by Peter Payne

Created on: November 04, 2011   Last Updated: November 05, 2011

Liberals Are More Rational and Humane Than Conservatives

“You can always tell how intelligent someone is by the extent to which they agree with your opinions.” This statement is pretty much a universal attitude. For those who are pious, unquestioning belief in religious doctrines is a virtue rather than an afflicted mental state, even though it is obvious that whether one is a Christian, Moslem, Jew, Hindu, or even an atheist is the consequence of the vagaries of birth and other arbitrary circumstances, and in most cases has little or nothing to do with free, intelligent choice. This fact is so obvious it is simply trite; yet only a small fraction of humanity acknowledge it. Of course, even facts are merely opinions, albeit true ones, and the multitudes who are convinced that their religion is the one true one will not hesitate to accuse me of being blinded by personal bias, uneducated, logically inept, naïve, a traitor, dishonest, a societal parasite, and deliberately stupid. However obvious it strikes me that a just God would not base people’s salvation on their ability to reject the religious beliefs that they and generations of their ancestors have honored, this opinion merely seems more humane and rational to me because I am a “bleeding-heart” liberal. Conservatives consider calling someone humane an insult. “Humane” is defined as “with emphasis on liberal values: with an emphasis on respect for other people's views.” This comes naturally with the simple understanding that much of what we believe is circumstantial and arbitrary, that we are not gifted with natural wisdom, and that we can learn a lot by listening to others.

“With or without [religion], you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.” This observation of Steven Weinberg ignores the fact that politics and economics work just as well. Religious doctrines are accepted no more unquestionably than both liberal and conservative political and economical ideologies. One difference is that on some rare instances, the latter are capable of being proven correct or incorrect. However, even when both parties are determined to be as honest and perceptive to evidence as possible, which is almost never the case, there are major obstacles hindering rational discussion.

Not surprisingly, scientific research has shown that hearing an opinion that we agree

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