= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
nerzhin comments on Rationality is Not an Attractive Tribe - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (105)
We all enjoy beating up on the silly evangelical Christians, but that is dangerous. Let's try to be just a bit more charitable.
Christians view their status as sinful. There isn't (usually) some battle between the perfect Christian and an external "absolute evil". Instead, the battle is primarily internal, and the Christian views their own motives and actions with suspicion. Because the motives are always suspect, there is no clear black-white divide and moral judgments are never easy.
This is not too terribly different from what you describe as the rationalist struggle:
I think most people make a division between "Christianity done normally" and "Christianity done well", just like one can make that division for rationality. I agree with you that they should be explicit that they're talking about the stereotype of "standard" Christians instead of "correct" Christians.
Because when you look at "standard" Christians, the "we're all sinners" is generally used as an excuse, not a motivation. "Hey, you can't expect me to be perfect!" Instead of actually improving, you just have to want to improve.
Indeed, I might even separate Christianity done well into "Christian rationalism" or something similar, because the similarities are rather strong.
If we're talking about evangelical Christians, the prevailing view is that they are sinful, but forgiven. They believe that they're not perfect, but that their imperfections have already been excused.
This gives us two points on which rationality fails to be as appealing. First, evangelical Christians don't have to doubt their understanding, they believe they know what it would look like if they were perfect, although they lack the fortitude to achieve it. Second, they have a forgiving entity to appeal to when they get things wrong.