(Photo: Wikimedia commons)
A child is born neither Christian, nor Jew, nor Muslim, nor atheist, nor an adherent to any other brand of religious or philosophical order. A child is born a human being with an ability to learn and from this raw material society builds her walls of nationalism, [prejudice] and religious certitude —Max T. Furr, The Empathy Imperative
An insider explains how rural Christian white America has a dark and terrifying underbelly
FORSETTI’S JUSTICE, ALTERNET
06 FEB 2018 AT 02:20 ET
As the election of Donald Trump is being sorted out, a common theme keeps cropping up from all sides: “Democrats failed to understand white, working-class, fly-over America.”
Trump supporters are saying this. Progressive pundits are saying this. Talking heads across all forms of the media are saying this. Even some Democratic leaders are saying this. It doesn’t matter how many people say it, it is complete BS. It is an intellectual/linguistic sleight of hand meant to draw attention away from the real problem. The real problem isn’t East Coast elites who don’t understand or care about rural America. The real problem is that rural Americans don’t understand the causes of their own situations and fears and they have shown no interest in finding out. They don’t want to know why they feel the way they do or why they are struggling because they don’t want to admit it is in large part because of the choices they’ve made and the horrible things they’ve allowed themselves to believe.
Read more at https://www.rawstory.com/2018/02/insider-explains-rural-christian-white-america-dark-terrifying-underbelly/
The Benevolent Thou 
Feb 07, 2018 @ 18:14:01
The article’s author sounds like a frustrated anthropologist. The white fundamentalist Christian group doesn’t just insulate themselves, but they negatively impact our nation’s ability to evolve and progress. I will just add one thing: They’re not all located in rural America.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Feb 08, 2018 @ 08:34:44
Thanks for the comment, JoAnn.
The demographic reference gave me pause as well, but I think that he was considering the concentration of fundamentalists in rural America as a block vote where in sizable cities the fundamentalist vote is most often weakened by fewer fundamentalist individuals (speculation, of course).
Certainly the fundamentalist vote impedes the intellectual evolution and progress of themselves and the nation. I’ve been frequently “debating” fundamentalists for years and can say that, without a doubt, the most powerful cannonballs of logic will not even scratch the walls of dogma within which they lock their minds.
Such a debilitating worldview always leaves one completely vulnerable to the emotional rhetoric of self serving preachers and politicians because they trust those who profess a like mind, but rarely, if ever, verify. After all, people of strong Christian faith would never lie (tongue planted firmly in cheek).
LikeLiked by 1 person
Feb 08, 2018 @ 10:22:24
Yes. Logic is not appreciated. It is not “wisdom,” which is spiritual, they explain. However. If we are to be in this world but not of it, shouldn’t we apply spiritual concepts to worldly concerns? In other words, if it’s important to understand God, isn’t it also important to understand how the world works?
Never mind… I think I can “hear” the fundamental response I’d get.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Feb 08, 2018 @ 19:01:06
Hah! I was beginning to worry about you until the last sentence. I’ve not been a fan of the words “spiritual” or “spiritualism.” They are far too amorphous/ambiguous. My mind always relates it to religion or subjectivism. I consider all theistic assumptions to be just that; assumptions–entirely subjective.
But this subject can go deep into variations on the theme. I do wish I could sit down with you over a bottle of wine and discuss it at length, but that is not possible. The subject is fascinating to me, not because I like to debate theological ideas–which I certainly do–but because I understand that existence, itself, is so profoundly improbable.
If you are interested, the following is an excerpt from my novel. A professor of evolutionary biology is replying to a challenge from an evangelical preacher on a board of regents trying to fire him from his teaching position:
“Professor,” he said, apparently giving up on the End Times argument, “you wrote that, ‘blind religious faith is irrational, but then, so seems existence itself.’ So, you’re saying that your faith in evolution is just as irrational as my faith in God?”
“No. Firstly, I do not have faith in evolution. I believe evolution to be true because I accept the voluminous body of evidence obtained by objective research and corroborated independently by virtually every field of science. Most people of faith believe their religion is true because, when they were children, it is what they were taught.
“Accepting evolution to be true requires an acceptance of the evidence for its truth. Faith requires only that a believer believes any particular proposition for any number of reasons, but objective evidence is not one of them.
“Secondly, if you will recall the context from which you quoted, I’m saying that the most perplexing question of all is not, ‘Does God exist?’ but, ‘Why is there anything at all?’ I am musing about the origin of existence. It’s an unanswerable question, really, but it’s nonetheless fascinating to ponder, at least for me.
“What I am saying is that, even as my mind reels in awe at existence itself—even as I am staggered by the breathtaking improbability of it all, I cannot conceive of a conscious, intelligent being at its foundation.
“And, to assume that such an intelligent being—a god—is the cause of existence, is no answer at all, even if you do agree with the concept that this god caused Itself to come into existence. Whence did it come by all the knowledge it needed to create anything?
“In my humble opinion, it is more reasonable to accept the possibility of the eternal existence of energy, manifesting in one form or another, or even to believe in energy as self-causing, than to suggest that a thinking mind, consisting of nothing, coming from nothing, popped out of nowhere, into nowhere, thought about it, then made it somewhere.”
LikeLike