A lot of people seem to be interesting in writing letters to bigoted religious leaders, and they seem to be very well intentioned and have the highest hopes. I just think they’re wasting valuable time.
What are these letters supposed to accomplish? Are they going to inform these religious leaders that someone out there disagrees with them? They already know that. In fact, they count on it. They frame themselves as being a minority holding-out with the Truth while the rest of the entire world along with Satan himself is conspiring against them. They already know that a lot of people out there disagree with them. In fact, they’re much more likely to overstate the amount of disagreement than understate it. So go ahead and tell them that you disagree, but you’re not telling them anything they don’t already know. And in fact, the only thing your disagreement will do is harden their worldview that yes, there are in fact hordes of people out there just trying to ruin their perfect little world.
If you’re attempting to appeal to them with reason, that won’t work either. They’ve already decided that the one and only way to truth is via divine revelation. If you’re trying to reason with them, you’re not only asking them to reconsider this one issue of homosexuality, but you’re asking them to undermine their entire worldview — the only way they know to make any sense of the world. To you, reason looks stable and reliable, but to them it looks like chaos and hopelessness.
These people spent a lot of time and energy building up an emotional resistance to anything or anyone which contradicts their dogma. They call it strengthening their faith but all it really is is systematically building up psychological resistance to outsiders. You know how you like to mock TV commercials. It’s because you know they’re trying to trick you in subtle, subconscious ways, and so you put up an emotional wall against them such that their message never gets to enter your subconscious. Well, dogmatically religious people do the same thing with you. I know because I’ve watched them, and I know because I used to be one of them a long time ago.
Basically, these are people who do not accept the premise that informed debate is a good way to reach conclusions. So why try to debate them?
They have an adolescent outlook on life, and similarly, when I look at history, I see that the only way that their minds get changed are by similarly adolescent means. You can change their minds if you offer them a big reward for doing so, or just maybe if you ridicule them enough. When the Mormons changed their dogma on bigamy, they did so because they got statehood in return — a nice big reward. When the Mormons changed their dogma on racism, it was because by 1978, they were the laughingstock of the country.
Sometimes indoctrinated individuals can overcome it if their environment changes enough. They might move away from the religious community — physically removing themselves from the habits in their religious context (being a missionary doesn’t count, they’re still surrounded by the same culture, just in a different place.) But with the exception of an adherent who boldly relocates her own home, or has it relocated for her, religious indoctrinations are surprisingly persistent. There’s a reason why you don’t ever meet a cosmopolitan fundamentalist.
So, in all honesty, I think that if you actually want to try and change their minds, if you don’t have a sufficiently large prize to offer them, and you can’t physically break up their community, you’ll just have to try ridicule. Sometimes I wonder if they react so violently to ridicule — throwing hissy fits over being offended — because somewhere deep down they know that ridicule can be their undoing. It also may be why so many religions make such a defiant pretense to dignity — immaculate cathedrals, important sounding job titles, convoluted apologetics — all attempting a mock-up of humanism while simultaneously deriding it, as if to say, “You can’t ridicule us. Look how serious we are.”
Ridicule: I think you ought to seriously consider it. And make sure they see you doing it. That’s the whole point.
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