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That sounds like, ‘I don’t see Mormons as an outgroup’ rather than ‘I find it offensive to distinguish the outgroup’ though. The defining lines seem to be still be there for you (must love god, must treat sex as a lifetime commitment in principle) and indeed the latter potentially excludes not a few of the Christians I know who are broadly pro pre-marital sex as an inherently good thing.
If you are not personally interested in arcana about lines of apostolic succession then fair enough. I’m pretty lax about most theology - probably too much so. But clearly to many people it does matter.
More like I think people who drink excessively (i.e. drink to get drunk), use drugs, and engage in promiscuous sex are engaging in a lifestyle which leaves them feeling very empty and lifeless. My issue with the illiberal radical Left is that they not only enable but encourage [1] that kind of behavior.
[1] In the linked article, the writer full on enables if not encourages promiscuous sex for women, then blames men for the bad feelings that result from that kind of behavior, one of which is being paranoid about the guys they’re having sex with.
I think the link is wrong. The article I got was about phone cables.
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Right -- they're your outgroup. If they started to describe themselves as "classical liberals", you'd balk: you've just called them the "illiberal radical Left", which contains just as much condemnation and othering as "Mormons aren't Christians!"
I agree with @Corvos's take: my view on what you've written is that religious distinctions aren't very important to you, and you don't believe a person's choice either way on the matter makes much difference to the outcomes of their lifestyle. So long as they avoid drinking excessively, using drugs, or engaging in promiscuous sex, of course.
But Nicene Christians of the sort who would say "Mormons aren't Christians" disagree with you: they believe that following the LDS faith to its endpoint leads to eternal conscious torment, or in other words is a lifestyle that "leaves them feeling very empty and lifeless." You can disagree with their point of view on this, and perhaps you should, but that's their point of view which motivates their feeling.
You're frustrated that people are writing online articles encouraging women to have promiscious sex, and see that as harmful... well, the LDS literally sends its young men to go door to door actively encouraging people to become Mormon! If you believe that's a harmful path to go down, as many Protestants do, you would feel the same level of concern about it. They'd argue that abstaining from promiscuous sex, drinking, and drugs does you no good, if you don't have the right set of beliefs. You disagree, and invert the importance, but that's not their view.
Furthermore, plenty of people disagree that excessive drinking, using drugs, or promiscious sex leads inevitably to lifelessness and emptiness. To make that determination, you have to actually take a step back and look at evidence, listen to anecdotes, read statistics, as I'm sure you've done. But because the truth claims of the LDS and Nicene Christianity are cosmic, we can't use the same kind of empiricism on them, and so people who believe these things are important rely on their own epistemological standards for what's cosmically true: sacred texts, ancient creeds, community consensus, personal testimony -- all of which are vitally important both for Nicene Christians and the LDS. When people say, "Mormons aren't Christians", they're making the exact same claim as "the radical left is illiberal," applying personal values and epistemology to a category problem.
Classical liberalism did not emerge out of a sudden singing of kumbaya, and many of the world's most fruitful democracies have histories as twisted and bloody as the religious wars that led to religious tolerance. You can handwave away that similarity, and say that of course the democratic revolutions in France or America or the English Civil War or the revolutions of Latin America was violence that led to good things, but the people who killed the Huguenots and the Calvinists who stripped altars in grand riots believed they were doing the very same thing: eliminating pathways that lead to feelings of emptiness and lifelessness in the long run. You can believe they were horribly mistaken about this, and many people do, but simply saying "these feelings historically led to violence, therefore I am revolted by them," seems to miss the point that the classical, classical liberal archetypally holds a musket pointed at the head of an aristocrat.
I think the important thing isn't to refuse to draw category distinctions or recognize outgroups, but consists of how you treat them. Even in the moral teachings of Jesus, he presupposes that one will have enemies -- "a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household" -- but that one should love them and pray for them and do right by them. I don't agree that refusing to do the former automatically achieves the latter.
That’s very key: There’s no way to empirically prove the theological assertions of either group. And, indeed, when the empirical evidence made it clear certain creeds of classic Christianity are false (e.g. the Earth is around 4 billion years old, not 6,000 years old, and the Earth rotates around the sun, not the sun around the Earth) the initial reaction was to threaten anyone who made those scientific claims with torture.
If we don’t consider the Bible reliable, the claims that Jesus even existed are very flimsy, resting on a passage in Antiquities of the Jews that may not even be authentic, and may not be true even if authentic; I myself find the claim that Decius Mundus (to use another story in the Antiquities) was so lovesick for one Paulina that he would pay what would amount to over a million dollars in today’s money to be with her questionable, especially with how he supposedly got into bed with her.
If someone comes up to me and says “You’re going to Hell because you don’t have my particular form of Christianity”, my reaction is “yeah, that’s a pretty strong claim, what’s your evidence?”, at which point they open up their Bible so I retort with “that’s nice, but what’s your empirical evidence.” For centuries we were in the dark ages, with people slaughtering each other over what interpretation of the Bible is correct. Those religious wars only quieted down and life only improved for mankind when we started looking at actual real world empirical evidence and engaged in the scientific process.
I’m a big fan of Christianity. I’m opposed to any type of fundamentalism, whether it’s fundamentalist Christianity or narrow-minded illiberal “left-wing” thinking — for example, the notion supported by empirical evidence that someone with a high sex partner count is more likely to divorce someone than a virgin will is considered heresy by the illiberal left, and they will use shame and other non-empirical tactics to refute the notion because it goes against their creeds.
And yet you’re insistent on dating women who are part of communities dedicated to those principles, and considering yourself a part of them.
I assure you, the women I am dating in those communities don’t have a strong opinion either way about the age of the Earth. These churches are not the kinds of churches to have lectures on things like “20 proofs the Earth is under 10,000 years old”.
If you’re making an argument that people still seriously believe the sun rotates around the earth, that kind of nonsense only exists on YouTube, and I’m pretty sure flat earth advocates are actually trolling us.
I guess I should begin by stating I’m not making an apologetic for young earth creationism — only for Christianity understood as a set of creeds, period.
The larger context of your post was that the Bible is not reliable, the existence of Jesus is flimsy, and historic Christian creeds are not reliable. That kind of language is rarely limited to purely views on Genesis, and taken to an extreme leads easily to the deconstruction of the whole religion. It’s more that general viewpoint, rather than any particular belief, that I find it hard to believe religious women are interested in. But it’s possible you hail from the more mainline/theologically modernist traditions, where those views are common — in which case, boy, should you hear what evangelical Protestants and conservative Catholics think of them. If you think what they say about the LDS is bad, you should hear how they describe Episcopalians.
My view, fundamentalist as it is, is that a faith should live or die based on its truth claims, and if historic creeds are false, the faith should crumble into dust and be buried by history. So perhaps we bring a different psychology to the table, which explains are tension with each other’s viewpoints. I’m actually a big admirer of empiricism, and I suspect we agree far more than you may think — but I do think ideas deserve to be taken all the way, and have a great deal of respect, actually, for the classical liberals who said, “death to religion,” and started forcefully disestablishing churches. I respect a strong opinion held strongly.
I see how a reader could read my earlier comment as a direct discussion of age of the earth or heliocentrism debates — but my point is rather that “the Bible is not reliable and religion must bend to empiricism” isn’t exactly a popular point of view in Christian circles, and I have an inherent suspicion — which may well be untrue and unnecessary in this case! — of people who try to join religious communities to try to get with religious women, while avoiding actual commitments to the community and joining in the beliefs that shape and ground it. I dislike milquetoast or opportunistic religion about as much as you dislike fundamentalism — but I am, after all, a child of evangelicals who went atheist and then back to Christianity… taking religious ideas intensely seriously and deconstructing and reconstructing them to the fullest possible extent is rather my thing.
It’s not really relevant, but I do have a friend who’s a flat earther, and believes that NASA was founded to cover up the conspiracy. Boy, is he wrong… but boy, is he fun to talk to!
Actually, I believe in two levels of standards of evidence:
I believe in a low bar of evidence when giving people emotional support and guidance. The Bible is reliable in so much as it gives me comfort or allows me to make a point which emotionally comforts someone.
I believe in a very high bar of evidence when the Bible is used as a hammer to make one feel superior to another person. If someone is going to use the Bible to say something like, for example, that Mormons are all going to Hell, I’m going to bring out the point that the Bible is so unreliable, we can’t even be sure Jesus existed. [1]
The Catholics believe the Bible is inspired and not inerrant, and it makes a lot more sense to see it as an inspired book. When we make the Bible inerrant, not only do we have to embrace things like young earth creationism, we also have to believe things like Jesus cleared the temple twice (John 2:15 vs. Matthew 21:12-13/Mark 11:15-17/Luke 19:45-48).
[1] I do believe in Jesus’s existence, and that he was God, but I don’t let those beliefs get in the way of the connection I have with my very close friends who are Muslim. Indeed, I do Muslim prayers with them and give them spiritual comfort.
You’re entitled to your spirituality, but “I tell you comforting things I don’t really believe if it helps you feel better” is a point that’s pretty incompatible with truth, and truth-seeking. I respect sincere atheism more than I respect therapeutic moralism that decides what is true based on what feels good.
I also am guessing I was correct in arguing you’re mainline, or at least come from a more modernist/liberal theological tradition.
I’m not sure we’re going to see eye to eye. That’s fine. But I strongly disagree that the point of religion, or irreligion, or ideas in general, is to make people feel good and not cause harm — sometimes the truth hurts, and that’s good! Living in accordance with truth is the highest duty of man, even if it hurts.
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