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If I tell someone shooting heroin that it's killing them and they need to stop, they can decide that actually I just hate them, and if they insist on doing so I certainly can't stop them. At a scale of the entire society, they're going to find no shortage of people who actually do hate heroin-shooters to conflate me with. That doesn't make their logic any less garbage.
Your insistence that Christians trying to warn non-believers away from Hell amounts to hatred and hostility seems nonsensical. Christians positing the existence of Hell neither breaks your leg nor picks your pocket, any more than your claiming our God and Heaven does not exist. To the extent that Christianity has been used to implement oppressive authoritarian norms in the past, so has literally every other ideology that has ever existed; where Christianity stands out is the number of states where it has played a significant role in allowing actual liberty, something secular humanism has a considerably worse record on.
You're free to despise Christians if that's your thing. Not liking people is legal. You're likewise free to coordinate meanness against them for believing things you disapprove of, since no system of law or custom will ever prevent such behavior. Just be clear-headed about the likely consequences of forcing several dozen million people to choose between peaceful coexistence or their faith.
There are certainly circumstances where someone telling people this would be mainly motivated by contempt of heroin users, and where it would be correct to infer hostility. Furthermore, society has norms of religious tolerance that it does not have around heroin tolerance, and by proclaiming that your outgroup is going to suffer, you are violating norms that you are not for heroin users.
I'm pretty sure you're quoting Jefferson out of context here.
Also, notice that actually saying "I hate you and you should die" neither breaks your leg nor picks your pocket. By your reasoning not only is loudly talking about your outgroup's suffering not hostile, literal direct hatred isn't hostile either.
Do you think the first amendment should be abolished?
No, it is possible to think something is bad without wanting it prohibited.
So you think the first amendment is bad? But you don't think it should be abolished? Why not? It's the primary obstacle in the way of stopping anyone from expressing hostility, which appears to be what you want.
It's bad in this particular case; it's good in enough other cases that we should keep it despite that. Also, I don't trust the government to decide what to ban, so it's better that we allow people to say evil things than to have the government get rid of its enemies by saying they are speaking evil.
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There is no norm that believing in hell is an attack on your outgroup. Religious tolerance emerged from people who universally believed that their opposites were going to suffer, because the core insight is that my beliefs about the afterlife don't make much difference to you in this life. Likewise, it would be idiotic for me to claim that your insistence that my God doesn't exist harms me. If you are worried about suffering in the afterlife, you are free to do something about that. If you are not, you don't have to. That's the deal, and you don't get to alter it.
I'm pretty sure I'm applying a solid principle to a more general context where it nonetheless applies.
If you hate me and want me to die, that has direct implications in this life, and while it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket, it has a strong correlation to both happening shortly.
"Loudly talking about your outgroup's suffering" is an interesting way to phrase it. It covers both "I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father but through me", and "GOD HATES FAGS". I readily concede that people can use the concept of hell to communicate hatred. That doesn't make the concept of Hell itself hateful, and the distinction is both necessary and useful if you want to maintain a pluralistic society. Any moral or ethical claim at all can be labeled hatred under your framework, and then used to exclude the disfavored from the public square. This is a bad thing to do for a lot of reasons, but doing it for a very large portion of society who already have a lot of bones to pick with the increasingly unstable social compact is just burning social cohesion for the fun of it. We Christians put up with all sorts of social bullshit already. Maybe you Atheists can try putting up with some bullshit as well.
Believing that your outgroup is going to Hell is not the same as loudly proclaiming in public that your outgroup is going to Hell, just like loudly proclaiming "your children are ugly and your toupee sucks".
This is also true for other types of hostility. If you yell in public that I'm going to Hell, that has a strong correlation to doing bad things to me.
"As well"? What? You're talking as if people who are not Christian have never put up with bullshit related to religious beliefs and this is the first time. This is absurd. You are not engaged in some sort of glorious table-turning where Christians "put up with bullshit" from everyone else and suddenly you get a chance to do it back.
Christians believe that everyone who doesn't accept salvation from Jesus is going to go to hell. We believe that we are required by Jesus to try to warn those people away from hell, and convince them to accept salvation. Keeping quiet about it is not something we are permitted to do; keeping our Christianity secret is not an option.
You are claiming that the way we express our core beliefs are insulting to everyone who isn't a Christian, and use the example of telling someone their children are ugly and their toupee sucks. Is there a way to express the core beliefs of Christianity that is not insulting? I readily concede that people can fake concern to express condescension and hatred, and that some people absolutely use Christian ideas for this purpose. In your view, is the problem that the people are abusing the ideas, or that the ideas are themselves abusive?
Again, I point to the heroin addict example, or to fat positivity activists. It is trivial to demonstrate that people harm themselves, and defend their self-harm by phrasing all criticism of that self-harm as hatred from bigots. I concede that you can, if you choose, declare that Christianity itself is hateful and evil, that the concepts of sin and salvation are at their core objectionable no matter how they are expressed. Is that your claim?
I readily agree that one person screaming at another person that they're going to Hell has some correlation with doing bad things to them, though I would argue that such a correlation would be significantly weaker than screaming "I hate you and want you to die", much less "I hate you and you should be killed". I defy you to show me a stronger connection between "There's no hope for any of us outside of having faith in Jesus Christ alone" and bad things happening to people than between, say, "Christianity is antisocial" and bad things happening to people.
Of course, you never actually said "Christianity is antisocial", but it seems to me it's rather less of a stretch than your translation of the original tweet "There's no hope for any of us outside of having faith in Jesus Christ alone" into the maximally-inflammatory "you are going to hell". You conflate a metaphysical claim about the souls of all humanity with threatening language between individuals. This seems absurd to me, but perhaps you actually believe that Christianity's record of oppression is bad enough to justify it. If so, you should probably make the argument specifically.
We Christians had it hammered into our heads that we didn't own the public square and anyone could say what they liked without consequences. Now you're arguing that people should be shouted down when they say unpleasant things. There is no shortage of things people say that I find unpleasant. If I tolerate them, so can you. If you can't tolerate them, why should I?
No. You are talking as though you have a monopoly on getting offended. To the extent that I can avoid offending you, I'd like to do so. If you have decided that the only way to avoid offending you is to keep my beliefs to myself, then I'm afraid I'm not willing to do that, and you're going to have to come to terms with being offended. I think you can put up with being offended, because I certainly do on an hourly basis. If you can't, if you think offensiveness is something worth pushing back on, well, get in line.
You are mixing up "convincing people", "not keeping quiet", and "keeping secret". In the modern world, you aren't keeping secret; it's common knowledge that Christianity says that nonbelievers go to Hell. And "not keeping quiet" isn't the same as convincing people. Nobody outside the lizardman constant gets convinced to be a Christian by being told that they are going to Hell. Saying that people go to Hell in public doesn't "convince people to accept salvation", and can't be justified on the basis that you are required to do that.
No, you had it hammered into your heads that you didn't own the public square and anyone could say what they liked without going to jail for it. Maybe even that you shouldn't be fired from your job for it (I disagree with the left here.) But if by "consequences" you mean people getting offended, no, you don't get immunity from consequences, and nobody ever said that you do. The toupee example may be useful here. I won't get arrested if I walk into the public square and say that your toupee sucks. But you can still think I'm being rude and tell all your friends what a jerk I am.
I don't go around saying "all Christians believe lies" or anything similar outside of contexts like specifically discussing Christianity. You don't put up with offense from me that is similar to the offense you want me to put up from you.
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Generally speaking, I am sympathetic to what you are saying, though obviously I think your beliefs are wrong. But being unable to completely shake my "go along get along" mistake theorist past, I am generally pretty chill about Christians preaching, even in public venues where I'd rather they didn't, unless they are literally getting in my face and screaming, Fred Phelps style.
That said, I will point out that theoretically, there is no limiting principle in what you are saying, and given that you have spoken eloquently at length about how the breaks are disengaged, the safety rails are gone, and we're cruising downhill, well. If Christians no longer believe in any kind of detente, any sort of agreement "not to be annoying about it," pretty soon you arrive at what I'd call the extreme outcome, taken to its logical conclusion: if you believe I am facing eternal damnation and torture, what wouldn't you be justified in doing to save me from that?
(The Catholic Inquisition had an answer to that. It wasn't a great time.)
Small anecdote time. I was once on a forum for people suffering from a severe health condition. (I'm fine now, thanks.) We generally were okay with the occasional Christian urging us to pray, "get right with God," etc. Sure, whatever, dude. Appreciate the thought.
Until there was one who was very, very serious about it, haranguing the list daily about the fate in store for us if we didn't get right with Jesus. Every polite request to tone it down, maybe stick to sharing the Word with people who expressed interest, preferably in private, was met with - dare I say - an acceleration of his behavior. He explained, as you just did, that as a Christian he was required to preach to us, that he did not have the option to be quiet about it, and that he would be acting against his faith not to shove it in our faces at every opportunity. (Okay, he didn't put it like that, obviously, but that's what he meant.)
Needless to say, this didn't go down well. It had the effect of destroying what had once been a fairly supportive community. People left both because they thought he'd been bullied for sharing his faith, and because there were a lot of people who felt he'd been bullying them, people who really wanted support for their situation and really didn't want to be preached at (some of whom came from very negative religious experiences).
Obviously, most Christians aren't like that guy. And I don't know that there is really a point to this story, since I don't expect you to start preaching to the Motte, except that, well, I remember that guy. And I think about him every time a Christian explains very earnestly that he is just trying to save our souls.
All that being said, I don't think a lady talking about Jesus on Twitter is any kind of a threat and I wouldn't want to see her fired or "cancelled" unless she's going all WBC about it.
There is no limiting principle. There is no objective definition of "reasonable" or "unreasonable" behavior. There is no objective definition of "tolerant" or "intolerant". All we can do is to look with clear eyes at what is actually being said, and what it seems to lead to. Here, what is actually being said is that Christians should be punished for stating their beliefs publicly, because their beliefs are anti-social. That is an attitude that seems both very bad and increasingly popular as the old norms continue to decay. It isn't a simple problem either: anti-social beliefs cannot be rigorously defined, definately exist, and definately need to be dealt with.
There's nothing I can do to save you. Your will is your own. We each make our decisions and live with the consequences, and most people have made their decisions pretty decisively, it seems to me. Productive interaction requires common ground, and the common ground we share is Reason, its nature and observable limitations. So if possible, I argue with you and others here about that, and mainly limit my comments on Christianity to when other people bring it up, as here. If that seems rather callous re: eternal damnation and torture, well, it doesn't seem to me that we share a common understanding of the concept of Hell, but the best solution there would probably be to recommend The Great Divorce.
On the other hand, there's no particular reason why you should trust any assurance I could give you. After all, as you note, the Inquisition happened. Likewise, there's no reason I should trust any assurance you could give me, since the Cheka and the Khmer Rouge and their other variants also happened, and rather more recently. One difference might be in the stakes we each see on the table; you think this life is all there is, and I do not, so I am at least potentially less invested in the outcomes of this life than you are. That cuts both ways, though.
The problem in general is a wicked one.
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Do you think the same about atheists who no longer believe in any kind of detente, any sort of agreement "not to be annoying about it"? I've heard plenty of atheists talk about the absolutely world-scale horrors that they lay at the feet of Christianity or religion generally, especially in the heyday of the New Atheists. Do you worry at all that that will lead to the extreme outcome, the logical conclusion?
My expectation is that most people conjugate this Russel-style. My concerns can respectfully, softly, and gradually change the world for the better, even if the utopia never comes and the dystopia wasn't imminent anyway. Your concerns are a bit overbearing and annoying, and maybe we should subtly force you to knock it off so we don't have to hear about it. His concerns could cause WWIII if we take them to their logical conclusion, so they must be suppressed By Any Means Necessary.
Yes.
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