{"id":943,"date":"2007-12-03T12:27:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-03T12:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/2007\/12\/03\/teflon-coating-religion\/"},"modified":"2007-12-03T12:27:00","modified_gmt":"2007-12-03T12:27:00","slug":"teflon-coating-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/2007\/12\/03\/teflon-coating-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"Teflon-coating religion"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In previous post below [Is religious dangerous? (II)<\/a>] William Hawthorne defends the view that religion has no power to get people to hold wacky beliefs; rather it’s “people who have the power to assent” to wacky beliefs.<\/p>\n

This tendency to teflon-coat religion so that no responsibility for any bad stuff sticks (religion is not bad\/stupid\/dangerous, people are) is reminiscent of the U.S. gun lobby’s insistence that guns don’t kill people, people do.<\/p>\n

I just want to note, however, that there’s a form of dodgy teflon-coating that atheists also apply. Christopher Hitchens, in God is not Great<\/span>, refuses to give religion any credit for anything good, period. When a religious person does good, it’s the person that gets the credit, not the religion.<\/p>\n

This is just as silly, of course. Religious people have got v. upset about it. Rightly so. But then I think we’re equally justified in getting upset when the teflon-coating is applied, not so the credit for good stuff doesn’t stick, but so the credit for bad stuff doesn’t stick.<\/p>\n

William defends the view that religion has no power to get people to believe wacky things, only people do. I wonder what William’s reaction would be to the suggestion that religion has no “power to do good”, only people do. My guess is he’ll say -“Oh religion does have that<\/span> power!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In previous post below [Is religious dangerous? (II)] William Hawthorne defends the view that religion has no power to get people to hold wacky beliefs; rather it’s “people who have the power to assent” to wacky beliefs. This tendency to teflon-coat religion so that no responsibility for any bad stuff sticks (religion is not bad\/stupid\/dangerous, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[109],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teflon-coating-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}