-- GideonHart - 29 Mar 2008

Untenability of the Christian Right

-- By GideonHart - 28 Mar 2008

Introduction

Christian Right claims to be the moral and Christian political party. Their position is riddled with hypocrisy, and is focused on a small number of issues that are not central to the Christian faith. Position centered on abortion and gay marriage. Neither of these topics is central the Christian faith. Both are mentioned in the Bible, but are not core tenets of Christianity. Skewed to become rallying points for the Republican party.

Other positions that would be logical Christian rallying points are abandoned, and opposite position often taken.

Death Penalty

Torture

Affordable Health Care

Tax cuts for the rich and big business

Better schools for the poor

War in Iraq

Inequality among races and genders

However, despite this hypocrisy, and near abandonment of most of the loving teachings of Jesus, the Republican party is able to capture a large percentage of the committed Christian vote. The right has hijacked the Christian vote by dangling flash point issues at election time and through the use of media.

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Conclusion

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I am sorry this is still long, Gideon. I confess, I’m using your paper as a jumping-off point to [what I think is a useful gloss on] Eben’s grading style. Do edit/delete what you think is irrelevant, and I’ll move those portions to a new thread on "grading style".

Gideon,

I am interested to see how you’ll characterize a “Christian political party,” or religious “hypocrisy” or the “centrality” of views to the Christian faith. I've always been puzzled how Christianity can reconcile its strong moral teachings [good samaritan etc] while itself admitting that political aspirations MUST be "riddled with hypocrisy" [God:God::Caesar:Caesar]. Can we really distinguish Christianity's "intent" [e.g. original] from its uses [e.g. as a social signal: "I am your friend"]?

Jews, I know, make the same dichotomy comfortably because they imagine the social signal as passed down physically, i.e. corporeally, without the host’s choice -- at birth / by circumcision / by last name -- such that one can fail to DEMONSTRATE his Judaism / choose to be Jewish and still be a Jew on the "inside". Christianity, by contrast, can cease to exist in some geographic area (like a corporate brand or national constitution), even when all its (former) members are still alive. Its survival is not physical, but mental. It is utterly impervious to physical conditions.

But then, what data could you use to PROVE a distinction between, e.g., those ethical "tenets," "mentioned in the bible," vs. those that are actually "central to Christianity"? It's hard enough to justify distinguishing metaphysical statuses of things whose physical boundaries we've agreed upon (e.g. Veblen: the original vs. modern uses of wealth / messages about Stuff vs. messages about its Holder). How could you distinguish the metaphysical statuses of a thing in order to characterize its physical existence? -- why bother calling Christianity a "syndrome," if its only common symptom is that it's contagious? Any argument you make will be non-disprovable TWICE.

The typical response to that claim is that "my argument is disprovable; you'll see once I gather more evidence." But that's the same thing as saying, "My concepts are symmetric with my grader's concepts; you'll see once I clarify my concepts." The former language would require Eben, the grader, to choose whether to criticize either our brain’s search for evidence, or the actual lack of evidence; the latter language permits him to lay the blame on the brain’s static concepts, or on the education it received. He will choose the latter, because it empowers him to dismantle arguments on which WE are the experts.

-- AndrewGradman - 30 Mar 2008