leibowde84
Veteran Member
If religions encourage skepticism and challenges, urging adherents to provide reasoning behind their beliefs instead of being dogmatic, they should be respected. If not, they should be ridiculed as dangerous.
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Does Religion Deserve Respect by Default?
- Thread starter Skwim
- Start date
leibowde84
Veteran Member
I've listened to him quite a bit, and I don't feel that way about him. So, I'm curious as to why you feel the way you do. That's all. I can't be expected to read your mind.
Because he's an angry, arrogant antitheist spewing nonsense generalizations about billions of people, while believing that he knows the truth and everyone else is just brainwashed. He sounds like a petulant child who needs to grow up. His mentality is just as bad as those of people like Pat Robertson.
He's also conflating atheism with his own antitheism, which aren't the same things. The idea that you can "take religion down" is a completely stupid one in the first place, and even more stupid when you're so pigheaded that you think you have the truth and everyone else is just a brainwashed idiot. So he's just another obnoxious blowhard talking out of his ***. Onto the garbage heap he goes.
leibowde84
Veteran Member
Fair enough. I don't get that sense from him. I do see his frustration, but I think that is understandable. But, to each their own. We will probably have to agree to disagree about this one.
It's all good.
CATSISS
Catsiss The Catheart
Which means you are either ignorant or lazy.
-Peacemaker-
.45 Cal
depends on one's definition of "god". The most practical definition of god is: what one trusts in most. "Worship" can be thought of as a synonym for "trust". The ancients trusted gods of wood and stone. Today most secular Westerners trust their own abilities to reason. By that definition we all worship something, even if it's ourselves.
CATSISS
Catsiss The Catheart
As an atheist do i worship god,no i dont worship anything not even reasoning,i trust reasoning not worship there is a fine line between those two words.
Rick O'Shez
Irishman bouncing off walls
Better reason than superstition, surely?
Shad
Veteran Member
Ive know a few people that have experienced doubt in their religion in which the response with the claim they are questioning God. The response is due to a very literal interpretation of the religion.
dust1n
Zindīq
Sure, it a metaphorical sense. I mean, I perform the ritual of the sacrament of the bed for 8 hours every night.
Demonslayer
Well-Known Member
I think there is a wide gap between the words worship and trust. Worship is a very bizarre concept to me, and negative in any way. It's unhealthy to go about your life in a state of worshiping anything. It's demeaning.
Demonslayer
Well-Known Member
Wow, you're like a zealot or something! I perform the ceremonial Washing of the Pits each day, but only for like 2 minutes. 8 hours is serious dedication.
dust1n
Zindīq
My sect actually places less emphasis on washing and more on eating. But as long as we all believe in the same nothing in particular, then we are brothers are far as I'm concerned.
Demonslayer
Well-Known Member
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
Something I don't respect is people who are inept at determining connotation from context.
CATSISS
Catsiss The Catheart
I said there is a fine line because that guy cant even tell the easiest difference between those two.
First Baseman
Retired athlete
NO. Religion deserves no respect by default.
'Religion' hasn't commonly been very good at respecting other religions, whilst commonly demanding such respect for itself.
As with anyone, including atheists, giving respect to people's rights for ideas is a pretty simple first step in demanding respect for your own.
But in NO circumstance would I equate 'respect' with 'unquestioning'.
As with anyone, including atheists, giving respect to people's rights for ideas is a pretty simple first step in demanding respect for your own.
But in NO circumstance would I equate 'respect' with 'unquestioning'.
jonathan180iq
Well-Known Member
This is something I've been conversing about quite a bit lately.
I'll second Sunstone, I believe, and admit that all people should be given a certain level of respect when dealing with them. But there is a prevailing social moray that suggests that openly questioning the apparent authority of a religious text or a religion in general is seen in bad taste, and I really don't see how that makes any sense. I live in a culture where try to bookend conversations with some Biblical quote or teaching as if that is the end-all of the a conversation. Simply adding a slight rebuttal to their conclusions is often times met with surprise and some combination of anger and disdain. I mean, just yesterday I got into a conversation with a hardcore Conservative Christian who was defending Trump's plan to ban all Muslim immigration from the Middle East. He went on citing the Biblical call to evangelize the world and cited some made up statistic about how many Muslims want to kill the infidels. I simply asked why his Biblical mandate to evangelize was any more legitimate than the Muslim's and he flipped his ****. (Note he didn't really have any answer - but that's not the point.)
You can pick any topic at all - any zany belief that someone holds - all I'm asking is why are we expected to accept that belief plainly, without any common discourse at all?
If some women think their heads should be covered, fine. They can cover their heads all they want. But if I ask you why you cover your head and ask why you think it's necessary, you should at least have some semblance of an answer. And if I question your immediate appeal to authority, have a good reason to support the lending of authority to whatever it is you lent authority to.
Questioning someone's personal belief system isn't an attack on that belief system and it isn't an attack on that person.
All too often the pious among us will expect us atheists to have every answer to every question that they can think of to challenge our position in light of theirs. Why can't we do the same thing? It's not our fault if you don't have a satisfactory or intellectually dishonest answer and get called to task on it. That's just how conversation works.
Note - all of this can be done 100% cordially. I'm not saying "you believe in god so you're an idiot." I'm simply challenging your logic. There's nothing dangerous about that, unless you have really faulty logic at the base of your belief system.