First I want to thank wiscmass, the author of this recommended diary. I want to thank you for being a member of this progressive community. I am glad you are here and I am happy to stand side by side with you as a progressive. I want to recognize that you are not Pat Robertson or some other right wing A**h0le in a red car or however you want to put it. You have used this fact in defense of religion. I would argue, however, that this is precisely why we should reject religion.
Religion requires faith and in fact treats it as something to be desired. One of the definitions of faith offered by Webster is a "firm belief in something for which there is no proof". I would add that this implies a complete lack of evidence. Firmly believing in something for which there is no proof or no evidence is dangerous. It allows you to say, believe in intelligent design. Or hate gay people because the bible told you so. Or blow up infidels because that is your interpretation of the faith.
Now, as you have pointed out, it is wrong to characterize all religious people as adhering to these beliefs. You are a progressive who understands that being gay is not something you can change. It's just as much apart of gay people as being straight is for the rest of us. You get that intelligent design is a proxy for creationism and that evolution is the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community which bases its finding on rational inquiry (although, evolution is a theory and I would encourage you to learn what this means in science). And I think it is safe to say that you find blowing people up because they do not share your religious beliefs to be morally abhorrent. Yet you take from this that religion is by and large good and that it is ruined by some bad apples. I take from this that faith, and thus religion, is fundamentally flawed because its core function is to legitimize and privilege ideas without rational inquiry.
If we accept faith, a firm belief in something for which there is no proof or evidence, as a legitimate way to think about the world, than we legitimatize all interpretations of the faith. Southern preachers looked to the bible before the civil war to justify slavery. After their defeat, they looked to exodus as a story of a chosen people that was tested and in time would be rewarded by their god for their faith. Northern abolitionists also drew on the bible to condemn slavery. Exodus is also important of the preachings of Dr. King. This dichotomy is striking. Two diametrically opposed forces have a faith that the words of the same book mean two different things. We could resort to rational inquiry of the meaning of the document in its historical context, but I hope you will agree that no matter who has the more accurate interpretation of the bible as a historical document, that this case should make it clear that morality does not stem from from a faith in the teachings of the bible. Because here are two, bible believing, god fearing peoples who have come to diametrically opposite conclusions.
The bible, or any other religious text which is dominant within a culture, functions like a Rorschach test. Progressive see what they want to see in it and conservatives see what they want to see in it. In a purely secular society, they then have to then translate these ideas into non-religious terms. If that is how a society function than that is all well and dandy. But what actually happens in our society when someone says they think homosexuality is a sin because the bible says so and the bible is the word of a god? Their thought process goes largely unquestioned. Now you may say that they have misinterpreted Christianity and argue that you are challenging them by saying that your faith accepts the LGBT community, but that would be missing the point. You challenge their conclusion by offering a differing interpretation of the faith. Yet you offer no challenge to the cognitive framework of faith. They believe that based on something for which they have no evidence (the bible is the word of a god and thus has moral authority), that homosexuality is wrong. You believe that the teachings of Jesus Christ offer something different. You have differing faiths, but no basis in faith to reject each others' assertions. Do you really presume to know what your God, capital G, thinks? You may have faith that you do, but then we are back to the other side which has the same faith that you are wrong.
To truly challenge the claim that we should not have gay marriage because the bible, the word of the Christian God, says it's wrong, we have to challenge the thought process of faith. Where is your evidence that the bible is the word of a Christian God? Everyone of the GOP candidates, except Ron Paul, said they believe every word of the bible in a CNN/Youtube debate question. And so I ask, where is the evidence for a Christian God? Where is the evidence that the bible is the word of a Christian God? Where is the evidence that there is a Christian God that knows homosexuality is wrong, but loves the sinner? Where is your evidence, for that matter, that there is a Christian God who has no problem with gay people? I ask you all to show me your evidence!
The truth, of course, is that there is no evidence. Each one of these arguments for which I have asked for evidence is an argument from faith, a firm belief in something for which there is no proof, imposed on the culture's Rorschach test (btw I would argue that you are clearly smart and thoughtful because based on your personal human experience you saw certain things in the Rorschach, but that is just my personal progressive bias and my way of saying that I do not think religious people are stupid). However, whatever you see in the ink blot, as long as you consider yourself a person of faith, you legitimize the cognitive framework of faith. As long as arguments from faith remain privileged, by which I mean their core assumptions go unchallenged, then you are legitimizing a thought process that allows, and I would argue encourages, people to claim anything they want with no basis.
By asking you for your evidence I am challenging faith with what Sam Harris calls conversational intolerance. I still adamantly defend your freedom of religion. You write that "I arrived at my progressive values through my religious identity" and that your journey is what made you progressive. I get that in the same way that my progressive beliefs are inextricably rapped up with being an atheist (which I would like to point out before we get into the comments does not have a faith that there is no Christian God. It holds that there is no evidence for any god and that the odds of a Christian God are so bad that it is ridiculously improbable, but it is still possible. We'll believe in God, all you have to do is show us the evidence). I am still proud to stand next to a fellow progressive. However, if you argue for something based on faith, I am going to civilly, but firmly argue that faith is a lack of evidence and thus is not a good justification for what you are arguing. If you say thank god that something happened, I am going to ask you how you know there is a god and furthermore I will be very curious to know how you know he (or is it she, you tell me) had something to do with it. This is "conversational intolerance" of faith, which really just asks it to play by the rules of any other idea in our society.
That said, I understand that this is not currently a viable strategy for politicians in most places and that even if it was I would want them to be far more polite about it than I am. That's fine. I get that. However, I would like to point out that convincing people who are still white Christians to change their mind and vote for democrats is not what wins elections. If the United States had the same demographics in 2008 as it did in 1988, that is to say a greater percentage of white people and a greater percentage of Christians, then based on the exit polls Barack Obama would have done about the same as Michael Dukakis. I would encourage people to read Chris Bowers article on this topic or simply go directly to the data here.
Finally, this has been written as a letter to a progressive Christian. I chose this because this is the primary religious framework on Daily Kos. However, these thoughts could apply to any religion.
Update: Wow! I hit post and went to class and came back to a great discussion. Let me start off by addressing a few concerns. One commentator felt slighted that I did not address his or her Jewish faith. As I said at the bottom of this diary, I think what I wrote applies to all religions. I too would like to stay away from comparisons between an either/or of atheism or Christianity. Among other things, this prevents Christian's from referring to pascal's wager as if it were a serious idea (really, I should take that bet? On what? On the Christian God? On the Jewish God? On the Islamic God?). If I have not included enough on other religions and focused too much on Christianity I am sorry. I am equal opportunity anti-religion so here are some of my albeit limited bashing of Judaism. I think being kosher is fairly ridiculous and would like a rational explanation as to why we should continue these dietary restrictions? If you've got one that's great, but it still doesn't get the god requires me to eat this way people off the hook. Prove to me that there is a god who wants people to eat this way. And if you don't practice kosher, which I would guess is the case with the majority of Jews on Daily Kos, you still legitimize a framework that allows someone to say god wants you to eat this way because you accept the framework of faith.
Another commentator pointed out that I was extremely crass in the way in which I talked about political calculations in relation to religion. As I said at the start of the diary I am happy to stand side by side with people of progressive faith. We need you. The point I was trying to make, however inarticulately, is that the Democratic Party is not doing better because there are more white progressive people of faith. It is doing better because there are more non-religious people and more people of color. I stand by this because I think it is born out in the data.
Some people in the thread have compared a belief in a god to a belief in physics. As this commentator accurately points out, physics have a basis in observable evidence, experiments that can be repeated over and over again with the same general result. And they can be shown to everyone. Religion does not have this. To further illustrate this point I would like to look at what another person said that both the religious and the non-religious can come to absurd conclusions.
Christopher Hitchens and Al Sharpton had a debate on God which I find fascinating. Hitchens is, unfortunately a right wing atheist who supported the occupation of Iraq. In this debate Al Sharpton compared his faith in a god (I write a god because he would not defend anything in the bible and would not defend a Christian conception of God interestingly enough) to Hitchens' faith that electricity was what was powering the lights. At the same time, he got out of most of Hitchens' tough questions by mocking him for his support of the occupation of Iraq rather than debate the topic at hand.
Here is my observation on the debate. If a preacher had said God wants us to invade Iraq there can really be no discussion because there is no factual basis for the claim (unless we adopt conversational intolerance, at which point there really is no factual basis). However, Sharpton was able to ridicule Hitchens' because the facts around the WMDs simply did not add up. There was a clearly observable lie that had been made and Sharpton used it to his advantage to rightfully mock Hitchens, but also to avoid talking about his belief in a god. To the same degree, we can conduct an experiment with the electricity analogy. 100 preachers who think that all people who are not of their faith are going to hell and who think that I only have a faith in electricity can take down the ceiling panels, cut back the plastic that encases the electrical wiring, and grab hold to the exposed electrical wire. At the same time 100 atheists like me who think they're crazy can tell God to go ^**+ himself and challenge him to kill us. We could repeat this experiment over and over and eventually one of the atheists might suddenly die of hard attack, but the rest of us would be fine. On the other hand, almost everyone of the crazy preachers would be electrocuted. Sure, maybe the power would go off just as one of them reached for the wire, but the rest of them would be electrocuted. Thus, basic physics can and have been observed and verified through experiment while religious beliefs have not (in this particular thought experiment we found more evidence against the God hypothesis, the title of a book I would recommend to you all).
Finally, there is a general trend in the comments of progressive people of faith to say thank you to me for being civil, but agree to disagree without engaging in the ideas. Wiscmass, I am sorry to put you on the spot again, but you adopt this technique. You say that your faith is your business and that you don't care what I think about it. That would be fine if it were your personal beliefs. But you have brought it into the public square and I would argue you have thus maintained and legitimized a dangerous thought process which undermines progressive change. You are frustrated with being lumped in with the religious right and I have recognized that frustration, but argued that you being different is what highlights the moral and cognitive bankruptcy of faith and religion. Please engage with this idea.
The exception which I would like to highlight is "Tipped and Rec'd -- by this believer" which acknowledges that "if my faith is misplaced, those beliefs are, indeed delusional." If you believe in a god and that god is indeed imaginary I hope we can agree that there are some problems for the believer.
Oh, and I don't have a clue who is in the red car in my framework, that is not my analogy.