Its perfectly acceptable to be rude to religous people...

[startrek90]

Definately going to get flamed here but oh well.

I get the feeling that this is perfectly acceptable to be rude about religous people. From reading the threads on this forum, and my experiences in RL, the amount of rudeness and sometimes plain nastiness is awful.

I am religous. I don't care if people are not, if they go to church or how they live their own lives or raise their children. As far as I am concerned as long as you obey the law, do what you want.

So far I have seen people imply that all religous people are closing their childrens mind, are ignorant, bigots.... its horrible!

I don't deny that there are people who are that way and use religion as an excuse.... but quite frankly you can be ignorant and rude without religion.

I am being unreasonable to be offended, but it really bothers me that its culturally acceptable to be rude to and about people of faith. You wouldn't do it to someone from a different culture or race would you? I have never bothered anyone with my faith so please stop taking it as an insult!

(Just venting, been lambasted in RL for daring to buy my son a Noahs ark toy. I thought it was cute with all the animals etc... but apparently I am raising him to be ignorant, bigoted and stupid. He will hate gay people and women and generally be a horrible person.....apparently grrr )

Pretty much sums up my feelings on why I will happily criticise religion.

Ilovepud, I think you are having difficulty understanding religious beliefs because you are trapped in the view that logic and rationalism are the only wAy to understand everything. I reject humanism because I reject that rationalism is central to being human (as well as humanism's uncritical absorption on the Judaic Christian belief in the primacy of the human species but that is another thread). I think we are essentially instinctive emotional animals. I think religious belief is primarily experiential. People aren't taking a reductive approach to their belief and faith, the clue is in the name on the tin really. It is about faith. Of course it will make no sense to you if you choose to view it through your chosen prism of logical reductionism, but if you really want to understand something you have to understand it on it's own terms, not yours.

Tbh hairy I don't find the antithesis of religion to be reason. So if the world's sbsolutely most eminent scientists have been whole heartedly religious. For me the antithesis of a belief system is disbelief or as in my case simply not knowing.

*some of the world's absolutely

Autocorrect fail

"Love the sinner, hate the sin"

But what if the sinner is an utter cunt?

You can't just run around loving everyone simply because they're a fellow human being.

And I would question the honesty of anyone who claimed they did.

I agree with Hakluyt that it is partly because of the privileged position that religion holds that many atheists feel aggrieved, if I could send my children to a local school which didn't push Christianity as the truth and if unelected bishops didn't have automatic places in the country's legislature then I wouldn't have so much of a chip on my shoulder about religion.

But Whoishillgirl how can you reconcile your particular religious faith with the fact that there are so many other religious groups with different belief systems and equally strong 'faith'? I do agree that we are essentially instinctive, emotion led animals but I believe that is because of evolution and it's against this context that humans try and make sense of the world and their existence by crafting narratives involving creator Gods and afterlife.

Whois....Islam rejects any non canonical views as apostasy. All of them. Any doubt, dissent? You're an apostate. Death penalty. There's been no enlightenment, no process of moving from a literal textual interpretation to a more 'ok, this bit is a bit mad, let's not do this' stance. Their rejection of the stance I outline (secularity) is at odds with everything the liberal west holds dear.

There's no separation between religion and politics in Islam. That's dangerous. This is what bugs me when our leaders weasel around saying things like isis are a perversion of Islam. They aren't. They are very, very literal in their beliefs. Saying they're not Muslim is like saying Westboro baptist aren't christian. It may upset all the perfectly nice , law abiding Christians out there, but they are just looking at the book literally.

The extrapolation of that mindset is what lead to the charlie hebdo massacre. People being unable to separate their religious selves from their civic selves. When that happens, the sane parts of society need to stand up and be counted, or we will end up in Texas with no reproductive rights, and in the UK unable to criticise brutal religious dogma for causing offense.

I want to live in a world that's moving away from religion towards rationality and respect for humanity and our environment.

I don't think it is acceptable to be rude to anyone.
If they are rude don't give them what they want by rising to the bait. Keep the high moral ground and just say something bland like 'we will have to agree to differ' and ignore. Repeat as necessary.

I'm really surprised that people are that rude to you IRL about your beliefs. I am an atheist and I am never rude to people about their religious beliefs (not IRL, anyway), though my private thoughts are a different matter.

I don't really see anything wrong with buying a Noah's Ark. I doubt that most people who buy Noah's Arks for their kids believe that Noah was a real person.

until there is proof otherwise, the facts are that there is no god.

but even given that Noah's ark is an unpleasant story when you think about it, I also see just a boat full of animals for a child's toy!

There are people on both sides of this well worn debate who would benefit from this short helpful video:

m.youtube.com/watch?v=y-p33001J-0

ErrolTheDragon

">love the sinner, hate the sin

In the context of MN threads etc perhaps this can be usefully translated as : 'debate the idea, don't make ad hominem attacks', maybe?"

I agree about that on MN. I was thinking more of real life situations where people use that idea to disguise moral judgements. I suppose an example would be if someone said, 'It's a sin to be gay, and George is gay, I love George but think his sexuality is sinful'. To me, that sounds like a judgement disguised as concern.

saskia - oh yes. I think that sort of attitude would get further up my nose than simple rudeness.

Ilovepud, I dn't feel the need to reconcile my beliefs with competing beliefs. That is kinda my point.
You talk of religious people crafting narratives, but we all live our lives by the narratives we create, by the stories we tell about ourselves and other people. There is nothing peculiarly religious about that.
Skiptonlass some Muslims do take a more interpretative understanding of the qu'ran. As in any religion there are many different understandings, as in any book, there are many ways to read it. There are Muslims who understand the qu'ran within an historical context, this is the majority of Muslims. I have read a Saudi Arabian translation and commentary taking precisely this historical context interpretation.
You are right that ISIS is a version of Islam, it clearly is. It makes sense for other Muslims to argue that they are not true Muslims, in any conviction based group there will be internal debates about who is most right, but it doesn't make any sense for non Muslims to.

Agree with that, Saskia and Erroll.

I always say this on these threads. There's a major difference between personal attack and debate. Debate can include all sorts of vitriol and attack but as long as it is not aimed at any individual it's fair enough. If my faith is not robust enough to take some of the stuff thrown at it then it's nothing at all. But if someone's calling me ignorant/bigoted/insert insult of choice then that can sting.

I get sad when I see the occasional poster say that when they realise people are religious they lose respect for them. I'd not even think of judging someone for their faith or lack of it. I might judge someone for voting UKIP, and I suppose it must feel a similar thing if you feel religion is destructive - and it can be. But also a force for great good.

Co blimey there's a lot in this thread. Phone typing too annoying to go into lost gospels or the bible as word of God thing for now.

I've very rarely been attacked in rl for faith and rarely personally attacked on MN though this has happened and via PM sadly. Let's just be nice to each other. It's generally the way forward.

No need for rudeness at all. Athiests are often rude about religious people and religious people are often rude to athiests.

Whoishillgirl I couldn't go along with that way of thinking in my own life but hey we are all different and as long as you are not pushing your religious beliefs onto others then I would have no issue. It sounds like you have a more tolerant religious outlook as I said I wouldn't really care what other people thought if Christianity didn't have such a grip over the institutions of state. Why people hold religious beliefs intrigues me but I don't have any desire to try and destroy those only the view that religion should have a privileged position in society.

I do lose respect for people when they are religious. Same as I'd think someone was daft for believing in glittery unicorns. There is no evidence whatsoever for either. I consider you, and the glittery unicorn fans, as deluded, irrational.
The sooner we do away with religion, the better. This ain't the dark ages.

Good link othehuge!

Hairy you should view the YouTube video!

Don't disagree that some of the recent threads seem a little intolerant.

But it's fair to say a lot (not all) of religious / spiritual people tend not to be shy in pushing their values so there shouldn't be surprised if they meet some resistance, I have a friend with a religious wife and there is simply no 'agreeing to disagree'

I do resent it when I see things on FB where people are beating terminal illness and people respond with pages of "my prayers were answered" "God is good" "thank Jesus for saving you" without a word for the doctors, nurses and researchers that actually made it possible as opposed to an imaginary person.

Of course, it's not acceptable to be rude about someone's faith. It does depend how that person defines rudeness, though.

It's perfectly acceptable to disagree with the tenets of someone's faith, out loud, if it's relevant to a discussion. It's perfectly acceptable to object to proselytisation and preaching (both of which I find extremely rude) and it's perfectly acceptable to disagree with people who, for example, expect unwilling family to go to church to keep them happy.

If you find that rude, then you are always going to have a problem with other people who do not share your faith.

Forgive them then...

Love the sinner, hate the sin

So that's clearly a satirical failure on my part. What I was doing, see, is taking a phrase commonly associated with religion (and often applied to the evil gays and dirty whores) and turning it back onto religous people, by referring to their religion as the 'sin' but hey, I don't hate them personally. It also highlights the irony of a religious person claiming to be able to separate the action from the person while denying that critics of their religion are doing exactly the same.

It wasn't really a serious point. Oh well.