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Religion, Violence, Tolerance and Progress: Nothing to Do with Theology

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Re: Religion, Violence, Tolerance and Progress: Nothing to Do with Theology

#5
I've got family members that are a good example of this. Some live in a rural area of the South and think that worsening weather is punishment for allowing gays to marry. Meanwhile when one of my cousins came out as gay, my grandparents who live a few states further North said that he didn't choose to be gay, God made him like that, and invited him and his boyfriend to thanksgiving dinner to make sure he knew that everyone still loved him. Both groups of people are super religious (same religion even), and both use their religion to back up their beliefs, not the other way around.

Re: Religion, Violence, Tolerance and Progress: Nothing to Do with Theology

#6

Controversial author on a controversial topic

Is this really controversial? It's pretty well established that people match local norms far more than they match whatever the statistical norms are for the demographics they belong to.

Re: Religion, Violence, Tolerance and Progress: Nothing to Do with Theology

#7

Controversial author on a controversial topic

Is this really controversial? It's pretty well established that people match local norms far more than they match whatever the statistical norms are for the demographics they belong to.

It shouldn't be controversial, but it is. Assuming that everyone in a demographic is the same is why companies try to increase diversity by hiring based on skin color instead of their actual life experiences. It also means that you can't blindly hate on libs/conservatives, you need to actually talk to people and understand why they think a certain way.

Re: Religion, Violence, Tolerance and Progress: Nothing to Do with Theology

#8
post #5

I've got family members that are a good example of this. Some live in a rural area of the South and think that worsening weather is punishment for allowing gays to marry. Meanwhile when one of my cousins came out as gay, my grandparents who live a few states further North said that he didn't choose to be gay, God made him like that, and invited him and his boyfriend to thanksgiving dinner to make sure he knew that ev…

On a bigger scale, Christians used to be anti gay for seemingly their whole history, then when others in the same western society decided gay is OK, they suddenly decided that Jesus was telling them to be tolerant all that time and all those earlier Christians had somehow got it wrong.

Re: Religion, Violence, Tolerance and Progress: Nothing to Do with Theology

#9
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this really controversial? It's pretty well established that people match local norms far more than they match whatever the statistical norms are for the demographics they belong to.

It shouldn't be controversial, but it is. Assuming that everyone in a demographic is the same is why companies try to increase diversity by hiring based on skin color instead of their actual life experiences. It also means that you can't blindly hate on libs/conservatives, you need to actually talk to people and understand why they think a certain way.

> Assuming that everyone in a demographic is the same is why companies try to increase diversity by hiring based on skin color instead of their actual life experiences.

That makes no sense as a takeaway here. The author's argument is that while religious theology doesn't drive the cultural norms, the religious boundaries define a grouping wherein people tend to converge on or copy cultural norms. Thus, you end up with a particular religious group behaving like X, even if X didn't come from the religion itself.

One could easily apply the same reasoning to visible ethnic groups: they don't behave similarly because of their ethnicity, but the ethnicity defines a grouping where the people within tend to converge on shared cultural norms regardless. Ergo, you would indeed end up with people within said grouping behaving similarly, and then it follows that increasing diversity of which groups you hire from would increase diversity of cultural norms or thought/behavior.

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