Lifelong member President Jimmy Carter left that self-righteous ship of fools about 4 years ago over Church teachings about the subservient role of women and I'm waiting to see who tumbles into the lifeboats over the latest decision to dump the Boy Scouts because they decided on May 24th that they no longer are going to excommunicate gay Scouts.
It's a "Moral" thing you see and it's not really bigotry because they justify
Of course the SBC was a supporter of Slavery and Segregation because it was a moral thing and a Biblical one - not because they're a bunch of bigots and moral cowards. It's what God wants and who can question the absolute truth of anything someone put into God's mouth for his own purposes?
Yes, yes, they decided to stop beating that dead horse and renounced all that back in 1995 -- decades after the horse died but perhaps that's only because they had gays and women to turn to while blathering about God's word. One wonders what they will choose as the next life raft when the world of decency, respect and morality, in due course rejects once again that rotting prison hulk of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Curious. The other day I was reading this article: Religious Fundamentalism Treated As A Mental Illness. It resonated with me – sort of but not completely. An excessive use of psychological defense mechanisms is often a measure of disturbed behavior, even full-blown character disorders. Religious zealotry gorges on defense mechanisms: All-or-nothing thinking, denial, grandiosity, rationalization, reaction-formation, as examples. In concept at least, religious fundamentalism as a mental illness makes some sense. When we do not approve of a cult, we rescue its victims through intervention.
ReplyDeleteI can think of other aspects of human behavior at least as destructive as religion: Partisan conflict, battles over resources and spheres of influence, turf wars, and gratuitous aggression not driven by anything in particular. Humanoids! You know my opinion of them.
We are well within our rights to condemn bigotry, oppression, and sources of violence; but do we want to “pathologize” everything that fails to meet with our approval? Are all Southern Baptist congregations purveyors of bigotry? I can cite at least one exception - the Interfaith Alliance run by Rev. Dr. Welton Gaddy, a Southern Baptist who challenges extremism and defends human rights.
Sometimes I employ what I call the “nonsense word” test. Take St. Anselm’s Ontological Argument starting with this premise: “God as that being that than which nothing greater can be conceived.” Substitute the word “god” with any nonsense word, and the fallacy of an a priori argument is immediately apparent. Similarly …
“Southern Baptists aren't that smart … [a] foundering wreck of antique bigotry. ”
It is not the “nonsense word” test that concerns me. Substitute the words “Catholic” or “Jew” and you have a statement that unwittingly points a finger of bigotry back at itself.
Are you saying that accusing people who support bigotry whether by action or inaction is in itself bigotry? Perhaps I should lay off the Tea Party because there may be one or two who aren't quite as bad or that evil isn't evil unless it's flawless evil. Fallacious or not, that train of logic is going to run off the rails in short order.
ReplyDeletePerhaps I should have said those who are not leaving a sinking SBC are not as smart as rats or as decent as Jimmy Carter, but the SBC is an organization, not an individual -- an organization with clearly stated principles that oppose and have long opposed freedom and justice and I don't think prejudice is involved in pointing out their history or in repeating their words.
If there's prejudice on my part it's a prejudice against ecclesiastical attacks on common decency, on compassion, on freedoms supposed to be enshrined in our American foundations. If I simplify it by saying that people who support organizations who abuse human rights and justify it with references to the imagined demands of a supernatural power aren't smart and if this points an accusatory finger at me I'll quote Saint Foggustine who said that you don't have to prove sainthood to oppose evil and if one did, no moral judgement would ever be possible.
It was pressure from within and without that caused them to accept that God likes dark skinned people too and perhaps I can postulate further reforms more in line with the teachings they pretend to follow.
If enough people follow Mr. Carter by renouncing affiliation with SBC that organization would be forced to reconsider, God being without a voice lest it be ours.
The SBC is a money machine, just like every other well organized religion.
ReplyDeleteWhen a religious group is not paying people six and seven figure incomes* (or, for that matter, more than a decent, living wage) for doing "GOD's Work", then they get some respect from me.
* That figure includes housing and all of the little "fringe benefits" like private aircraft, limos, etc., that "belong" to the church but are for the exclusive use of the inner circle.
DC:
DeleteThe 'poverty' of certain ecclesiastical figures is quite spectacular, isn't it? Ever see Billy Graham's palatial estate?
On the whole I think Theravada Buddhism does a far better job of teaching detachment from the world of commerce and possessions than any form of Christianity I'm aware of, not that there aren't voluntarily poor preachers and Bikkhus with Gucci sunglasses.
People with a propensity toward faith are easy marks for the oldest profession. I'm not one to defend faith or the practice of abusing the faithful.
But I'm not going to back off my dislike of certain organizations that promote intolerance and oppression and racism whether they think it's "God's work" or the Devil's. The SBC courts the wealthy by sanctifying the nasty sentiments of the bigot and has done so for a long time and it's good for them there really isn't a god to Sodomize them straight to hell.
Captain,
ReplyDeleteI will always agree with you with regards to “ecclesiastical attacks on common decency;” but my concern is unintended by-catch when casting a wide net that captures gentle air-breathing marine reptiles alongside predatory sharks.
Is religion always the source of evil in the world? How about Commies like Pol Pot! Damn Nazis! Knuckle-dragging, low hanging tea anarchists! And Republicans! Perhaps chicanery and corruption is the default condition of the human species no matter what we are talking about – whether the subject is religion, politics, commerce, or other human constructs used and abused to indecency.
There are a billion Catholics in the world, more than a billion Moslems, a lot of Hindus and Buddhists, and a few Jews. They say Einstein was a spiritual man (albeit a relative one). Heisenberg was either the world’s best golfer, or the world’s worst. Trappist Monks make good beer and wine. The new Pope assures atheists that there is a place for them too. And my new girlfriend is vegan.
If the default condition of the human species is chicanery and corruption, flaming godless liberals have found comfort in the embrace of diversity and multiculturalism (unless they’re hermits).
Octo:
ReplyDeleteI don't think condemning an organization is like casting a wide net. It's possible to condemn the Roman Catholic Church for various things without condemning the local Parish priest or individual Catholics who may, after all, share my displeasure with the Vatican. The SBC is not a person. It's a large group of people who accept the often unacceptable codes of behavior and attitudes its leaders assert. I do not include opponents or dissenters in the set of followers for obvious reasons otherwise I'd have to call Protestants Catholics.
No I don't say that religion is the root of all evil, but like any tool it can be misused and because people have faith in their faith, they often get sucked into the troubling things a particular church is promoting or attacking, and so it has a unique character as a tool that affects both the user and the thing it's being used on.
So perhaps it sounds like a Koan, but is intolerance for intolerance intolerant?
Captain,
ReplyDeleteI see your point, and I have also been known to comment on ecclesiastical abuses without balancing my own tirades with qualifications. Perhaps, I was just a bit too sensitive in blanketing the entire SBC knowing there are dissenters such the Rev. Dr. Gaddy and others who challenge extremism and value human rights as much as we do.
BTW, this caught my attention today:
God spoke to Republicans and told them not to turn against House Speaker John Boehner. Here is my tirade against this crap – not on my terms – but on their terms: Invoking the name of “God” to advance a self-serving partisan agenda is HUBRIS and BLASPHEMY, and I am sure there are Catholic liberals and Protestant liberals and Jewish liberals who resent this shit as much as I do.
Yes funny how these 10 Commandments shouters forget all about taking HaShem 'the name' in vain and this being the best possible example thereof.
ReplyDeletePresumably, God, being omnipotent, omniscient and all that jazz could do what he wants done without a legion of losers who make themselves feel important by manifesting God's dyspepsia.
It doesn't take long for a religion of gods to become a religion of priests, shamans, prophets and other phonies and that includes the antique politicians who wrote all kinds of biblical stories praising slaughter and slavery in the name of power, amen.
"It doesn't take long for a religion of gods to become a religion of priests, shamans, prophets and other phonies..."
ReplyDeleteIn reality, it doesn't take long for a group of men (usually) to figure out that griftin' teh roobz is a lot easier if the capo di tutti capi is not only omnipotent but INVISIBLE!
That's why I call it the oldest profession. Some paleontologists are trying to establish a "belief system" in Neanderthalers so that they can say they were as smart as we are. Think scientists are really objective?
DeleteMakes me want to convert to Islam where women and gays are treated equally.
ReplyDeleteThis kind of equality we are better off without.
DeleteSomeone needs to explain that to the Islamists...
ReplyDelete