Can A Progressive Also Believe in G-D
It’s a simple question and it grew out of some of the comments that were left on my post regarding circumcision.
As a progressive/liberal, I also believe in G-D. I attend synagogue regularly, I serve on its board of directors, and I teach in its religious school. I also believe in evolution and the Big Bang Theory. Is there a contradiction? I don’t believe so.
I want to hear your thoughts. There are some ground rules though – keep it clean and keep it respectful. I don’t want this thread to get into the pissing contest that the circumcision thread did. If you veer off subject or start with the name-calling, I’ll delete your comments.
Tags: Religion
Maybe the better question here is can a progressive also be a person of faith?
I don’t see why not. Progressives need to share a set of policy views/goals — not religion (or lack thereof).
I know progressives who are very religious, some who are atheists and others are are agnostic (like me). While we do not share the same viws re: God, we do share many of the same policy views and goals.
It’s been said much more eloquently than this but, essentially you need to be able to separate *beliefs* from *facts* and as long as you can keep those two apart it is easy to be progressive and believe in a diety. Running gov’t based on scientific fact pretty much leads to progressive gov’t. Running gov’t based on centuries- old tradition and belief, not so much. U.I. has posted lots of good stuff on this.
Of course they can. The writings and arguments of Abraham Maslow demonstrate that people of faith can not only have a high incidence of altruism but of self actualization as well.
Progressives can be believers the same way scientists can – they simply interpret scripture/dogma/etc differently than others do.
I have a hard time believing a person who understands science and it’s findings/discoveries over the past century can still think there is some great SkyDad out there in the ether somewhere.
It’s like hedging your bets. And the reliance on moving the goal posts after every new discovery, be it ‘the earth is not flat’ to ‘the earth is not the center of the universe’ to ‘evolution means we didn’t come from a human starter set’, destroys the theological argument, piece by piece. Now what you’ll hear in response is that a god created the goal posts. No offense, but that’s a child’s argument disguising itself as dogma for the sole purpose of propagating the religious power structure.
One is based on evidence and the other on wishful thinking (no matter how many people agree with you). The question is then, how does the person deal with the obvious conflict while being truthful to themselves?
I’ve been all over the map on this and I can conclusively say that there is no God. Any questions? Okay. Carry on.
By most reports, Jesus was both a progressive, and had a fairly strongly-held belief in God.
Note that some of these comments are confusing progressives with scientists, and are confusing following a religion (dogma-based) with believing in a g*d. I appreciate MJ’s refinement of the question to be whether a progressive can ‘have faith’ rather than ‘believe in (presumably Judeo-Christian) G*d.’
How can you be so sure of that, Jason?
PB I think what VC is saying is that by using the scientific method, one cannot prove the existence of a god or gods.
Personally, if your religion doesn’t enter into any discussion other than a discussion on religion, I’m fine with it. If it is used to end a debate, or negate a debate, then I have a problem. Basically, everyone should keep their religion to themselves. I really, really, really am tired of hearing, “my religion is a part of who I am.” Um… no, it’s not.
To me your religion should be private. If I become aware of your religion (other than in a discussion about religion) I’m uneasy and skeptical.
nemski, my point is that that (scientific method versus existence of god) is outside the scope of this discussion, unless someone is additionally stating that progressives believe in the scientific method and conservatives do not.
Being a progressive is all about what you vote for and work for politically. You can believe in any God or no God at all.
Personally I think most religions would drive you toward progressive politics if you think about them seriously.
I also find most people overestimate how progressive they really are, myself included. So if you believe in God (or don’t) and you think you are progressive, review your progressive activities over the last few years and see if you still qualify (sorry, voting Democratic doesn’t count anymore).
What’s up with the g*d or g-d, stuff? Is it like you can’t type it out because it’s similar to drawing cartoons of Mohammad?
Just wondering.
Anyway, PB, a lot of those labels are intertwined, but to be more exact, I was referring to MJ’s acknowledgement of scientific findings, along with the countless others who have similar beliefs.
To me, with a couple millennia of history to reference, the separating of faith and religion is nothing more than a distinction without difference. Yeah, yeah, the faithful may have slightly different beliefs than what is decreed by the many religious orgs out there, but when it comes down to it, all roads lead to Rome – belief in the supernatural.
It is considered disrespectful to mention God’s name outside of prayer in Judaism. “God” however, is not her name. We use “Hashem” meaning “the name” instead of “Adonia” (or Yaway or Jehova) Not sure why G-D is used. If i were that observant of a Jew, i would use Hashem in all references. But to each his own.
When i marched drum corps, “Mojo” was considered such a cursed word that i didnt say it for 2 years AFTER i stopped marching
Superstitions are fun. Now stop praying and start helping your fellow humans.
But to answer the basic question – can progressives believe in a god?
Sure, why not? most of the good things about religion, helping others, etc, are part of the liberal/ progressive platform for decades now.
Thanks for the explaination, sb. Kinda thought that was the reason, just didn’t know for sure.
I believe that question was answered March 28, 2009…. And while at it, I would like to again thank Deldem for his kind words.
It’s hard for me to believe that there can’t be a contradiction with someone that believes everything was created by a big explosion and then on Saturday or Sunday or Wednesday nights can tell someone with a straight face that a “voice” used a guy on earth (not a woman) to tell everyone how to behave. So don’t covet thy neighbors wife or say god damned when a hammer hits your thumb.
That guy that the voice talked too. He couldn’t read or write and the words that the “voice” told him were put on paper hundreds of years later. That’s not important though. God does exist. This book he had someone write says so. How is that not a contradiction?
i can’t even sit in a church and listen to a priest without wondering how the hell someone so sure of himself can be so blind.
I need religion to know right from wrong? Do you know primates understand and practice a system of fairness. And, when they feel they are not being treated fairly they act out. MONKEYS. You know monkeys have figured out how to trade and barter. How to negotiate. MONKEYS. Elephants protect their young and have families. they practically have burial ceremonies.
Man is not some special thing placed on earth. An octopus can open a jar and get the item trapped inside of it. A dolphin can masturbate and have sex for pleasure. And my dog has trained me to feed him.
We aren’t all that we just think we are
i would answer that question with another question
Which God?
If you are asking if i believe in the all powerful being depicted in the Bible/Torah, than no. I dont believe in a creator that “makes us in his image” but makes some of us sinful from birth (think the gays)
If God is so infallible, than how come Moses was able to talk him out of wiping out his people after they flagrantly broke his first and most important rule? (that was my bar-mitzvah torah portion… ironically it is what started my questioning of it all) Humans got it dead wrong in their messy interpretation of what the driving force wants, or is. They got it wrong because most of them wanted power and control and perverted whatever spirituality people felt to keep women down, to make their society as hegemonic as possible and to get more money.
Kavips,
Humanity does not need God to be hopeful. We don’t need God to be moral or to “make a difference”.
Unless we are a bunch of children, I guess.
The question is then, how does the person deal with the obvious conflict while being truthful to themselves?
I know a few scientists who have faith in God and the thing that they are clear about is that they are not asking the same thing of their faith as they are of their science. Which sort of points to what it is that people get from their faith and it has nothing to to with the pursuit or organization of some specific knowledge. Even when I was in Catholic high school, the nuns and priests responsible for our coursework kept the business of science and religion very separate. And the official Catholic support of evolution noted that what was being studied was *how* God made the world, which isn’t that unreasonable.
The key concept here is *faith*, which is often unexplainable and frequently irrational to those who don’t share it. I don’t have it anymore, but I don’t doubt that there are people who genuinely do. I start to push back when religious people want to organize everyone else’s lives in accordance with their own beliefs.
Yup, faith. Faith in something better than what is current reality. Be it a serf from 700 years ago (life’s gotta be better than this shit!) or hoping to see loved ones once again. The notion is very appealing to the imaginative human mind, hence its pitfall.
Deep down, not something that most believers will agree with, but totally falls within basic human nature, is faith driven by selfishness? The selfishness of wanting things as they should be in one’s own mind, like the two examples above, or just simple human exceptionalism. We’re chosen, we’re special, so death cannot be the end of it all.
Scientists have the highest % of atheists and agnostics of any profession.
Can you have faith and still be progressive?
Of course, yes. There are many, many religious progressives. As Paul wrote earlier, Jesus was progressive in many ways. I see absolutely no conflict in these two things.
Can you be a scientist and be religious?
Again, the answer is yes, of course
Are religion and science the same thing (as implied earlier in the comments)?
No, they are not and they are not even addressing the same thing. Faith can never be tested by science since science only deals with what is observable and testable. Faith does not have that constraint.
I have to add – many religious traditions, especially regarding gender roles, are not very progressive.
During the enlightenment, the birth place of liberalism, Blaise Pascal,a noted mathematician and philosopher proposed Pascal,s wager, if I believe in God and he does in deed exist I have won, if he does not exist I have not lost, however if I do not believe in God and he does Exist in only this way can I lose, therefore I pronounce my belief in God. Many of our founding fathers practiced an off shoot of Pascal,s wager called Deism, he did exist and was our creator but need not be worshiped our adored, Franklin, Jefferson<and Washington, and to Some extent James Madison, until Dolly coerced Him into being a Quaker, where all deists, just in case I shall be a deist until I die, look for a sign from me when I pass, they must have PC,s above.
@UI “No, they are not and they are not even addressing the same thing. Faith can never be tested by science since science only deals with what is observable and testable. Faith does not have that constraint.”
Not true. Whenever faith makes a testable prediction (like when the world will end), that prediction is subject to the scientific method. And there are MANY testable “predictions” in the bible (like “The earth is the center of the universe”,”Men are not descended from animals”), and each time religion gets it wrong, faith is diminished in the mind of anyone engaging in critical thinking.
Where faith and religion have an utter conflict is in hypothesis versus fact. Everything in science is subject to revision. Faith is presented as fact and not subject to revision. Critical thinking skills are essential for science and not needed at all for faith. The lack of focus on critical thinking skills is why religious based education is often so terrible for a society where progress is so important. It’s one reason why we’re falling behind as a nation.
@CM “Blaise Pascal,a noted mathematician and philosopher proposed Pascal,s wager, if I believe in God and he does in deed exist I have won, if he does not exist I have not lost, however if I do not believe in God and he does Exist in only this way can I lose, therefore I pronounce my belief in God.”
The fallacy in Pascal’s wager is that God, if he exists, is presumably not a fool. Does Pascal really believe he can scam God?
@VC “Yup, faith. Faith in something better than what is current reality. Be it a serf from 700 years ago (life’s gotta be better than this shit!) or hoping to see loved ones once again. The notion is very appealing to the imaginative human mind, hence its pitfall.”
Studies have strongly suggested that there is an evolutionary advantage for humans to have faith. Imagine two tribes, one with faith, and one without faith. Which one does better in a hard cruel world? Thus, the evolutionary pressure to have faith results in the propensity for faith.
Thus, being religious is the natural human state. To be an atheist takes work. The higher mind needs to continually “slap down” the lower brain’s more base religious desires.
The irony here is that the very thing that many religious people hate (evolution) is the root case of their religion.
People of faith try to scam God constantly by professing that he knows all and sees all but they commit sins anyway, Humans Scam God all the time, Pascal,s wager is about as sincere as most people of faith.
LE; Scamming God and other humans is a common human endeavor, are you always 100% honest, if God does exist he gave us the free will to do that, and a lifelong atheist might use Pascal,s wager at the last few moments of his life.
The belief or disbelief in God, Supreme Being, Creator, Higher Power has little to do with whether such a being actually exists. Hawking’s view is just his explanation for the way things are that would not involve a higher power.
Faith is belief in something in the absence of evidence. Those who profess to have faith but rely on evidence actually have little faith. The constant search for evidence in everyday events (miracles) is the search for evidence to validate one’s faith.
I believe God exists because I do not have the temerity to assert that we humans are the highest power in the vastness of the entire universe (or universes). That “God” may not be the same as the God that who others believe interceeds in human affairs. Nor is that belief a religion. It is simply a conviction that we are not alone and that there are powers greater than our own. That belief does not require worship or fealty. It just requires recognition that some sentinent force may be responsible for our physical world, either wholly or partially. It really doesn’t have to be any more complex than that.
Faith can make testable predictions, but it doesn’t have to.
It’s untrue that faith is never revised. The sun-centric solar system fits pretty well in most faiths now. Also, didn’t they just get rid of purgatory or something?
RE Pascal’s Wager – perhaps we should all pronounce our faith in Zeus, just to be certain.
No one knows the FACE of GOD.
We are all equally ignorant.
Of course there’s a GOD; otherwise, Anthony (arrogant) Weiner would not have gotten caught in his own sex scandal. LOL!
@ABSCAM “Of course there’s a GOD; otherwise, Anthony (arrogant) Weiner would not have gotten caught in his own sex scandal. LOL!”
You mean God promotes stupidity? How apropos.
The early Christians lived in a Progressive utopia (see Acts 2: 44-47). There is a telling scene in the movie “The Mission” about Jesuits in the jungles of Latin America where the emissary of the Pope visits one of the Jesuit’s mores established missions and the local priest talks about how the locals and clergy there share all that they make. The emissary notes that there is a group of radicals in Paris that live that way. The local Jesuit says, no we live this way because that is the way the early Christians lived. The emissary nearly plotzed.
The key is always in the interpretation.
Religion and my religion is better than yours is the point. For me, religion is private and shouldnt be discussed publicly. Its not my business what your religion is, nor you to question mine. I do believe science and evolution almost prove all religions are flawed. Religion was created by man to control man. The Natural law principle seem more appropriate.
“One man’s religion is another man’s belly laugh.”
– Lazerus Long (Robert Heinlein)
The other key is that YOUR religion is also another man’s belly laugh.
What if I think Robert Heinlein’s “philosophical” musings are a bigger belly laugh than any religion?
What ever gets you through the night, it’s all right, it’s all right.
No. Theft through taxation is a direct contradiction of the eighth commandment.
Theft through taxation is a direct contradiction of the eighth commandment.
Where does the commandment say anything about taxation? Be careful:
“Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.” – Deuteronomy 4:2
I wouldn’t stand too close to Father Malcolm if I were you.
Puck: You don’t spend enough time on right-wing Jeebus sites. FM’s twaddle is standard boilerplate.
Puck, if I force you, under the threat of violence, to give me a dollar, is it not theft? I may call it by some benign name and justify it by all manner of benevolent reasons, but this cannot hide the true nature of my actions.
Even in the church we do not take from parishioners their tithe without consent. Coercion and force are the true mechanisms of evil in this life.
Father Malcom – As Geezer suggested, I am off to the right wing websites to study your kind.
— just kidding! I’d rather have a sucking chest wound.
Well, maybe just a little:
Anthony Weiner needs to accept Jesus Christ as his personal savior, says Southern Baptist pastor.
Yeesh! OK that’s enough research for my first day. Gotta take it slow.
And Father Malcolm is our persistent sockpuppet, here to try out another ill-conceived argument for why he should get all of the government he wants for free. Of course, he hasn’t a clue of what he is talking about.
There are *plenty* of churches — largely of the evangelical and pentecostal type — that are very coercive about tithing. I’ve actually seen that up close and personal in a local church. There are plenty of churches who tell their parishioners that tithing is God’s law (never mind that this is an OT instruction and something of a holdover from when the state sorta was the state too). If you want to make an argument about churches, you can start by arguing that they *should* pay local taxes. There is simply no reason left why a church should get a taxpayer subsidy. And those crazy churches that will sell you religious diet plans, religious marriage plans, religious parenting plans (expensive ones too) and whatever else they can get into their MLM schemes should be subject to sales taxes.
Taxation is no more violence to you than new asphalt is violence to the road outside of your house. And you’d be screaming if the road outside of your house was nothing but potholes.
Stop with the sockpuppetry. Now.