Fake Christians and Closet Atheists

I tire of this endless onslaught of bullshit, and I am not getting it off my chest often enough.

I just got done listening to Polyamory Weekly episode Christianity & sexual ethics (MP3 link), in which a listener calls in to say that it is possible to be Christian and sex-positive, obviously, because he is.

It does not work to say "You can be Christian and X, because I am" and fill in the X with whatever you want. Go ahead. Fill in the X and use your imagination for a while. Leave it in the comments.

You do not get to decide what Christianity means to you. Nobody does. There is only one person who gets to decide what Christianity is about. That is the person whose name is in the title. I'm not going to claim to be your follower, doing whatever I want to do, and thereby putting my words in your mouth.

You cherry-pick the cute, harmless, nice-sounding quotes from Jesus about love and grace. You ignore the majority of what Jesus said. On this flimsy basis, you claim you and Jesus are tight, in order to have an easy time getting along with his followers. But you also get to subordinate his way of life to your way of life. Coward.

You are not a Christian. You are a modernist in caveman drag. I am sick to death of moderates saying fundamentalists are hijacking your religion. I've read every word of the bible-- most of it multiple times-- and I can tell you fundamentalists are the authentic ones. It was written by primitives who substituted authoritarianism for moral reasoning, and that comes through when you read it. "Ancient wisdom" is an oxymoron. You are hijacking their religion.

You can't just spin-doctor the world's religious traditions to conform to modern moral sensibilities, and call that version "authentic"! You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Stop using authentic as a synonym for good. Your culture, your heritage, the identity group in which you choose to have membership, can be authentically bad.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad your morality is as advanced as it is! But where does authority come from? An ancient prophet? Or you? If it's you, stop calling yourself his follower, if "follower" is to mean anything.

Why would an atheist like me care about this? Because I don't like being incredibly unimpressed with people who are otherwise great. I can forgive someone who poses as something cool. That would be just their reach exceeding their grasp. But posing in the costume of a mainstream conformist, while getting to go to orgies, makes you a venereal abscess.

By your endorsement of Christianity, you are contributing to a climate in which "everybody knows" that Jesus is awesome. You are lending your voice to a gigantic chorus that influences people. Some of them, unlike you, are going to actually crack the Bible open, and they'll read all the quotes from Jesus that you conveniently ignore. Like how he is not overturning the Old Testament law, and in fact we should obey all of it. Or the parts where he is really strongly in favor of an authoritarian social heirarchy (of course, with him on top of the pyramid). And then, because they are more sincere than you in subordinating their conscience to religious authority, they will be douchebags.

Comments

nicegeek on Jun. 26, 2010 2:10 AM — Something to consider

It seems to me that lumping all of Christianity together makes only slightly more sense than lumping all of Discordianism together. The only defining characteristic of a Christian is a belief that Christ was and is divine. Everything else, including the degree to which the Bible is authoritative, varies considerably between the denominations. And while I think that Christ likely has a single intent, it seems vanishingly unlikely that any extant denomination perfectly represents it. If Christ were to judge in the manner of this post, that would mean that there are no true Christians at all. But IMHO, Christ is more tolerant of flawed people than that, and while I won't presume to declare whether He'd consider sex-positive-ness forgivable, it's at least not outside the realm of plausibility.

matt-arnold on Jun. 26, 2010 3:31 PM — Re: Something to consider

"Take up your meaningless religious affectation and follow me." "Behold, my fashion statement is easy and my popularity-maximizing strategy is light."

nicegeek on Jun. 26, 2010 3:42 PM — Re: Something to consider

There's might be a point that this reply was trying to make, but it's obscured by a haze of incendiary sarcasm.

matt-arnold on Jun. 27, 2010 7:29 PM — Re: Something to consider

Yeah, I threw that one together quick. The snark was strong with me yesterday.

Words have meanings. Broad meanings, sure. Not perfectly precise, sure. (As they say in the Lojban community, the price of infinite precision is infinite verbosity.) But one can only "reinterpret" them so far and remain even borderline plausible. Interpretation is like throwing a dart at a dartboard: you might miss the bullseye and still land on the board.

One may not turn around and throw the dart the opposite way and pretend it just missed. At that point I call bullshit. Words mean things to listeners. If "Christian" means something different to this guy than it means to pretty much every listener ever, then he should just invent a new word. Then I'll be satisfied.

nicegeek on Jun. 27, 2010 8:35 PM — Re: Something to consider

If "Christian" means something different to this guy than it means to pretty much every listener ever...

I submit that the only definition of "Christian" that could be broadly accepted by "pretty much every listener ever" is the very basic one I posted above. It seems like you're trying to apply a less broadly accepted definition of Christian, but if you want to do that, you also need to narrow your argument to the subset of denominations that use that definition. For example, it's probably valid to say this guy can't be a Catholic, because (I think) the Catholics would give someone the boot for unrepentant orgy attendance.

matt-arnold on Jun. 27, 2010 9:07 PM — Re: Something to consider

I agree that a certain sense of the word has become meaningless-- the sense in which it is an ethic demographic, not chosen by the participant but thrust upon them by inheritance and followed blindly. Just another identity group, just another checkbox on a survey that says nothing important about who they are. But listening to them talk, that version of the word is clearly not what they're claiming when they apply the term to themselves.

atropis on Jun. 26, 2010 4:17 AM

people who say they're christian without prioritizing the study of christ are lamers, sure. which probably doesn't do much to change that pretty much being how humans roll.

also inclined to second nicegeek's point about how christianity's unifying thread is belief in the importance of christ, and the rest need make no serious apology for being all over the map.

not that i'm naysaying, here, as i do appreciate the need for periodic venting of dissatisfaction.

matt-arnold on (None)

matt-arnold on Jun. 26, 2010 3:44 PM

Yeah. Well, I expect that from small towns cooking up crystal meth in their trailer parks. But from the educated, I expect a formulated ideology, not just ticking off a check box on a demographic survey. I know, an educated human is still a human-- just as likely to substitute group identity instead.

The funniest outcome of this post was the sudden flash of realization I had, in which I figured out what annoys people so much about cultural appropriation. Ironic, that in this instance, it involves a cultural heritage that I repudiate.

It just really bugs me to reduce a philosophy with so much elaborate underpinning to a mere culture, to be blindly inherited.

atropis on Jun. 26, 2010 4:16 PM

yeah, i was also noticing that old ingrained loyalty to the specific branch of the belief system you were raised in. it's pretty funny to hear you say these things so intensely, cause exactly this has long been a pet rage (that is, a little past a peeve) of my dad's, and especially so when he was in seminary. have gone over some of that same(?) ground myself, besides.

i'm not an atheist and have no plans to become one. definitely not all about specifically christian ideologies, either. took some heavy processing to get to a point where i wasn't still kind of pissed off at one or both (or all?) of the influences that are part of the shape of my thought processes, chosen and un-chosen.

for me, a lot of it has to do with finding the spots where old viewpoints and new viewpoints grow into one and are part of the shape of one another. a lot more has to do with squarely facing the fact that the stuff in my head got built in before i was cognizant of it, and because of that, is in no position to go anywhere. 'self-acceptance', if you like that kind of terminology. alongside that, finding stuff i really like that grew out of christian things, as well. some of the art, for example, is pretty sweet. and all those monks that maintained literacy during the dark ages. and writers newer than that, like lewis and tolkien.

all of which is kind of a digression from the original topic. but may also be nearer to the underlying point?

matt-arnold on Jun. 29, 2010 12:53 AM

When participating in a culture war, instensity of passion comes with the territory. :)

Thinking about it for a couple of days, I really don't know what to make of the suggestion that I'm exercising loyalty. This post was not what I would recognize as offering aid or support. At least not voluntarily.

I can identify cultural preconceptions, examine them, judge some of them right and others wrong, and work to overcome programming. I have done a lot of that. I expect that of myself and ask it of others.

merlyntemple on Jun. 27, 2010 7:24 PM

You can be Christian and enjoy Nine Inch Nail's atheist "God is dead" lyrics because I did. :)

Mostly because I believed in the existence of the Christian God and didn't so much live the chaste and pure life that I was taught to adhere to. I don't know exactly what I should have called myself back then that accurately described what I was in terms of religion. A non-practicing Christian maybe? I had decided that Christianity meant living a life of love, acceptance, and making decisions that didn't hurt other people when in reality, that was my own moral code coming to surface that had nothing to do with Christianity at all.

Now that being said, I did feel guilty for enjoying Nine Inch Nails back then. I knew their music was not something I should enjoy being Christian just as there were many other things I enjoyed everyday that true Christians know go against the tenets of the religion. Like for instance, South Park, sex before marriage, drinking to the point of drunkenness, etc. But Christians do sin everyday and realize that it is impossible not to, so I just continued to do these things and then felt guilty about them.

I'm pretty happy not to have that burden anymore. Feeling guilty over stuff like that -- sins that had no victim -- was the worst part for me about being a Christian. And if there is a God, and he wants to condemn me for committing these sins and no longer feeling sorry for them, then he is a dick. But more likely, he will condemn me for no longer believing in him. If he wanted me to continue believing in him, he should've given me at least a shred of evidence of his existence.