tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9721761.post6048884970466740805..comments2024-03-19T07:27:06.216-04:00Comments on VOTARIES OF HORROR: Religious People Can Be Imperfect: It's OkayKatherine Woodburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14364517253667798449noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9721761.post-79067793038838813922009-08-18T12:21:12.631-04:002009-08-18T12:21:12.631-04:00Amen! [To keep with the religious motif :)]
Actua...Amen! [To keep with the religious motif :)]<br /><br />Actually, speaking academically, when I first started teaching English Composition, I never even thought about critical thinking--getting kids to question what they read/encounter. In the past few years, critical thinking has become a bigger and bigger and bigger part of my syllabus. <br /><br />One reason I was so wary at first is that I didn't want the students to be cynical; of course, cynicism (or, at least, the brand that I ran into in my master's program) was really just a lack of critical thinking: the bandwagon of "everything is stupid" is not much better than the bandwagon of "everything is lovely and perfect." <br /><br />Unfortunately, now I'm wishing my students were at least cynical, and the cynical kids, who don't have great critical thinking skills, actually come off as kind of thoughtful--cause they are, at least, thinking about something! <br /><br />But it still isn't a great solution. For example, in my master's program, there was this woman who was dead-set against "patriarchal" textbooks, not to mention <i>written</i> primary sources from the "patriarchal" past: "Students think it is true because it is written down!" <br /><br />She's right. They do. And it's really annoying. But the reason academics get so giddy about written sources is that you can actually check them. Kind of hard to do with oral sources, unless those sources are <b>written</b> down. But this woman had decided that written was bad/masculine, and oral was good/feminine, end of problem. <br /><br />She wasn't completely wrong, but she wasn't completely right either. In other words, she hadn't really thought the problem through (a lot of powerful oral communication is male, even patriarchal, and the history of men writing things down has, in many ways, opened up doors for women writing things down); she wasn't, as you say, Cari, questioning everything. She'd just put labels on stuff and decided what was good and what was bad. For me, though, thinking through all the scattered data is what critical thinking is all about; however, saying so makes me feel like a lone voice in the wilderness!<br /><br />Well, not so lone!Kate Woodburyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06276977170991272672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9721761.post-42670907760850075792009-08-18T11:31:29.213-04:002009-08-18T11:31:29.213-04:00"My conclusion: Give me the particulars first..."My conclusion: Give me the particulars first. I want to know the people before I judge the situation. Whatever the situation."<br /><br />I totally agree. I find it very odd how many historians seem to focus on solitary events or singular individuals as if that could ever paint a true picture of what/who happened. I've been reading Irrationality by Stuart Sutherland. Studies have found that people rarely learn from hindsight because they rarely rememeber what actually happened. We tend to repaint our opinion of our past according to our present.<br /><br />It makes sense. Studying history I find it fascinating/disturbing how every generation rewrites history from their own perspective. Sometimes this can be helpful in highlighting something that hadn't been noticed before, but there are so many layers of complete rubbish/untruths between the past and the present its amazing we bother to believe anything.<br /><br />What really boils my blood, stepping on my soap box, is how complete historical-rubbish is touted as fact by organisations/journals/historians who have been educated to question the story written by people who weren't there, but they don't. So few people bother to question the source of their information and accept as true what already fits with their preconceived opinion of what happened. It's like people are handed several pieces of a puzzle, told it's a picture of a field of poppies (which they haven't seen) and then tell their friends that these five pieces of the sky belong to an image of a field of poppies, but they're passing on their "knowledge" based on someone's word without any proof that it wasn't really a field of wheat...or a dirt field filled with dead bodies.<br /><br />I think the most valuable thing one can teach a child is to question everything...of course there is truth in the world, but the dimonds of truth are often burried under worthless dirt. So few people are taught to dig; like the idiots who put forth the opinion that if someone who professes belief in a religion and then doesn't live it exactly means the religion is untrue. Talk about illogical. Since when is a truth dependent on some random person acting on it? With logic like that I'm amazed the human race has managed to survive this long.Cari Hislophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15717398455999202660noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9721761.post-70877034911749925342009-08-14T13:09:55.420-04:002009-08-14T13:09:55.420-04:00I completely agree that pro-religionists (religion...I completely agree that pro-religionists (religionites?) should be tougher. I get tired of wimpy religion. For instance, I think there are legitimate, legal, even social reasons why gay marriage is a problematic proposition, but my reaction to religious arguments against gay marriage is: If marriage is that important, then work on having a good one! (And if gay marriage is that big a threat--in the free-est country on earth--how would you ever maintain your faith in a tougher time under tougher circumstances?) <br /><br />I also agree that leadership hypocrisy is often a bigger deal to how a religion is judged than laypeople hypocrisy <br />although, often, leaders can be flawed without being total losers (and will be products of their age and backgrounds: yes, yes, I know, they will sometimes claim not, but I figure such complacency or self-righteousness, is one of their flaws. But this is a personal judgment call, not a percentile one). <br /><br />However, the argument "flawed people=bad religion" is so common (the book I picked up was going on about the "flaws" of laypeople specifically, not outright evil or anything), and so weak (in strawman's terms), I think people should occasionally point it out!Kate Woodburyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06276977170991272672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9721761.post-47648986128960336472009-08-14T12:44:32.368-04:002009-08-14T12:44:32.368-04:00I think to an extent you are responding to a straw...I think to an extent you are responding to a straw man argument by setting one up yourself.<br /><br />Anti-regligionists (for lack of a better phrase) tend to miss the point that many religions, especially Christianity, are aspirational--that is, it teaches an ideal and challenges the believer to achieve it. Christianity actually has as its core theology that everyone will fall short, but there is a mechanism (repentance) to try again. (Oddly, even Christians often miss that point--one thing I got very wary of when a believer was all the notion that there is a limit to repentance, either in frequency or extent. Stating, for example, that anyone guilty of this, can <i>never</i> be allowed to do that.)<br /><br />On the other hand, pro-religionists miss the point that if almost everyone ignores a certain tenant of a religion then there is something seriously wrong with that tenant. Add too many of these things together and it does raise serious questions about that religion and reinforces the view that it exists only as a way for one person or group to control another, and isn't representative of God at all.<br /><br />Another problem with pro-religionists is that if the founders and/or leaders of a religion or sect weren't/aren't practicing what they preach[ed], that is a real problem. The apologist can't just wave it away and think that's sufficient. (If a religion is founded on the premise that everything man-made must be literally colored black or white and it later comes out that the founder only owned one black and white suit and everything else man-made in his life was blue, I think we could safely assume the religion was bunk.)<br /><br />The second point is that hypocrisy is real, though with my twisted philosophy it's more nuanced (cringe) than that. Preaching an ideal that you try to follow, but fail at isn't hypocritical IF your attempts are genuine. One way to detect hypocrisy is how lame the excuses are for failure (porn made me do it being among the lamest, followed by "it was the alcohol" and anything with the word "addict".)Joehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04450897654318345683noreply@blogger.com