{"id":2473,"date":"2008-04-07T09:13:13","date_gmt":"2008-04-07T09:13:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/04\/07\/moderation-not-apathy\/"},"modified":"2008-04-07T09:13:13","modified_gmt":"2008-04-07T09:13:13","slug":"moderation-not-apathy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/04\/07\/moderation-not-apathy\/","title":{"rendered":"Moderation, Not Apathy"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had planned to let the current round of screechy-monkey-bashing die, but I woke up this morning to an accusation from commenter Andrew<\/a> that I don’t want to leave unanswered:<\/p>\n

\n

As for the blog – I’m not sure you are actually moderate really, it sounds more like vaguely apathetic. Or more accurately (and without the negative connotations), perhaps “unconcerned” would suffice. As you don’t seem to be pushing for any moderate position as much as you are pushing for the (as you see them) fringe views to kindly quieten the hell down so you can get on with stuff you do find interesting\/concerning without all the distracting noise.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In fact, I do<\/strong> have a position that I push for– see, for example, this recent post<\/a>, and this older one<\/a>. I just don’t blog about it obsessively.<\/p>\n

If those are too long to read, here’s the short version: I think that in order for things to get a lot better, they first need to get a little better. As much as it might be nice to see religion wither away to nothing, that’s not going to happen overnight, and there are concrete political goals that require action right now<\/strong>. Those goals can best be achieved not by belittling and mocking moderate religious people, and driving them into the arms of the fundamentalists, but by actively reaching out to them– actively<\/strong> reaching out, mind, not “We’re happy to work with Ken Miller as long as he doesn’t talk about God”– and engaging them to work for a saner world now<\/strong>. It may not hasten the arrival of the Atheist Utopia, but it might help get us a government of people who aren’t barking mad.<\/p>\n

I also think that people should pay less attention to the easy task of how best to mock the core metaphysical beliefs of major world religions, and put some thought into the hard problem of how to offer people a positive alternative to religious communities. As I’ve said before and at great length, I think that the communal aspect of religion is a critical one, and one that’s almost entirely overlooked. People go to church not only because they believe in God, but because they get real benefits from being part of a religious community– in some denominations, I’d wager that the people who are there for the community outnumber the true believers. They’re resistent to giving up their religious affiliation not because they haven’t heard enough people say “The Bible says pi=3, isn’t that stupid?” but because they don’t see an alternative on offer for the community that they enjoy.<\/p>\n

That’s a hard problem, and not one that lets screechy monkeys on the Internet feel like towering great apes by insulting and belittling people. It involves getting away from the computer, and getting out into the community to organize and engage with people in a positive way. But until more people start doing something about it, I fear that religion will continue to dominate American culture, and blogging monkeys will continue to rant impotently about it on the Internet.<\/p>\n

So there you go, there’s an affirmative position that isn’t “You kids get offa my lawn.” That’s what I’m advocating, and want to see done. You know where the comments are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had planned to let the current round of screechy-monkey-bashing die, but I woke up this morning to an accusation from commenter Andrew that I don’t want to leave unanswered: As for the blog – I’m not sure you are actually moderate really, it sounds more like vaguely apathetic. Or more accurately (and without the… Continue reading Moderation, Not Apathy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2473\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}