In terms of the study, you would have people who first score 9 or 10 dropping to 5 or even zero. But they don’t report findings like that.
What they found instead is what you’d expect they found. People who initially answer in the intuitive mode, which is prone to easy, binary answers, will say, “Yes” or “No.” But when you engage their analytic side, they will say, “Well, actually, I do believe in God, but sometimes I’m confused by how God acts, and puzzled by some of God’s instructions, and distressed by some of God’s commands” and now the 9 or 10 moves to a 6, 7 or 8.
The great world religions have no problem with this phenomenon since none of them promote unthinking allegiance but instead provide an abundance of reasons why their system is credible while also allowing that there are challenges to belief no matter what system you adopt. The great traditions are about faith based on knowledge, or even about simply just seeing reality as it is, not about fanaticism that shuts its ears to any argument to the contrary.
Bible knowledge much?
Source: ashleygulker
Baptist homophobes in North Carolina get their wish (Found at Joe. My. God.)
Source: christiannightmares
Preach, preacher.
Thou shalt not commit logical fallacies.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/05/05/the-big-four-markers-of-the-evangelical-tribe/
I’ve commended Jonathan Dudley’s excellent book, Broken Words, for his frank and insightful assessment of the four tribal markers that characterize the boundaries of American evangelicalism: abortion, homosexuality, evolution and environmentalism. Opposition to all four of those constitutes evangelical tribal identity.
Such opposition need not be active or particularly outspoken. What’s important is the “stance” of opposition, to use the lingo of the tribe. That “stance” must be “firm.”* When someone takes a “firm stance” against any of the Big Four, they solidify their identity as a member of the tribe in good standing. When the firmness of one’s stance against any of these four is in question, so too is one’s status, identity and membership in the tribe.
We need to hear these voices.
