Oh—this is a veiled critique of conciliatory attitudes toward religion? I though it was a direct critique of conciliatory attitudes toward political ideologies—and I was going to disagree with it. I think I detect a dark side to lumping all political ideologies together under the category of “poltitical ideology” and ignoring the specific reasons why political ideologies can become harmful or anti-rational.
Now that I see that this was a veiled critique of religion (or a specific religious grouping?) I think my reservations still stand.
What would it look like if we neglected the fundamental differences between religions—or even between sects of a “single” religion, such as Christianity? How would that distort our view of sects that never adopted doctrines like Biblical inerrancy and instead focused on an altruistic message embedded in an ancient narrative? Would we make the simplistic assumption that these sects viewed the Bible in the same way as the more reactionary sects except that certain passages were to be taken as “metaphorical”?
Would we have any hope of coping constructively with the bewildering array of beliefs, epistemologies, ethics, meta-ethics, values, emotional responses and activities that can loosely be regarded as “religious”?
Worse yet, would we fail to notice the mechanisms by which some religious (or political ideologies) become especially prone to bad belief and bad behavior? Will we believe that something magical about the name “church” or the activity of counting a rosary has some sort of harmful essence of itself? Will we be unable to constructively suggest to people who find value in religion that they are better served to divorce religion from dubious orthodoxies and to reconsider any rules they may be following which limit the freedom to inquire critically?
I read your post multiple times, and yet I almost missed the point.
Lumping is dangerous, yes. In the case of this parable, I think (though I might be wrong) that you noticed it was dangerous to lump everything related to Nazis together in one group. Blanket condemnation for supporting Nazism loses us the opportunity to examine what makes the difference between direct harm and harms that can be redirected. The lumping happens anyways, positive associations made by the typical human brains of the general populace, and this is the darkness seen by the original poster. That doesn’t mean there aren’t other dark corners to be seen.
It occurs to me that science has had some pretty dark patches in its past. Especially with experimentation. Probably going a few questionable directions in the current day too. The march of reason is not marched at a uniform pace, even with a pretty agreed upon creed of “the scientific method”. I wonder, have we differentiated ourselves enough? Do we still carry the baggage of our forbearers?
Oh—this is a veiled critique of conciliatory attitudes toward religion? I though it was a direct critique of conciliatory attitudes toward political ideologies—and I was going to disagree with it. I think I detect a dark side to lumping all political ideologies together under the category of “poltitical ideology” and ignoring the specific reasons why political ideologies can become harmful or anti-rational.
Now that I see that this was a veiled critique of religion (or a specific religious grouping?) I think my reservations still stand.
What would it look like if we neglected the fundamental differences between religions—or even between sects of a “single” religion, such as Christianity? How would that distort our view of sects that never adopted doctrines like Biblical inerrancy and instead focused on an altruistic message embedded in an ancient narrative? Would we make the simplistic assumption that these sects viewed the Bible in the same way as the more reactionary sects except that certain passages were to be taken as “metaphorical”?
Would we have any hope of coping constructively with the bewildering array of beliefs, epistemologies, ethics, meta-ethics, values, emotional responses and activities that can loosely be regarded as “religious”?
Worse yet, would we fail to notice the mechanisms by which some religious (or political ideologies) become especially prone to bad belief and bad behavior? Will we believe that something magical about the name “church” or the activity of counting a rosary has some sort of harmful essence of itself? Will we be unable to constructively suggest to people who find value in religion that they are better served to divorce religion from dubious orthodoxies and to reconsider any rules they may be following which limit the freedom to inquire critically?
I read your post multiple times, and yet I almost missed the point.
Lumping is dangerous, yes. In the case of this parable, I think (though I might be wrong) that you noticed it was dangerous to lump everything related to Nazis together in one group. Blanket condemnation for supporting Nazism loses us the opportunity to examine what makes the difference between direct harm and harms that can be redirected. The lumping happens anyways, positive associations made by the typical human brains of the general populace, and this is the darkness seen by the original poster. That doesn’t mean there aren’t other dark corners to be seen.
It occurs to me that science has had some pretty dark patches in its past. Especially with experimentation. Probably going a few questionable directions in the current day too. The march of reason is not marched at a uniform pace, even with a pretty agreed upon creed of “the scientific method”. I wonder, have we differentiated ourselves enough? Do we still carry the baggage of our forbearers?