She had someone better to talk to… so I wait..

Well after much soul-searching and an argument with Trey I’ve flip-flopped again. Call me a flip flopper… I like to hear it.

I am still in serious anger at the ignorance shared by a majority of America due to the past election, mainly because it seems the consequences are going to be dire. BUT, I am willing to admit one key fact that I have said earlier but I never linked to this whole situation.

My argument used to be that if given the correct tools that anyone in this world could demonstrate a far more superior knowledge then we grant them on the whole. I argued that people are inherently able to make good decisions when given enough information about a subject. I was not wrong in this argument although I thought I had been after the election of 2004. I was wrong with linking the election of 2004 with a revolution of information. I thought that during the election the right information was getting out. I had naively been rampantly using my own understanding to truncate evidence for the whole of the USA. I was wrong.

Obviously it appeared to me that the information was getting out because I was pre-programmed to weed through the trash and find the truth. So it comes down to this, we need to fix this. Something has got to change. Christianity has to change. I can only see it this way. My argument is as follows.

-=-=(The extended entry includes an argument for this, I felt that I might offend you by keeping it here)=-=-

In the end Christianity is a tool. It is used for good and bad, and believe me there are a lot of good things that come out of Christian beliefs. My concern is that the negative things that come about due to Christian beliefs far outweigh the good. I wish everyone were as open-minded as my mom. She is the model Christian in my mind, her and Desmond Tutu of course. If there were more christians like her then the world would be a better place.

I face a unique problem. I have a lot of Christian friends who believe their prejudicial and inflammatory beliefs are okay to have. I’m starting to sever my connection with them. Is this a good thing? I don’t know I’m tired. Trey said that the answer isn’t to ignore them and not interact with them. I argue it certainly isn’t attacking their beliefs. I progress this argument by saying that as long as they vote my rights out of existence and they use my name to wage a holy war, I will cut ties to them.

They are right about this. There is a moral relativism that is growing in this country. What is more troubling is that it is spreading into the area of knowledge. Suddenly a notion of how little we can truly “know” gets thrown around to support the most absurd ideas. We can’t really know if ghosts are real or not, so why not believe in them for fun? Sure it is all fun and games until some psycho takes his belief in ghosts and decides to murder thousands of people in an attempt to create a ghost. My point? My point is this. We can know things. There are degrees of knowledge. We can know that on September 11th 2001 two planes were hijacked and piloted into the twin towers in New York City. We can know that our political system is not producing effective leaders. We can know that the Iraqi war was not based on solid evidence or sound reasoning. We can know that as much as Bush professes to be Christian, he doesn’t embody enough of the Christian ideals demonstrated by Christ himself. We can know the information tools we use on a daily basis are biased.

Finally we can know that there are a near infinite of truths in the world that are there for us to discover and know. Truth is not subjective.

Morality is necessary for our society to survive. Just like when I know adding 2 + 2 gives me 4, I know that my actions have an effect. I also know there are moral effects to some of my actions. I kill a person and I feel immoral about the action. There are negative effects in our society that occur due to that action. These are all evidence of moral codes in existence. A moral code is simply a law of nature that dictates how social animals co-exist. We see plenty of societies behind us that have failed because they didn’t recognize the moral codes in existence. They are like ruined airplanes at the bottom of a cliff, where great minds spent so much time trying to figure out how to fly. All they needed was to recognize the law of aerodynamics, and all we need to do is recognize the law of living.

Conclusion: Every major civil-rights progression has been hindered by Christian moral fundamentalism.
1) The subjugation of the Native Amerindian Nations. Christian Churches were well known for donating blankets and goods that were riddled with disease to the Amerindian Nations. Some cases were accidental, but other cases were planned annihilation.
2) Slavery is the biggest and darkest era of Christian history in America. One of the major arguments was that the African American was nothing more then a beast and that God gave Man dominance over beast. They have slaves in the bible right? Didn’t Moses lead a bunch of them out of Egypt? I digress, my point is that it was used to spurn on hatred between the white and black races.
3) Women’s rights. This is another dozy. For many years people have used Christianity to keep women as simply Adam’s rib and tied to the stove. How many years has it taken to undo that tragedy? Oh surprise it STILL isn’t undone. Women are paid less across the board for doing the same jobs as men.
4) Civil rights outside of slavery. Ok so slavery is un-institutionalized. It could be argued that it still exists but in it’s original form it is dead. We still use the black community for our mundane chores (look at your local fast food restaurant and tell me how many minorities are working there, then look at your average corporate board room and see how many minorities are there. disturbing I know… capitalism) The question comes down to whether or not Christianity is to blame for some of the negative treatment of blacks in our country today. I argue yes. The religion is still the tool of the racist backwater counties.
evidence to support my claim
–how many known lynching occur in “good old down home country”
–when studying the distribution of christians, there is a correlation between that and hate crime against blacks… the south is predominantly Christian and it is the center of race-related hate crime.
5) Homosexuality- This is a current issue. “We have a notion of moral ambivalence in our society. The Liberal Community has adopted a moral relativism that allows for immoral actions to continue.” This was overheard during an argument on the rights of homosexuals and the recent rash of anti-gay legislation passed in our country. Homosexuals are the new target for Christian fundamentalism.
http://www.apa.org/pubinfo/answers.html#whatcauses
I show you this link because it might answer some questions you have. Guess what? The APA believes that Homosexuality is not a choice but something that could be biologically dictated or influenced. On the other hand there are several Christian organizations right now teaching men and women that loving the same sex as yourself is wrong. Go figure. Original sin anyone?

Now I know one of the major objections that will be raised is that none of these topics are created because of Christianity. I agree there is no causal evidence, but something can sustain a belief without being the cause of that belief.