I don't think you understand. I'm an atheist. I'm bound to no deity.
Perhaps it's just a question of priorities.
Like your thread about
talking to God↗; you couldn't grasp any other context than a Christian pretense fashioned in your image. Or the
"one thread to rule them all"↗ that required a
companion thread↗ because the one thread strayed into a range that "doesn't appear to describe the God of the Abrahamic religions … very well at all", and sought comparison to that sort of framework.
Think of it this way: In thirty years of giving this stuff your consideration, and twenty years as an identifying atheist, what have you actually learned about the religions you criticize? Consider your inquiry in
"Religion, State, and the New Christian Spirit"↗: "Some context: the bible commands no less than the death sentence for all kinds of innocuous or harmless infractions of God's law. For some reason, this isn't hateful?" It's like you've been doing this for thirty years and are still arguing against the God of your childhood.
I promise you, James, compared to "the enormous burdens and costs that religion of all kinds has placed (and is placing) on believers and non-believers alike", or
"the point where their unsupported beliefs start having detrimental impacts on other people"↗, no, that pabulum about the death sentence being hateful is not going to be effective.
Remember, James, I'm someone who can stand in a roomful of atheists and hand out tools for criticizing religion, and it
only↗ seems↗ to
distress↗ them.
Here, it's like I said to someone else, about
four years ago↗:
• Really, if the Salish people don't happen to have finely resolved and metaphysically determined tables describing which angel has what authority over which day of the week, and, furthermore, the daily schedules of diverse angels given which authority over what hours on any given day of the week, there might be a reason. I'm pretty certain they also never invented an invisible college, either .... If there is no Nisqually angel of three o'clock in the afternoon on Wednesday, it does not seem so much to hope the reasons why are apparent.
Or, as I told you, all of a
couple weeks later↗:
• Here is a contrast: Existential questions of life and death, purpose and meaning, to the one, and, What day is it? to the other. Most religious people's focus, James, has to do with daily life.
See, the thing is your primary discussion about religion is as an inquisitor against some manner of Christianity you can't describe very well. It's not so much that you're bad at explaining it, but, rather, that you seem to put work into avoiding some details. I mean, it doesn't come up, much, but in all these years at Sciforums, if you ever said what denomination, I missed it: Catholic, Anglican, Seventh-Day Adventist, Kingdom Hall, Latter-Day Saints, it makes a difference.
But I have, before, mentioned the
brochure↗ gloss↗, and five years later it persists¹. The story you tell in
#25↑ is similar to
a couple years ago↗, smoothed over with a polymer generality that, as I explained
then↗, leaves your descriptions vague enough that, while we can generally grasp what you're after, there isn't much to be said for specific response because it remains unclear what some things mean.
It's kind of like why
it's not surprising↗ when Christians somehow end up supporting sin; comparatively, you create a similar outcome by turning the discussion away from sin—
i.e., "the enormous burdens and costs that religion of all kinds has placed (and is placing) on believers and non-believers alike"—in favor of a preferred inquisition,
e.g., "Some context: the bible commands no less than the death sentence for all kinds of innocuous or harmless infractions of God's law. For some reason, this isn't hateful?"
Four years ago, I happened to
raised a similar point↗ about the health hazard of defying epidemic protocol for the sake of religious glorification: Communicating with those sorts of people and congregations is difficult enough, but it remains unclear how it is you expect your preferred manner of inquisition will do anything useful toward attending the harms they might bring to self or others.
Now that such religious ideologies are not only in play politically, but promising and rising toward even greater infliction, it's one thing if, "These days, I'm more informed about the enormous burdens and costs that religion of all kinds has placed (and is placing) on believers and non-believers alike", but inasmuch as you might take issue with the religious at the point where their unsupported beliefs start having detrimental impacts on other people, two-bitting the "death sentence for all kinds of innocuous or harmless infractions of God's law" for a quick turnaround on what is hateful or not will be approximately as effective this time around as it has been over the last
forty years↗, at least, of American discourse and politics.
I have, before, said this and that about letting people we know are wrong set the terms of discussion, and in the moment, what occurs to mind is whether, when bearing witness to apostasy, you might validate the apostasy in order to run it through the standard wringer, or challenge the apostasy itself. Inasmuch as this one evangelist doesn't care if it works because at the end of the day she isn't answering you, she is answering God, well, sure, and according to the Bible (Mt. 6.1), she already has her reward.
Think about it, we've known about that one for over fifteen years, and if you pass over the record we have of
the Christian's proud defiance of Christ, you might miss that it's not even a question of hypocrisy, but open rebellion and usurpation. Your manner of inquisition tends to implicitly validate untenable arguments in order to indict your own, personal
shoebox idol↗. More broadly, when you ask diverse people to respond, for instance, according to one errant standard—
i.e., what
you say—you give them a common foe, or, at least, focus. Instead of focusing on the errors of their own faith, they focus on the presumptuous rudeness of the atheist in front of them. It's one thing if they have unfortunate superstitions about atheism and atheists, but your inquisitory approach affirms and reinforces many of those expectations.
It's one thing if reactionary atheism tends to focus on familiar aspects of religion,
e.g., for most in our community over the years, some manner of Christianity. Beyond that, most aren't as aware, knowledgeable, &c., about Abramism, and while that makes sense in and of itself, by the time we're talking about theists in general, the critique against religion tends toward its own articles of faith.
Comparatively, when advocate Stenzel declares, and assembled faithful cheer, that truth does not matter because she is performing for God, her solipsism is more relevant than your word games and fallacious provocation. They're faithless, and seek to usurp God's authority in this world. In a word, they are
apostate.
As for handing out tools, that one's pretty basic; it's not just Mt. 6.1, but also Mt. 7.15-20. The thing is, we can't just
disqualify them as Christians, even though that is essentially the point. This faithless usurpation is not new; whether forty or thirty or twenty years, consider the difference between time spent isolating and identifying this apostasy that would require widespread Christian reassessment of faith, or piling them in with all other Christians in order to keep asking them to submit to your judgment.
And that's the thing: It's not just the tendency toward familiar foundations, such as Christianity;
i.e., it's not
merely↑ "why your concept of deity is so rooted in Christian theology". Your inquisition is particular and proximal, nearly intimate. It's also insistent and largely unchanging. Again, what have you actually learned about the religions you criticize, because your approach doesn't change. You're pursuing a very particular idol, and while it might look like you are pursuing somebody else's god, it is in its way actually your own.
That's why I say,
bound; it's like you're still arguing against the God of your childhood.
____________________
Notes:
¹
ca. 2022↗, Along the way, I described it as
so generic as to read like a fourth-wall pitch to first-timers, and explained:
It is not that I somehow don't recognize the range you describe, James, but that it's a gloss composite, so generalized that even a Methodist joke doesn't work.
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