Comments | debunkingwhite: How to reconcile anti-racism with atheism (or other religious belief)

alias_sqbr in debunkingwhite

How to reconcile anti-racism with atheism (or other religious belief)

Jul 25, 2008 13:42

In my experience there is a tendency for (most but not all) people of every religious creed to deep down believe that every religious belief except their own is rather obviously wrong, and thus that the followers of other religious beliefs are (to some extent) stupid, delusional, ill-informed, or deliberately obtuse. EDIT: "my experience" is pretty ( Read more... )

Comments 85

MOD PRE-WARNING... epilady July 25 2008, 10:14:00 UTC

Thank you for posting this. It is, indeed, an extremely important consideration for people of all religious beliefs (and non-beliefs), and a topic quite worthy of serious and sustained discussion here at DBW. That said, prior explorations of the topic have been met with resistance, hostility, and misunderstandings all around, so please everyone, keep on your Sunday best and try to keep the discussion respectful, on topic, and LASER FOCUSED AS ALWAYS on whiteness, white privilege, and racism.

If your hackles are raised on this one in any way not specifically related to RACISM and WHITE PRIVILEGE as they relate to religious beliefs (or lack thereof), PLEASE wait a little bit before posting and ask yourself if your response is on topic.

Thanks in advance.

Re: MOD PRE-WARNING... alias_sqbr July 25 2008, 11:50:53 UTC

Your warning is better than my warning :)

I got a lot of static when I tried to discuss this on the atheism board and eventually gave up. I have probably entirely unfounded hopes of it going better here *crosses fingers*

Re: MOD PRE-WARNING... sanguinity July 25 2008, 13:47:15 UTC

I always get resounding silence when I try to discuss racism on atheist blogs. Crickets chirping...

Re: MOD PRE-WARNING... alias_sqbr July 26 2008, 01:38:09 UTC

Yeah, that was the main response, but the few actual replies I got tended not to be very helpful.

Thread 11

out_fox July 25 2008, 12:05:26 UTC

For example, I find it really hard not to dismiss the religions of other cultures (especially aboriginal religion) as silly superstition.Curious, I feel the opposite of this. People talking about variations of traditional beliefs like the Dreaming & communication with spirits is easier for me to accept because no one's ever tried to impose those beliefs on me in that tone of knowing THE TRUTH TM ( ... )

alias_sqbr July 26 2008, 02:02:22 UTC

Hmm. I agree that I also don't feel threatened/oppressed etc by aboriginal beliefs in the same way I do sometimes by christianity, and so in a lot of ways have more positive feelings about them. My reactions are still pretty problematic though.

That being the case; rather than argue against religion, when religious freedom is a right too, it just seems more practical to call out the way specific actors in specific churches have access to power which they abuse for white dominance. I agree that this should be the first priority of anyone in a white dominated country who says they're fighting against the "tyranny of religion" (but usually isn't). And religions which never abuse their power or do any harm should be left alone to do as they wish. But it's not always that clear cut: at what point is it ok to interfere with a religious group which is "harming" it's children? What if they're just educating them poorly? How much leeway should be given to religions whose requirements actively contravene the laws of a country? (Carrying around ( ... )

sanguinity July 26 2008, 16:44:37 UTC

:: What if they're just educating [their children] poorly? ::

:: How much leeway should be given to religions whose requirements actively contravene the laws of a country? (Carrying around weapons for example) ::

You're probably (hopefully?) already aware of this, but those are very loaded questions. Educated poorly by whose standards? Both Canada and Australia have apologized for their attempts to "improve" the education of aboriginal cultures' children. (And in Canada, at least, religion was mucked deep through all that -- most of the schools the kids were sent to were run by Christian denominations.) And we know that something being a law doesn't make it just. There are many laws in the U.S. that suppress Native religions, and this is widely considered okay because these religions include elements that Christianity doesn't consider to be a normal part of religion. It would surprise me if Australia doesn't have similar legal biases.

:: as long as it doesn't cross certain boundaries of reasonable behaviour (no murder, to give an ( ... )

I have a feelig I'm still missing something obvious, but I'm not QUITE as dumb as I look alias_sqbr July 27 2008, 01:48:03 UTC

*slaps forehead*

I swear to..something, in the version of that comment in my head I made it clear that those were specifically chosen as loaded questions: that at one extreme society is right to intervene in the religion's business but at the other extreme they totally aren't (but do it anyway), and history shows quite graphically that that people really suck at telling the difference (or applying the same rules consistently to different cultural and ethnic groups ( ... )

Thread 6

iRamble hortensio July 25 2008, 13:18:15 UTC

Well, the trouble I find with overEnlightened* atheists is that they simply refuse to understand how the cultural furniture of other people's lives might include religion-derived elements, the way their own includes "coffee break" and "weekend" rather than "prayer time" and "holy day". There's also a tendency to weird zero-sum dichotomies: religion and "reason" (or whatever stand-in the person is using) are inversely related - if a person has a lot of one, they must have little of the other; "community" and "individual" are also inversely related in a very fascist way - if one is well-developed in a society it MUST BE at the expense of the other, and the only legitimate way to do it is to privilege the individual. And so on.

This is pretty deeply-rooted stuff, and I don't entirely fault even the most hammer-banging atheists for dismissing it. Few people of any religion or non-religion are as aware of how much that they consider "self-evident" as ways of thinking and relating are really - not ( ... )

Re: iRamble alias_sqbr July 26 2008, 02:20:03 UTC

refuse to understand how the cultural furniture of other people's lives might include religion-derived elements, the way their own includes "coffee break" and "weekend" rather than "prayer time" and "holy day"

It often goes further than that: Australia is mostly pretty secular (though not that many people go so far as to be actively atheistic) and yet most people accept easter, christmas etc as just normal "secular" celebrations. But I'm pretty sure people would complain if we were all expected to celebrate ramadan...

religion and "reason" (or whatever stand-in the person is using) are inversely related - if a person has a lot of one, they must have little of the otherYes, that is definitely a major problem. And quite absurd when you consider how many deeply religious people have made major contributions to "rational" endeavors like science/philosophy etc ( ... )

Re: iRamble sanguinity July 26 2008, 16:48:33 UTC

Yes, this. Your whole first paragraph is spot on.

oh, let me ANECDOTE hortensio July 25 2008, 13:55:02 UTC

So I was sitting in a hotel lobby at 2 a.m. with several Muslim colleagues from a very broad spread of countries; we were discusing 'difficult' cultural practices from a development perspective (here mostly related to health); and the conversation turned into a really straight-faced discussion of people's experiences with djinnies and similar. I'd heard next to zero of this from out of a Muslim context so I could only sit and listen as obvs. I had little to add, but afterwards I had to chain-smoke and walk around for hours because there was so much to process about my own thoughts and reactions ( ... )

Re: privacy of faith out_fox July 25 2008, 14:48:52 UTC

the notion of religion and religion-related things as "private" - why?Don't religions differ on this a bit though? I come from a Roman Catholic community that emphasized prayer as a personal meditation. But religious rituals can be a kind of mass intimacy. Like large congregations all entering enter ecstatic states together ( ... )

Re: privacy of faith hortensio July 25 2008, 15:24:52 UTC

Don't religions differ on this a bit though?

Oh, sure -- and there are different schools of thought/individuals within religion. I was getting at the sort of axiomatic thing a lot of people out here say if they're uncomfortable with religion - that it Should Be a private matter and such. Or, say, scientists can be religious Privately, in some pigeonholed corner, to avoid contamination of their Professional work. That type of thing. I wasn't really thinking of the view from -within- any given religion, but the view from some non-religious people towards religion overtly happening around them.

Like forms of preaching where a white preacher lay hands or raises hands over subjects to bless them, cast out demons etc. When the subject person isn't of the faith or lacks much capacity to deny consent - it can feel really sleazy, controlling. I'm thinking of when churches combine their social work with conversion drives amidst low income POC families - so it's preachers the family otherwise wouldn't be sharing intimate space with. That' ( ... )

Re: oh, let me ANECDOTE alias_sqbr July 26 2008, 02:30:31 UTC

You know, there's nothing your anecdote reminds me of so strongly as the times I've had (mostly vaguely christian) australians tell me about their experiences with ghosts and ufos. Which..hmm.

Well, what is the value added to my thinking of X this way rather than that way? Like, is it really inherently dangerous to think of a person with Tourette's as demon-possessed? Our inclination is to say yes, of course, so I'm glad I got to hear about a situation where there would literally have been no added value to the person's life from a "rational" diagnosis.This sort of thing really pokes at the conflict in my mind, between my support for pluralism and the fact that no point of view should be rigidly enforced over all others, and my deep seated love and respect for science and The Truth. Where I think it gets messy is when the person with the illness is not the one who makes the decision (because they're too ill, or a child, or whatever) and it's plausible (from our POV) that they would benefit from our methods (which they may not have ( ... )

katesedgwick July 25 2008, 14:02:30 UTC

I'm an atheist as well. For me, the weird point you bring up is trying to move entire societies toward secularism. To me this is the main problem with christianity - in terms of racism and beyond - that christianity and the guise of it and spreading its word has been used to exploit/kill people in the name of righteousness. If atheists feel the need to spread the good news, I wonder what the point of atheism is ( ... )

alias_sqbr July 26 2008, 02:57:40 UTC

I'm not an evangelical atheist myself, some of the question I asked were hypotheticals based on the views of other more aggressive atheists. I could try to justify them, but I'd probably do a bad job since I don't believe them :)

That said, a secular state is not the same as an atheistic state, and is in fact more open to other religions than a single-religion theocracy.

Also, not that I want to argue in favour of missionaries, but I think they tend to believe that those who die without knowing about christianity may do better than those who choose not to be christians, but still suffer a worse fate than christians (stuck in limbo or some such)