Diversity of Everything but Thought

I think this discussion is 100% governed by the religions of the participants' here, but so far relatively little about religion itself.

I define religion to be a system of beliefs held with ardor and faith. My dictionary defines religion that way plus other ways too.

I may be wrong or too simplistic, but as I see it, there are the religions of conservatives wherein humans are perceived to have been caused or influenced to exist by a higher intelligence. Sustaining that belief requires great faith. They believe they exist for the purpose of honoring God, a higher intelligence and/or a higher truth. They debate among themselves how to best accomplish that. They seek thereby to know absolute truth for certain even while they know they haven't yet accomplished that in this life and probably will not. They seek to conserve their perception of the reality of what human life is all about by convincing conservatives and liberals alike of the superiority of their beliefs over non-conservative beliefs.

I may be wrong or too simplistic, but there are the religions of the liberals where humans are perceived to exist by chance for the purpose of honoring themselves and/or each other. Sustaining that belief requires great faith in what can be accomplished by chance in a finite time. Their perception of how to honor themselves and/or each other is to survive a long life while making that survival easier for themselves and subsequent generations. They believe that what their peers believe is what is true. They believe that those they perceive as their peers are those who think the same as they do. When they debate, they do it primarily to convince enough people of the superiority of their beliefs in order to gain their allegiance and/or acceptance and/or love (peers and and non-peers alike), and to enable them to accomplish their primary goal which is a relatively risk free liberal environment. They believe they actually know of what such an environment actually consists.

I believe neither liberal or conservative religions lead humans in this life to ultimately know reality for certain. Conservatives accept the probability that they will not know reality for certain in this life. Liberals on the otherhand believe they can know reality for certain in this life, and they believe that for the most part they probably already do.

ican711nm, there are many conservatives who are not fundamentalists. I think you might be thinking of a strain of conservatism that is currently running amok.

Also, I do know some liberals who are quite religious. Think of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., just for one fine example.

:wink:

On the other hand, I am one very involved in Church, religious things, and religious thinking, and I can honestly say that I generally think of Conservative and Liberal in political and ideological terms and not at all in religious terms unless somebody brings it up. Maybe that's because I belong to a very liberal denomination in which the participants have not been 'ruined' by the liberalism, and I also have many conservative Christians, Jews, a family of Hindus, and a couple of Moslems among my friends and relatives, none of whom have been 'ruined' by their religious beliefs.

Well okay, there is one branch of the family that's a little off the farm but then they made up their own religion so maybe they don't count.

this thread has just taken an interesting turn, for me. it follows on the heels of a letter in today's local paper. here's where they are similar;

the concept that there are conservative and liberal christians is not new. but today i have seen twice where the equation is "conservative christian = good. liberal christian = bad"

ican's post sort of leans in that direction, though he says he doesn't buy it. the fellow in the paper ( who has achieved resident crank status here) goes further to whole heartedly claim that; quote;

"conservative christian compassion is moral".

"liberal christian compassion is immoral".


btw, last night nimh told me that he kept having to login everytime he went to post. today, some my settings, like the "notify me when a reply is posted" keep resetting to null. anybody else having problems?

I have two choices. I can insist my definitions, or rather specifications, of what is a conservative and what is a liberal are probably the most practicable, or I can agree my specifications are two simplistic. I'm unsure as to which is the best route for me to take, so I will for the sake of argument explore the first for a while.

I've not specified the system of beliefs of conservatives to be fundamentalist any more or less than I have specified the system of beliefs of liberals to be radicals. Simplifying a little more: I claim Conservatives believe they exist by design and the purpose of life is to honor the designer; I claim Liberals believe they exist by chance and the purpose of life is to honor each other. By that characterization, Martin Luther King was a conservative: that is, an individual who believed in older truths which he attempted to live by and evangelize for others to live by. By that characterization, racial supremists are not conservative but are liberal in that they seek to honor those who think like them, but not the designer which thy may claim to honor but do not actually honor, because belief in a designer requires the belief that all humans exist equally by design.

not sure that's gonna work for me when you put it that way, ican. it's too broad a brush.

for instance, you believe me to be "a liberal", and on some things i am, mostly social.

but i do indeed believe in the creator. and while i don't think he spends a lot of time looking over my shoulder, i try to live by the examples that are instinctive in humans and that he teaches us in nature.

And I don't know about any kind of correlation between compassion and 'good' or 'bad' re whether Christians are liberal or conservative. Well you didn't put it exactly like that DTOM, but that was sort of the gist I think.

But let's face it. When it comes to tolerance for diversity of thought, religion can be one of the most intolerant. Some fundamentalist are certain all us more liberal types are going straight to hell; and some liberals are certain that all Fundamentalist are narrow minded, homophobic, bigoted, racist, keep-women-barefoot-pregnant-and-in-the-kitchen fanatics. And there is no room to discuss it cordially or see it any differently to make an effort to understand the other person's point of view.

But then the thesis of the thread is perception of an intolerance for diversity of thought , and I suppose religious belief is a form of thought.

It's usually conservative types down at the Salvation Army putting Christmas baskets together, but all manner of Christians work shoulder to shoulder at the community food bank and blood bank. It's really hard to say one group is more or less compassionate than the others.

I have in mind what may more properly be called neo-liberal. So what I think are neo-liberals are not classical liberals.
I don't think you to be a neo-liberal. You certainly don't fit my tentative specification of a neo-liberal, but do fit my, as yet unspecified here, tentative specification of a classical liberal. I think I in fact may also be a classical liberal. I've got to mull this over some more before I decide. I have similar problems in specifying a conservative. I'm starting to think conservatives come in more than one form too. For now call them classical and neo-conservatives. These political concepts seem to me to be evolving rapidly.

Strangely, it may turn out that neo-conservatives and classical liberals fundamentally see things the same way, while classical conservatives and neo-liberals see things the same way. I'm thinking out loud here, so to speak, so I may change my mind several times before I can sort all this out and what is the proper relationship of all this to the topic of this thread.

to: foxy and ican,

the thing that i thought was really strange about the remarks from the guy in the paper was that;

he said that both conservative and liberal christians were capable of compassion.

where he baffled me was in his assertion that "conservative christian compassion is moral, and, liberal christian compassion is immoral".

i've never heard anything like that before. when i was a kid going to church, it never came up that way. people would fight like cats and dogs about stuff like civil rights and vietnam outside of church; but, inside it was all about the word, as they say. and as i've mentioned, and foxy had a similar experience, i grew up in the bible belt.

The essential issue :
Is INTOLERANCE a MORAL exercise?

i.e., is it MORAL to despise others for savoring the babyback porkribs that YOUR faction has forbidden to its members?

I think it can be moral to be intolerant. Not tolerating lynching black people, for example.

That doesn't mean all intolerance is moral, of course. Just that some can be.

MORAL RELITAVISM!

Moral is that which conforms with set axioms, or that which can be derived therof.

I am guessing we have differing assumptions re the meaning of "moral." I have mostly thought of the word as being derived from religious application such as "it was immoral to eat meat on fridays" or more often relating quite specifically to sexual issues "it is immoral to commit adultry."
I generally use "ethical" when defining something as right or wrong.

A couple of pages back, when I posted the top ten conservative colleges here, I included excerpts from their own self descriptions to illustrate the emphasis that they themselves put on religion. I didn't look in depth at all of them, but some are very fundamentalist requiring the teaching of creation of the earth according to Genesis in six twenty-four hour days.

Labels are often bandied about rather loosely and this thread was about conservative students not getting a fair shake in liberal schools.

The reason for posting the top ten schools was to show what self described conservative schools had that was different. What stood out to me was an emphasis on Christian religious themes.

In that post I also posed a question which no one has yet replied to. "Can any institution that does not promote religious concepts be satisfactory to conservatives?" I realize that there are many non Christian conservatives here on A2K, but they are not the ones complaining about bias in the schools, McG excepted. It's my opinion that the more secular conservatives do not have the same degree of problems with liberal professors.

that could well be mesquite. neither my conservative friends or my conservative parents have brought it up to me.

my friend xxxxxx, who went from viewpoints in line with my own, to a bush adherent, doesn't have much use for organized religion. when he complains about liberals, it's usually in connection with iraq and "terrorists".

he's gone back to school and has yet to complain about liberal bias on the campus. he just complains about liberals in general. gripes are usually voiced in between a toke and a pull on an import beer.

go figure...

Ican, foxfrye and others:

When you all bring up conservative christians and liberal christians, do you all mean the type of church that a person goes to being liberal or conservative or the way a christian believes politically making them either a liberal or conservative christian?

For instance I go to a conservative Church of Christ. We are defined that way not because of our worldly politics but because of our church's belief in religious terms. I believe in those beliefs myself.

On the other hand I am a liberal politically and believe in keeping my religious beliefs to myself since I believe religion cannot be forced to be true religion and it is not fair to force my beliefs (such as homosexuality as just an example) on people who do not believe the same as I do.

So would I be a conservative or liberal christian?

Let's also keep in mind that not all conservatives belong with the religious right as well.

But when a person sides with every single religious conservative issue including gays not being allowed to marry, it is reasonable to assume that person is religious and on the side of the conservatives unless being told otherwise. You have told us and we must take your word for it.

Earlier here, I responded to the 'present day education is in tatters!' claim by referencing a historical work which revealed just how ubiquitous this claim has been throughout American history.

I also noted that however ahistorical such claims are, they are at least understandable because of the hopes we have had for the education of our young citizens. Education seems one of those particular endeavors which we ought to constantly push towards the fore of our attention and seek to improve.

And each of us, I'm sure, have now and again bumped into some telling anecdote or study which has made us shake our heads in surprise and bewilderment at how poorly we seem to be doing in this task.

Here's just such an example...

65% of Americans cannot name a single Supreme Court Justice.
link

Revel, my take on your question is that conservative Christians, ie the ones making all the noise about "values", draw their values primarily from the Old Testament and use the New Testament for salvation. Liberal Christians appear to pay more attention to the messages and example of Jesus. Of course as with most labels neither is a perfect fit for the majority.