Religious moderatism empowers religious fundamentalism by affirming the false premises that religious fundamentalists rely on.

In a pluralistic modern democratic society, religion is irrelevant. Government and the society it represents make no stake in religion, no defense or attack of it. Religion becomes like any other private activity. Growing heirloom apples, collecting antique cars, having three-ways in motel rooms, reading Stephen King novels, collecting salt and pepper shakers. That’s it. No more, no less.

I think Atatürk had the right idea in this regard. He abolished the Ottoman caliphate, removed Islam as the state religion, eliminated sharia for secular law, and banished religious interference in government. It sounds like a foreign thing, but it’s relevant to the American experiment. He created a modern society that was secular, democratic, and republican, with sovereignty in the hands of the people.

I would say all these principles are inherent in the American founding documents and the documents of other modern democracies. One aspect of Atatürk’s Six Arrows (Alti Ok) that seems relevant is Laicism. A step beyond secularism, but actively banishing religion from the public sphere. The public place is a secular place, and is the place for secular language, facts, reason. Period. Religious interjection should be cut off.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m actually a religious person. But this is the only way people can have any religious life in a modern pluralistic society.

Public insertions of religious expression in what should be a secular society are problematic in many ways. In one sense, people would argue that bringing their faith into government or the work place is natural as their faith defines their values. Well, great. Just state your values. Some God or texts backing you up is irrelevant. Also religious excursions into the public space are forms of virtue signaling. So we just end up having a meta conversation in the subtext of our secular work as a society. One that is in a private language. It also implicitly sets a tone of religious conflict or conflict between religion and the secular life.

I think this is the destructive part of American public life. We have something so far from something like Atatürk’s Six Arrows that we openly tolerate and work around overt and manifest insertions of religious expression into a society that should be pluralistic and secular. And so we have de fact religious activity as social and political function.

It's so hard to explain but I had this kinda happening to me today. My mom isn't strongly religious but she is a believer, like most people in this society and she was telling me a story about how some priests and church people who organize a "Sunday school" (if I may call it that) for christian kids were trying to "proselytize" her nephew into becoming a priest or a monk when he was a kid. I told her "Have you ever thought that the way priests and monks live are the best ways for a christian to live so they just encourage this way of life to anybody who follows the religion?". But she was just insisting that those people are hardcore believers or "fundamentalists". But most "moderate" christians don't have a problem with a whole country being "based" on this religion, with it being taught at school to all students, with the church having an active role in politics etc. It's suddenly only a problem when their own relatives are becoming hermits or when they follow the religion "too much" to the point where they reject secular cultural things, then apparently they are "brainwashed".

And how often do arguments between religious fundamentalists and moderates boil down to both accusing the other of not being a "true" Christian/Muslim/etc.? i.e. a meaningless argument that goes nowhere and resolves nothing.

Hey! It’s not up to me to prove The Flying Spaghetti Monster is fake!

The burden of pasta is on you! Dammit! 😠