Religion
Related: About this forumFake Gay Panic News Fools Christians
http://religiondispatches.org/fake-gay-panic-news-fools-christians/By Sarah Posner July 14, 2015
Christians are just too gullible. Thats the message from Ed Stetzer, writing at Christianity Today, about internet hoaxes masquerading as news that duped Christian readers who then shared them widely.
Believing these stories, Stetzer wrote, and sharing them via social networks, is just embarrassing.
Yet these news stories play into fears the religious right has been stoking for years, and with more intensity since the Supreme Courts decision in Obergefell v. Hodges two and a half weeks ago. One piece of news that Stetzer said many Christians fell for was about a Vermont pastor who was jailed for refusing to marry a gay couple. The story came from a fake news site. Not like Jon Stewart fake news. Or even Onion fake news. Actual fake news.
By the way, Stetzer added, if you are a pastor you should already know that no one can make you officiate anything. In fact, you can refuse to officiate an interracial marriage. Youd be an idiot and a racist, but you wouldnt be arrested.
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skepticscott
(13,029 posts)Like very little else. It poisons everything it touches.
rock
(13,218 posts)So the result is as you say.
bvf
(6,604 posts)Couldn't ask for a truer, more succinct response.
Angry Dragon
(36,693 posts)trotsky
(49,533 posts)It therefore has no reality check.
And it is therefore uniquely armored against criticism, questioning, and self-correction. It is uniquely armored against anything that might stop it from spinning into extreme absurdity, extreme denial of reality... and extreme, grotesque immorality.
...
Any other ideology or philosophy or hypothesis about the world is eventually expected to pony up. It's expected to prove itself true and/or useful, or else correct itself, or else fall by the wayside. With religion, that is emphatically not the case. Because religion is a belief in the invisible and unknowable -- and it's therefore never expected to prove that it's right, or even show good evidence for why it's right -- its capacity to do harm can spin into the stratosphere.
Angry Dragon
(36,693 posts)trotsky
(49,533 posts)Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)Angry Dragon
(36,693 posts)skepticscott
(13,029 posts)that the accusation of broad-brushing would be quickly unsheathed? Can charges of bigotry and being a theophobe be far behind?
Angry Dragon
(36,693 posts)skepticscott
(13,029 posts)Content-free. And I'm all too familiar with the mindset you're exhibiting. It's rampant in here, so if it wasn't you to trot out the "broad-brushing" accusation, it would have been someone else.
Angry Dragon
(36,693 posts)organized religion will be the downfall of this country
religion is just a set of beliefs and may or may not contain a belief in a deity
and I am well aware that this definition is different than the excepted definition
it is time for a change
skepticscott
(13,029 posts)that any way of practicing religion that harms people isn't "correct". A nice NTS argument, but hardly one to be taken seriously.
Angry Dragon
(36,693 posts)Perhaps you would like to tell me what religion I hold and other facts
Lordquinton
(7,886 posts)skepticscott
(13,029 posts)The last word.
foxface666
(29 posts)there is little evidence to this assertion.
skepticscott
(13,029 posts)and this: http://www.democraticunderground.com/123044105
and this: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1218207197
etc., etc. I'd go on for quite a while, if I thought you had the time.
uppityperson
(115,681 posts)skepticscott
(13,029 posts)more stupid-inducing form of fundamentalism than religious fundamentalism?