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helenkgreenwood:
Atheist Musings #5
Atheist: *criticizes religious idea*
Theist who can’t separate ideas from identities and can not imagine that anyone else can either: “That’s anti-(insert group of people here)!!!”
OP I really hope I can clear this up for you. the people criticizing you are not theists, they’re fellow atheists who think you’re being a toolbag.
I am not a theist, and to the best of my knowledge neither iwilleatyourenglish not hyperspace-ace is either. we have different understandings of religion, religious practice, and the nature of religious identity groups than you do. not “different understandings” in the sense of believing that the supernatural aspects of religion are “real” or “true”, but different understandings of what the word religion means and of the sociology and anthropology of religion from an academic or political perspective.
from our perspective, there is of course a significant difference between ideas and identities, and there is also a significant different between ideas and different ideas. when you insist that you’re simply criticizing belief in a deity, but repeatedly mock the practices of an ethnic group that (I know you find this hard to wrap your head around but I am living evidence that it’s true) do not depend on belief in a deity and refuse to acknowledge that these traditions could follow any kind of internal logic, in a way that happens to sound like the kind of thing someone who thinks Jews, specifically, are bad would say… it kind of seems to people watching like you have some form of dislike or disrespect for Jews.
this is especially charged because of the long and brutal history of people trying very hard to get Jews to stop doing Wrong Religion. while most of these people have not been atheists, I hope that you can understand how, having struggled for so long to retain these cultural traditions, being told that they’re bad and (even, as you’ve been repeatedly told people do, practicing them as an atheist) practicing them is bad could be something of a sore spot
Hope this helps!
helenkgreenwood:
Atheist Musings #5
Atheist: *criticizes religious idea*
Theist who can’t separate ideas from identities and can not imagine that anyone else can either: “That’s anti-(insert group of people here)!!!”
OP I really hope I can clear this up for you. the people criticizing you are not theists, they’re fellow atheists who think you’re being a toolbag.
I am not a theist, and to the best of my knowledge neither iwilleatyourenglish not hyperspace-ace is either. we have different understandings of religion, religious practice, and the nature of religious identity groups than you do. not “different understandings” in the sense of believing that the supernatural aspects of religion are “real” or “true”, but different understandings of what the word religion means and of the sociology and anthropology of religion from an academic or political perspective.
from our perspective, there is of course a significant difference between ideas and identities, and there is also a significant different between ideas and different ideas. when you insist that you’re simply criticizing belief in a deity, but repeatedly mock the practices of an ethnic group that (I know you find this hard to wrap your head around but I am living evidence that it’s true) do not depend on belief in a deity and refuse to acknowledge that these traditions could follow any kind of internal logic, in a way that happens to sound like the kind of thing someone who thinks Jews, specifically, are bad would say… it kind of seems to people watching like you have some form of dislike or disrespect for Jews.
this is especially charged because of the long and brutal history of people trying very hard to get Jews to stop doing Wrong Religion. while most of these people have not been atheists, I hope that you can understand how, having struggled for so long to retain these cultural traditions, being told that they’re bad and (even, as you’ve been repeatedly told people do, practicing them as an atheist) practicing them is bad could be something of a sore spot
Hope this helps!
