain people.

In the matter of White Christian Evangelists, the abandonment of judging for oneself is the bridesmaid of the primacy of previous levels of social rank.

:up:

In the interminable litany of nastiness perpetrated by humans, most examples will be of religious people and religious groups simply because most people are assumed to have been religious for most of history. Atheists have done their worst, but haven't had long enough as an avowed group to remotely match the religionists.

It is entirely possible that religion makes folks horribler, and atheists are a nicer bunch of people just because of their atheism. But what I want to talk about is the phenomenon of literalism in particularly Christianity and Islam, but also Hinduism and even Buddhism, that seems to have begun in the 18th Century and and reaches something of an extreme in Modern US with stuff like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Statement_on_Biblical_Inerrancy

This to my mind is mad, ridiculous, politically motivated and dangerous, and a perversion of the Christian tradition. (Add extra negative epithets to taste.) I think it is clear that it is reactionary, and specifically reacting against science, particularly evolution. But also the deep time of geology, that predated evolutionary theory This is not Darwin's fault. :grimace: It is also probably a reaction trying to defend against loss of authority and power, the connection with conservative politics is clear enough. Literalism attracts the ire of atheists, judging by this thread, and it also attracts the ire of liberal, psychological, esoteric or moral interpreters of religious traditions and texts.
—————————–
With regard to truth, consider The Handmaid's Tale, by Margret Atwood. A fictional account of somewhere a bit like N. America in which the religious right has taken over, so appropriate to this thread.
It paints a sufficiently dark portrait of the religious right wing in terms particularly of sexual politics an misogyny, that it has been banned in parts of the US.

One can speak truths in fiction that would get one into serious trouble if not fictionalised. See also Rushdie's Satanic verses for the serious trouble one can still get into even with fiction. See also, Orwell's 1984, a prophetic warning against totalitarian Marxism.

These are all 'not true'. But they tell important truths in story form. But the op already made this point using Aesop. I clearly should have made a much longer and more confusing op with lots of quotes and links, to slow folk down a bit.

I need to look at that more carefully, I'm not sure yet what you or Badiou is saying.

Why invoke and analyze
this fable? Let us be perfectly clear: so far as we are concerned, what we
are dealing with here is precisely a fable. And singularly so in the case of
Paul, who for crucial reasons reduces Christianity to a single statement:
Jesus is resurrected. Yet this is precisely a fabulous element [point fabu-
leux ], since all the rest, birth, teachings, death, might after all be upheld. — Badiou

I never liked Paul, I was always happier with the parables as teachings. But Paul is the fundament of the fundamentalist, and as Badiou is an atheist, I'll have to engage with this. Tomorrow...

tradition. (Add extra negative epithets to taste.) I think it is clear that it is reactionary, and specifically reacting against science, particularly evolution. — unenlightened

This article addresses this question, making the interesting point that literalism as we know it today, has its roots in the Protestant Reformation. It was then that the power of the Church was supplanted with the power of the Bible because they took away the Church's authority in offering any clarifications. Once the Bible became the final word, it's word couldn't be questioned.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2011/feb/21/biblical-literalism-bible-christians

This explanation also offers an explanation to who pointed out that a priest friend of his suggested looking to be Christlike as opposed to applying a strict adherence to the text. The priest was obviously Catholic and would not have been as influenced by the Protestant traditions.

It is a peculiar fact about the Christian fundamentalists that they deny their clergy special elevated status (as you might see in the Catholic Church or even among orthodox rabbis), but everyone is offered the same status in the eyes of the community in their ability to interpret scripture, with everyone with the same right to go back to the text and argue their point. I see that here as well among the religious critics, where they ask how in the world can a particular passage be interpreted in such a way when it says what it says, trying to decontextualize a thousands of years conversation to just looking at a few limited words on the page.

It is a peculiar fact about the Christian fundamentalists that they deny their clergy special elevated status (as you might see in the Catholic Church or even among orthodox rabbis), but everyone is offered the same status in the eyes of the community in their ability to interpret scripture, with everyone with the same right to go back to the text and argue their point. — Hanover

This is Protestantism in general, not just fundamentalism. It’s why there are thousands of Protestant denominations.

The priest was obviously Catholic and would not have been as influenced by the Protestant traditions — Hanover

We spend a lot of time talking about radical priests - Thomas Merton, Richard Rohr - who are not always well liked by the church hierarchy and often influenced by mystic and Eastern spiritual traditions. The Catholic church is also engaged in a nasty internal culture war between progressives and conservatives. Doing good and making change in the world is far more important than doctrine for the progressives.

An interesting and paradoxical thing about many fundamentalists I have known is that they are not particularly familiar with the Bible - apart form a few frequently recycled quotes. Pastors may in theory have the same status as others in the congregation, but generally hold a degree of power over interpretation and the culture of their church, often through charisma or personality.

But what I want to talk about is the phenomenon of literalism in particularly Christianity and Islam, but also Hinduism and even Buddhism, that seems to have begun in the 18th Century — unenlightened

Ah. As opposed to the literalism which resulted when the early Church through Councils and otherwise tossed out what's been called the Apocrypha, or which resulted through the Protestant Reformation, or the division of the Church into western and eastern Christianity, for example. Well, that at least makes the claim regarding literalism as a reaction to peevish scientists and atheists somewhat more credible, as they haven't been all that much around until fairly recently. But I think modern fundamentalism is more a function of the Protestant evangelical tradition, which began during the Reformation. The stranger of the evangelicals, like the Puritans, took ship to God's Favorite Country as they didn't like and were shunned by the Church of England, a kind of quasi-Catholic Church established to satisfy the vanity and cupidity of Henry VIII. And here the tradition flourished, sometimes clashing with science, as in Tennessee and other states. But again, literalism even of this variety isn't merely a reaction to atheism or science.

We spend a lot of time talking about radical priests - Thomas Merton, Richard Rohr — Tom Storm

They're not radical priests. The Berrigan Brothers were, and the one that got the guy who sang "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" out of jail and on the cover of Newsweek. Even Father Groppi.

Oh no. This comment probably isn't pertinent, is it?

So a piece of Christian Dogma may be "Jesus Christ rose from the dead". What makes this dogma? — Moliere

The claim is an authoritative yet wholly unsubstantiated opinion, no?