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

I think there is a strong element of that. But Jesus himself actually said almost nothing about homosexuality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_the_New_Testa...

The traditional Christian view of same-sex activity derives from more direct statements made by Paul, and Jesus’s general statements about sexual immorality. What Paul actually meant about homosexuality depends on ambiguous translations from the original Greek. Moreover, Jesus’s prohibition on sexual immorality depends on what counts as sexual immorality. Christian denominations that accept same-sex marriage interpret these statements differently. This is particularly easy in Protestant Christianity because it accepts that the Bible is the work of people and that it must be interpreted.

On one hand, I think you’re correct that a lot of this is results-driven rationalization—looking at the Bible anew with the desire to reach a particular end goal. That in and of itself isn’t necessarily that big of a deal, though. We do the same thing in the law, with texts that are far less ancient and where the original meaning is far more apparent. The Supreme Court just decided this year that Congress had already banned discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity back in the 1960s.

But there have also been theologically relevant changes. It wasn’t until the 21st century that it became widely accepted as a matter of science and sociology that homosexuality is innate and not a choice. These facts are enormously important theologically. Christianity is not in the business of affirming peoples’ choices. But an overriding principle is that God created each person individually and knows and loves each person. Within that framework, an orientation that is innate is very different from behavior that is a choice. Moreover, an overriding purpose of Biblical marriage is to have and raise children. In the United States, large scale studies showing that huge numbers of gay couples were raising children together were released in 2011, based on 2010 census data. This went largely unnoticed among folks who don’t see child rearing as an essential purpose of marriage and life generally, but is tremendously important for deciding that same-sex unions fall within Christian (and other traditional) understandings of what is a marriage.

If there were a list of things you need to know before talking about religion, this might be the #1 fact: it's almost never true that you can understand the religion just by looking at the scriptures. At least, it's true of the religions I know things about (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, in that order, with exponential decay in my knowledge as you go down the list...).

The funny thing is that Taleb is making something of the same point, but still makes that mistake when it comes time to talk about theology.

Early Christianity was pretty plainly against sex as such, straight or gay, but I don’t think Christianity per se is more anti-gay than any other religion. Gay marriage in the modern sense just didn’t exist anywhere, afaict, and Christianity was against sodomy but not fanatically so until the early modern era. The real anti-gay paranoia seems to me to be more of a product of early modernity than a specifically Christian thing.

One thing this essay misses is that in your typical religious group, you're going to have:

* A good-sized portion who are "in name only" adherents

* A large group who are "in good standing" but not necessarily strong adherents

* A minority, and likely a small minority, who are "sweat the details" adherents.

For instance, among Americans who identify as Catholics, only 40% attend Mass weekly. But only about 22% of Catholics say they ever go to confession, and only 2% go regularly.

So although a person might identify as Catholic, the importance of their faith and their adherence to its doctrine is going to vary from person to person, and my guess is that for the majority of U.S. Catholics, their religion does not hold as much sway on their behavior as other factors -- including their political affiliation.

Granted, there are some cases where the distribution is different. If your religion is especially insular or vulnerable, or if it is controlled by people with great political power, there are probably fewer casual adherents.

Nevertheless, I don't think it's especially helpful to talk about Catholics or Jews or Muslims or what have you without making the distinction between these different levels of adherence.

But I do think the author makes a good point that many of the activities, attitudes (and atrocities) we attribute to religious groups are really the result of other cultural factors that use religion as a mantle. Look at the Catholic-Protestant conflicts in Northern Ireland; these were undeniably political groups that used the Catholic and Protestant labels to identify themselves, even though they weren't fighting over doctrine -- they were fighting over power.

I attended a Unitarian lecture where the minister gently chided the members, "Yes, we have a theology." The gist was that there were seven or so dimensions to appreciate, including: theology, eschatology, ecclesiology, soteriology, and a few more.

So the word 'theology' != "formal beliefs", whether or not that affects Taleb's brief thesis.