Getting One's Way By Cheating

[nemorathwald]

[Edited to add: In case there was any question, this post is about how grateful I am to my friends who identify as Christians, Buddhists, Pagans, and various buffet-style custom designer religions. It is about the kind of things that they would not do, which I can't even conceive them doing. When I started, I intended to bring that up as the point of this post. THANK YOU!]

From time to time I reiterate my position about faith as it concerns what I will and will not tolerate. I'm tolerant of anyone's devotional life. Granted, I may decline to praise it because I give myself permission to hold opinions; and I consider faith beliefs a reflection of the content of character, so it imposes a ceiling on intimacy. But I am pragmatic. That ceiling is probably higher than you think. I offer a wide range of friendship/association/relationship options.

What I do not tolerate is cheating. When you try to get your way with me or a group of other people by playing the faith card, you are manipulating us to win while being wrong.

This is no different from the line drawn in the sand by the wider social circles I travel in. Want to identify yourself as a Christian or an astrologer or what have you? I won't get prickly. Want to hold a worship service or practice voodoo rituals at a science fiction convention? We'll give you a room. However, if you start talking about the Lordship of Christ over the world, or whatever your religion's analogue is, this will not escape comment or scrutiny that you have just transitioned into a cheating asshole in your interpersonal transactions.

The only difference in this between me and fandom in general is that I'm one of the least politically correct. (Well, OK. Other than jer_.) It's fashionable to be all talk, and claim that ancient wisdom has something to offer*, and then totally ignore what it has to offer, while basking in the cost-free glow of superior enlightenment. I do not do this.

Sometimes I have been mistaken for an intolerant person. Why then am I involved in one particular project which offers nothing rewarding to me? (I will not name that project here, except that I assure you it is not a convention, it does not involve writing software, and it is not Lojban.) I have to summon vast reserves of toleration every single time I consume any of the product of that project. I do it in order to get out of my insulated bubble, and to get the other participants out of theirs. It's easy enough to mistake yourself for a tolerant person just by avoiding anyone who triggers you.

I've heard precious few of my friends offer an explicit rationale for where to draw the line of tolerance (jer_ has done so very well, thank you), but in practice they draw it in the right place. I will make the rationale explicit here.

When A believes something they can't prove to B, fine. But when A uses it as a reason for the group of A and B to make the choice that A wants to make, A is applying manipulating pressure to win while being wrong.

Even those who want to validate everyone around them will ally with me in this, when somebody uses their blind faith to vote on issues like sexuality. The voting booth is one place we get our way over other people. This imposes a responsibility to be able to defend that position.

Literalist bible-believers perceive this insistence on evidence to be monolithic secularism. But as I have attempted to show here, when reason and evidence end up as the default decision method of any pluralistic group, that isn't imposed artificially. It's a natural consequence of pluralism. Reason and evidence are neutral ground.

* Tolerant well-educated people, raise your patchouli-scented hand if you've read the Bible cover to cover. No? I have. Even Leviticus. I am Gother Than Thou. ;)

Comments

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

Hold the phone. You're using a pedantic version of the word "know." We aren't talking about unverifiable metaphysics here. We could even set aside for the sake of argument anything that happened long ago and far away that are falsified by biological and archaeological forensics. I don't know about you, but I have a stronger class of evidence in my own life. It is knowable in present day experiences that contradict the bible over and over. That's why all the people who spoke up on this page to say they read it, left it.

If you don't know how specific the Bible is in its falsifiable claims about what believers are supposed to experience, that indicates you haven't read it.

Don't bother bringing up Brother Guy Consolmagno as if his endorsement would enhance the credibility of anything.

[drew4096.livejournal.com]

Of course Br. Guy's "endorsement" does not add credibility
to anything, and Br. Guy might be the first person to say so.
But when someone who is reasonably intelligent, educated, and
respected for his knowledge, and otherwise appears to have his
head screwed on tight, ostensibly holds an irrational belief,
I tend to wonder why. This is a piece that does not fit into
the puzzle; it is not *logical* to expect such a thing to occur.
(If you have cause to think that Br. Guy *doesn't* have his
head screwed on tight, other than the fact that he is a member
of a religious order, I would be interested in hearing about
it.)

Again I am opposed to the government taking orders from
a God even if one turns out to exist. Having gone to a religious
school for 8 years, I've seen the difference between religion
inspired "discipline" and a more laid back policy in the effects
on the social environment, and very much prefer the more laid
back policy.

But to clarify my position a bit, I take the heaven and
hell bit in the same spirit that the FBI would take a bomb
threat. Maybe, even most likely, a hoax; but none the less it
bears investigation. For when someone declares that certain
laws must be passed because a God demands it on penalty of bad
things happening, whether a God is actually behind it or not
you have to agree on one thing: An attempt at coersion is
taking place. And attempts at coersion bear investigation
just for being attempts at coersion.