3 Comments Little Time to Write

I don't have much time today, for some reason a lot of people with make-up work showed up yesterday and today.   Here's a current disagreement I'm having at Religion Dispatches on a post rather appallingly titled, "OUT OF OPTIONS: CHRISTIANS’ LOSING BATTLE OVER EQUALITY".   That is dishonest because without a majority of Christians supporting equality for lesbians and gay people, equality couldn't be won through legislation or sustained.  When transgendered people win the support for their rights from the majority of Christians is when it will be the day when their legal rights are secured.   Lots of us are hoping that will come very soon, as surprisingly soon as it happened for lesbians and gay men.  Of course, the wider equality in society which the law can't ensure has to be achieved the same way,  Christians being a large majority in this country.

Camera Obscura • 3 hours ago
The many Christians who favor equality, including those in denominations who oppose equality, are not losing out.

This article makes a number of mistakes as well as getting some things right. First is taking the category "nones" seriously. "Nones" is the invention of the actively anti-religious Barry Kosmin, who is active in the anti-religious group Center for Inquiry. He explicitly invented the category so he could pretend that what his data showed wasn't the case, that in the United States religious affiliation is the norm. I would be put in the category if I answered a Pew survey on religion and I would certainly not put myself in that category.

The use of the word "Nones" as if it meant anything, characterizing what "nones" think or do is a sign of flawed reasoning.


Jim Reed  Camera Obscura • an hour ago
It doesn't matter where the term "nones" came from. The important thing is we like the term, and we take it to mean we believe in none of the religions.

Camera Obscura  Jim Reed • a few seconds ago
Yeah, it does matter because Barry Kosmin announced his dishonest intentions in inventing it and because they never asked those of us who would be put into it if we considered ourselves to be "Nones". The other categories in the Pew study aren't put together that way, it is based in peoples' identification of themselves so it is a phony category invented by an atheist ideologue for a political purpose.