I am tired at the time of writing this, so to this reply I would say yep, sounds good/fine to me lol.
To touch on a couple of things I didn't get to yesterday:
One of the problems with conservative-style evangelical Christianity imo is that it has bought into this idea that religious belief must be fact-based and therefore the Bible is to be taken literally and therefore there must be evidence of its historical validity, and frankly this is just not a good way to do religion and leads to the kind of anti-intellectualism you've described while also butting heads with atheistic/scientific circles in a really unfortunate and unproductive way.
Personally, I don't take the Bible either fully literally or fully figuratively, and I think a lot of Christians take this path to it. I am not anti-science or anti-intellectual, but personally I think that science has a purview and that it cannot make any useful determinations regarding metaphysics. This is what I wrote my philosophy thesis about in undergrad. I get offended by the idea that religious belief or practice, even if it is in the literal existence of something, is irrational or not based on whether science can prove it.
I celebrate Christmas completely unironically without any religious belief. It's the same with Christian themes, motifs etc, in literature and so on. I don't feel alienated by it. But obviously that isn't the case for everyone.
It's great that you don't feel alienated. I think some people do, particularly if they have grown up in an environment where they felt proselytized in a way that felt invasive or tried to force them to deny some aspect of themselves. Personally, I think that one philosophy professor I worked with back in undergrad had a good point about how we really shouldn't continue to just accept that "western norms" get to be "unmarked cases" (i.e. the default, the one without a label, etc.). For example, we should call Western Philosophy "Western Philosophy" as opposed to having "Philosophy" and "Eastern Philosophy." It helps to avoid a lot of disingenuousness in arguments if you actually define your terms.
On the other hand, my family are Christians and hardly celebrate Christmas at all. We don't believe there are any religious holidays apart from the Sabbath (and kind of Easter but that is like a specific Sabbath set aside to remember a thing that happened on Sunday according to the Bible.) It's kinda weird to explain that to people, and it caused a major wedge in my extended family growing up.
no subject
To touch on a couple of things I didn't get to yesterday:
One of the problems with conservative-style evangelical Christianity imo is that it has bought into this idea that religious belief must be fact-based and therefore the Bible is to be taken literally and therefore there must be evidence of its historical validity, and frankly this is just not a good way to do religion and leads to the kind of anti-intellectualism you've described while also butting heads with atheistic/scientific circles in a really unfortunate and unproductive way.
Personally, I don't take the Bible either fully literally or fully figuratively, and I think a lot of Christians take this path to it. I am not anti-science or anti-intellectual, but personally I think that science has a purview and that it cannot make any useful determinations regarding metaphysics. This is what I wrote my philosophy thesis about in undergrad. I get offended by the idea that religious belief or practice, even if it is in the literal existence of something, is irrational or not based on whether science can prove it.
I celebrate Christmas completely unironically without any religious belief. It's the same with Christian themes, motifs etc, in literature and so on. I don't feel alienated by it. But obviously that isn't the case for everyone.
It's great that you don't feel alienated. I think some people do, particularly if they have grown up in an environment where they felt proselytized in a way that felt invasive or tried to force them to deny some aspect of themselves. Personally, I think that one philosophy professor I worked with back in undergrad had a good point about how we really shouldn't continue to just accept that "western norms" get to be "unmarked cases" (i.e. the default, the one without a label, etc.). For example, we should call Western Philosophy "Western Philosophy" as opposed to having "Philosophy" and "Eastern Philosophy." It helps to avoid a lot of disingenuousness in arguments if you actually define your terms.
On the other hand, my family are Christians and hardly celebrate Christmas at all. We don't believe there are any religious holidays apart from the Sabbath (and kind of Easter but that is like a specific Sabbath set aside to remember a thing that happened on Sunday according to the Bible.) It's kinda weird to explain that to people, and it caused a major wedge in my extended family growing up.