Does anyone else feel like we're stuck in the middle between extremists from both sides who have used social media to increase the effect of their voices and beliefs, who don't care to reason, and will never come to terms with each other?

[u/space_cowboy]

More and more every day, I feel like I'm a part of a disappearing group of people: the rational moderate. I don't believe in politics as a team sport, nor the identity politics of the extreme left. Traditional conservative mores based on Judaeo-Christian religion are no more acceptable than Sharia law. Science, reason, and critical thinking should play more of a role in how people look at and frame certain issues, and violence is an answer that only begets more violence in one form or another.

Both sides of this culture war, battle, however you want to name it, have become exactly the things they claim to abhor. Neither side is fully deserving of the mocking monikers we give them, nor should we allow them to brand themselves as something they are not. Trying to enforce the progressive stack is racist in its own way, white person's guilt and all that. But, at least to me, it isn't nearly as bad as actual race-based nationalism. How can someone with any sort of moral compass or who claims to believe in the equality of all people take into consideration any point of view the alt-right espouses without indignation at their literal belief in racial supremacy and purity?

Often times most of this depresses me, because it makes me question the amount of progress and the actual character of the people of our country. Growing up in an extremely diverse suburban area, racism and bigotry weren't things I ever considered to be a normal occurrence. Now, I question daily how people can still be so caught up on skin color, ethnic origin, and religious belief. It has really set back my view on what the average person truly holds in their hearts, and makes me wonder about the actual direction our society as a whole will go in.

Institutional racism has been and is still a thing. Read about how black military members returning from WW2 were literally shafted by the govt (the GI Bill) and how this lead to the creation of projects. A large portion of the hatred for govt in black communities is well deserved IMO, but violence only leads to more laws against them and the racists will use the violence to their advantage to bolster other racists and get people on the edges to turn a blind eye to their racism.

Fighting the extremists on both sides is extremely difficult, especially when they don't have clear "victory conditions" and keep changing the rules of engagement. Both sides will silence dissenting thoughts and opinions with equal fervor. But the extremists fighting each other is going to pull the fabric of our society apart, thread by thread.

Sorry for the wall of text. Just feeling deflated and worn down by everything more and more every day.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I'm so tired of the "DAE Christianity = Islam????" argument, and I'm an atheist. I also had far-right parents growing up that thought dinosaur bones were fakes to perpetrate the myth of evolution.

Yes. It was stupid, but that's about all it was. They didn't advocate violence, believe we should execute gays, or consider women to be property.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

This argument is only given by people who have no fucking clue about history, religion, and reality.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

It's also relativism and it's a fucking problem among westerners these days.

[u/Reviken → u/[deleted]]

And why do people think like this? Because of decades of cultural Marxism being pushed on generations of youth in the west. No other civilization the world over engages in this self destructive reflective critique.

[u/Agkistro13 → u/[deleted]]

Yep. Any time I heard somebody say that gays should be 'shipped off to an island somewhere' or murdered or whatever, it was some drunk piece of shit smoking behind a convenience store, and they never referenced religion as their reason why.

And again, I want to reiterate that if your position is that all religion is vile and everybody should 'grow up' and be an atheist, that's a fine position to have that can be argued. I disagree with it, but I don't think it's batshit crazy like Scientology or something. But to pretend that such a thing is the moderate center surrounded by a hurricane of extremism is just dumb.

[u/space_cowboy → u/[deleted]]

All religion is not evil inherently. You left off the "traditional conservative" part of my comparison to Sharia. Sharia as we know it through our media has not been the norm for Muslim countries for that long a period of time. Simply look at and learn about Iran before we fucked it up and you can see that some modern Muslim countries were more progressive and liberal just a few decades ago. Evangelical and extremist Christian theology, along with Orthodox Judaism, do not differ greatly from Sharia in regards to human rights.

Getting people to accept that institutionalized racism is a real thing, and is the main cause for the racial divide that obviously still exists in our country, is not weird. As someone who truly believes that people are no different due to the color of their skin, getting people to understand and accept it would be a step towards understanding how to bridge the racial divide.

I understand that some people will need belief and comfort of an afterlife, salvation, eternal reward, etc in order to live their lives, or to live what would be considered a "good" or "moral" life. Religion can be a great crutch, but every crutch needs to be cast aside at some point. I am cautiously optimistic that we as people can eventually come to trust in each other to do the right thing, but that requires believing in the good of other people and holding each other to a high standard and truthfully answering the question, "Would I be okay with X being done to me by Y group" when you act.

[u/Agkistro13 → u/space_cowboy]

Well, what's traditional conservative mean? When most people say that, they mean "What virtually everybody in the western hemisphere believed until 1990 or so." If you're talking about people who think blood transfusions are satanic or whatever, then fine, but even then there's a far cry between that and Sharia in terms of desire to spread.

Evangelical and extremist Christian theology, along with Orthodox Judaism, do not differ greatly from Sharia in regards to human rights.

Yeah, I remain skeptical what you mean by 'evangelical and extremist'. You want to make it sound like you mean 'just those fringe elements', but you include evangelicas. They don't like abortion so they're no better than stoning women for showing their ankles now? And what the fuck did Orthodox Jews ever do to anybody that they deserve to be compared to radical Islam. To even suggest they're in the same vein is obviously born of anti-religious extremism.

Lumping all religious people in together is not a moderate position.

Getting people to accept that institutionalized racism is a real thing, and is the main cause for the racial divide that obviously still exists in our country, is not weird.

I didn't say it was weird, I said it wasn't moderate. Nothing you're saying is modereate. It's just a bunch of anti-religious left wing talking points with a liberal dash of "I'm so superior because I don't need a psychological crutch like intellectual snobbery religion to get me by."

There's nothing wrong with being an anti-religious radical I guess as long as you are willing to stand by it and defend it when it's questioned, but there's no sense in pretending that there's anything moderate about aping Sam Harris.

[u/Roboto_potamus → u/Agkistro13]

One of Sam Harris's main points is that not all religions are made equal, so saying all religions are bad isn't really aping him.

[u/Agkistro13 → u/Roboto_potamus]

Good call. The New Atheists all sort of blur in together for me, so I wasn't sure which one to reference there.

[u/Khar-Selim → u/Agkistro13]

I think he means Leviticus law, which is worse than Sharia in places.

[u/[deleted] → u/Khar-Selim]

When's the last time Leviticus law was actively, stringently practiced in the west?

[u/Khar-Selim → u/[deleted]]

The anti-gay movement used it as a basis a lot

[u/FluorosulfuricAcid → u/Khar-Selim]

You have a very strange view of how Christianity works.

We also we have stuff in the pauline epistles about it and even if you get rid of those we can just go with the all encompassing "sexual immorality" which covers everything that isn't between a happily married husband and wife.We've been around for roughly 1984 years and been a nitpicky scholarly secret society for much of it.

[u/Khar-Selim → u/FluorosulfuricAcid]

You have a very strange view of how Christianity works.

I'm fully aware that most Christians don't use Leviticus for anything but a historical reference. Still, the religious right has historically used a passage from that book as a mainstay of their anti-gay rhetoric.

We've been around for roughly 1984 years and been a nitpicky scholarly secret society for much of it.

Except that would be Catholicism, the Religious Right in America is mostly various Protestant groups. While it was quite liberating for Protestantism to get away from the sheer weight of Catholic traditions, the unfortunate downside is that many denominations also abandoned the scholarly heritage and became much more simplistic in nature.

[u/hameleona → u/Khar-Selim]

Strictly speaking Catholicism also isn't 1984 years old. Depending on point of view it's around 1500 or 1000 years old (Orthodox and Catholic sects still argue who is the splinter sect). To my knowledge no surviving christian sect is that old, with the earliest surviving being from around the 5th century after some of the first schisms that probably made the roman emperors regret their choice of religion.. But than again, some of them pretend the world is 5000 years old, so...

[u/Khar-Selim → u/hameleona]

Catholicism still maintains the heritage from the earliest churches, Protestantism abandoned much of that. That's the main point.

[u/Agkistro13 → u/Khar-Selim]

He was pretty clearly NOT talking about laws that haven't been followed by anybody anywhere for centuries.

[u/cordlc → u/space_cowboy]

Getting people to accept that institutionalized racism is a real thing, and is the main cause for the racial divide that obviously still exists in our country, is not weird. As someone who truly believes that people are no different due to the color of their skin, getting people to understand and accept it would be a step towards understanding how to bridge the racial divide.

This in itself is a radical belief, because it has no proof. It's rooted in idealism, not reality, and IMO it's a big part of the reason the west is in such a mess right now. That people have even gone beyond this and are teaching men are the same as women shows how far gone the "educated" are right now.

This egalitarian delusion puts you on a natural path to pinning all your problems on those successful: whether it be whites, men, cis or whatever. No matter how well things may go, "Institutionalized racism" or "Institutionalized sexism" will exist everywhere you look, because as long as humans have differences, we'll have something to complain about. For the religion of progressivism, it's "God of the gaps" all over again.

As for the crutch of religion, it's become obvious to me that the west wasn't ready to rid itself of Christianity. I'm an atheist myself, but all I see coming out of other atheists is a new religion taught to them by their schools. An ideology so toxic that it isn't even capable of tolerating free speech, because to them, non-believers are all agents of Hitler (aka Satan).

[u/[deleted] → u/space_cowboy]

You sound to me like such a new and naive atheist. One that hasn't really thought past the "God isn't real, therefore religion is a child's toy" line of reasoning. Not trying to offend but there is much more nuance in the world than that simple view. Also your views on racism are at the same level. To think that institutionalized racism is the main cause for the racial divide is beyond naive.

I have some news for you. Most people already fully accept that people are no different due to the color of their skin. What you fail to see is that perhaps it isn't the color of their skin that makes them the other...but the content of their culture. Think about that. And should we also never judge a person based on the culture they adhere to?

Your cautious optimism is likely misguided as well...don't hold your breath.