Respecting religious belief

religiousragings:

I’ve heard it several times this weekend.  I’m supposed to be respect religious beliefs.  I’ve been answering that I can respect a person, but I have no obligation whatsoever to respect an unsupported belief.

And to be honest, I’m even willing to give some ground on unsupported beliefs to a degree.  But let’s understand what we’re dealing with here.

If you were to walk up to me and tell me that aliens had invisible milk beams going into everyone’s heads, and that if we didn’t start eating pickles while standing on our heads, the aliens were going to flood the planet with slightly spoiled milk, well, no, I don’t have to respect that belief.  I will respect you, and, if I know you personally, I might try to see that you get some professional help, but your belief?  I’m honestly not going to respect it.

And this is, admittedly, a ridiculous example. But that’s the entire point. When you start talking about the earth being 6000 years old and that flood thing; when you start talking about an invisible mind reading god; when you start talking about clasping our hands together and telepathically begging a dude who died 2000 years ago if he lived at all to save your Aunt Sally from her hemorrhoids; when you talk about people being punished in everlasting eternity for thought crimes; when you talk about the aforementioned dead dude coming back and sending the “good” people to heaven and the “bad” people to hell…

…it sounds EXACTLY as ridiculous to me.  It is JUST AS BAD!  I kid you not.

The only difference is that I won’t try to get you professional help because you’ve been indoctrinated in a cult-like system that you’ve been fooled by, the same as billions of others.

But if you mention the ark, you might just as well be talking about turtles holding up the earth.

I’m not going to respect that!  Are you kidding me?  NO!  It’s not going to happen!

And it honestly takes a large amount of effort not to laugh in your face about it sometimes.  I really try not to do this, because it helps no one and it just makes communications between us harder.  But the ideas are THAT silly.  I want to laugh at them because I find it hard to believe that you believe in them too, and I want to laugh at the joke with you, and that you don’t see them as funny is funny in itself because they’re so silly…

Now, if you’re one to say that you feel that there must be some kind of higher power, but you don’t know the nature of it, then, while I’m still not going to agree with you, I’m not going to argue with you about it either unless you ask me to.

But I’m not going to respect a belief that involves a 6000 year old earth or a world-wide flood.  There is simply no way it’s going to happen.

~ Steve

(Source: skepticalavenger)