Need Advice On Dealing With "soft" Christians.

[Guest Dude]

Hi gang,

 

I am looking for some opinions on dealing with what I call "soft" Christians. I personally define a "hard" Christian as a fundamentalist with an opinion that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. These are easy to debate for me due to all the biblical errors.

 

Where I am having some dificulties is in dealing with Christians who do not especially adhere to the "inerrant word of God" thing. I call these "soft" Christians. They believe that the Spirit of Jesus and the general spirit of the NT are what we are to take from the Bible. The OT is hardly considered by these folks. They are a little more difficult to debate/discuss and fortify my own position. Because frankly, there is a lot of good in the Bible. Serving others and and the words of Jesus are actually an awesome and idealistic way of societal protocol. The Bible is not the centerpiece of societal suggestions but it does offer good and bad. However, my questions deals with those who are "soft" Christians.

 

How do you guys deal with arguments or discussions with who I call "soft" Christians? Do you go into more philosophical discussions?

 

Thanks,

Dude

[All Gods Fail]

Well, I don't really feel a need to debate with 'soft' xtians. If their idea of religion is to be nice and help people, that's not a problem. It's like punching a bunny.

 

The fanatics are the danger to society; the ones who use religion like a weapon. I would save my ammo for a more worthy target.

[thunderbolt]

The fanatics are the danger to society; the ones who use religion like a weapon. I would save my ammo for a more worthy target.

Maybe, maybe not. Sam Harris argues that they are enablers of fundamentalism, and thus a problem as much as fundamentalism. I deal mainly with soft/moderate type Christians, and its challenging. They have no religious spine, and they change their opinions like the wind, so it’s hard to keep track. I have decided to create a meme to deal with them, and I pound the fact that Jesus is a Myth relentlessly. This seems to irk the ones I deal with quite a bit. But you have to keep track of their philosophical views, and keep the burden of proof on them. I devise little experiments to show them how they can rationally debunk other gods and myths, but when it comes to Jesus, they turn into lobotomy patients. They don’t always take the bait.

 

Exceprt from An Atheist Manifesto

 

Although it is easy enough for smart people to criticize religious fundamentalism, something called “religious moderation” still enjoys immense prestige in our society, even in the ivory tower. This is ironic, as fundamentalists tend to make a more principled use of their brains than “moderates” do. While fundamentalists justify their religious beliefs with extraordinarily poor evidence and arguments, at least they make an attempt at rational justification. Moderates, on the other hand, generally do nothing more than cite the good consequences of religious belief. Rather than say that they believe in God because certain biblical prophecies have come true, moderates will say that they believe in God because this belief “gives their lives meaning.” When a tsunami killed a few hundred thousand people on the day after Christmas, fundamentalists readily interpreted this cataclysm as evidence of God’s wrath. As it turns out, God was sending humanity another oblique message about the evils of abortion, idolatry and homosexuality. While morally obscene, this interpretation of events is actually reasonable, given certain (ludicrous) assumptions. Moderates, on the other hand, refuse to draw any conclusions whatsoever about God from his works. God remains a perfect mystery, a mere source of consolation that is compatible with the most desolating evil. In the face of disasters like the Asian tsunami, liberal piety is apt to produce the most unctuous and stupefying nonsense imaginable. And yet, men and women of goodwill naturally prefer such vacuities to the odious moralizing and prophesizing of true believers. Between catastrophes, it is surely a virtue of liberal theology that it emphasizes mercy over wrath. It is worth noting, however, that it is human mercy on display--not God’s--when the bloated bodies of the dead are pulled from the sea. On days when thousands of children are simultaneously torn from their mothers’ arms and casually drowned, liberal theology must stand revealed for what it is--the sheerest of mortal pretenses. Even the theology of wrath has more intellectual merit. If God exists, his will is not inscrutable. The only thing inscrutable in these terrible events is that so many neurologically healthy men and women can believe the unbelievable and think this the height of moral wisdom.

 

It is perfectly absurd for religious moderates to suggest that a rational human being can believe in God simply because this belief makes him happy, relieves his fear of death or gives his life meaning. The absurdity becomes obvious the moment we swap the notion of God for some other consoling proposition: Imagine, for instance, that a man wants to believe that there is a diamond buried somewhere in his yard that is the size of a refrigerator. No doubt it would feel uncommonly good to believe this. Just imagine what would happen if he then followed the example of religious moderates and maintained this belief along pragmatic lines: When asked why he thinks that there is a diamond in his yard that is thousands of times larger than any yet discovered, he says things like, “This belief gives my life meaning,” or “My family and I enjoy digging for it on Sundays,” or “I wouldn’t want to live in a universe where there wasn’t a diamond buried in my backyard that is the size of a refrigerator.” Clearly these responses are inadequate. But they are worse than that. They are the responses of a madman or an idiot.

 

Here we can see why Pascal’s wager, Kierkegaard’s leap of faith and other epistemological Ponzi schemes won’t do. To believe that God exists is to believe that one stands in some relation to his existence such that his existence is itself the reason for one’s belief. There must be some causal connection, or an appearance thereof, between the fact in question and a person’s acceptance of it. In this way, we can see that religious beliefs, to be beliefs about the way the world is, must be as evidentiary in spirit as any other. For all their sins against reason, religious fundamentalists understand this; moderates--almost by definition--do not.

 

The incompatibility of reason and faith has been a self-evident feature of human cognition and public discourse for centuries. Either a person has good reasons for what he strongly believes or he does not. People of all creeds naturally recognize the primacy of reasons and resort to reasoning and evidence wherever they possibly can. When rational inquiry supports the creed it is always championed; when it poses a threat, it is derided; sometimes in the same sentence. Only when the evidence for a religious doctrine is thin or nonexistent, or there is compelling evidence against it, do its adherents invoke “faith.” Otherwise, they simply cite the reasons for their beliefs (e.g. “the New Testament confirms Old Testament prophecy,” “I saw the face of Jesus in a window,” “We prayed, and our daughter’s cancer went into remission"). Such reasons are generally inadequate, but they are better than no reasons at all. Faith is nothing more than the license religious people give themselves to keep believing when reasons fail. In a world that has been shattered by mutually incompatible religious beliefs, in a nation that is growing increasingly beholden to Iron Age conceptions of God, the end of history and the immortality of the soul, this lazy partitioning of our discourse into matters of reason and matters of faith is now unconscionable.

[Asimov]

How do you guys deal with arguments or discussions with who I call "soft" Christians? Do you go into more philosophical discussions?

 

The Jesus-Lite Gang? Punching bunnies is fun.

 

It's pretty useless trying to show the bible is errant to people who agree with you, so obviously it would require something a little more God-based than biblical historicity and atrocities and what-not.

 

You 'could' point out the inconsistency of their own beliefs because they generally avoid the whole OT part and only focus on the good Jesus stuff.

 

A few things you might want to focus on:

 

1) Non-cognitivism

2) Lack of evidence

 

 

What argumentation do they use when discussing?

[saxyroze]

 

I am looking for some opinions on dealing with what I call "soft" Christians. I personally define a "hard" Christian as a fundamentalist with an opinion that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. These are easy to debate for me due to all the biblical errors.

 

 

Instead of debating about the bible how about debating the mere idea of a god, theirs or the general theistic god.

[The Sage Nabooru]

One question: Why?

 

Do you want to be the fundamentalist you claim to be battling?

 

They're going about their own business. Let them. Otherwise you're just proving a source of pointless harrassment. If they turn fundamentalist, consider them fair game. But if they're "soft", as you say, why are you picking fights with harmless people?

[Lycorth]

One question: Why?

 

Do you want to be the fundamentalist you claim to be battling?

 

They're going about their own business. Let them. Otherwise you're just proving a source of pointless harrassment. If they turn fundamentalist, consider them fair game. But if they're "soft", as you say, why are you picking fights with harmless people?

 

Precisely. Life is not about religion and religion should be about life. If their religious views are harmless and they are not using them as an excuse to harm themselves or someone else, there's really little to worry about. I'd rather have a dozen soft Xians around me than a couple of fundy-minded freethinkers or Heathens of whatever stripe who keep trying to convert me to their personal beliefs, as if I asked to hear their opinions.

 

Soft Xians can sometimes be harder to talk to. Their religion and personal beliefs are mainly customary, and they are what they are only because that's how they were raised to be. They don't care to think too deeply about religious topics or other points of view, and will probably not make much sense out of the things a non-xian criticizing about the cult. But since they bother no one, it's best to return a gift for a gift and not bother them in return, unless you're accosted about religion first.

 

Respect is more important than religion, and we always ought to have the former whether or not we have this or that version of the latter.

[Skankboy]

But if they're "soft", as you say, why are you picking fights with harmless people?

 

Because, as was said before, "soft" christians enable the fundamentalists. "Soft" christians also voted against gay marriage. "Soft" christians are also trying to get ID taught in schools. Not because they have a huge stake in it like the fundamentalists, but because they share a paradigm where the two will often overlap.

 

Now, we have some christian mystics, for lack of a better term, around here at Ex-c. How are they different? They have taken the time, much like fundies, to really evaluate what they believe. As such, they tend to be much more independantly minded than the "norm" for christains and as such, not a threat.

 

As for debating them, I usually show them contrasting verses of Jesus to dispel the idol worship and then get into critically evaluating their beliefs. Please understand though, even with what I said above, I DO NOT INITIATE these discussions. For the most part, and where I don't see their values as a threat to my own liberty or the liberty of others, I let them be. But if a dicussion is engaged, I cannot see being "easy" on anyone...

 

IMOHO,

[The Sage Nabooru]

Because, as was said before, "soft" christians enable the fundamentalists. "Soft" christians also voted against gay marriage. "Soft" christians are also trying to get ID taught in schools. Not because they have a huge stake in it like the fundamentalists, but because they share a paradigm where the two will often overlap.

 

Answer: No, they didn't. Otherwise they wouldn't be "soft Christians", would they?

 

The vast majority of Christians I have met in my life have been of the "soft" variety, and by far, the bulk of them found nothing wrong with gay marriage, or at least perhaps had the same approach to it as they did to abortion - they personally wouldn't do it as it goes against their beliefs, BUT, recognizing seperation of church and state, do not feel it is appropriate to bring those beliefs into law.

 

ID is a solely fundamentalist belief. It involves taking the Bible literally, which as we've already discussed, "soft" Christians don't do. Again, they may believe in it themselves, but they don't feel the need to spread it around in public or governmental places.

[Lycorth]

Very true, Sage. Most of the soft-Xians I've met only care about saying a few prayers before bed and going to church once a week. That's about as far as their Xianity goes, even though they won't give that up. It's hardcore fundies who are the problem and push the irrational bullshit and play on the hatreds their cult encourages.

[Thackerie]

One question: Why?

 

Do you want to be the fundamentalist you claim to be battling?

 

They're going about their own business. Let them. Otherwise you're just proving a source of pointless harrassment. If they turn fundamentalist, consider them fair game. But if they're "soft", as you say, why are you picking fights with harmless people?

 

I'm with you! Why, indeed? I say, if they're not bothering you or doing something destructive, like trying to force kids in public schools to pray, etc., why not just live and let live? This need to one-up people because of their beliefs or how they choose to label themselves is a known trait of fundies - and of arrogant jerks of any or no persuasion. I wouldn't want to be in either camp.

[LosingMyReligion]

I used to be a soft Christian, and prior to that I was a hardcore fundie...

 

So, basically, those soft christians are on their way to being regular chatters on this website.

 

I would not worry too much about them.

 

But alot of them are annoying, especially Joel Osteen. I know that America is having a love affair with him, but his whiney voice, corny jokes, and plastered on smile get on my nerves. He is like a snake oil salesmen...

Now multiply him by a million and you get the soft christian movement.

[pandora]

Hey, Dude!!!

 

I agree with the members who say you shouldn't worry about it. There are more important things in life.

 

I truly think that those of us who reject all religoin and spirituality are just wired differently than those who find meaning in religions, even though they are aware of the historical and logical problems. I don't think any amount of logic and reason will make these kind of people suddenly abandon their faith. Most of these "soft" Christians see that they use religion as a psychological crutch, and they truly need it. They just can't handle living without it. Live and let live.

 

I fail to see how they are enabling fundamentalists. Most "soft" Christians are mainliners, and they are involved in the ecumenical movement, and no fundy or evangelical would ever consider attending a church that supports that kind of moderation in religoin. Fundies vote differently than most soft Christians, and if they vote the same, it is because of economic or political issues, not religious.

[Asimov]

Ignore those ingrates who say to live and let live. Just because some hunters shoot bears doesn't mean you can't shoot bunnies either.

 

[thunderbolt]

Please understand though, even with what I said above, I DO NOT INITIATE these discussions. For the most part, and where I don't see their values as a threat to my own liberty or the liberty of others, I let them be. But if a dicussion is engaged, I cannot see being "easy" on anyone...

Yes, and perhaps that didn't come through in my comments. They come to my blog, I never go around to their blogs and diss their beliefs, but if they debate me in my "home" then I will speak my mind – which is something I often remind them when they start going off on my motives. I did not go looking for YOU – you came here.

[SkepticOfBible]

One question: Why?

 

Do you want to be the fundamentalist you claim to be battling?

 

They're going about their own business. Let them. Otherwise you're just proving a source of pointless harrassment. If they turn fundamentalist, consider them fair game. But if they're "soft", as you say, why are you picking fights with harmless people?

 

True. They are just using religion as vechile to live out their life. Most of them haven't even read the OT for sure. In fact I have seen these "soft" xtian are the ones who oppose the fundies quite well. They don't buy into their nonsense on "Evolution is false".

 

I think one of the biggest group of "soft" xtians would be catholics. Apart from some extreme views on sexuality and abortions, they rest of them are pretty content with going to church and living their lives. For starters the catholics don't believe in the nonsense called "Witnesses" or "Is JC your personal saviour"

[Asimov]

True. They are just using religion as vechile to live out their life.

 

CRASH THAT FUCKIN VEHICLE, WAHOOOOOOOOO!!!!

[Lycorth]

True. They are just using religion as vechile to live out their life. Most of them haven't even read the OT for sure. In fact I have seen these "soft" xtian are the ones who oppose the fundies quite well. They don't buy into their nonsense on "Evolution is false".

 

I think one of the biggest group of "soft" xtians would be catholics. Apart from some extreme views on sexuality and abortions, they rest of them are pretty content with going to church and living their lives. For starters the catholics don't believe in the nonsense called "Witnesses" or "Is JC your personal saviour"

 

It's very true. Growing up in Catholic school, we were serious about our religion but only in a customary sense. We never were taught the Great Comission™ nor do I recall much about the eeevils of sex (just don't do it). As I recall, we were even taught evolution in the typical progressive Xian sense; Gawd made the world and humans evolved on it, guided by him, etc. I never heard the term "personal savior" until my brief time as a hardcore fundygelical. Religion was just viewed as another folk custom, not the end-all of life.

 

I'm grateful for that. Having an upbringing where I wasn't brainwashed with fundygelical propaganda I think made my eventual deconversion easier.

[Thackerie]

True. They are just using religion as vechile to live out their life.

 

CRASH THAT FUCKIN VEHICLE, WAHOOOOOOOOO!!!!

 

"My way or get off the highway," eh? With all due respect, sir, that sounds like a fundie view, and a rather RETARDED one at that,

[queenie]

Even if they come to you for discussion, I don't see the need for convincing them of your mindset. Offer your ideas, listen to theirs and go on.

 

And enabling fundamentalism? Please. I know the "soft" Christians in my life were largely responsible for waking my stupid ass up when I was wrapped up in fundamentalism. And they mostly did it by simply living their lives and not being obnoxious.

 

Leave 'em alone.

[pandora]

Even if they come to you for discussion, I don't see the need for convincing them of your mindset. Offer your ideas, listen to theirs and go on.

 

And enabling fundamentalism? Please. I know the "soft" Christians in my life were largely responsible for waking my stupid ass up when I was wrapped up in fundamentalism. And they mostly did it by simply living their lives and not being obnoxious.

 

 

Same here. The moderate Christians were the ones who introduced Biblical historical criticism and reason to me. Yeah, they may still be deluding themselves to a certain extent, but it is up to each person to find their own path. Most of these Christians (if they are young) will come to reject Christianity at some point as well. Acting like a raving fundamentalist athiest can do nothing to supporrt the cause of atheism. Moderates support evolution, abortion (in most cases), and are as afraid of Pat Robertson and the possible takeover of Christian fundies of the government as much as we are.

 

I still hold to my conviction that these people are wired differently... and just need religion to make sense of the world. If they start conversations with me, I just tell them my conviction that it is intellectually dishonest to hold to something in which that they know there are so many problems. If they ask more, I recommend books. That's as far as it goes. Whoever said that it shouldn't matter until personal liberties are taken away, or secular government is threatened, I completely agree.

[jrmarlin]

I am a little at a loss. I have never thought people could be "soft" christians. They either are christians or they're not. Fundamentalists, see ya on the weekend jebus crowds, they all will preach to high heaven and give out their critique of anyone's life at a drop of a hat..... so what's the difference?

 

Christians, just by the very nature, are hypocritical and critical of others who they deem are not cut of the same "cloth" as they are. I don't know about this soft christian business.... as I treat them the same way.... with kit gloves -- unless they show they are not trying to "witness" or "convert" me into the kingdom of the assinine denial crowd.

[Lycorth]

CRASH THAT FUCKIN VEHICLE, WAHOOOOOOOOO!!!!

 

"My way or get off the highway," eh? With all due respect, sir, that sounds like a fundie view, and a rather RETARDED one at that,

 

Asimov's a racist, Jew-hating Nazi bigot, so you've got to cut him some slack

 

Acting like a raving fundamentalist athiest can do nothing to supporrt the cause of atheism. Moderates support evolution, abortion (in most cases), and are as afraid of Pat Robertson and the possible takeover of Christian fundies of the government as much as we are.

 

I've noticed that moderation and balance in anything is the best way to get a person to think well of whatever it is you believe in. Soft Xianity did provide the easy escape hatch in the end by not inculcating me with hellophobia, but it did give me reason to persist as a Xian for a time, citing that "not all Xians act like like the raving fundies" and appealing to the concept of an easygoing, customary faith. Of course, my desire for knowledge and the issues about Xianity that did not vanish no matter how I took the religion ended up convincing me to dump the cult, but that's another story

 

I am a little at a loss. I have never thought people could be "soft" christians.

 

Truth is stranger than fiction

[Interested Atheist]

This really is an interesting question. Harris' response is a good one - that moderate Christians enable their destructive fundamentalist brethren. Another point is that, no matter how benign the philosophy, it isn't actually true. A third point: the theology isn't even benign. Even if the moderate Christian makes a good case for his or her theology being one of love, it still includes the elements of noah's flood, Biblical wars and hell.

 

And finally, there's an excellent article from Ebon Musings:

 

http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/godislove.html

 

which says:

 

There are those who claim that God loves everyone, that he will not send any good-hearted person to Hell, that all religions have it at least partly right, and so on. Well and good. But if this is what God is like, then for what reason should I - or anyone - believe in him? It seems (in a sort of reverse Pascal's Wager) that we have nothing to gain thereby, and if lack of belief does not by itself doom one to Hell, why not just discard the unverifiable supernatural baggage and instead devote one's life to being the best human being possible? It is even conceivable that God has purposely withheld evidence and allowed the claims of religions to become exaggerated and go unsubstantiated because he does not want us to believe in him. (Something for a liberal theist to think about: Could God be a spiritual "parent" whose desire is that humanity grow to the point where it no longer needs him?)

 

Why do we even need religion, according to liberal theists? Do humans not have a conscience that allows them to know right from wrong on their own? Why live by holy books at all if they are full of unhistoric miracle stories and commands for violence and intolerance that fundamentalists can so easily twist to their own purposes? Indeed, a god who loves everyone, who doesn't especially care when it comes to one's choice of religion, and has left no good evidence of himself, is all but identical to a god who does not exist. The god of the fundamentalists, cruel and vindictive though he may be, at least has these two things in his favor: his followers offer real reasons to follow him ("believe or burn" may be a simplistic and atrocious reason, but it is still a reason), and if he existed, the world would be a noticeably different place than if he did not. However, if the liberal god did exist, the world apparently would be no different than it is now. This god demands no worship, sets no rules, and requires no behavior except in the most general "be nice to people" terms. Believing in him does not seem to have any point at all - yet this is the god a majority of theists profess to follow.

 

Paradoxical though it sounds, I believe that many of these people are atheists who believe in God. They follow a humanist moral code, reject the miracle-drenched world and judgmental afterlife of the fundamentalists, and believe in the power of human conscience and reason. In this respect, they stand much closer to the atheists than their fundamentalist brethren. The only real difference is that they wrap themselves in a thin cloak of genuine but inconsequential deity-belief.

 

To these people, I offer commendation for having come thus far, and now I urge them to take the final step. Cast off that worn-out garment! Study your belief, test it against the hard evidence; do your best to cast off preconceptions and examine it critically. Put it under the light of rational analysis and see how it fares. What do you have to lose?

[Fonkey]

Don't fight soft Christians. As someone has already said, they can be instrumental in guiding people away from fundamentalism. I'm sure I would never have had such an easy road away from fundamentalism if it hadn't been for the moderate Christians in my life. Many of these Christians--interestingly enough--are professors at my evangelical-on-paper-but-not-always-in-practice university. They are probably the people that played the strongest role in convincing me of the errancy of the Bible and the evolutionary origins of life on earth, despite being Christians. How they can live with the discrepancies is beyond me, but whatever... They're probably more effective in deconverting fundies than a full legion of atheists would be. And given a choice between fundies and moderates, there's no question what I'd choose. I think this is one case where being willing to settle for less is probably ideal. Adopting an all-or-nothing approach will probably get you nowhere. I know my own journey from fundamentalism into atheism took me through at least two years of moderate Christianity. Give the "softies" some time, maybe they'll change.