#5567: — 08/26  at  10:20 AM
Read between the lines. They're slamming the living shit out of Bush's prophet shtick.

#5568: Hank Fox — 08/26  at  10:52 AM
That business about the godders hijacking morality, that's bothered me for years too.

I've talked to countless people in religion chat rooms who really can't seem to imagine that there can be any good without their particular god. And who believe that the instant you get the idea in your head that there are no gods, you're instantly freed to steal, rape and kill -- and that most people WOULD do this if their "faith" faltered. Apparently, they can't imagine the existence of non-religious compassion or caring -- or even the tiny bit of foresight required to imagine what the suddenly-free-from-all-moral-guidance kinfolks of a rape victim might do to the suddenly-godless rapist.

Their minds reach the edge of their religious teachings and just STOP. They have no imagination beyond that edge. No autonomous power to THINK about anything beyond that edge.

This is a pretty scary window into just how much damage religion can do to a human mind.

There's a hilarious parody of the way godders mix the silliness of their religion with wholly non-religious issues of "good" at http://www.jhuger.com/kisshank.mv -- Anybody who hasn't seen "Kissing Hank's Ass" should take a look.

Among the 11 "commandments" of the Church of Hank are such common-sense things as "Eat Right" and "Wash your hands after going to the bathroom." But they're mixed in with outrageous weirdnesses such as "Kick the shit out of people who aren't like you" and "The moon is made of green cheese."

The joke is that a true believer sees the sensible stuff on the list and so believes that EVERYTHING on the list is sensible. For people with no power to think or question, the technique apparently works.

And no, I had nothing to do with this Hank or his church. :D

#5569: PZ Myers — 08/26  at  11:01 AM
DS: Like I said, I agree with their position completely, and despite saying they are non-partisan, the only reasonable interpretation is that it is a Bush slam. But the other thing it is slamming, obliviously, is non-christianity.

#5570: vm — 08/26  at  11:12 AM
I'm with you, PZ. If humanitarian issues are their priority, they need to understand that their purpose is hindered by alienating a large segment of their audience. By failing to recognize that they give the impression that promoting their religious ideology is more important to them, and I couldn't in good conscience support that either.

#5571: — 08/26  at  11:28 AM
Eh? Where's the beef? Soujourners is a Christian organization. The petition is quite clearly directed at Christians; it's an internal discussion about what, if any, the political implications of Christianity are. They make no claims about the moral or ethical beliefs of atheists. They don't slam atheists. They just aren't talking to you.

I'm baffled by your gloss on the quoted sentence. It seems obvious to me that any voter is going to measure a candidate's policies against the moral and ethical precepts held by that voter. Soujourners are not saying that a Christian should only vote for Christian candidates. They are saying that Christians should vote for candidates whose policies are consistent with the moral and ethical requirements of Christianity -- all of the moral and ethical requirements, not just the subset favored by the religious right.

#5572: PZ Myers — 08/26  at  11:41 AM
So you would find nothing biased about saying, "We believe all candidates should be examined by measuring their policies against the complete range of White ethics and values," if it were said within a group of white people, with the goal of encourage better value judgments by the same white people?

I don't interpret it as saying "only vote for Christians", and I am aware that I am not their target audience. My objection is to the implicit and automatic assumption that "christian" and "good" are equivalent. They aren't. What they are doing is pandering to the unquestioned bigotry of the dominant group, to people who won't even recognize that the "christian" qualifier is completely superfluous...and by doing so, they support that bias.

#5573: Chad Orzel — 08/26  at  11:48 AM
o you would find nothing biased about saying, “We believe all candidates should be examined by measuring their policies against the complete range of White ethics and values,” if it were said within a group of white people, with the goal of encourage better value judgments by the same white people?

If there were a political group that constantly pushed the idea that there was one and only one candidate that white people should vote for, and that white people should only vote for that candidate, and some other group came back with your hypothetical sentence, as part of a statement arguing that it was perfectly justifiable for white people to vote for some other candidate, then, yes, I would view that as an improvement over the previous statement.

Of course, it's not the same as what we've got with the Sojourners, but you weren't exactly trying to put together a fair analogy.

#5574: PZ Myers — 08/26  at  11:55 AM
That's why I'm saying it's a start. They have a little further to go. So far, they talk only of "people of faith" and "Christian values". Someday, it would be very reassuring to see these same people offer similar support of people of no faith and secular values.

#5575: — 08/26  at  12:18 PM
> So you would find nothing biased about saying, “We
> believe all candidates should be examined by measuring
> their policies against the complete range of White
> ethics and values,” if it were said within a group of
> white people

Since I do not believe that "white people" are a group defined by shared moral and religious values, I think the statement would be nonsense on a number of levels regardless of whether it was biased.

However, I see nothing biased about a communist saying that communists should evaluate candidates by measuring their policies against the complete range of communist ethics or values. And a muslim would presumably measure a candidate against the complete range of Islamic ethics and values.

Wouldn't it be pretty silly for a Christian/Muslim/communist/whatever to fail to measure candidates against the values of Christianity/Islam/communism/whatever?

> My objection is to the implicit and automatic assumption
> that “christian” and “good” are equivalent. They aren’t.

You would be more accurate to argue that the Soujourner's imply that "faith" and "good" are equivalent, because the petition explicitly mentions other people of faith. But even that would be a misreading, I think. Since the petition is directed at Christians and is specifically a response to the claims of the religious right, then it makes sense for the Soujourners to say "We believe that war - and our call to be peacemakers - is a religious issue" with accompanying Bible references. To a Christian, the moral response to war is derived from that Christian's understanding of Christ's teachings. We can have convergent evolution in ethics, just as in biology, so an atheist might reach the same conclusion from completely different premises, but that doesn't alter the fact that to a Christian, the issue is a religious one.

If the Soujourner's addressed their petition to "the American people" and then couched all their points in religious terms, you might have a point about neglect of atheists and other non-Christians. But given the obvious target and focus of the petition, I just don't see a problem.

#5576: PZ Myers — 08/26  at  01:53 PM
Errm, I don't believe Christians are a group defined by shared moral values. That's the problem. Many Christians do accept it is a naive truism that being a follower of that faith makes you a moral person, and some smaller subset accept the corollary, that not being a Christian makes you a bad person. All we have to do is look at the wide range of followers of the faith that exist now, or its less than stellar history, to see that Christianity has no necessary connection to morality.

I would also see a bias if a Communist (or an atheist!) tried to claim that "Thou shalt not murder" was a Communist (or atheist) belief. It's an attempt to claim ownership of a general value that is not a property of the philosophical position at hand. Communists, atheists, Christians, Muslims, etc., all accept it as a principle.

You may not see a problem, but I do. It's an attempt to reify a granfalloon, and to perpetuate an inappropriate association. Confusing faith with morality is a dangerous thing.

#5581: — 08/26  at  02:35 PM
sojourners, sojourners, sojourners. I don't know why I have a such a problem with the spelling of that word.

I would also see a bias if a Communist (or an atheist!) tried to claim that “Thou shalt not murder” was a Communist (or atheist) belief.

You would? If they said it was exclusively a communist (or an atheist!) belief, I'd agree with you. But that's not what the Sojourners have done. Nowhere do they claim that the listed issues are exclusively the concern of the religious.


It’s an attempt to claim ownership of a general value that is not a property of the philosophical position at hand.

Quite obviously, the general values listed are properties of the philosophical position at hand, if we understand the philosophical position at hand to be "Christianity, as understood and practiced by the Sojourners." The petition appears to be an attempt to rally others who agree with the Sojourner's position (including the religious underpinnings, not just the practical applications). It also attempts to convince those who profess the same religion that they should share the same practical applications of the philosophy. The beliefs and practices of those who self-identify as atheists are completely irrelevant to that discussion, regardless of whether they have similar political beliefs.

You do have a point that some Christians believe that morality can only be derived from religion and that atheists are by definition immoral, but I see no evidence from the text that the sojourners are guilty of that particular sin.

#5583: — 08/26  at  02:52 PM
If the sojourners were trying to reach both Christians and non-Christians (I don't know if they were or not), their statement should probably read, "As Christians, we believe our faith leads us to espouse the following ethical/political/social positions (list x, y, z). We urge all who agree with these positions - regardless of how they have arrived at them - to join us in finding the most practical way to make these a reality." Sojourners may feel that their religion leads to certain conclusions about how they should view the world around them, but that doesn't mean that others can't arrive at the same conclusions for different reasons. Surely it's possible to claim that one's religious beliefs can inform one's actions without denigrating those who would act the same way absent such beliefs.

#5602: — 08/27  at  10:31 AM
This strikes me as an example of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Given that the whole country/world simply isn't going to become atheistic anytime soon, I'd much rather have religious people of the Soujourner stripe carrying the religion banner than the current Falwell/Evangelical/Nutbar contingent.

A start is a start. Especially in the current political climate.