Saturday, May 08, 2010

Food For Thought

Challenging your assumptions can be healthy...

1. Do 'Family Values' weaken families? Most evangelicals would find the very question appalling, but that's all the more reason to seriously examine whether the church might have missed the boat in its efforts to enforce sexual (and doctrinal) purity.

2. One can only suppress the truth for so long, as the religious right is continually discovering. It can come out in a healthy way or as a scandal, but either way the real "truth about homosexuality," as it plays out in the real world on a daily basis, has proven to bear almost no resemblance to the propaganda advanced by groups like NARTH and Focus on the Family. The George Rekers scandal is just the latest proof that dogma can only suppress reality for so long before the pressure leads to an explosion.

3. The left is susceptible to placing dogma ahead of the evidence as well, as the Climategate scandal suggests. Be wary of anyone who tells you the debate on this or any other issue is closed (in either direction). While it's indisputable that the Earth's climate is changing, and distinctly possible that human activity is a significant factor in how that change is occurring, it's far less certain whether the drastic (and expensive) actions promoted by environmental groups will do anything to improve the situation.

When those same advocates of massive changes in environmental law engage in suppression of dissent and carelessly glom onto any assertion that seems to support their case, they undercut their own credibility and cause people to question whether we're being railroaded into taking actions that will benefit an elite few at the expense of everyone else.

If they are in the right, the facts will back them up without the need for sensationalism. If not, then all the noise in the world will fail to vindicate them in the long run. Either way, descending into alarmism and name-calling will only send them down the same path to irrationality that the religious right so famously pioneered.

No comments: