Virtually nobody wants to piss off moderates because they comprise such a large and powerful voting block, not to mention a huge consumer block.  Anybody with a vested interest in damn near anything is too smart to piss off half the country.

Even so, the logic is inescapable.  Without the compliance of moderates, the religious right would have no political power.

If you're interested, I wrote an essay about this very thing.

 

 

Hambydammit - that was interesting essay. Thanks for the link.

If this woman was just trying to sell books I would understand - I still wouldn't think it was right but I would 'understand' where she was coming from. However, when she said the thing about all the founding fathers being Christian I relized that there was quite a chance that she actually believed this BS.  I have an exam tomorrow, but I think later this week I'm going to write her a letter.

   ... anyone who says our atheist founding fathers were xians should be rounded up for an up coming buddhist comedy tv show, to air 2050 ?

get pissed, fix the tv, world wide tv .... I am even more pissed off than yesterday, thanks RRS

....and this weeks "Newsweek" magazine cover ! oh shit, more god of abraham delusion with A bombs .... Pakistan, "The most dangerous nation in the world"

the moderates are just a buffer for fundies from reality, they are the go between.

Before I can make my point on this topic, we need to talk about the word 'moderate'. In the Uk (and possibly other places like this university) we use the word 'moderate' for what Americans call 'liberals' and the word 'fundamentalist' for what many Americans call 'moderates' and for what American's call fundamentalists... well, we don't really have a word for that - when the existence of such people are shown to us we're like, "wtf?"

It sounds like the speaker was using the word 'moderate' in the same way that we do here in the uk. My opinion on this forum might be a bit controversial, but I think that there is virtue in religion when it is treated the right way. Moderates/liberals tend to get this balance, that they implicitly recognise how religion should be treated as opposed to simple minded literalists.

I think that many atheists also miss the point in religion (mostly those who take their idea of religion from fundamentalists) often taking it as an alternative account of the facts of the world to science. If you look at religion as it is really practiced, it kind of makes claims but people don't treat it to inform as facts (and those who do we call fundamentalists) - most treat it as an important part of their lives and claim more that it is important for humans in dealing with their experience with the world. I think that literalists on both sides have missed the point in religious belief, literalists on the religious side who demand that religious beliefs be treated like literal facts, and those who believe that religion is irrational because religious beliefs are false as literal fact.

That's why moderates tend to have the credibility, as they have recognised what 'truth' religions does have and also recognise the limits of such truth.

Perhaps to prove your point, I don't believe those statistics at all!
Given the large amount of fundamentalism in America, it's perhaps not surprising that most American atheists use fundamentalism/literalism as their 'model' for religion.

The problem is when they go on to make statements about religion in general. You can tell because many of them define religion as dogma and indoctrination, but if you look at religion around the world this definition doesn't always apply.

Politically I like to call myself a "Radical Moderate". On many political issues I take moderate positions, which are not only consistent ideologically, but guaranteed to upset both the left and right (for example I belive that Abortions and Guns should both be "safe legal and rare&quot.

But, comparing my philosophy to the radical right wing theocrat/neo-con cabal I can be easily mistaken for a liberal.

Getting back to the topic of Moderate Christians however, I have been reading the Freke-Gandy books on "Gnostic Christians" and their interesting theory of Jesus as a Myth.

What fascinates me is that a form of Christianity once existed that did not rely on the acceptance of irrational mythology as literally true, but merely allegorical to teach followers how to live a decent life. Gnosticism is basically a Christian form of Budhism (including the rejection of an anthropomorphic god in favor of being one with the universe).

The modern day equivalent would not be the moderate christians, but the Unitarian/Universalists. The UUs basically believe in church without the religion. Why? Because church is a social gathering of like minded individuals. Church members look out for one another, and church organization requires LEADERS. If you do not have leaders, church participation can create leaders. Churches are mini communities of members that together can do big things.

Here we hit upon the reason why the fundamentalists are winning even though they clearly do not have reason or logic on their side: Leadership and organization.

It is not just a matter of a lack of moderate Christian leaders taking back Christianity from the fundies, it is also a serious lack of rational-atheist-humanist leaders (and followers) willing to take back truth from the irrationalism wherever it may be found. The fact that we have no interest in "Church" puts us at a huge disadvantage.

On the way home from school tonight I saw a car with two bumper stickers.  One was for a local UU church, the other said "My FAITH will vote No on #1"  (Number 1 was a local marriage ammendment - giving rights to unmarried partners regardless of sex.)  When people with so-called 'moderate' views still place their faith in control at the voting booth I'm scared... 

thats why i attend UU functions, and not all of them are smelly hippies.

I'm so glad someone else understands this.   It's hard for people to digest the implications of this because nobody is off the hook.  It's such a threatening concept, but it's true.

 

While I appreciate the sincerity of the statement, I don't think that MLK would have attracted more than a couple of followers for his journey had it not been for religion. Like AdrianeB pointed out, religion has its organization and leadership down to a science. MLK, while a brilliant and compassionate man, used the church as a tool to rouse the hearts of his followers. Had he not used that tool, his words would have fallen on deaf ears and he would have died much younger.

On the idea of moderates (semantic arguments aside), I believe the moderates are fully culpable for the affect religion has on society and the government. While they are not the ones stepping out and trying to change public opinion, they are the people that are quietly voting for the Right and spending their money in religious stores and donating to religious causes. They are fully within their rights to do so but calling them anything but THE reason for religions vast power is incorrect. If it were not for the moderate religious dinks the fundie psychos would have not power/effect at all. They would just be flakes standing on street corners screaming about Santa Claus.

[edited for content]

True.  I suppose I should have said that I see MLK as being so uniquely charasmatic that there must be a way for a movement to succeed solely on the merits of that movement rather than on the back of religion. 

Because this topic is so near and dear to me, I feel like I have to chime in. It's very, very important to note that we're talking about two distinct things here. This paragraph comes close to sounding like an admission that something unique happened because of religion that wasn't possible without it. It simply isn't so.

What MLK did was hasten the end of racial discrimination in America in the last half of the 20th century. We have to note that all over the world, there are places where there is no legalized discrimination, and there was no religious leader necessary to get that way.

While it may be true that religious fervor made it an easier sell to Americans -- and I'm honestly not convinced that this is true -- it is not true that discrimination could only end with the help of religion. It is remarkably easy to construct a scientifically compelling argument for the equality of the races, and very easy to construct a model of an equal society based on nothing more than that scientific data and the principle of blind justice.

More on whether or not it was a religious sell. Although this is not my area of historical expertise, I get the distinct impression that the gist of most discussions of race was not, "God wants it to be equal, so we ought to do it that way." Rather, people discussed the logical reasons why race should not be used for discrimination. It's impossible to know what kind of impact a non-religious activist would have had, but it's instructive to note that the suffragist movement was not religious, though it entered the national consciousness with the same kind of rapidity as equal race rights.

That's not a point I'm really interested in debating because I'm admittedly not well versed enough in the civil rights movement. The point that I want to emphasize is that we have many clear demonstrations that civil rights are possible without religion. To suggest that MLK could only have done what he did when he did it with the emphasis of religion is to miss the point entirely. Maybe the addition of the religious fervor hastened the awareness in the public consciousness. Nevertheless, the actual arguments for civil rights are not mysterious to us. We arrive at them by reason.

To summarize: Religion is not the only meme capable of motivating the public quickly and effectively. To suggest that because religion was used to motivate the public for a good end, religion is good on balance is ridiculous. Nobody I'm aware of denies the existence of good acts done in the name of religion, or because of devout religious fervor. I simply refuse to grant that because the ubiquitous character of altruism in humans infiltrates religion that it makes religion good.

That is all.