According to the mealy-mouthed Jim Wallis, anyway, the recent election was a defeat for the religious extremists and the secular Left, and a great victory for moderate and conservative Christians. Fortunately, we’ve got Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden to administer a corrective, or I’d have to throw a snit and go start piling faggots for the long-postponed atheist revolution. Since they’ve got it under control, I guess I can let it pass. This time.
But Wallis does join Amy Sullivan on The List.
Saw that discussion last night; checked the comments again this morning, and am a little saddened by how quickly it devolved into “yeah, and those darn shrill anti-god militant Dawkinsian atheists are Just As Bad as the Christianists.”
‘Cause, you know, no one should ever have to read/hear/see anything that challenges his/her dearly-held and unexamined beliefs.
Hey! I … oh, oh … those kind of faggots.
To some extent the centrist or moderate Xtians can feel a bit vindicated, I think. The elections were, in a lot of ways, a forceful wrestling of the power in DC away from the right-wing idiots.
Let ’em have a bit of a happy dance. They deserve it as much as we do, I think.
I see nothing wrong with a big pile of gay people. As long as they’re alive and consenting.
Dobson says:
“Values voters are not going to carry the water for the Republican Party if it ignores their deeply held convictions and beliefs.”
They are convinced that their beliefs are real. Their belief that one ancient book of myths is the litmus test for modern day values and societal needs is why they are losing their grip on even the evangelicals.
Dobson’s belief that he is somehow superior to everyone else will be his downfall.
After all, according to The Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan survey, only 42% of americans go to Sunday church services, so churchgoers are in the minority.
The RR likes to say that 85% of Americans are christians, but what they know is that a big share of those people are christians by default. They are basically latent agnostics. If asked, they will answer that they are christians merely to ease the conversation strain of having to justify their position, and of course, to side step criticism.
The same study says that 53% of Americans feel religion is important to them.
So, in fact, we are a secular nation where less than one half of the people are church going christians. Most of that group isn’t going to be pushed around or put up with the bigotry and hatred that Dobson spews.
As is the case for Dobson, people who want to save us are usually actually out to control us.
I forgot to post that in the study I quoted above, it also states “These numbers are somewhat suspect. Church attendance data in the U.S. has been checked against actual values using two different techniques. The true figures show that only about 20% of Americans and 10% of Canadians actually go to church one or more times a week. Many Americans and Canadians tell pollsters that they have gone to church even though they have not.”
So, it would be reasonable and generous to take the average and say that perhaps 30% of Americans are churchgoing christians.
Relax. Everything is going to be OK. According to the folks at this link, praying for Nancy Pelosi will help her understand the role of Satan in her politics. Unfortunately one of the commenters noted that he also prayed for Bill Clinton, and that didn’t seem to help much….
Here is a little look at your neighbor Wisconsin and how rethuglican strategy backfired.
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=528978
“t sounded like a good idea at the time.
Get the proposed same-sex marriage constitutional amendment on the November ballot to drive up the Republican vote while driving Democrats out of office. The plan worked for President Bush two years ago, particularly in Ohio. So why wouldn’t it do the same in Wisconsin this year, the GOP brass reasoned.
Welcome to the real world.
“The timing ended up backfiring,” said U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, a Menomonee Falls Republican. “I think the opposite worked out this time.”
The controversial amendment easily passed Tuesday, with Wisconsin voters approving the ban by 59% to 41%.
But the measure clearly had an unintended consequence by sparking a larger-than-expected turnout, especially among left-leaning college students, who flooded their campus polling places.
The result: Dems scored some unexpected gains in the Statehouse.
“We’re very happy,” said Rep. Mark Pocan, an openly gay Madison Democrat, “and we definitely saw this as a product of the turnout on the college campuses.”
In the Assembly, Republicans lost as many as eight seats, reducing the GOP’s once formidable control of the house to what now appears to be a 52-47 margin. Five of the new Democratic legislators were elected in districts that include University of Wisconsin campuses. Among those expelled was Colleges and Universities Chairman Rob Kreibich, who represents UW-Eau Claire.
Democrats gained control of the Senate by knocking out four Republicans, including longtime Sen. David Zien, who also represents UW-Eau Claire.
If you can win by losing, score one for Fair Wisconsin, the well-funded grass-roots group that led the unsuccessful fight against the amendment. In his victory speech, Gov. Jim Doyle, who scored his own impressive seven-point victory over U. S. Rep. Mark Green, also put a spotlight on the group, thanking it for its efforts.
Even Republican honchos begrudgingly credited Fair Wisconsin Wednesday for a strong get-out-the-vote effort that helped Democrats up and down the ticket.”
Heh — you should have seen what he’d been planning before he was prayed for!
Though … given the extremely socially-progressive initiatives he’s been spearheading, and the amazing bipartisan — actually multilateral — support he’s managed to garner over the last few years, maybe the prayers really were effective after all.
Problem is that the prayergivers are simply too blind to understand the answers.
As usual.
So who are you going to go after next? The Quakers? The Amish? Maybe you could nail that bastard Martin Luther King, man his brand of shameless promotion of religious causes really makes my blood boil. I guess according to Making Light these people don’t really exist anyway. Or actually, since they seem to be pretty real they must then be really conservative. I guess they have a point, I know always dread it when I see those bearded guys in black hats come riding down my street in their buggies proselytizing from loudspeakers.
How are these kind of attacks productive in any way? Yeah the fact that Wallis identifies himself as an evangelical is kind of creepy and definitely something I could do without, but as far as social issues go its guys like him who are going to swing the rest of the country around, not guys like you PZ, at least not with this strategy. Do you really think the extreme Conservative Right is going to one day just snap out of it and become atheist? No, but if some of them grow up indoctrinated with all of the born-again bullsh*t and become a bit disconcerted they could at least go to something along the lines of what Wallis is preaching, or others like the Berrigans or the late William Sloane Coffin have preached.
These guys are out on the front lines making slow progress on issues like poverty and violence, the annual protests at the School of the Americas have had an impact, and the guys spearheading those initiatives are almost all part of this elusive “Christian Left.” And people have taken notice, there has been talk in congress of shutting down the facility that trained Noriega and the rest of those Latin American death squads. They at least got the Pentagon scared enough to change the name to the more convoluted “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.” The fact is these people for the most part hate the super conservative whackos as much as any of us do, and are equipped to take these people down on their own terms. When Wallis and these other guys are considered conservative then its time to attack them, but right now there is so much to their right it’s going to be a while. Those whackos who are really threatening the freedoms of this country (especially science) today are a whole different breed from Wallis.
Haven’t we learned anything from Tuesday? Its not like more voters have become Democrats, they just saw the other side screwing it up and saw something that was not all that different and uncomfortable for them in the Democrats and voted for it. If you’re going to attack the religious left you should be attacking the new Democrats on exactly the same grounds. You shouldn’t feel happy in the least bit and you should certainly not be breathing a sigh of relief.
I think we all know that it’s going to require gradual change to shift the country left on the political spectrum. This election is just a stepping-stone to a truly enlightened political future, why can’t guys like Wallis and his brood be stepping-stones to a truly enlightened society logically and scientifically (without religion) someday?
And, if you keep up these attacks, are you going to take over for them in advocating for the poor and trying to put an end to state sponsored violence and torture, and nuclear proliferation, PZ? They probably wont have much time when they find out there’s a whole wave of atheist and agnostic sentiment out there trying to take them down. In fact, they’ll probably spend a lot of time finding things in common with their brothers in the Religious Right. I guess South Park may have had a point last night when they portrayed Atheists as sectarian.
There’s a difference between strategy and tactics. It makes sense for atheists of all stripes, as a tactical move, to work with moderate Christians on the basis of shared values to achieve common goals.
As a long-term strategy, however, some (but not all) atheists will doubtless work for the eradication of any public expression of religious sentiment. You guys are welcome to try that, of course, but that’s not a good tactic to win elections in the short term….SH
The problem Eukaryote is that Wallis keeps batting at this secular strawman. It almost makes me believe that he doesn’t think we live in a society with a secular government. The way he keeps using secular as a pejorative is, quite frankly, bizarre. But he goes one step further and denies that those of us on the left who think secularism is a pretty good thing are part of the “moral center”. By which I can only guess he doesn’t think we have any morals. If he says that about us, what does he say about the secular right? With “friends” like these…
“In fact, they’ll probably spend a lot of time finding things in common with their brothers in the Religious Right.”
They’re going to take their marbles and go back home?
Um, because they’d fight against that tooth and nail and with even more support from their brethren-in-pews than they currently have for combating poverty and human rights abuses?
Anti-gay, anti-woman spew from the right side and anti-atheist, anti-secularist spew from the left side are just the same Christianist propaganda in two different dresses.
(I may be an atheist, but I have no problem with anyone else having particular religious beliefs… until the point that those beliefs impel them to interfere with other people’s civil rights. Then I have a big fat problem with horns and a sharp stick.)
Another blogger on HuffPo takes Wall to task.
Maybe I missed something, but didn’t WALLIS start this one?
More like a microscopic proportion of atheists who I (and probably most people here) would fight just as vehemently as we do the right wing fundies.
We don’t want to eradicate any and all public expressions of religious sentiment. We just want to make expressing such sentiments so shameful that people tend to choose not to do so. Rather like racism – it’s not a crime to be racist, but very few people dare to air bigoted opinions openly nowadays. Eventually, we hope that being religious will be like being a white supremacist.
“Here is a little look at your neighbor Wisconsin and how rethuglican strategy backfired.”
Interesting. I heard my brother say that the youth voter turnout for the latest election was the highest in 20 years. Of course, my first thought was “Where were you bozos in ’04?”
“Here is a little look at your neighbor Wisconsin and how rethuglican strategy backfired.”
Interesting. I heard my brother say that the youth voter turnout for the latest election was the highest in 20 years. Of course, my first thought was “Where were you bozos in ’04?”
As I said, the religious left is more dangerous than the religious right in a way. As long as the fundamentalists have nowhere to go but the Republican Party, the Republican leadership will take them for granted and throw them a bone once a decade while concentrating on screwing the poor. But if they can threaten to leave for the Democrats, they’ll trigger a competition for the Evangelical vote, with both parties rushing to be more anti-choice, more anti-gay, and more anti-science.
Maybe we should go after the Amish – their disgusting exploitative society prevents people from many opportunities they should be free to have, and their treatment of women is deplorable.
That said, I agree that Wallis is a moron. I supported him at first, but he pretty much jumped the shark several years ago. I was saddened by the level of the comments as well. The cognitive dissonance is astounding. I liked the “faith healing is quackery but not all faith healing is” one (not a quote from the comment, just the jist of it). Basically the “all bizarre beliefs are stupid, but mine aren’t” argument. That, and the “STFU Wicca!” comment. That was hilarious. And, of course, the atheism is a religion argument, along with the continuation of the idea that Dennet, Dawkins, and Harris speak out against, the religious views should be immune to criticism or evaluation, especially if they are your own. And as Harris says, the religious left are the enablers of the religious right (and other extremists).
This week the Straight Dope addresses how many in the US are creationists:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/061110.html
I would just like to add my agreement with BronzeDog that as an atheist I have no problem with people of faith, but I certainly do have a problem with faith-based legislation. Lets stick with reliable research for laws, and you can pray all you like. Heck, you can pray in public for all I care, just don’t demand that I join you.
If I may be permitted to plagiarize myself from some of my responses over there:
I believe no governmental institution should tell you who to worship or what kind of prayers to say, and no religious institution should tell you who to vote for or what kind of laws to pass.
It should be possible to see some real representation for the non-religious, rather than keeping us as permanent second-class citizens, who have the right to vote for whichever Christian we prefer.
A lot of Christians made quite a deal with the devil by allying with the pro-war, pro-torture authoritarian crowd (in return for support for some policies that I really don’t think Jesus would approve of), and I’m pleased to see some of them renounce it; but we (meaning everyone who loves freedom and peace and truth) still have a long way to go on that front. And I don’t appreciate being ambushed by my allies when the enemy is still in the White House.
… little late adding Wallis to the Amy Sullivan list arent we?
I used to be fan of Wallis, back in the day. That wasn’t the most coherent thing he’s ever written (and comments over at Making Light suggest he’s lost it in the last few years, which would be about since I stopped reading him regularly). However, I have to point out that PZ is constantly complaining that moderate Christians don’t criticize the wingnuts loud enough — well, Wallis/Sojourners have been doing exactly that for over 25 years. I mean, what mainstream American publication — secular or religious — had the yarbles to run a cover headline reading: “Ronald Reagan is Lying About Central America”? (I’m not American — enlighten me).
Steve: I think the issue is that many of the moderates really don’t criticize the wingnuts enough (hence why Wallis and his ilk stand out), but even the ones who do criticize the wingnuts tend to maintain that religious faith itself, and beliefs formed by faith, are things that should not be criticized. They criticize some of the right’s actions, but often not the beliefs behind them and certainly not the process by which they arrived at those beliefs.
Amen, if you’ll pardon the expression. ;)
In other words, we endorse public intellectual masturbation, but adamantly oppose intellectual rape.
(I suppose I’m going to take some flak for that analogy, possibly including spurious accusations of “trolling.” So be it; it holds in broad outline and certainly gets the reader’s attention.)
“Maybe we should go after the Amish – their disgusting exploitative society prevents people from many opportunities they should be free to have, and their treatment of women is deplorable.”
Leave them out of this. If the evangelical fundies took a lesson from the Amish, we’d not have near the theologically driven problems we have here and across the globe. Generally, the Amish, Minnonites, Quakers and a few others practice their beliefs in a most unobtrusive manner. It is their own convictions and nothing more.
Of course they think they’re right, but, hell, so do I (agnostic). But the point is neither of us is going to bash the other over the head because of it. Of course, that would be hard for them anyway because they’re mostly pacifist.
Face it, people are going to have beliefs we may think strange. But as long as they don’t use the levers of government to force the rest of us to accept their view, I have no problem with it. As long as they don’t beat on my door or acost me in the mall parking lot, I really don’t care what they belive.
In fact, the anabaptists seem to actually practice what Jesus supposedly taught, unlike the evangelicals who seem to make it up as they go along. The majority of anabaptists also allow their childen (both sexes mind you) to make up their own minds with respect to religious faith, a choice I never had grown up evangelical. A choice I STILL don’t have if you talk to some of my fundie relatives.