This is something that I do out of respect for the individuals involved.

But there are limits to that respect.

I think it may have been you who sent me a link to a video in which somebody said (I forget the guy's name) something like, "I'm not so interested in what you believe, but rather how you believe it".

To me, actions speak much louder than words, and are much more important in judging legitimacy and authenticity.

It is possible for somebody's actions to make me lose all respect for them, at which point I don't care much about hurting their delicate fee-fees.

I realize that for many, shunning is inherently bad (and many times in practice it is indeed bad), and folks who engage in it are pelted with internet memes, but if a Scotsman picks up a gun and proceeds to go on a killing spree, I'm really not interested in his opinions of what it means to be a Scotsman.

As far as I am concerned, he lost his right to pontificate on such matters the moment he picked up a gun.

And if that hurts his delicate fee-fees, then so be it.

I just don't care.

I really don't.

If you really want to impress me with the authenticity and legitimacy of your beliefs, then show me by your actions why your beliefs deserve to be respected. I want to know how you believe, not what you believe

Don't go on a murder spree and then turn around and expect me to respect your beliefs out of some sort of misguided political correctness because of some stupid internet meme.

Internet memes are a dime a dozen.

I am currently struggling with the position the Obama is taking on this issue, but I am increasingly seeing the merits.

He who owns the definitions may be the ones that win the battle.

So sadly ironic that the 'less authentic' is often the truly more authentic expressions of the teachings of a particular religion, philosophy, or political world view whereas the 'more authentic' is in actuality the much less authentic expression. It contains distortions, always rage, and numerous cognitive biases. Most importantly it pits an us versus a them and is an either/or mode of thinking. Authentic traditions are the more inclusive and are capable of the more mature both/and mode of thinking.

Wonderful article.

Not to mention blind, uncritical acceptance of an argument that you very badly WANT to be true, but can't actually muster any evidence for.

I have two qualifications to consider if someone is part of a religion. First, do they claim to be part of the religion? Second, do they base their religion on the specific holy book/tenants of the religion. So if I see a guy waving a bible and declaring himself a christian then I will believe he is a christian no matter how he interprets the words in the bible. Same is true for a muslim and the koran.

How dishonest of you. Not that I expect any better from a theist. Dishonesty is the foundation of any kind of faith.

So no, I wasn't putting words in your mouth at all.

often are profound statements in themselves. In yours there is the assumption that I would actually stoop to the level of declaring violent monsters to somehow be legitimate. It is frankly dishonest and very insulting of you.

My post was pointing out that ISIL is made up of muslims that follow muslim teachings. There is no point in pretending that they are not muslim. That doesn't mean they are not violent monsters. It just adds muslim as another accurate descriptor. The same way that we can call westboro baptist a group of bigoted jackasses, it doesn't change that they are christians and that christian is an important part of their character.

In the end the point is the actual teachings of the religion that these evil people follow are worth analyzing. Dismissing it by saying they aren't "true" believers is just stupidity.

Have you ever declared that liberal/moderate believers should stand up to fundamentalists, or criticized them for not opposing fundamentalists?

directly answering your question wouldn't accurately describe my thoughts on the matter. I will use christianity as an example because I am more familiar with it. What is the difference between a fundamentalist christian and a moderate? The moderate takes less of the teachings seriously, discarding the distasteful parts. A fundy embraces as much of the teachings as they can. From my perspective the gap between the two is generally very small. Both teach that the religion is "good" and its followers are "good" and being more pious is "good". So all it takes to cross that line from moderate to fundy is to decide to become more "good."

Now why is all this relevant to your question? Because with that background I can answer your question: No. I do not feel the need to encourage moderates to fight the fundies because the fundies come from the moderates. As long as the religion exists and is considered a positive force then there will be people who dive deeper into it to become more "good." I am of the opinion that we should treat the violent fundies as the criminals they are. We should treat the fundies that offend our sensibilities as the social pariahs they deserve to be. Finally we should let the silent moderates become "spiritual but not religious" or "nones" and not pass on the god virus as much as possible.

You're assuming that Fundamentalism is the default nature of religion, and liberals and moderates are lesser because they lack something that Fundamentalists possess. Fundamentalists are the authentic ones, and practitioners of other forms of religion are pale imitations, who desire to become more authentic by becoming more fundamentalist.

(insert Inigo Montoya joke here)

You are also once again putting words in my mouth and/or assuming the worst possible meaning of my words. Both are insulting and dishonest.

For me to presume fundamentalism is the default would have to leave out that I mentioned that the fundies come from the moderates. Default is the starting point, the point that something is initially and everything else deviates. How could you possibly come to the conclusion of what you just posted from my post unless you are literally trying to paint me in the worst way possible?

Religion defaults to societal norms. It just unfortunately has built in ways to overcome that. Like I mentioned in the previous post one way it overcomes having to adhere to societal norms is the insistence that the religion itself is "good" and devoting yourself to it more will make you more "good." Then you add in the horrific stories and commands built into the holy scriptures which absolutely cannot be changed to match modern values and we have a complete recipe for fundies to emerge.

Thus my preference for letting religions crazy themselves into obsolescence. Once religion lacks automatic respect there will be no more way to easily legitimize crazy BS. There will be no more politicians or judges able to get automatic acceptance of their insanity by tying it to religion. The violent monsters won't have an easy recruitment pool by appealing sky daddy. Before you say that last one is only one religion. Dr. Tiller's murderer has a fanbase and is regularly visited by people who are idolize him as the symbol of their anti-abortion movement. I'll bet you even know some people who ahve said "well if he wasn't killing babies..."

Also cut the BS false equivalence that people will find other reasons to kill each other. I never claimed they wouldn't. However it is far harder to justify crazy without religion. God says kill the gays! Gays are anti-american! Which is more likely to get people to back it? This is also why the fundies are trying to rewrite history saying we are a christian nation. They know nationalism alone isn't enough to get people to back their crazy, they need the insane and horrific stories and commands that get automatic respect.

for clarification:

If you aren't going to address anything I actually mean and just nitpick trivialities and imply the worst about me I am going to write you off with the rest who do the same. Goodbye Htom I am no longer going to bother even trying to speak with you, you aren't worth the effort.

after you attacked my character with this prejudiced gem:

More likely it was attempt to get someone to say something that you could paint as supporting what religious fundamentalists are DOING, when all they were doing was saying that their interpretation of what their religion dictates has just as much support and claim to be "legitimate" as any other. But something can be "legitimate" without being nice or desirable, frequent attempts by certain folk here to conflate the two notwithstanding.

The fundies are opposed to modernity and interpret the ancient holy texts to justify their position. The liberals support modernity and interpret the same ancient holy texts to justify their position. The fundies have the strength that the literal meaning of the texts generally support their position while the liberals have the strength that their generally metaphorical interpretation is less odious to modern sensibilities. As there is no way to prove or disprove any of it, all the interpretations are equally valid.

Someone adopting a totally literalist position would be a flat-earther and a geocentrist who thought the sky was a solid dome (with the sun, moon, and stars hung from it). But that's a bridge too far for even many ardent YECs who claim to adhere to a literalistic reading of the Bible.

How can you demand internal consistency with respect to foundational texts that are inconsistent? And besides that would place an unfair burden on the literalists, as the liberals are permitted unbounded assignment of metaphor to anything unpleasant, inconvenient, or inconsistent. The fundies are just more literal than the liberals, they all cherry pick and re-interpret as needed to suit their underlying agendas.

They claim to read, believe, and adhere to the Bible (in the case of Fundamentalist Christians) literally. Most of them do not actually do that. They fail by their own standard, which they freely adopted. Nothing unfair about it.

You are confusing "letteralism" with "literalism". There are few protestant sects that actually hold that the bible is word for word "letteral" inerrant and not subject to any interpretation. There are many that adhere to something approximating this view:

And why wouldn't they? They were just describing what they saw. What you linked to relies on author's intent to make distinctions between factuality and metaphor. It offers fundamentalists no help in this case.

Which even as described by your Biblical literalism link, is still violated by a failure to adopt a geocentric, flat earth point of view.

You would be better off with geocentric, but you would still be missing the point. Plus "liberal" christians are in the same boat, they are just picking and choosing and interpreting to suit their ideological agenda, and are as literal as the fundies on some of the nonsense.

Fundies do have such a principle, but they do it anyway. As I've demonstrated, and claiming that I'm just "missing the point" is a very weak counter. As is claiming that the Bible is inconsistent on the flat Earth without any examples, and leaving the geocentrism completely untouched.

This author and more than a few rather clueless posters here try to peddle the utterly unsupported notion that there is some "pure" or "original" version of religions like Islam and Christianity, and that all of the bad shit we see from those religions is due to "distortion" or "corruption" by "fundamentalists" from that original warm fuzzy version. The author's subtle attempt at sarcasm in his use of "authentic" in quotes indicates that the nicey-wicey versions of religion are always the "right" ones, but as noted, that's utterly without foundation. Neither extreme can show any greater claim to being an "authentic" or "legitimate" version of religion than the other, and the same goes for any version in between that you care to throw a dart at. The author can't tell us what the one objectively "correct" version of Christianity is supposed to look like, and neither can anybody else. Even if such a version could be shown to exist, nowhere is it written that it must be "loving", "inclusive" or "neighborly", as opposed to "prideful", "exclusive" and "hostile".

I'm sure the author has ideas about how he thinks religion SHOULD be or how he WISHES it were, given how hard it is to be an apologist these days, and he may be irritated that nastier versions of religion have more sway than the more "neighborly" ones, but big fucking deal. That has exactly zero to do with how real religion is practiced by real people in their real lives in the real world.

Have you ever declared that liberal/moderate believers should stand up to fundamentalists, or criticized them for not opposing fundamentalists?

And your rather disingenuous question has already been predicted and its intent answered, in the last line of my post #12. Whether a particular interpretation of religion deserves support or criticism has nothing whatsoever to do with whether it is "legitimate" or not. Which is the point. Versions or interpretations of religions that promote suck-ass behavior and attitudes have no less support for their authenticity than those that don't. "Authentic" or "legitimate" are something quite different from "desirable"

That's not going to work. It's not clear why you didn't just answer, since Promethean successfully answered my question. So let's try one last time:

Have you ever declared that liberal/moderate believers should stand up to fundamentalists, or criticized them for not opposing fundamentalists?

by my references to what is more and less desirable in religious belief and practice, yes.

It is noted that you continue to dodge the points raised, for reasons which are also abundantly clear.

And if you're going to try the same comeback on me, you'd be advised not to waste your time. You'd have to have ignored most of what I've posted in order to accuse me of assuming that Fundamentalism is the default nature of religion. But hey, if you're wondering how those words taste, go for it.

there's no reason for me to respond in the same way, is there?

But I do have a point to make about your responses to my question and this thread in general. Since you want Liberals/moderates to stand up to and oppose Fundamentalism, its jarring when you turn around and argue against that opposition.

I get that you might personally prefer other rhetorical strategies for countering the fundamentalists, but attacking their legitimacy as examples of their religion has merit, too, if your concern is the use of religion as "cover" for bad behavior. Fundamentalist use of religion gets taken less seriously, because it is revealed as agenda-driven when liberals and moderates put forward their interpretations as the authentic ones. The cover of "well, that's just naturally what my religion means, and I'm following it" is blown.

Can't you accept that you're getting what you asked for, and be happy about that?

to try to dishonestly force words into other people's mouths. Was this just your attempt to be uber-clever and end up with a "Ha! Gotcha!!"

I'm not "getting what I asked for", nor am I arguing against opposing the violent and disgusting behavior and attitudes that religion breeds so abundantly. I pointed out the simple truth that neither "fundamentalist" nor liberal, warm and fuzzy-wuzzy versions of religions are any more "legitimate" or "authentic" than the other, and that No True Scotsman claims to the contrary are horseshit. A point you are utterly unable to dispute (and afraid to even address). If the simple truth makes it harder to fight fundamentalists, well, boo-hoo. If religion weren't so good at producing so much assholish behavior in the first place, it wouldn't be a problem, now would it? Attempts to deny that religion has anything to do with the problem at all are where the real finger should be pointed.

And I ask questions so that I can be clear on what my respondents actually think.

Liberal religion can be attacked just as easily on the grounds of consistency. They reject some dictates that are plainly stated in their sacred texts, as direct commands of their 'god' or otherwise, and accept others, with no criteria other than what makes them feel good. You "authenticity" argument is bullshit.

Sorry that you've been confronted by people who have a better grasp of this than you, but tough. I've wasted enough time on you.

And liberals don't have a principle that forbids cherry-picking, which Fundamentalists do.

It's always a pleasure. Enjoy the rest of your evening.

and these moderate and liberal apologists for religion are just indirectly supporting the bad parts of religion as well, all so that they can keep their religious privilege.

The arrogance of the claims of religion are bad enough, much less the different factions claiming their subjective interpretation is more "authentic".

ISIS has as legitimate a view on Islam as other groups, and few want to admit that, because it gots at the inherent problem of religion.

Naming your preferences and labeling them authentic is intellectually lazy and dishonest, about all I expect from religious apologists.