Quote Originally Posted by WeedGremblin
I do not see how you can relate something as profound as religion to things like politics/philosophy/history/science.
Religion, like all those other fields of thought, is an attempt to figure out the truth about how the universe works. And like any field of thought, if it wants to get anywhere it needs to have people debating each other so the correct ideas win out over the false ones. However, religious dogma doesn't work that way. For some reason that I can't figure out, people seem to think that religion is somehow special, that religious opinions should not be challenged no matter how silly they are, and that everybody should be entitled to voice their opinion about religion but never receive a critical response about what they say.

Someones faith in religion is a whole different story all together. I can already tell you dont take anything about religion seriously so I doubt anything I can say will make much difference to you so I will make this short and sweet.....

Clearly it states to have respect in here, and I do not find that to be respectful, its plain and simple.....
I don't see the point in "respecting" faith. What's so great about faith? Faith is belief in that for which there is no evidence. It is, to me, plainly inferior to rationality and logic, and the scientific method of demanding evidence before you're convinced of something. I think it is silly how much our culture glorifies zealous fervor for ideas that haven't the slightest shred of objective evidence going for them.
You are an extremely intelligent person Oneironaut but I think you might be alittle over-critical about religion. Could you explain as to why you MUST disprove someones faith in religion?? What drives that? What is it?!?
I believe that every person should have the ability to do as they please so long as they do not infringe upon the life or liberty of another person, and that matters concerning human affairs should be decided upon democratically by the populace. Western monotheism directly contradicts those ideas (so does Hinduism to a large extent, but I'm much more lenient on Buddhism and Taoism, which are far less authoritarian).

The Bible, as I read it, is an extremely authoritarian book. Yahweh is, without a shadow of a doubt, the worst character in any book I have read. He is portrayed as a totalitarian dictator figure, who sets laws and demands that they be obeyed unquestioningly, just because he's the one who wrote the laws. His ego is so huge that he proclaims himself to be the greatest thing in the whole universe, and demands that everybody worship him as much as possible. He has a chosen race and orders them to pillage towns belonging to "inferior" peoples, then kill the men, expropriate their property, and take the virgins for themselves. Yahweh orders wives to submit unquestioningly to their husbands, and for people who work on the Sabbath to be stoned to death. He orders women who menstruate and men who ejaculate to burn animal sacrifices so that he can receive the "pleasant aroma". Yahweh condones slavery throughout the Bible, and even gives rules for how to properly sell slaves and how to mark your slaves. Even in the New Testament, slaves are told, "be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward" (1 Peter 2:18). It's a good thing people don't really follow that verse anymore, or we'd still have slavery and the Jews would still be toiling away in Nazi labor camps. Christians actually continue to publish this pro-slavery, sexist, homophobic, racist, illogical crap and encourage their children to read it before they're at an age when they can critically and logically think through all the arguments for and against Biblical accuracy and the historical issues involved with its origins. It's like handing a 6 year old a copy of Quotations From Chairman Mao Zedong and pressuring him to become a faithful Maoist, then rejecting out of hand any criticism of what you're doing to the child! Children should be taught about all ideologies, religious, political and otherwise, and should be able to choose for themselves what they want to believe in. I think indoctrinating children into an ideology like that, and encouraging them to believe or be burned forever, before they have a chance to rationally examine all the evidence and arguments, is a form of child abuse.

Not that any Christian actually follows all the ridiculous crap in the Bible, but the heavy authoritarianism is still very much present in Christianity. When you bow down to a "higher power" and his "higher justice", proclaiming all his moral guidelines to be absolutes that cannot be questioned, you are basically giving up the idea that humans should be able to decide how they should live their lives on their own. When you say the Lord is your shepherd, you are saying that you are a sheep.

I see no reason to be respectful of child abuse, dictator worship and blatant sexism, which I find to be rampant problems among those infected with the Christianity virus.