Yes, I get that - but when it comes to the beliefs of Christians, we tend to be so overly careful is what I’m getting at.
Sure, it’s annoying and not going to convince anyone to say something like “YOU are a complete IDIOT to believe in this stuff because…”
That’s never going to be received all that well about any topic, really. I have just noticed in my lifetime that we tend to give the kid glove treatment to the beliefs of religion (most especially xtian belief in this country) like almost no other - with the exception of now some conspiracy theories/denialist type of positions, like anti-vaxxers, but that seems to be a more recent thing.
but when it comes to the beliefs of Christians, we tend to be so overly careful is what I’m getting at.
True. I didn’t catch it because my statement would have been the same regardless of the religion I was about to trash, but your point is well taken.
The only thing I would suggest is that this is not something new in itself, but the stretching of a very old norm – avoiding conversation of religion and politics – into something that bears little resemblance to what it started as, and is now used to create offense instead of prevent it.
We as a nation (US) have been firehosed with propaganda, and none more so than the religious. What MAGA has done with the Republican party it has also done with Christianity itself.
Or to put it another way, when propaganda is involved, changing the belief of the individual that consumes it is only the first stop: it is only and ever created and disseminated in order to create a larger, aggressive voice that can also drown out and silence whatever beliefs it cannot change.
So hell yeah, we give kid glove treatment to someone belonging to a group that regularly ambushes the most innocent statements about anything, then twists them and throws them back with malice.
But anything spiritual (or even quasi-spiritual) in content is even more dangerous, because for people who legitimately hold those beliefs the words mean everything, but to the flingers of propagandistic shit the words mean nothing. It’s an asymmetric emotional battle many people never even know they’re facing when they open their mouths, a mistake they generally will not make twice.
And this is by design. The propagandists don’t want a person who carries a genuine faith (or knowledge, or interest) to speak against the fake, and that’s true of both religion and politics, and pretty much anything else the propagandists wish to distort. This is the same dynamic, to me, that lies behind the discrediting of science – I think we’re both true believers when it comes to actual science – and the demonization of real-world experts in everything from vaccines to climate change.
For myself, I’m old school in that no matter the spiritual belief, when dealing with the individuals who profess it I will ringfence it as belonging to someone else and not my business. I too was raised in the “don’t talk religion and politics” tradition. Now we talk about little else, largely because there is an unending stream of actions and distortions that are designed to keep all our divisive subjects front and center, and look at where it’s gotten us.
That’s why I wrote my little screed anyway. If they wanna come at me, at least I’m well equipped to defend my point: that the state of Texas is not trying to teach language by taking the most defeatist “work, suffer and die” passages out of their holy book to stand in for the most high god themselves while indoctrinating a new generation of wage slaves.
Yes, I get that - but when it comes to the beliefs of Christians, we tend to be so overly careful is what I’m getting at.
Sure, it’s annoying and not going to convince anyone to say something like “YOU are a complete IDIOT to believe in this stuff because…”
That’s never going to be received all that well about any topic, really. I have just noticed in my lifetime that we tend to give the kid glove treatment to the beliefs of religion (most especially xtian belief in this country) like almost no other - with the exception of now some conspiracy theories/denialist type of positions, like anti-vaxxers, but that seems to be a more recent thing.
True. I didn’t catch it because my statement would have been the same regardless of the religion I was about to trash, but your point is well taken.
The only thing I would suggest is that this is not something new in itself, but the stretching of a very old norm – avoiding conversation of religion and politics – into something that bears little resemblance to what it started as, and is now used to create offense instead of prevent it.
We as a nation (US) have been firehosed with propaganda, and none more so than the religious. What MAGA has done with the Republican party it has also done with Christianity itself.
Or to put it another way, when propaganda is involved, changing the belief of the individual that consumes it is only the first stop: it is only and ever created and disseminated in order to create a larger, aggressive voice that can also drown out and silence whatever beliefs it cannot change.
So hell yeah, we give kid glove treatment to someone belonging to a group that regularly ambushes the most innocent statements about anything, then twists them and throws them back with malice.
But anything spiritual (or even quasi-spiritual) in content is even more dangerous, because for people who legitimately hold those beliefs the words mean everything, but to the flingers of propagandistic shit the words mean nothing. It’s an asymmetric emotional battle many people never even know they’re facing when they open their mouths, a mistake they generally will not make twice.
And this is by design. The propagandists don’t want a person who carries a genuine faith (or knowledge, or interest) to speak against the fake, and that’s true of both religion and politics, and pretty much anything else the propagandists wish to distort. This is the same dynamic, to me, that lies behind the discrediting of science – I think we’re both true believers when it comes to actual science – and the demonization of real-world experts in everything from vaccines to climate change.
For myself, I’m old school in that no matter the spiritual belief, when dealing with the individuals who profess it I will ringfence it as belonging to someone else and not my business. I too was raised in the “don’t talk religion and politics” tradition. Now we talk about little else, largely because there is an unending stream of actions and distortions that are designed to keep all our divisive subjects front and center, and look at where it’s gotten us.
That’s why I wrote my little screed anyway. If they wanna come at me, at least I’m well equipped to defend my point: that the state of Texas is not trying to teach language by taking the most defeatist “work, suffer and die” passages out of their holy book to stand in for the most high god themselves while indoctrinating a new generation of wage slaves.