Irrelgious Intolerance?

[monk222]

♠
“In polls, more than 90 percent of Americans have said that they would be willing to vote for a woman, a Jew or a black, and 79 percent would be willing to vote for a gay person. But at last count, only 37 percent would consider voting for an atheist.”

-- Nicholas D. Kristof for The NY Times

This statistical tidbit is actually from a discussion about the surge of atheism, including Richard Dawkins' latest atheist tract, "The God Delusion." As Kristof quips, "If God is omniscient and omnipotent, you can’t help wondering why she doesn’t pull out a thunderbolt and strike down Richard Dawkins." In spite of the import of the statistic above, Kristof is arguing against a sort of fundamentalist secularism, "We’ve suffered enough from religious intolerance that the last thing the world needs is irreligious intolerance." Judging by that statistic, though, I don't think we have that much to worry about.

xXx

Comments

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Noooooo, we need more worldly atheists in power. You can just hide your atheism and say you love Jesus. ;)

[antilapsarian.livejournal.com]

Intolerance of any kind is usually bad. Although I can get where the vote would come from. One would like a candidate to be rational...and a rational person would at least be agnostic. I do sometimes think that atheists can be just as fundie as the religious type. Like Dawkins.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

I don't think it is anymore irrational to be atheistic than to beleive in the supernatural, unless you mean not going against the grain with so many people as disposed as they are to the religious. Though, I take the point that the most intellectually respectable position is to be agnostic.

[antilapsarian.livejournal.com]

I suppose, to go deeper into what I was saying...not only it is the more intellectually respectable. But who in their right mind would pick nihilism?

And, by that, I mean that if the world is either filled with meaning and leaning toward something greater or pointless, aimless, and without purpose, then why should we elect to office those who negatively hold that latter position.

My argument is that any firm atheism is probably as misguided as those who firmly claim there 100% is a God. No matter how much a person leans that way or has faith, I think humanity has to make room for the errors in our own judgments.

It's sort of the irony about the saying "with God, all things are possible." Even atheism!

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

I do not believe atheism is synonymous with nihilism. For instance, if I am an atheist, but I have a rich values-system indeed, consisting of democratic egalitarianism, I do count myself as a nihilist, even though a subclass of atheists may indeed be nihilists.

Incidentally, I wonder how you reconcile your strong appreciation for post-modernism while apparently disdaining nihilism. It seems to me that there is a closer association between nihilism and post-modernism that between nihilism and atheism, as post-modernism seems to be pretty valueless. I wonder that we should vote for a post-modernist!

[antilapsarian.livejournal.com]

This is exactly the discussion I think society has to be having even if it isn't...though it is nice that we're putting it out there in the blogosphere.

Believing in democratic egalitarianism is fine, I suppose. That's a "higher power" sort of. Although I think it would still be dodging the bullet, a bit, about having a discussion of what all that democratic egalitarianism "means." Why? Why does one have a values-rich system? There's the rub. Existentially/philosophically. In that, I think all roads return to either "God" or atheism. It's more complicated than that, but your second issue is in there too....

I'm not sure all post-modernism is nihilism. Deconstruction is one thing. But doing it for its own sake or for greater good...and what is that good?...is where things get interesting. Is post-modernism valueless?

The devil, so to speak, is in the details. To me, postmodernism is about living in a full world not bounded by old standards and brave enough to boldly move progressively into the future. I suppose it means different things to different people though.