There are many things that some conservative Christians do that are aggravating to me and come across as very hypocritical.
Their claim that liberalism is a religion
Conservative Christians believe in a religion. Some of them claim that liberalism is a religion, whether it be climate change, evolution, secularism, socialism, and atheism. Let's not forget that some of these characteristics do not correspond nicely to politics. Climate change and evolution have more to do with science, even if you don't think they're scientifically supported. There are conservatives who believe in evolution, like Charles Krauthammer and there are conservatives who believe in climate change, like Newt Gingrich. There are also conservatives who hold different religious beliefs than their conservative Christian counterparts. Of course, this goes without saying though, since there is more than one type of conservative. There's the social conservative, the paleoconservative, the fiscal conservative, and arguably, the libertarian. However, some conservative Christians like to group these together, add Christianity, to get the definition of a true conservative and they may have a valid point.
Where they go off the line is claiming that liberalism and its alleged tenets is a religion. If you don't believe in climate change and evolution, call it unsettled science, but don't refer to it as a religion. There are many people who believe in global warming for example, but have different opinions as to what the appropriate solution is to combat it. There are also many people who believe in some tenets of evolution, but do not entirely agree with evolutionists across the board, such as the theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs or the theory of punctuated equilibrium. Science is not formally determined by consensus, too, unlike a religion, which has been determined by a group of people creating their own primitive philosophy as to how we got here and why we are here. Even if every scientist believed in climate change or evolution universally, it wouldn't make it so. Only evidence that supports hypotheses can make it a theory and only further evidence can make a theory reality.
Secularism is the rejection of using religion as a guide for reason. Therefore, it is simply not a religion. Atheism is the belief that there is no god. Nothing else. Many atheists tend to be naturalists, but you'd be surprised to find a wide variety of both philosophical and political beliefs among atheists. Of course, generalizing can be expected as always, but there's no book or list of facts that atheists subscribe to like there is in many religions. Nor can you make the argument that atheists are fundamentalists, since there is only fundamental attribute to atheism, and that is there is no god.
Their opposition to freedom of religion
Conservative Christians are very religious, yet they don't support the freedom of religion. Why? Why are there states that block nontheists from running for governor? Why are the federally funded Boys Scouts of America allowed to prohibit nontheists and queers from holding membership? Why do they want publicly funded schools to lead prayers in class? Why do they want to use taxpayer's money to put up the Ten Commandments in front of a courthouse? Why do they want their God in the Pledge of Allegiance and as the official motto on our currency, but they would reject the idea if other gods were promoted to such status? Well, you may point out that earlier I said that atheism isn't a religion and the freedom of religion doesn't guarantee the freedom of irreligion, but if that were the case then freedom of speech wouldn't guarantee the freedom of silence. You may also point out that the United States was founded by mostly Christians. However, the country was also founded by white men, but that didn't stop men and women of all races from eventually acquiring rights.
Some conservative Christians oppose religion so much that they go so far as to paint their own beliefs as not a religion, but as a personal relationship with God. This, ironically, allows them to insert religion in a secular context, but don't use the word "secular", because they hate it, and remember that they see secularism as a religion. With it in a secular context, they can say that their God has nothing to do with religion and that it should be inserted into every piece of legislature and into every speech, even if the writer or the speaker doesn't believe in their God.
Of course, there's the more obvious point: the belief that Christianity is true as is the sky is blue. While I do maintain that there are some true attributes of Christianity that can be promoted through government, such as the commandment, "Thou shalt not murder" and, "Thou shalt not steal", we don't have to do this by invoking the Bible. Imagine how many religions and philosophies we'd have to invoke if we advocated the Golden Rule! We should, though, make it apparent that anyone can believe and abide in these simple laws. Whether or not Christianity is entirely true isn't up for debate, but if you want to believe it's true, under a government that respects the freedom of religion, that's possible. If Christianity is completely true, then I'd have no problem killing nonbelievers, witches, homosexual men, children who curse their parents, and unborn children of adulteresses, so as long as we have God in our Pledge of Allegiance and in our official motto. However, you have the capacity of reason. You can make that judgement yourself. That's the beauty of freedom of religion.
Now, I do think that when religion is suppressed by the government, it's going too far. However, neither can government issue religion. The only thing that government can issue is our natural rights. I should also note that liberals abuse freedom of religion to mean that you can't practice a religion publicly, especially Christianity and they possess some weird double standard that Christians can't practice what Muslims can, but this is topic is about conservative Christians. Maybe I'll make a topic later what ticks me off about liberals.
Their opposition to secularism
Secularism is the ability to reason without the use of religion. Religion is, strictly speaking, authoritative in that a god or a scripture is considered holy and therefore their word is true just because of their authority. This is argument from authority, which is a logical fallacy. If someone can prove something about a religion without the use of religion, then they win the argument. Secularism is simply the ability to reason without the use of authority. That's because reason isauthoritative.
Their support for easily accessible divorce
If the United States is going to be nation that keeps same-sex marriage illegal, let's start with improving the concept of marriage. Marriage is supposed to be a faithful relationship between two individuals that never ceases until death. Why then, is it so easy to get a divorce? A divorce is truly the worst thing you can do as a lover. Marriage is an absolute contract, not just something we temporarily feel for someone, but come time, we will have long abandoned as a result of having never truly loved the person in the first place. If divorces are so easily accessible, I actually have no problem with same-sex marriage. Why not abandon the whole concept of marriage and we can reverse the process of evolution and go back to when we weren't men, where we couldn't reason, and love was just for survival purposes?
Their support for Sarah Palin
1 Timothy 12 says, "But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence." Sarah Palin is a figure that is not silent nor respects the authority that man allegedly has over her as indicated by many conservative Christians' support for a 2012 presidential run. I do support the notion that conservatives have evolved from limiting women to preordained roles; that free will should dictate what's best for a woman within reason, but the fact that some conservative Christians still maintain that they interpret the Bible as literally, when they don't is either a blunder by them, or worse: a lie.
Their political objections to evolution
I'm not going to discuss the scientific objections to evolution, because I don't want to discuss the validity of ideas, but the validity of how we discuss ideas. All too often, evolution is associated with socialism and liberalism, but is it really? I think evolution best fits in with a libertarian conservative philosophy. Conservative in that government is a social structure of which to uphold natural rights. It's new in that it's never been used by other animals, because we humans are advance enough to reason far then other species. Conservative and libertarian in that laissez-faire capitalism is essentially the economy's variation of natural selection. I say libertarian conservative, because I don't think that everything especially from a moral standpoint can be understood strictly from an evolutionary perspective, simply because humans are so unique, but I do think that evolution can help explain social structure, family structure, and morality and thus, since libertarianism allows a bit too much freedom to exercise, one could make the argument that evolution is very libertarian. They could arguably go as far as to say anarchistic, considering that every other species do not possess a government as understood by humans. Now, I can understand conservative Christians' religious objections to evolution, but why can't they be open to a loose interpretation as they are when it comes to women's rights or Mosiac Law?
I could go on about what I think are some curious attributes of some conservative Christians such as Jesus's alleged support of socialism, but I think that's open to interpretation and could really rely on whether or not you think charity should be given through the individual or through the government, or the Old Testament's disregard for unborn children, but it doesn't care much for born adults either, so I think this is a good stopping point.
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