Christians: bad for society.

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One of the objections to the earlier thread I had on Christian scriptures was that Christianity should be held as a cultural group, rather than being considered disciples of Jesus Christ and beholden to the supposed words of that figure. I didn't take that response seriously then (especially given how inconsistently held it was, as it still existed amidst criticism of my theological authorities, and use of scripture), but in this thread, I have decided to take the matter seriously, and look into Christians as a sociological group.

First of all, Christianity is anti-homosexual. Now, if the spiritual teachings of Christianity are decided by the masses, then obviously, this is a sign that the masses themselves are expressing an otherwise ungrounded hatred of homosexuals. This in turn means that Christianity stands against the interests of a significant segment of the population for NO reason. Now, saying "Christianity is anti-homosexual" might be attacked by some local Christian apologists, but the issue is that the masses tend to agree. According to research by the Barna Group, 91% of those outside the church agree that Christianity is antihomosexual, and 80% of those within the church hold to the same conclusion. So, if the majority overwhelmingly agrees on this, then any claims to the contrary seem pointless.

Secondly, many people point to Christianity as a moralizer. The problem is that this conclusion seems false, mainstream Christianity does not promote better behavior. This is stated by David Kinnaman of the Barna Group: "based upon a study released in 2007, born-again Christians were statistically equivalent to those non-born-against. When asked to identify their activities over the last thirty days, born-again believers were just as likely to bet or gamble, to visit a pornographic website, to take something that did not belong to them, to consult a medium or psychic, to physically fight or abuse someone, to have consumed enough alcohol to be legally drunk, to hav eused an illegal nonprescription drug, to have said something to someone that was not true, to have gotten back at someone for something he or she did, and to have said mean things behind another person's back. No difference."(pg 47) What this strongly suggests is that the Christian faith is morally irrelevant. As such, any justification for Christianity as a "source of virtues" is somewhat questionable, so, while this does not show that Christianity is bad for society, it certainly undermines the idea that it is good for society.

Thirdly, even beyond the anti-homosexuality of Christianity, some variants of Christianity are also correlated with a willingness to torture individuals. http://us.cnn.com/2009/US/04/30/religio ... index.html Now, torture, as we all know is a degrading, dehumanizing thing to do to anybody. As such, a greater willingness to engage in it, is most likely driven by moral character than anything else. For that reason, it is worth considering that Christianity as it is practiced, undermines the morality of society by being more willing to dehumanize individuals.

Fourthly, even beyond both of those, Christianity often stands in tension with truth. Christians both hide the degree of separation between their beliefs and the truth, but also many politically motivated attempts to squelch science come from Christianity and what every day Christians think. A really big example of this is evolution, as Christians have put forward religiously motivated efforts to suppress this science for a very long time, and with on-going efforts, such as the Intelligent Design movement, and Young Earth creationism. Given that some of these have been popular enough within Christianity to reach mainstream politics and culture, and that these intellectual sicknesses are uniquely Christian, there is a real problem in saying that Christianity, defined as a sociological group, is actually good for society. Anything that stands against scientific truth is going to undermine society, by substituting valuable knowledge for BS.

Fifthly, Christianity is just intellectually dishonest as practiced within the mainstream. The average Christian has an incoherent theology. Poor reasons to believe. And mostly they just believe because they've been told it is important, and because being spiritual "feels good", but the issue is that it is important for society to consider intellectual virtues to be real virtues, as in doing so, we can insure rational discourse, and pursuit of truth, and Christianity, due to the ongoing tension in the mainstream between it and these intellectual virtues is thus a bad thing. (this can be seen with the common views of "faith" within religion as something immune to criticism from reason. Also note: apologetics is not found within much of mainstream Christianity anyway to a strongly expressed degree, and I'd imagine that most apologists hold to something better defined than sociology.)

And for this reason, ultimately, I'm going to have to argue that Christianity as a sociological group is not overly desirable. (and given that I already argued against Christianity as disciples of Christ, I really just want to see the next maneuver the apologists will try to throw)

(Note: some of these facts are pulled from the book UnChristian by David Kinnaman)

Last edited by Awesomelyglorious on 09 Nov 2010, 10:01 pm, edited 2 times in total.

We already have a thread about this....

You mean the other one I created?

Yes, but that other thread came at this from a particular angle. Now I am exploring the other angle. I already recognized this and acknowledge it in the very first paragraph. Your statement is thus completely irrelevant.

Check your own link more closely. Mainline Protestants were the least likely to support torture, disapproving of it more strongly than the unaffiliated did. The survey is skewed by focusing on "evangelical" Christians, who are well-known for being completely psychotic.

Eh, small mistake. Apologies. The other bits still have some degree of value, certainly because the morality card has been attacked.

Besides, if we argue that holding to a god and religion tends to be inherently an intellectually dishonest move, then the argument has more force.

AG, to avoid confusion, you should retitle this thread "Christians: bad for society.", since Con Artists seem to think this thread is the same as the other thread (I like this one more, by the way).

Actually, it looks more like you have some personal animousity towards Christians... Least that's how I'm interpretting this.

As an atheist I heartily agree that Christianity has a great deal to account for in society. I am sure that a good many Jews and Muslims feel the same way and that is a lot of people.

Actually, I do have personal animosity towards Christians. Only a few though. I'd say that animosity towards how the last thread was handled is really what is driving the current thread. I'd say the last thread was driven by a desire to beat DentArthurDent. Finally, I'd say that I am also acting to win "STRIDENT atheism" points, as I managed to win some measure of dominance within the local atheism community through a propaganda campaign last time, but I still want to keep my title.

Oh, thanks. I do try.

Btw, "UnChristian" is actually a Christian text. The authors are writing as Christians. So.... you can't say that my source is "evil" and "biased". Just a little FYI.

When I was young (under 15) Christian (primarily Catholic) boys used to beat the sh*t out of me because I (as a Jew) personally crucified Jesus Christ, 2000 years before I was born. I learned to fight (very dirty too) and that sort of nonsense stopped. Ever since I have decided not to hold a grudge. Attitudes have changed over the last 55 years. Now I do not run into all that many anti-semitic Christians. I was astonished by the effect that Pope John 23 had on Catholics. He got rid of the Baltimore Catechism and there has been a lot less anti-semitism among Catholics since. Apparently small miracles still do happen.

ruveyn

Yes, well, your story isn't that strange. There have been thousands of years of anti-semitism within Christianity. Frankly, I imagine that this abuse at their hands has made you into the monster you currently are.

I'm sure a great many Jewish people would also think atheists are intolerant bigots. And until Muslim religious leaders condemn using children as guided bombs where they are remote detonated, I really don't think they have a leg to stand on.


Furthermore, you neglect to point out there are many different branches of Christianity, some of which completely abhor violence.

The Catholic Church has a lot to answer for, but I'm not Catholic. There was a split in the church centuries ago due to all the abuses.

Now you can pin all this blame game all you want about things that happened where nobody is alive in the first place to answer for i.e. the Crusades, slavery (which a lot of Christians actively participated in the Underground Railroad as did Jewish people), and any other event that has occurred decades ago, but the fact is the victims and the perpetrators are all dead so it is pointless.

I don't see Christians strapping bombs to children to use as suicide weapons. Heck if it was a Catholic doing that, the Pope would excommunicate the individual so fast he you'd swear he broke the sound barrier.

Maybe I should post a topic about Atheists being a threat to society and see how you react, and believe me I've got a lot of stuff to submit a very good argument in that regard.

Quite so. I would have been a monster in any case. It is my nature. Being an Aspie empathy is not my strong suit.

ruveyn

So that just leaves us atheists. Great!


Most of whom do not. Most of the posters here also not believing that any of those branches are actually theologically or ethically correct. As it stands, many posters attacked my last post for concerning itself too much with high theology, rather than what the people actually hold to. This is an effort to point out what "mainstream Christianity" is like. I see no reason why I have to refute all of the things that call themselves Christian, as such a task is empty and irrelevant to the majority of believers, despite their efforts to shield themselves that way. (especially once one considers that Christianity has bastard children with almost every philosophy in history)


Well, there is a huge problem in that the Christian church is often considered a supra-human organization. It isn't usually just considered an "alright group of people", but rather people argue that Christians are better and more moral and everything else. Thus, the question is where is this morality really seen? Particularly given that we have huge MASSES of Christians doing horrifying things throughout history.

Maybe I should post a topic about Atheists being a threat to society and see how you react, and believe me I've got a lot of stuff to submit a very good argument in that regard.[/quote]
If you want to make the argument that atheists are a threat to society, then have fun. You know a lot of people will put effort into rebutting the claims there, and the real issue isn't "Oh, I like or dislike X", but rather the effort to rebut.

@ Awesomelyglorious

Careful this actually looks like a Saul Allinsky tactic of demonizing people because they don't agree with you.

The mainstream of Christianity actively condemns anti-semitism (which we largely see in Europe and the Middle East). Also I can probably label Atheists and anti-semites too cause I'm sure their are atheists out there that are anti-semites.

I actually, consider this to be thread to be flamebait because if I posted a similar thread about atheists you'd be calling for my head.