There was a recent call over on The Line from a woman named Angel in Ireland and while the call wandered around a lot, there were two points that I wanted to touch on. First, she asked if every religion in the world became “extremely progressive” overnight, would Matt and Jimmy still fight against them, and secondly, when talking about skepticism, she kept insisting that she was open-minded, as if they were the same thing.
They are not. Matt and Jimmy gave their answers, but I’m going to give mine.
Originally, I was going to give some examples of why I strongly disagree with progressive politics here, but that exploded and will now become a series of posts, based on actual political positions. Therefore, I wanted to just address the concepts, not the actual statements.
If every religion adopted all of the political and social positions that I accept, would I stop complaining about religion? No, not one bit, because I don’t dislike religion because of its social positions, but because of its magical thinking. Religion, by its very nature, is harmful to human society and advancement. If we hadn’t had religion for the past couple of thousand years, chances are excellent that we would be a lot further ahead right now. Religion has been nothing but a millstone around the neck of humanity. It has held us back at every turn. Would we have had the Dark Ages without religion? Maybe, in some ways, but certainly not to the extent that we did. Would we have scientists being murdered because they dared to disagree with the dominant religious paradigm? Certainly not. We would have almost certainly acknowledged the way that reality works a lot earlier on without the religious stupidity holding us back.
Therefore, if modern religion suddenly came to its senses and stopped trying to make everyone comply with their ridiculous theology, would I stop being so critical of it? Absolutely not because that’s not what I’m being critical of. I care about reality. If they are pushing ideas that aren’t compatible with reality, I am going to oppose them. There’s no evidence for any gods, therefore no one ought to believe in gods. There’s no evidence for any afterlife, therefore no one ought to believe in an afterlife. Of course, if those things happened, there goes religion, right? It’s the irrational bits that make religious exist at all. Take those away and there’s no more religion.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
The second part was the difference between being open-minded and being skeptical and those are not the same thing at all. In fact, I’d say they are polar opposites.
Most people that I see saying that they are open-minded, that just means they let anything in uncritically. They are absolutely not skeptical about absurd claims. They embrace them. There is a big difference between being open to the potential possibilities, and just buying into anything because it makes you feel good.
Being skeptical is measuring everything against the metric of reality. Is this thing true, or likely to be true, based on the evidence that we have? It is always based on something other than “it sounds good to me” or “I really like the idea!” That is irrelevant. What you like, or what sounds good to your uneducated brain, means nothing. We are after what is factually, demonstrably and evidentially true.
The second I hear anyone demand open-mindedness, I’m pretty sure they’re a kook. Those are the people who are indistinguishable from the religious and I want religion to go away. Not just religion, but the very mindset that religion and the uncritical use. I want people to stop trying to impose their feelings and faith onto the real world. Just deal with what is to the best of your ability. Stop pretending that you can just make up stories to explain things in a way that is emotionally comforting. If you can’t do that, you’re an idiot and I’m sorry, but Angel was a complete idiot. Most theists who call into these shows are. That’s not something you should be proud of.
Knock it off.