Yep, another GMS video.
This one isnt a surprise. We've discussed most of this with David Noebel's book "understanding the times." Fundamentalist christians don't believe that a goal of morality is to reduce suffering, if anything, suffering is a useful tool to bring people to God, which is he discussed the need to force people into submission. Yeah, they're a bunch of religious authoritarians who want to coerce people to submit to their worldview.
They also dont believe in mental illness. They show that christian dude interacting with homeless people and accusing them of being possessed by demons. No, they're just mentally ill, which is why many of them are homeless in the place. Yeah. This is what happens when you believe people just need Jesus.
On Christian charity. Yeah, charity is often used as an excuse to preach the gospel at homeless people in compromised positions. It's also used to impose the protestant work ethic on them. Keep in mind, due to the above authoritarian nature and beliefs about suffering, they believe it's okay for the poor to suffer in a lot of cases as their habits and sinful nature are responsible for their suffering in the first place. Again, suffering is okay as it can be used as a form of behavioral modification to force people to submit to their worldview.
This is one of the reasons I see fundamentalist christianity, and conservatism as literally evil. One of the most basic moral litmus tests for me is that the reduction of suffering is generally a good thing. We can argue fringe cases and specifics at times, but all in all, I generally do believe in a form of utilitarian, consequentialist morality. Not saying we cant have some deontology, but that deontology is only valid insofar as it gets positive results. For the record I would say my own approach to morality is closest to "rule utilitarianism", and I tend to favor it over raw utilitarianism because a legal framework of laws and rights is generally the best way to get utilitarian results, even if utilitarianism sometimes fails in individual situations. But again, that's where the debate is for me. If you dont even accept the basic premise that reducing suffering is a bad thing and you're fine with cruelty to impose some authoritarian system on people, well, that's LITERALLY EVIL. Sorry, not sorry.
As for the exhortation at the end about liberal christians and atheists uniting and how hitchens style new atheists are just as imperialist as christians (I think he made that specific claim in another video, but he's been making various jabs at new atheist types)...eh....this is where I have some issues.
Christianity is a worldview. Liberal christians still adopt problematic aspects of said worldview. They might tone down the harmful stuff, but take economics. A lot of them would still implicitly agree with the idea that people should be coerced to work to get their basic needs met. They still implicitly prop up that system. They still have weird holdovers like fixations on "virtue" and stuff like that. They still have implicitly authoritarian views at times. I admit, christianity is a spectrum, it's not always as simple as A or B, there is nuance there, but yeah.
Here's the thing. I think that GMS is confusing atheists who argue the intellectual and moral superiority of the secular worldview with people who want STATE ATHEISM. We can agree, state atheism, a la, say, the USSR is bad. But I dont think people disagree with the idea that we should have religious pluralism on the whole, and that people should be allowed to practice their own beliefs, even if they suck, are irrational, etc. Sure, we can step in when they do tangible harm to others, and we should have a strict separation of church and state, but again, it's public morality vs private morality. publicly, yes, religious pluralism is the way, combined with a lemon test style application of separation of church and state. i certainly dont want atheists imposing their views on others in the ways fundie christians do. But at the same time, that doesnt mean we should necessarily entertain the weird views that "moderate" or "liberal" religious people often have. If they wanna practice that stuff in their own lives, no complaint from me, but yeah, I do think it's fine to critique that stuff.
Sure, we might have to ally with moderately religious people to win elections, gain power, that's fine. Coalitions bring together diverse interests and as long as we agree on the religious pluralism and public/private morality aspects I laid out, sure, welcome aboard. But that doesnt mean I dont have distaste for religious views that still have holdover elements from these harmful traditions. I still wish people would straight up abandon organized religion. Maybe not all spirituality, as I said I have anecdotal reasons to accept some private spirituality myself. But I think the humanist worldview is still the way to go. Logic and reason should be the arbiters of truth, not dogmas, authorities, traditions, etc. And if moderate religious people want to put their stuff into law, well, they're gonna get as much resistance from me as a fundie would. Sorry, not sorry. Because moderate christians still have weird holdovers in their worldviews that dont manifest in as harmful of ways as extreme ones do, but they still have those elements there, and they can be activated at times. And I just aint entertaining that crap. Sorry, not sorry.
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