I don't do nuance. - President George W. Bush 2/15/2004
Since becoming an atheist years ago, I have noticed when talking to New Christians that many simply do not do nuance. They are intelligent people that are educated in Christian theology but when you read some of their blogs, check out their social media, watch their YouTube pages, or have a discussion about Christianity you find they simply want to keep things extremely simple. In fact one of my New Christian friends wrote a book a few years back titled "Jesus or Nothing". In discussing his premise with me via email he addressed what I pointed out was an obvious false dilemma fallacy.
My friend truly believes it's really a simple choice between "the gospel" or nihilism. I let an atheist friend of mine borrow his book to thumb through looking forward to hearing his expertise critique since he is getting his masters in philosophy currently. He asked me if this author realizes that there are many different types of nihilism in philosophy. I am pretty certain my friend understands this, but this is my point... There
is nuance within the "nothing" part of the "Jesus or Nothing". Shit, there is nuance in the "Jesus" part of the "Jesus or nothing". There are people that truly believe that Jesus was an extraterrestrial. So it's a false
dichotomy right from the title page.
My issue with my New Christian friend's entire concept of "Jesus or Nothing" (the current theme throughout the entire book) is it just isn't the only two choices we have. He'll delicately admit he's aware that there are other choices out there that people can pick buuuut will follow by doubling down on his premise by saying that following all things to their logical conclusions there is only two real choices - 1. Jesus (the gospel) or 2. Nothing (nihilism). But that's only true when you are working within a narrow framework. It's only true when you are working within one context - a Christian worldview. There is SO MUCH outside of this context. There is so much outside of this narrow frame work that it's dishonest in all reality to say that the truth is that there is only two choices. It's not true.
It certainly isn't true to the millions of extremely devout Muslim believers in the world today who could easily say "All(ah) or Nothing". I call copyright on that book title! So the author of that book would also be working in a narrow framework (Islam). To be completely "objective" (a term loved by the New Christians who kid themselves that they have an actual "objective" morality when we all know it's working within a subjective framework - the framework of a Christian worldview) we must say it's really an infinite amount of choices out there.. it could be "Polytheism or Amish apple butter", "tweezers or God's God", "Jews or Jesus" .... whatever you want it to be. The possibilities on each side of the "or" here are endless.
But New Christians don't do nuance. It's THIS or THAT! They are tricking you like any good salesman would. You need this NOT that! In reality there are infinitely more choices besides...
"A supernatural being sent his son - put him into a flesh-suit of his favorite species of ape, had that son killed by that species, had that son raise from the dead and come back to a magical, supernatural home beyond the cosmos all to appease blood sacrifice rules he set up in the first place OR .... One particular definition of nihilism."
"A supernatural being sent his son - put him into a flesh-suit of his favorite species of ape, had that son killed by that species, had that son raise from the dead and come back to a magical, supernatural home beyond the cosmos all to appease blood sacrifice rules he set up in the first place OR .... One particular definition of nihilism."
Just look at the #Defund Planned Parenthood movement to see my point. Here is another example of New Christians trying to pigeon hole an issue into one clear binary "right" or "wrong" stance. To New Christians it's a baby at the moment of conception. The soul is inserted (by Yahweh) into that "baby" vessel as soon as that sperm meets that egg. God often allows miscarriages and horrific birth defects like something you would see out of a horror movie, but we'll ignore that and pretend it's not true - (That must be "the fall", Satan, sin, evil fallen angel-demons or hobgoblins or whatever).
If you have an abortion about a month after that sperm met that egg inside of you and began forming a baby you are a murderer! There is no nuance here. Ignore that God himself killed actual real Egyptian children (the firstborn of all families and what the fuck, why not... all the firstborn cows too), that doesn't matter though, please stay focused... I have heard it a million times on social media from New Christians. It's a baby INSTANTLY!.. thus any abortion at any time period is killing. I suppose if we were to follow this to it's logical conclusion and have our government be ran by a sort of Christian-style-Sharia law (what I think most Christians are striving for since they vote for these type of politicians) then these women who get abortions would be tried in court for murder.... which if you keep following this logic (most New Christians I've known are FOR the death penalty too- "eye of an eye", right?) so we should kill the mother for killing her zygote. Makes sense.
If you have an abortion about a month after that sperm met that egg inside of you and began forming a baby you are a murderer! There is no nuance here. Ignore that God himself killed actual real Egyptian children (the firstborn of all families and what the fuck, why not... all the firstborn cows too), that doesn't matter though, please stay focused... I have heard it a million times on social media from New Christians. It's a baby INSTANTLY!.. thus any abortion at any time period is killing. I suppose if we were to follow this to it's logical conclusion and have our government be ran by a sort of Christian-style-Sharia law (what I think most Christians are striving for since they vote for these type of politicians) then these women who get abortions would be tried in court for murder.... which if you keep following this logic (most New Christians I've known are FOR the death penalty too- "eye of an eye", right?) so we should kill the mother for killing her zygote. Makes sense.
There has not been one New Christian explain to me why on Earth you cannot be pro-life and also NOT support the Defund Planned Parenthood movement. One merely need to be mildly informed with just one, maybe two simple facts -- that 97% of Planned Parenthood's services deal with women's health that everyone is OK with (not concerning abortion) and only 3% are abortion services .. and of those abortion services ZERO are funded by tax payer money. Why is this still a discussion again?? This apparently escapes them... even those that know these 2 simple facts. However, out of principle we must stand with Team Anti-Abortion because well um.. yeah just because it's relevant now.... many New Christians do not do nuance! Murderer or Pro-creation no matter what.
It also works this way with many New Christians' attitudes on gay marriage. There is a song and dance they do that often amuses those like us that simply want all citizens to have equal rights under the law. wow. what a controversial concept! They are in a bind, torn because their "holy book" explains being gay is an abomination (along with shrimp and wearing mixed fabrics in the same book of the Bible but ignore that) and, we should probably be strongly Biblical and kill all gay people (Leviticus 20:13) while we're at it.
These poor New Christians are the young, cool fundamental-hipster Christians so they often have gay friends that they haven't murdered (some of which are even Christians themselves who happen to attend a more liberal church!); so if they are to be true to their religious dogma (via whatever Timothy Keller, C.S. Lewis, Max Lucado book they are reading at the time because no one's gonna actually kill their gay friends as the Bible commands) and remain "cool" quasi-liberal hipster-Jesus-servants they simply shut down. They don't know how to act. They mostly, and simply avoid the subject like the plague altogether in the real world... only inside the protected tribe gatherings of New Christian peers do they discuss it in a rainbowless room.
These poor New Christians are the young, cool fundamental-hipster Christians so they often have gay friends that they haven't murdered (some of which are even Christians themselves who happen to attend a more liberal church!); so if they are to be true to their religious dogma (via whatever Timothy Keller, C.S. Lewis, Max Lucado book they are reading at the time because no one's gonna actually kill their gay friends as the Bible commands) and remain "cool" quasi-liberal hipster-Jesus-servants they simply shut down. They don't know how to act. They mostly, and simply avoid the subject like the plague altogether in the real world... only inside the protected tribe gatherings of New Christian peers do they discuss it in a rainbowless room.
This is the crux at what is wrong with religious dogma at it's core. Nevermind all the immoral passages within the Scriptures commanded or often acted out by God himself, the Bible forces ancient ways of thinking on it's followers. Many New Christians simply don't do nuance - it's right or it's wrong. Evil or Good. God or Satan. Theistic evolution or creationism. God-given libertarian Free Will or Hard Determinism. Life or Anti-Life. "Objective" morality or lawless chaos. The gospel or Hard Reductionism.
Please. Spare us.
Please. Spare us.
In the real world, the more you learn about philosophy, cultural studies, sociology, economics, and science as a whole the more you realize things are definitely NOT black and white. There are 50 shades of grey at the very least! (*You're welcome for that.) Clearly we can see the simplistic "this or that" mentality played out on full display in young Earth Creationists. Most of the New Christians steer clear from the Ken Hams and Kent and Eric Hovinds of the world and consider themselves at the very least Old Earth creationists. They no longer say all species (I'm sorry "kinds") magically popped into existence 6000 years ago and then just sort of micro-evolved until now.
No. Thankfully the vast majority of New Christians have finally accepted what every field of science shows to be a proven fact: the theory of evolution by natural selection and the common ancestry of all species. However, there are some New Christians that treat this topic like they would gay marriage.. it's easiest not to discuss why they don't accept evolution (per se) when all of science shows it to be true (with mounds of evidence). When pressed they usually just change the subject. Because let's be honest, it's hard to say you accept science and scoff and laugh at those simplistic, silly atheists that think there is a conflict between academic Christianity and the sciences when you deny the foundation of all of biology and genetics. You can't do both. Sorry, even our species MACRO-evolved from single-celled organisms billions of years ago. Deal with it. Stop dancing.
In reality, the journey of our species is an awkward, painful, luck of the draw, evolutionary story with so much death and suffering encasing most of our species existence. As anthropologist Robert Ardrey once said, "We are born of risen apes, not fallen angels." Morality came sprouting forth sloppily as we emerged millions of years ago. Science /does/ nuance. Evolutionary biology /does/ nuance! When studied we find our ancestors pieced together morality through subjective concepts, ethics, philosophy, and religion... all of which did not come from somewhere "out there" in the cosmos in some supernatural realm... it came from within our brains, intertwined with our emotions, over many years of gregarious, social existence among our fellow apes. We built our morality, it wasn't bestowed upon us by our imaginary celestial daddy as those ancient books say.
This is how everything came to be- evolved - bottom up and it's /all/ nuanced! It's all in the details. Just watch the video I posted below from Richard Dawkins to see the beauty of nuance in evolutionary biology. It's fucking amazing! He presents visualized interpretations (snapshots) of our own species back through time and you'll see animals that don't look anything like us the further back in time we go!
Nuance: It's something that thrills us, feeds the insatiable curiosity, stimulating our intellect to discover our species past and the birth of morality in our species - an ongoing social experiment that we have clearly not perfected yet. It's not so simple that all things horrible and immoral on this particular planet = two words for an explanation: "1. The 2. Fall". NO! It's more nuanced... Everything is more nuanced. All of everything that ever is and was or will be is not in one fucking book. It's not black and white. It's much more complicated and life is much more interesting and complex because of this. Beware of those that want to sell you simplicity or "the answer" to life. There is no such thing and as grown ups we should all know this by now.
Sites:
No. Thankfully the vast majority of New Christians have finally accepted what every field of science shows to be a proven fact: the theory of evolution by natural selection and the common ancestry of all species. However, there are some New Christians that treat this topic like they would gay marriage.. it's easiest not to discuss why they don't accept evolution (per se) when all of science shows it to be true (with mounds of evidence). When pressed they usually just change the subject. Because let's be honest, it's hard to say you accept science and scoff and laugh at those simplistic, silly atheists that think there is a conflict between academic Christianity and the sciences when you deny the foundation of all of biology and genetics. You can't do both. Sorry, even our species MACRO-evolved from single-celled organisms billions of years ago. Deal with it. Stop dancing.
In reality, the journey of our species is an awkward, painful, luck of the draw, evolutionary story with so much death and suffering encasing most of our species existence. As anthropologist Robert Ardrey once said, "We are born of risen apes, not fallen angels." Morality came sprouting forth sloppily as we emerged millions of years ago. Science /does/ nuance. Evolutionary biology /does/ nuance! When studied we find our ancestors pieced together morality through subjective concepts, ethics, philosophy, and religion... all of which did not come from somewhere "out there" in the cosmos in some supernatural realm... it came from within our brains, intertwined with our emotions, over many years of gregarious, social existence among our fellow apes. We built our morality, it wasn't bestowed upon us by our imaginary celestial daddy as those ancient books say.
This is how everything came to be- evolved - bottom up and it's /all/ nuanced! It's all in the details. Just watch the video I posted below from Richard Dawkins to see the beauty of nuance in evolutionary biology. It's fucking amazing! He presents visualized interpretations (snapshots) of our own species back through time and you'll see animals that don't look anything like us the further back in time we go!
Nuance: It's something that thrills us, feeds the insatiable curiosity, stimulating our intellect to discover our species past and the birth of morality in our species - an ongoing social experiment that we have clearly not perfected yet. It's not so simple that all things horrible and immoral on this particular planet = two words for an explanation: "1. The 2. Fall". NO! It's more nuanced... Everything is more nuanced. All of everything that ever is and was or will be is not in one fucking book. It's not black and white. It's much more complicated and life is much more interesting and complex because of this. Beware of those that want to sell you simplicity or "the answer" to life. There is no such thing and as grown ups we should all know this by now.
Sites:
My friend's "Jesus or Nothing" book for sale:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/jesus-or-nothing-dan-dewitt/1116874863?ean=9781433540462
Here's some full-blown "Not Doing Nuance" in all it's glory (Prager University's "The Truth bout C02"):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDWEjSDYfxc
Information on abortion:
http://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/health-info/early-abortion-options/
Beautiful Nuance by Richard Dawkins:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4ClZROoyNM
Here's some full-blown "Not Doing Nuance" in all it's glory (Prager University's "The Truth bout C02"):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDWEjSDYfxc
Information on abortion:
http://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/health-info/early-abortion-options/
Beautiful Nuance by Richard Dawkins:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4ClZROoyNM
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