Perhaps I need to reiterate my position on god, gods, whatever. If someone says to me, in all seriousness, “I believe in the tooth fairy, or Santa Claus, the rain-making pink elephant, or (that old favourite) the flying spaghetti monster,” I will consider that person to be a deluded idiot, possibly a dangerous deluded idiot. If a person says to me, “I believe in God,” my opinion is exactly the same, though perhaps with some sympathy for him if, like most, he was indoctrinated from birth. Because his belief is part of a religion this does not mean that I have to respect either him or his beliefs. The numbers game does not work. Just because he is one of a large number of irrational fools does not make him more worthy of respect than the guy who believes aliens from Andromeda are controlling his mind whenever he’s not wearing his foil hat and rubber boots.
11 comments:
"Because his belief is part of a religion this does not mean that I have to respect either him or his beliefs."
Exactly, which turns religion into something far more irritating then any other mass supported belief. It comes with a packaged entitlement to expect that belief to be accepted by anyone else, even patted on the back for it.
Well, it doesn't, and you are correct, it does not mean you have to respect anything.
cheers
Kirby, there's a lot of bullshit spoken about 'respect' from the street hoodies who 'ain't gettin' no respect' to the mealy-mouthed utterances of socialist MPs after they've downed a couple of bottles of Champagne. Respect is not a human right. It has to be earned.
ding ding ding!
right again.
trust is given, respect is earned. nothing is entitled to one but the freedom to give and receive trust, and ability to earn respect.
However, that doesn't make nice with the voters, or offer a blanket excuse to poor behavior, which is likely the reason for the popularity of reversing the order.
Hello Again.
Neal I can see and understand your position. I guess I worry about fundamentalist Islam in the way that atheists worry about people who believe in God in general.
There's no middle ground really is there, belief in God is fundamental and you either share it or you don’t. That works for the God I look to as well as it does the Sikh, Hindu, Moslem or Jew.
The just leaves the old cliché of respect and tolerance. Clearly the respect issue has been explored here and possibly respect isn’t something that can work either. I mean we trot out 'respect' a lot but it actually feels to me, that I have to see the other persons point of view and try to agree with them in order to share respect. That probably wont happen from either 'side' of the God issue.
But that surely must leave some form of tolerance. I don’t believe in the Venus god and wear tin foil as a hat but there must be room for me to have a beer with someone that does.
The problem that I see is that if we don’t at least try to find a way to be able to say (nicely) “I think that you are nuts but hey we like to talk about Books, Culture, Travel and great Films” then there’s no hope. All that will happen is that the God people will retreat inside their Churches and the atheists will exclude the God people on the grounds that they are all nuts. I see too much of this is in the world today to want to perpetuate any more of it.
So what do you both think of tolerance and how that could work?
Tony
The flying spaghetti monster...or known to his friends as... Al Dente
:) Bob
I frankly don't care what others believe until it affects me. If there is no god, how do you explain fur?
You shave it, and it grows back to a predetermined length. That goes for shaving it to the skin or just a trim. There has to be a god. The problem is that he's too busy making sure all the fur doesn't grow too long that world is getting all crazy. Or the folicle senses the weight of the fur and stops at a certain point. I'd like to see what happens if you were to put a furred animal in orbit for a long period of time...
either way, to each their own as long as they keep it their own.
NovaWasp,
righto! people can believe what ever crap they want. up to the point on preventing someone else from believing in their own crap. 8)
cheers.
See Buddhists are ok because they don't believe in god. Though there religion does kinda boil down to "stop the bus, I want off". Which isn't really constructive either.
If someone says to me, in all seriousness, “I believe in the tooth fairy, or Santa Claus, the rain-making pink elephant, or (that old favourite) the flying spaghetti monster,”
You forgot the IPU
8)
Well,
I'm part of the religious right, just not the religion you expect ;-)
That said, I try to keep religion, politics and my "opinions" out of my blog to a degree. But that's just me. I learned that this last week after much thought on the subject after a critical observation I made on music. I don't want to alienate anyone. I want people to know me for my writing (such as it is) not my opinions which don't mean anything anyway.
But if all things go well, I hope to have a rants page on my website (when I begin work on that in the new year)and if people want my opinions they can ask me (go to the links)
But like I said, that's just me.
if there is a god then eventually you will respect his opinion.
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