That’s simple. Just convince them to give up religious doctrines and maybe even political dogma and conspiracies.
I agree. Change won’t happen fast enough or soon enough.
The dotard and his followers messed up everything and made things worse, yet they can’t see it or refuse to see it. This is another group that is blind and refuses to see.
I expect more success helping people give up bad moral norms than religion.
An example: the Anglican church is now splitting over gay marriage.
The US, Au, Canada, and New Zealand Anglicans have agreed to support gay marriage formally. So religious people can change their views on moral norms they grew up with.
The rest of the world’s Anglicans are sticking with “homosexuality is evil”, causing the split. My arguments have a chance to convince some of the rest of the world’s Anglicans to accept gay marriage, but I would be wasting my time trying to convince them to give up religion.
Religion carries many of the “moral norms”.
I know. I used to be Episcopalian, after growing up Evangelical and before I “lost faith in faith” so to speak. You get a hard and fast lesson when the Church informally excommunicates a 12 year old child with PDD-NOS (high functioning), ADHD, and ODD, as well as learning disabilities. The Church is a means to control the Vulgar masses. Bishop Spong said it best when said the idea of Hell is nothing more than a means to control people.
Actually, no. The U.S. Episcopal Church has split over women priests, Gay priests, and Gay marriage. too. They now Episcopalians and U.S. Anglicans. There is now two different Episcopal Churches in the U.S.
Over in Africa, they refused to listen to Bishop Tutu. It’s a really BIG problem there.
Well, you may want to start in the U.S. first, because not all Episcopal Churches have accepted it and have split over it. I can get documentation on this. They even had a land dispute in the Episcopal courts. Yes, they have their own courts. I use to be in pretty deep. I was even a lay minister, so I can probably tell you more than you want to know about the Episcopal Church and it’s not all roses. Their crap stinks too.
Thanks for the correction. I blame my error on a faulty memory of a conversation with my cousin who is a retired woman Episcopalian (Anglican? I get confused) priest in Canada, and a too-brief google search.
I have thought an essay on how the science of morality could help resolve the Anglican Church’s dispute (or set of disputes) they split over could be useful. These are intelligent, civil people with a well-documented (I assume) dispute about morality. Sounds like a prime example of a moral dispute the science of morality should be able to help resolve. That we have two groups in the US who split over morality makes it an even better case to test the science of morality’s ability to help resolve moral disputes.
An excellent reference source is “The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible/Quran/ Book of Mormon”
It’s Free!
Can’t wait to get to the book of Mormon.
You haven’t mentioned the United Methodist Church. I joined one in 1993, they labeled themselves a “Reconciling Congregation”, which meant even though officially the international organization did not accept gays, this church did. The clergy couldn’t marry anyone gay, or they would get sanctioned, but they had an LGBT committee. They had been doing that for a couple of decades before I got there. Recently, the fundamentalist side finally split off.
Every 4 years, when the whole international conference happened, they couldn’t get the rules changed. Most of the US wanted to, but Africa (with some prompting by US fundamentalists) kept the majority going with “homosexuality is a sin” and “love the sinner, hate the sin.” One year, a proposal was made to change the language of their rules to “God loves everybody.” This was controversial.
So when you say people are reasonable, I don’t think you’ve really looked into how they actually act. I could find lots more on the history of this if you’d like.
Hi lausten
… are intelligent, civil people with a well-documented (I assume) dispute about morality.
It would have been more accurate to say
“Episcopalians have a reputation for being liberals. I expect the leaders seeking to resolve the dispute would be intelligent, civil people with a well-documented, but contentious, dispute about morality regarding sex taboos.”
Keeping in mind that “emotions are the master of reason” is commonly the case, I expect that knowledge from the science of morality could initially sway only people who are already unhappy with a moral norm. That is, people who are already looking for additional reasons to reject a moral norm they may have grown up with that they now see as the cause of harm and trauma rather than good.
Methodists have a reputation for being more conservative. I expect a smaller percentage would be unhappy with their church’s sex taboo moral norms. Hence my interest in the Episcopalian debate – a higher percentage of people might find the science useful. If the science of morality could be recognized by enough people as useful in resolving the Episcopalian debate, that would be a huge win for the science of morality and society as a whole.
So how might a religious person who is unhappy with their church’s sex taboo moral norms react to the scientific understanding of these norms arbitrary, exploitative, and shameful origins?
This knowledge could be used to inspire and illuminate reinterpretation of relevant scripture to provide a scripture-based justification for abandoning those harmful norms in the modern church. My interest in the Episcopalian dispute is partly due to it being well documented – though I have not yet researched that documentation.
IMO, it would be more accurate to say that all religions are trying to make accommodations to account for the phenomenon of homosexuality, which is quite common in the wild, but is a mortal sin in almost all religions because it does not produce offspring and is therefore an “indulgence”.
I think that’s demonstrable, going all the way back to Martin Luther, in the case of Catholicism. It’s also demonstrable that there are people who are just fine with the norms. These big denominations are splitting, they aren’t changing the minds of half of the congregations. So I’m not sure what new thing you are bringing to this conversation. Science has been pressing in on belief for a long time, corralling it, taming it, but it’s limited in what it can do and how fast it can do it.
I’m not saying we should stop confronting oppressive religions with science. I’m asking, what have we learned about how to approach it? How do we reach more people?
What I (science actually) bring that is new to the conversation about the morality of homosexuality and abortion is the explanation of why these moral norms that cause harm exist.
This knowledge is helpful for resolving moral disputes because
Without these insights from science, religious people who are unhappy with the harm and trauma caused by these norms lack conclusive arguments for rejecting these norms they are unhappy with.
They can turn to traditional moral philosophy, but moral philosophy has not been much help. Perhaps that is because of traditional moral philosophy’s uncertainty about “What we ought to do” and its silence on why religious moral norms that cause harm and trauma exist.
In summary, knowledge from the science of morality provides otherwise unavailable powerful arguments for abandoning religious moral norms that cause harm.
The approach I am thinking of is to focus on audiences who are most likely to find this knowledge useful. These audiences are people who are unhappy with the harm religious norms cause but who lack arguments for why they should abandon such norms and wonder if they do abandon them, what then is moral?
Being cast morally-adrift if they abandon religious moral norms could be frightening. Science provides an objective moral anchor point accessible to all.
There were a lot of abolitionists in the Episcopal Church back in the day and in 1989 (I think that was the year. It was fairly recent and I remember it being around the time my first born was born.) racism was declared a sin in the Church. I don’t know any other church who officially have on record that racism is a sin. However, when it comes to women and homosexuals, they suck. Let’s not talk about children with autism and other mental health issues. The Anglican Church (any branch) is oppressive though and not 100% liberal.
They like the veil of mysticism. It prevents the very thing you are trying to cause.
They’re fine with the arbitrary. “God did it”. Cognitive desonance handles the logic problems. Pain exists because of sin. Done
Lausten
You are describing the diehards.
The people who are upset by the harm and trauma of “homosexuality is evil” are not enamored in its veil of mysticism. And they are not fine with “God did it.” They are in anguish.
They are looking for a way out regarding the moral norm that allows them to keep the comforts of their religion.
It’s half of 12 million. It’s one of the biggest Protestant denominations. Catholics have plenty of diehards, they run the hospitals that don’t do abortions. Muslims have control of entire countries.
Xianity used to have control over entire countries too. Today, Xianity still has some control but not like it used to and it wants that control back. Religion is an insidious thing with a life of its own, thanks to zealots.
I wonder why there isn’t more focus on the reality that God and religion originate within the human mind.
Full stop.
6 members of the Supreme Court are Catholics, and if i am not wrong, they are conservative, to use a polite word.
Isn’t that theme of just about everything that came from atheist writers for the last 20 years? Be they biologists, physicists, philosophers, or just regular old folks?
I am amazed at how many people are not distressed and frightened that all nine well-educated, intelligent Supreme Court Justices apparently believe they have an invisible friend in the sky. All nine say they are religious.