Christian Annoyances

This is a response to https://twitter.com/JohnMBauer1/status/1244400185515655168?s=19 

A couple of quick disclaimers. 1) I don’t hold that any of these are only things that happen with Christians. People of other religious beliefs and those without any are also susceptible to any of these as well. 2) While John’s tweet was the inspiration for this post, much of this is things I’ve not seen John do personally. This should not by any means be read as an attack or criticism of John.

At first I thought I'd make this post two sections, one for individuals and one for community, but as I tried to think through it, I found that I couldn't separate most of my thoughts into those categories very well. So instead it's going to be more of an unorganized list with maybe a paragraph or two on each one. 

• Magical Thinking

This one is less about belief in Biblical miracles, and more about the denial of modern science and medicine. Recent times with COVID-19 have highlighted this to perfection with church leaders across many denominations refusing to suspend (or move online) church services.

Then you have people like Ken Ham and the rest of the Young Earth Creationists. I get it, your religion informs your world view. But when your religious doctrine requires you deny the validity of 100s of years of diligent work across dozens of disciplines of science, you just look foolish. 

• Separation of Church and State

This one may be the most important to me. The church and state need to stay as far away from each other as possible. This is for everyone's benefit. I get that your religion informs your ethics, and your ethics inform how you vote. I'm fine with that. What I will never be fine with is laws that show favoritism for a particular religion. I will never be fine with a law who's only arguments in favor are religious ones. The law cannot and should not ever be a tool used to enforce religious doctrine upon the nation. 

This isn't just important to non-believers either, several nonprofit organizations centered around the separation of church and state have members of Christian clergy as members and even leadership roles. It protects religious people from intrusions by the government as much as it prevents intrusions of religion into the government. 

• Mischaracterizing Atheists and basically any Non Christians 

Going to be totally fair on this right up front. This is in now way a problem that is exclusive to Christians. Most people really have no idea what any belief system is actually like unless they have been a serious student of that system. Even within the beliefs a person was raised in and still affirms, there can be a lot of confusion about the history and philosophy/theology of those beliefs. Speaking for myself (raised Seventh Day Adventist), I had almost no idea what our beliefs were about biblical canonization or a whole host of other theological issues. Many atheists never get beyond a simple "you can't prove God therefore I don't believe", and never actually dig too far into counter-apologetics, epistemology, or the larger depth of secular humanism. 

Where you see these most commonly (from Christians) is conflating atheism with devil worship, as requiring the same kind of faith as religion, or claiming that atheists are mad at God, etc.

• Claiming Ownership Over Social Constructs

Religion/Christianity doesn’t own marriage, nor holidays, nor ethics/morality. While it's true there has been a strong connection between these things throughout history, much of this connection can be directly tied to the lack of separation between church and state. Take marriage for example. For most of human history, at the point where marriage is some kind of official partnership, the church either is or supersedes the state in importance. Until you start getting closer to the industrial revolution there is almost no difference between going to your religious leader, and going to a judge today. In modern times, marriage holds far more focus on property rights and tax law than it does with religion. 

In today's world, a marriage performed by a priest is not considered official until the state confirms it, while a marriage performed by a judge is official regardless of a priest giving approval of it. 

Holidays like Christmas and Easter have Soooo many more non-Christian traditions associated with them than Christian, that pretending this holidays ought to be strictly for Christians is absurd. But let's say Christians and non-Christians were to get a divorce and needed to divide Christmas up based on who brought what to the party. It turns out that non-Christians get all the parts that are awesome, and Christians get a special church service that isn't even going to happen in December any more. Or you know, we could just share because it isn't that big of a deal. 

As to morality, much has been said about Secular Morality vs Christianity and I'm not going to rehash it. If I'm charitable, I would say that Secular Morality is a superior moral system. If I wasn't feeling charitable, I'm not convinced Christianity even qualifies as a moral system because it isn't actually systematic, and it doesn't have goals that I think lead to meaningful conversations about morality.