Indifferentialism 30 Jun 2009 The Sensuous Curmudgeon has a new (old) take on the accommodationism debate: indifference. To quote him/her/them: Our position is to totally disregard what we consider to be a sectarian disagreement among various denominations about whether scripture should be read in a manner to deny verifiable information about reality. One might describe our position as including both curiosity that such disputes exist, and indifference as to whether the disputants ever figure it out. We become concerned only when a reality-denial sect threatens to go malignant, seeking to forcefully spread its dogma beyond its own voluntary membership. Absent such malignancy — which requires vigorous opposition — why should we care about theological debates among denominations? And why should we involve ourselves in their disagreements? Don’t misunderstand — we’re not impartial. We prefer a world in which everyone thinks and behaves rationally, and we approve of scientific research and education. We humbly endeavor to achieve to those ends. (What else is this blog?) But we recognize that such efforts are unappreciated by some groups. Their choices are not our concern — unless they are literally a threat to our freedom. Should that happen, and it does, you’ll hear from us, and you do; but such are exceptional situations. I dub this indifferentialism, because all good positions must have an -ism suffix. And in my intellectual imperialism, I take it to be my own position, and hence either an accommodationism, or accommodationism is an indifferentialism. General Science Humor Religion Science
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Sure! First there was “agnostopath” http://dododreams.blogspot.com/2009/06/knot-making.html and now ” indifferentialist”. When is someone going to publish a scorecard so we can keep up with the players?
Oh, I forgot to mention “New Agnostic” too. http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2009/06/john-wilkins-is-asportist.html (scroll down in comments).
There isn’t any sign that an entity close to whatever any human has labeled as “God” exists. As an accommodation to live where and whithin who we live, indiferentialism is a position only tenable in an open society. The interesting part of the indiferentialism position is how one responds to a threat from the religious people, and also how we know when is it time to respond: Prayers in school? Religious schools? “In God we trust”? Religious pandering by elected officials? Religious meddling in science funding? How a freethinker should act if he lives in Saudi Arabia?
If definition fatigue wasn’t causing me to err towards anomenclaturism, I’d describe myself as a Integrated Indifferential Calculist Ignostic with pragmatic tendencies.
Indiffrence is simply one of a number of standard response within a contested identity. Although it’s a high maintanance approach. With a rigid set of largly artificial diffrences drawn up in order to maintian one dominant perspective. Diffrence has an exaggerated value in a conflict as it becomes a high demand commodity and needs to be frequently exchanged and reinforced. The diffrence must always be clearly made. Its not to suggest that all arguments boil down to a dispute over identity and status. But it’s a part of many debates.
At this point, I’m going to go with Brandon’s take on the whole ‘debate’: With admittedly a few notable exceptions, the argument is between one group of self-righteous atheists and another group of self-righteous atheists, both preening themselves on their rationality, fiercely debating whether religious people should be treated like lunatics and fenced off or treated like idiot children and patronized. And that’s about all of it, since the rest of it consists mostly of vague generalization, handwaving and sometimes logically inconsistent arguments, and agenda-driven claims without adequate evidence: tangible barbarie della riflessione. Debates between Boors and Prigs quickly cease to be of much intellectual interest and begin to take on the appearance of farce. Eventually one begins to realize that the whole thing might be moot, anyway; if the people implementing the policy are like the people debating, it’s bound to be bungled regardless of what policy is chosen. 😉