LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY lihan161051)

After seeing the "atheist visits a Christian family" episode, and reading the show's forum on the episode, I'm still trying to get a handle on the things that bugged me about it.



One of the things that I don't think the episode ever really dealt with, and something that I feel is sort of a nagging question with fundamentalism/dominionism in general, is the unspoken assumption that Christianity is somehow associated with morality and ethics, with the corollary that non-Christian belief systems are amoral/unethical on at least some level. I don't think the fundamentalist family was ever challenged on that, nor do I think they addressed their own beliefs on that score. What I saw was a very polite person staying with a very polite family whose beliefs and principles were diametrically opposed to hers, but both were too polite to ever get into an honest discussion of the differences.

And on that point, I was very disappointed by that episode. It did portray the two extremes in a positive light, but only by backing away from any real treatment of the underlying issues. And by that, I think it did the audience a disservice. A lot of the things that happened in the episode were kind of triggering for me, and quite honestly, if it had been me staying with that family, I'd have done my best not to be confrontational for confrontation's sake, but I'd have had some hard questions for them, first and foremost how and why they justify treating the "Christian==moral" and "moral==Christian" concept as an axiom, using some other justification than the simple fact that a "majority" of people believe in it. I guess that particular idea is the one I find most frustrating of all about the fundamentalist meme, because it creates attitudes and perceptions and prejudices that place a "burden of proof" on non-Christians that's unnecessary and, in my opinion, very unfair. And when it's thrown out there by a TV show episode that then just lets it go and doesn't examine it more closely, I feel disappointed and a little betrayed ..