Forgive me for taking so long to respond, but I've been short of time and sleep lately, and I wanted to be reasonably alert when I responded to this.
Thank you for your response. Because of it, I now understand what concerns were really driving your original post. Allow me to attempt to paraphrase, and forgive me if I get it wrong.
I think you're right that we are, fundamentally, in agreement, but we categorize the issues differently.
You perceive a threat to yourself by "people of faith" because you believe that, if their faith is true and deep, they must necessarily be committed to proselytizing for it, attempting to persuade, even compel, other people to share it.
I think that's incorrect (though I will grant that some faiths have, as a built-in element, the mandate that its followers must proselytize). Part of the reason I say this is because I used to be a person of faith (specifically, a Roman Catholic) and am one no longer. (I now think of myself as an agnostic.) But another part of the reason is that I know many conventionally religious people who are likewise disinclined, or at least disinterested, in forcing everyone to share their beliefs.
What has *not* changed about me since I turned away from Roman Catholicism is not my "faith" but my conviction that it's improper to try to compel, or even persuade, everyone else to share my beliefs. I still believe that mandating faith, any faith, is wrong. And I suspect many "people of faith" are of the same mind as I am in that particular regard.
I think the threat posed to you and your values (many of which I suspect I share) is genuine, but you have it miscategorized. The threat is posed by people determined to impose their own beliefs, whatever they are, upon others. Many of those people follow one religion or other, possibly most of them are Christian, but I believe that at least some of them are atheists, since atheism also leaves room for a certain amount of crusading (consider the efforts of the former Soviet Union to abolish religion of all kinds.) On the other hand, I do not know of any crusading agnostics, if only because the position "I don't know if God exists, and you can't either!" is a tad too ridiculous to base a crusade upon. :-)
I prefer to think of the people who pose the kind of threat we are discussing as "fanatics," but that's just a minor question of terminology.
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Date: 2005-10-24 02:41 am (UTC)Thank you for your response. Because of it, I now understand what concerns were really driving your original post. Allow me to attempt to paraphrase, and forgive me if I get it wrong.
I think you're right that we are, fundamentally, in agreement, but we categorize the issues differently.
You perceive a threat to yourself by "people of faith" because you believe that, if their faith is true and deep, they must necessarily be committed to proselytizing for it, attempting to persuade, even compel, other people to share it.
I think that's incorrect (though I will grant that some faiths have, as a built-in element, the mandate that its followers must proselytize).
Part of the reason I say this is because I used to be a person of faith (specifically, a Roman Catholic) and am one no longer. (I now think of myself as an agnostic.) But another part of the reason is that I know many conventionally religious people who are likewise disinclined, or at least disinterested, in forcing everyone to share their beliefs.
What has *not* changed about me since I turned away from Roman Catholicism is not my "faith" but my conviction that it's improper to try to compel, or even persuade, everyone else to share my beliefs. I still believe that mandating faith, any faith, is wrong. And I suspect many "people of faith" are of the same mind as I am in that particular regard.
I think the threat posed to you and your values (many of which I suspect I share) is genuine, but you have it miscategorized. The threat is posed by people determined to impose their own beliefs, whatever they are, upon others. Many of those people follow one religion or other, possibly most of them are Christian, but I believe that at least some of them are atheists, since atheism also leaves room for a certain amount of crusading (consider the efforts of the former Soviet Union to abolish religion of all kinds.) On the other hand, I do not know of any crusading agnostics, if only because the position "I don't know if God exists, and you can't either!" is a tad too ridiculous to base a crusade upon. :-)
I prefer to think of the people who pose the kind of threat we are discussing as "fanatics," but that's just a minor question of terminology.