What’s different about religion is that people don’t feel they need to have any particular expertise to have opinions about it. All they need is strongly held beliefs, and anyone can have those. No thread about Javascript will grow as fast as one about religion, because people feel they have to be over some threshold of expertise to post comments about that. But on religion everyone’s an expert.
Then it struck me: this is the problem with politics too. Politics, like religion, is a topic where there’s no threshold of expertise for expressing an opinion. All you need is strong convictions. [...]
I think what religion and politics have in common is that they become part of people’s identity, and people can never have a fruitful argument about something that’s part of their identity. By definition they’re partisan.
I know that 99.9% of religious and political arguments I’ve taken part in on the interent have been pointless. I’d say about 90% of my non-online arguments in religion and politics have been useless.
I think Paul’s theory is a very insightful observation on why this might be so. I’ve found that very few people are willing to rationally talk about topics that are wrapped up in their identity.
Mayor Bloomberg, Council Speaker Christine Quinn and 10 religious leaders of various faiths journeyed to Governors Island this afternoon to show their support for the proposed mosque and community center near the World Trade Center site.
[Bloomberg said:] “This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions or favor one over another. The World Trade Center site will forever hold a special place in our city, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans if we said no to a mosque in lower Manhattan.”
This is America. We believe in freedom of religion. It means pastors can turn a shopping mall or stadium into a megachurch. It means Mormons can knock on doors. It means you can believe in one god or three or three thousands or none.
And it means someone can build a Mosque in NYC near the trade center site.
Get over it, people. Otherwise your religion might be next.
Focus on the Family has an entire website dedicated to what retailers are “Christmas-friendly” — that is, retailers who say “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays.”
Does Focus on the Family not realize there are multiple religions and holidays in America? There’s Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, the Winter Solstice, and the New Year. What’s the problem with wishing people a general happy holiday season, instead of just one specific day that not everyone celebrates? There’s nothing sinister behind it, even if they want that to be true to fuel their persecution complex.
Seems to me that people who think this is a big deal are being self-centered and don’t want to think about anyone besides themselves.
Fire and Knowledge aims to be thoughtful and challenging through quotes, links, commentary and essays.
Topics include science, religion, politics, literature, history and technology. As someone said, there are no uninteresting subjects, only uninterested people.
