Respect People Whose Beliefs (You Think) are Stupid?

Respect the people not the religion.... I am an atheis in a religious country.... I learn to respect people with religion....

@rbz: What I meant was that it does seem hypocritical (more like a lie) to call someone's beliefs stupid but at the same time say that you respect them.

It's like insulting someone and claiming that you respect em.

Does that clear it up?

Then all your saying is their belief is stupid and insulting that. It's up to them whether to take it personally though, in which case they will think that you think they're stupid.

b4 i say anything sorry if i repeat anyone because i too lazy to read every word but i think out of all religion i think Buddhism the only one that actrally makes sence out of all

Im a Buddhist, and I dont even think thats true.

Its true, I think that Buddhism is probably the most easy going of the major religions (when was the last time you heard of a Buddhist extremist?) but its far from perfect. It suffers from the same problems that other religions do, like segregation of women and some corruption.

I think the big problem with religion is the people that twist its message to whatever they want.

On the topic of respecting people's beliefs, I too didn't read all the posts (its late, im tired), but I can say that you'd have to define respect. I think that some religions are crazy, hurtful, and basically a scar on society. But I wont try to convert the people in them, or I wont piss on it openly. I'll just... quietly detest them, while I appreciate the few good things about them. I've found that no religion is 100% Evil (well, maybe Westbro).

for example, the KKK were strongly supportive of women's rights. The rest of their beliefs were twisted and wrong, but they had that much going for them.

thanks!

I respect every human being on this earth, but I do not respect the idea of God, or being religious. Why? Well, first of all, the idea of an almighty god is completely groundless, and though he cannot be disproved, he certainly cannot be proved to exist. While I'd be glad to elaborate on why, I guess I'll save that for another thread, but here are some good arguments for not respecting religious beliefs and behaviour:

1. The Dark Ages. Need I say more?


2. Terrorism. I know what you're thinking": "It's only ONE religion, Islam, which is practising this holy war stuff." Oh hell no it ain't.

3. That both of the above, science and lifesaving research being limited & the practice of holy war, are still going on today.

For anyone looking for arguments against the existence of a God, I recommend Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion." Yes, that Dawkins. He's nothing like he's portrayed on the net, and the book is definitely not hateful.

*saves the poster*

Now that is an interesting thought behind the hilarity of the poster.

Sadly, it's very interesting...

You can add filling children's heads with bullshit at an impressionable age and having them grow up with it, believing it's a fucking fact. Especially the part about hell. Oh no, they're not too young for that shit.

There's a really good video somewhere about a christian theater doing a play for children based around what happens if you go to hell. The owner of the theater said that the target age was "as young as possible," because "it will be more traumatic" for young children, so they will remember it.

Sick.

First off, let's establish that I think all religion is stupid. Same goes with most doctrines of any belief.

I wouldn't call it "respect" in my case. I'd probably call it "amazed disgust".
I'm amazed that people can keep their shoddy belief in something that has no proof whatsoever, besides a collection of books that proclaim the existence of a God.
I'm disgusted that people can actually completely believe in their Holy Book and have no reservations, such as "Wait, this completely contradicts itself here" and blindly "follow" the word of their God.

Also, the fact that people can still believe that their religion is the "best" or most "fair" amazes me. Each religion has had it's own retardant effect on society.


This is an example of why I do not respect these religions. Most of the time, they ingrain their beliefs into a child when the child is highly impressionable, thus likely to actually believe what is being told to them.

Because logic, reason, and changing your beliefs based on evidence is the shit.

Hell yea. *high fives*
Those who believe won't survive if they can't adapt in accordance with evidence.

i personally think religion is like putting a band aid on a broken bone. we dont need to believe in a world where EVERYTHING is run by some entity that we cant even comprehend. really i think there is a cycle to life, where when we die, there are places we go, but they are so wild, and the system it too complex that we try to understand it with religion.

There are plenty of valid criticisms of religion, but I think it goes a bit far to go with ones that ignore history. During the dark ages, Christian churches were actually the only institutions preserving knowledge. They kept old books, educated priests and monks, and generally remained the premier centers of learning, both theological and non theological, until universities started appearing later in the middle ages. The so called "dark ages" had less scholarship because the established Roman Empire(who were Christians at this time!) was overthrown by tribes that did not have the same level of educational culture as the Romans, tribes who were not yet Christian. In fact, the fact that the Christian churches were able to convert Frankish leaders probably helped save many churches, and the records they stored, from destruction.

So really, Christianity saved the so called "dark age" from being the "total blackout age."

Of course, the chart above also ignores other significant facts, such as the fact that Christianity was very important and the dominant religion in western society both before the fall of Rome and throughout the Renaissance.

On the topic of Dawkins, it's not really possible to make a rigorous case showing that God must or must not exist. Dawkins puts forth his best attempt to show atheism is correct, just as Aquinas and Anselm of Canterbury put forth their best philosophical attempts to show that God must exist. Ultimately, neither have done much to appease those on the other side of the debate and have mostly only given ammunition to those who already subscribed to various sides, and none of the cases is strong enough as to even come close to settling anything.

True.


True.


Not exactly, the chaos caused by those tribes was short-lived, and they didn't play any major part in the hampering of scientific advancement. I would also like to point out that Rome wasn't exactly totally Christian. Rome never really subscribed to a single religion, it was always a mix of several, though Christianity certainly prevailed after its golden age. Hell, if you look at it that way, you'd come to the conclusion that Christianity caused the fall of Rome, which naturally isn't true.

Anyway, Rome was a very open society which did not censor people or burn books, no matter how controversial, much like today's western society.

True.


Completely and utterly false.

You have forgotten one very basic thing: Taking into account WHAT the church taught, and especially what it didn't.

The Church of the Dark Ages deemed all knowledge that was obtained after the bible was written to be the work of Satan, which is why technology and culture fell so low. It also declared all scientists heathens, and prosecuted people for terrible things such as trying to find new ways to cure illnesses.

And yes, they saved books, but only the ones they liked. Many great works were lost in the fires of the Inquisition, not to mention some of the people who wrote great works.


How does it ignore it? The chart simply points out that if it wasn't for Christianity, the Dark Ages wouldn't have occured, and technology would've advanced. Now, you prove to me that Christianity has resulted in scientific advancements big enough to excuse what the Church did in the Dark Ages.


I assume you haven't read the book, you should, along with "In the name of the Rose," a novel written by Umberto Eco. It peovides more details on the time period we are debating. ;)

Neither can you really respect someone who thinks you are going to burn in the fiery depths of Hell for all eternity. You can pity them... but not respect them.

The point is that Christianity in Rome post-Constantine didn't seem to completely and utterly ruin scientific and philosophical advancement in Rome.

The tribes didn't directly attempt to destroy scientific knowledge, but in addition to the obvious fact that a good number of learned documents were destroyed in the sacking of various Roman cities, they caused a society that had aspects naturally conducive to philosophical and scientific advancement(established universities, infrastructure, a stable government) to be replaced with a society that was less conducive to learning(lots of internal fighting, less infrastructure, a volatile feudal government, very little established system of education). Add to this the fact that the Franks and Goths were for the most part less advanced in philosophy and science than the Romans and you have a recipe for a dark age.



This section of your post just shows that you don't know what you are talking about.

The type of education pursued in monasteries and churches was something called Scholasticism. One received instructions in the subjects of the trivium: grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and the quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Certainly God and theology were seen as the center of learning, but this did not cause education to neglect logic and science. In fact, proper theology was supposed to be grounded in logic and science, hence the trivium and quadrivium.

They especially focused on Greek philosophy, much of which had not been preserved in Latin, and has been lost until rediscovered during this scholastic period. Plato was especially important, although during the Renaissance and Enlightenment, Aristotle would become more popular.

Additionally, contact with Arabic populations in both Moorish Spain and during the Crusades resulted knowledge of mathematics and medicine being transferred from the Middle East to Western Europe.

And at the center of this were monasteries and churches, as they kept and scribed books and served as centers of education until universities started to flourish in the 13th and 14th centuries.

People such as Boethius, Abelard, Aquinas, and Albertus Magnus made many contributions to various fields of natural science, philosophy, and fine arts. Magnus was even known for arguing that religion and science could coexist peacefully.

There have been throughout the history of Christianity persecutions, although the worst of it(including the height of the infamous inquisitions) didn't come until the very late Medieval Ages and Renaissance, when the Catholic Church found its political position challenged.

Still, to claim that the Dark Ages could have been golden if only the Catholic Church hadn't been around, or even that they would have been better at all ignores historical evidence is and thoroughly incorrect.



Christianity was still very prevalent both before and after the Dark Ages, especially during much of the Renaissance, yet it didn't "ruin" them. Why?

Honestly, I think you could make a better argument that the Renaissance or Enlightenment could simply have resulted in more advancement without the Christian Churches than that the Dark Ages would have been less dark without the Catholic Church.

If you would like to continue to support your thesis that Christianity ruined the dark ages, perhaps by saying something more than "they persecuted people" without any specifics, showing how the Catholic Church explicitly destroyed the knowledge and technology of Rome, and demonstrating why the scholarship and writings of church and monastery educated philosophers, artists, and natural scientists either failed to contribute to or detracted from culture and scholarship as well as why civilization would have been better off without them, I would be interested in seeing how you are going to "prove" your argument.

And of course, the other glaring question: who else was equipped and would have been motivated to value education and preserve and scribe writings if not the Catholic church?



Personally, I think David Hume did far more as an atheist philosopher than Dawkins. Maybe if you read "Summa Theologica" you will be convinced that belief in God is the way to go, but I doubt it, and I would be surprised if it convinced anyone at all who wasn't already inclined to believe in God. The works that the likes of Dawkins and Hitchens have presented us with in recent years are much the same in my opinion.