Response To Micah Clark: It Ain’t That Bad
Irradiated by LabRat
From the Illinois Family Institute: Warning To America: It Can Get Worse
By “it” he means atheism and agnosticism among young people.
The Illinois Family Institute apparently exists to “promote marriage, family, life, and liberty”. As poster Mr. Clark may or may not be aware, people who doubt the existence of the Biblical God generally get married more often than not, 100% of them have families, all of them are alive and all of them have a choice of positions on the issue of abortion if that’s the specific issue at hand, and most of them are broadly in favor of “liberty”, though most of them would also take a view of liberty that includes not being forced to participate in or mouth along with religious ceremonies, or be restricted by law grounded in an explicitly religious morality. Much as religious people object to laws restraining them from religious practice. (Anti-murder: not explicitly religious. Anti-contraception: generally explicitly religious.)
Fun additional quote:
By the way, everyone believes in something, be it the God, a god or themselves.
Missing from this list: family, community, the temporal order of law, the abstract order of morality, the sweep of human history… everyone believes in something, but not everyone believes moral authority is a chain of authority-people with eternal, personified authorities at the ends. (Lots of people who believe/d in multiple gods don’t, and those gods behave rather more like people freed of moral authority than moral authorities.)
Oh, I know, “family” associations are usually code for “Christian, and fuck your family if it doesn’t fit what we think is the Biblical mold, and fuck liberty if it in some way contradicts what we think God’s will is, even if God was pretty explicit in the Bible that everyone has a choice”. But today, for whatever reason, I am extra tired of the pretension.
June 21st, 2012 at 10:53 pm
Hey, ya gotta love the pic they have at the top of the page. It fits so well with pic at the top of this page.
Things could, indeed, get worse. People could go back to being religious.
June 22nd, 2012 at 8:57 am
Just five years ago only 17 percent of young people said that they doubt the existence of God. Today, that number has jumped fifteen points to 32 percent.
Couldn’t have anything to do with the election of the Second Coming, and subsequent disappointment? Nahhhh…
June 22nd, 2012 at 10:18 am
Awe geez. These people miss the mark so often. If you really believe the Bible is God’s word, then you should know that we were created with free will. Anyone choosing not to believe is doing exactly what they were created to do. That’s part of the deal. If doubt wasn’t an option, faith would be meaningless.
Maybe they should spend more time loving their neighbors instead of wringing their hands over them. You know, like Jesus. I know, crazy talk that those that proclaim to be Christians try and behave like Christians.
June 22nd, 2012 at 10:53 am
Jennifer- it would be very easy to get the impression that Christ’s life wasn’t primarily about breaking down social and tribal barriers, wouldn’t it?
June 23rd, 2012 at 8:55 am
@Jennifer,
I think you’re right.
This leads me to an a conclusion that I’m slightly surprised by.
It appears that strongly-religious (or at least theologically-and-culturally-conservative Christians) are a cultural tribe. That is, a cultural group that has bonded together around a common idea.
Related thoughts: there have already been discussion of tribes, but usually with another focus. Tribes are fun when they are Our People, right?
I guess this religious tribe gets worked up by the fact that they are no longer the dominant tribe in society. Or they can’t tell themselves that they are dominant, because the main forces in society are pushing stuff they don’t agree with. The existence of groups like this Family Institute, and the way they discuss the problems of society, are rooted in this tribal sense.
As Jennifer notes, this is behavior that is easy to critique as being against the principles of the religion.
June 23rd, 2012 at 10:24 am
Heh. It is that bad.
I plan on making it worse. People should think first. Belief should be verified or debunked.
June 23rd, 2012 at 2:16 pm
It would be easy. So very frustrating. Sometimes I wonder if I’m the misfit spending so much time with the ‘you! Off my side!.’
sigh
But I have a lovely tribe of misfits which mean more to me than family. And we are quite the mixed bag. I’d have it no other way.
June 23rd, 2012 at 4:07 pm
“It appears that strongly-religious (or at least theologically-and-culturally-conservative Christians) are a cultural tribe. That is, a cultural group that has bonded together around a common idea.”
I do think this is true. And I don’t think the key definer is the degree of religiousness, but the kind. Personally just going by the text of the gospels I always thought (and kind of took for granted until I got old enough to follow politics) that you could far far more easily use them to justify some kind of hippie commune than the kind of christianity that I have come to associate with the US capital ‘C’ Christian movement. I mean the majority of the gospels are literally about hanging out with social outcasts, giving away all your money to people poorer than you, and mocking rich people and religious authorities.
June 23rd, 2012 at 5:15 pm
Yea, but a lot of folks are only happy with the old testament thunder deity, BH.
June 25th, 2012 at 1:01 am
Kristopher, I, for one, shall sleep soundly tonight, knowing that you shall sleeplessly defend Western Civilization from that plague, the believers.
The Congress ought to honor you-we know they won’t. The ingrates.
June 25th, 2012 at 9:11 am
Ha ha ha ha … That’s OK, I don’t need a medal.
Believers don’t bother me. Insane god botherers like this one do, But … it warms my heart that they are there to drive folks away from religion and encourage them to think for themselves.
I should probably not be angry about Micah.
Seriously, folks like Micah Clarke do more than anyone else ( except maybe Chick ) to promote skepticism.
June 25th, 2012 at 11:10 am
Kristopher, you were a good sport. My hat is off.
Being myself a Transcendental Misapprehensionist, I’m not in a position to pester anyone else to their faith, as the core element of ours is that everyone will die and find out they were wrong.
June 25th, 2012 at 1:57 pm
Come X-Day and the Rupture, you will not be transported to the Sex Goddess’s saucers.
No amount of praise for Bob after that will get you out of eating dogfood in the ruins while the aliens hunt you down for the Harvest.
June 25th, 2012 at 2:01 pm
Heh.
June 30th, 2012 at 8:45 am
Ok believer, conservative/wookie. Who the fuck cares what some asshole from some foundation or institute says? Just be happy being you, content in your own beliefs and ignore the shot-stirrers.
July 5th, 2012 at 6:07 pm
For a great long while I’ve been saying a massive wave of secularism is what really needs to catch fire in the middle east, but I pretty much think that for the whole damned planet, including here.
July 5th, 2012 at 6:32 pm
You know, Jennifer is the kind of person I was reared to see as a true Christian- and if more folk were like her and my parents, I wouldn’t see secularism as preferable, actually.