I love your comment, very rational argument that moves the discussion forward into more sophisticated territory. (Hopefully) respectful disagreement incoming.
"Bigot: : a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices
especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (such as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance"
So technically, bigot could describe anyone who treats members of a group with intolerance. For example, I am bigoted towards Nazis. This example demonstrates that “bigot” does not intrinsically equal “bad”. It is probably a good thing to be bigoted towards Nazis. Given this definition, I don’t think there’s any way to claim these stances aren’t bigoted towards religion, but the real question is whether that bigotry is a good thing or not. That sounds obviously wrong, but only because we’re so used to hearing “bigot” as a synonym for bad. Given this definition I would proudly say, for instance, that I am bigoted against racists or sexists. And in a similar vein, if someone does a lot of good charity work in their city, and let’s say they’ve even been a factual net positive for their city, but they’re also deeply racist and sexist, I think it’s fair for me to say “I hate them”, even though they’ve done other good things. If I say “racism and sexism are evil”, then I’m not really “ignoring evidence” of this guy being a good benefactor to his city. I’m correctly disentangling an irrelevant aspect (his social benevolence) from the relevant aspect (the intrinsic goodness or badness of being racist+sexist). Yes, there are racists who have done good things, good acts, good science even, etc etc. But that is not necessarily relevant to whether racism itself is good. It is obvious to most people that when the racist guy happens to benefit his city, say with a big charitable donation to the museum (and even all races of people in the city may benefit), that he did a good thing despite his racism and not because of it. This “despiteness” is hard to establish though, and I understand that this line of thinking easily leads to unfalsifiable claims, where every good thing done by a religious person gets attributed to non-religious causes and vice versa for bad things.
But in the case of the racist, it seems clear, doesn’t it? All the good acts done by racists aren’t really fair to count as evidence for “racism is a good thing”. And to your point, all the bad acts done by racists aren’t fair to count as evidence for “racism is a bad thing”. If a racist cuts me off while driving without using their turn signal, I can’t be like “this proves that racism is bad”. We need to establish a causal link. My comment is getting long already, but to me it seems pretty clear that most of the good things done by religious people are things they likely would have done otherwise, since both atheists and religious people alike do plenty of good things, and the same sorts of good things. But there’s a whole class of bad things (usually genocidal type things, but also human abuses, etc) that seem to almost exclusively exist under religious justifications.
You think that nazism is always bad and you can deduce that when a nazi does something good they do it ‘despite’ being nazi. Then you claim the same for religious people. Do you really think the two cases are the same? I will now list a bunch or religious people who mean a great deal to me, and whose work can not be disengaged from being religious: Ferdinand Ebner, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenczweig, Franz Kafka, Jakob Böhme, Endre Ady, Béla Tábor, and I could go on and on. I could not mention one single nazi who means a great deal to me and for somewhat respectable but still somewhat racist people I can always disengage their racism from why they are important to me. So clearly for me the two cases are not paralell. I wonder if you are truly sure that they are parallel for you.
I accept your proposition to make bigoted a technical word. I am too intolerant towards nazis. And I am also intolerant towards various forms of religious zeals.
I love your comment, very rational argument that moves the discussion forward into more sophisticated territory. (Hopefully) respectful disagreement incoming.
"Bigot: : a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices
especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (such as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance"
So technically, bigot could describe anyone who treats members of a group with intolerance. For example, I am bigoted towards Nazis. This example demonstrates that “bigot” does not intrinsically equal “bad”. It is probably a good thing to be bigoted towards Nazis. Given this definition, I don’t think there’s any way to claim these stances aren’t bigoted towards religion, but the real question is whether that bigotry is a good thing or not. That sounds obviously wrong, but only because we’re so used to hearing “bigot” as a synonym for bad. Given this definition I would proudly say, for instance, that I am bigoted against racists or sexists. And in a similar vein, if someone does a lot of good charity work in their city, and let’s say they’ve even been a factual net positive for their city, but they’re also deeply racist and sexist, I think it’s fair for me to say “I hate them”, even though they’ve done other good things. If I say “racism and sexism are evil”, then I’m not really “ignoring evidence” of this guy being a good benefactor to his city. I’m correctly disentangling an irrelevant aspect (his social benevolence) from the relevant aspect (the intrinsic goodness or badness of being racist+sexist). Yes, there are racists who have done good things, good acts, good science even, etc etc. But that is not necessarily relevant to whether racism itself is good. It is obvious to most people that when the racist guy happens to benefit his city, say with a big charitable donation to the museum (and even all races of people in the city may benefit), that he did a good thing despite his racism and not because of it. This “despiteness” is hard to establish though, and I understand that this line of thinking easily leads to unfalsifiable claims, where every good thing done by a religious person gets attributed to non-religious causes and vice versa for bad things.
But in the case of the racist, it seems clear, doesn’t it? All the good acts done by racists aren’t really fair to count as evidence for “racism is a good thing”. And to your point, all the bad acts done by racists aren’t fair to count as evidence for “racism is a bad thing”. If a racist cuts me off while driving without using their turn signal, I can’t be like “this proves that racism is bad”. We need to establish a causal link. My comment is getting long already, but to me it seems pretty clear that most of the good things done by religious people are things they likely would have done otherwise, since both atheists and religious people alike do plenty of good things, and the same sorts of good things. But there’s a whole class of bad things (usually genocidal type things, but also human abuses, etc) that seem to almost exclusively exist under religious justifications.
You think that nazism is always bad and you can deduce that when a nazi does something good they do it ‘despite’ being nazi. Then you claim the same for religious people. Do you really think the two cases are the same? I will now list a bunch or religious people who mean a great deal to me, and whose work can not be disengaged from being religious: Ferdinand Ebner, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenczweig, Franz Kafka, Jakob Böhme, Endre Ady, Béla Tábor, and I could go on and on. I could not mention one single nazi who means a great deal to me and for somewhat respectable but still somewhat racist people I can always disengage their racism from why they are important to me. So clearly for me the two cases are not paralell. I wonder if you are truly sure that they are parallel for you.
I accept your proposition to make bigoted a technical word. I am too intolerant towards nazis. And I am also intolerant towards various forms of religious zeals.