Does Religion Deserve Respect by Default?

[CATSISS]

This is something I've been conversing about quite a bit lately.

I'll second Sunstone, I believe, and admit that all people should be given a certain level of respect when dealing with them. But there is a prevailing social moray that suggests that openly questioning the apparent authority of a religious text or a religion in general is seen in bad taste, and I really don't see how that makes any sense. I live in a culture where try to bookend conversations with some Biblical quote or teaching as if that is the end-all of the a conversation. Simply adding a slight rebuttal to their conclusions is often times met with surprise and some combination of anger and disdain. I mean, just yesterday I got into a conversation with a hardcore Conservative Christian who was defending Trump's plan to ban all Muslim immigration from the Middle East. He went on citing the Biblical call to evangelize the world and cited some made up statistic about how many Muslims want to kill the infidels. I simply asked why his Biblical mandate to evangelize was any more legitimate than the Muslim's and he flipped his ****. (Note he didn't really have any answer - but that's not the point.)

You can pick any topic at all - any zany belief that someone holds - all I'm asking is why are we expected to accept that belief plainly, without any common discourse at all?
If some women think their heads should be covered, fine. They can cover their heads all they want. But if I ask you why you cover your head and ask why you think it's necessary, you should at least have some semblance of an answer. And if I question your immediate appeal to authority, have a good reason to support the lending of authority to whatever it is you lent authority to.

Questioning someone's personal belief system isn't an attack on that belief system and it isn't an attack on that person.
All too often the pious among us will expect us atheists to have every answer to every question that they can think of to challenge our position in light of theirs. Why can't we do the same thing? It's not our fault if you don't have a satisfactory or intellectually dishonest answer and get called to task on it. That's just how conversation works.

Note - all of this can be done 100% cordially. I'm not saying "you believe in god so you're an idiot." I'm simply challenging your logic. There's nothing dangerous about that, unless you have really faulty logic at the base of your belief system.

The problem is religion like islam and christianity prohibited questioning,reasoning and logic.

 

[jonathan180iq]

The problem is religion like islam and christianity prohibited questioning,reasoning and logic.

While that may be officially true of Islam in some Middle Eastern theolocracies, it's only a social taboo when it comes to Christianity. So it's not like there has been no progress made. It's just way too little.

 

[First Baseman]

“Sometimes when I'm faced with an atheist, I am tempted to invite him to the greatest gourmet dinner that one could ever serve, and when we have finished eating that magnificent dinner, to ask him if he believes there's a cook.”

― Ronald Reagan

 

[Demonslayer]

“Sometimes when I'm faced with an atheist, I am tempted to invite him to the greatest gourmet dinner that one could ever serve, and when we have finished eating that magnificent dinner, to ask him if he believes there's a cook.”

― Ronald Reagan

Interesting quote, how ever did you find it??

 

[jonathan180iq]

“Sometimes when I'm faced with an atheist, I am tempted to invite him to the greatest gourmet dinner that one could ever serve, and when we have finished eating that magnificent dinner, to ask him if he believes there's a cook.”

― Ronald Reagan

Ah yes... The old "Ray Comfort Special" fallacy...

It would actually be more accurate for Reagan, if he is comparing this hypothetical "meal" to the Christian creation mythology, to take the atheist to a hospital room full of babies and ask him if he believes in a Stork.

Taking him to a meal and asking him if he believes in a cook is obvious, because we've all factually seen cooks make meals. That experience is pretty universal. There is, unfortunately for theists, no such experience when it comes to Deities creating things. No human in the history of humanhood as ever seen a deity of any kind...let along have they seen them create something.

EDIT: You can replace the dinner analogy with any other iteration, and the failure in logic remains the same.

Some popular attempts include (but are not limited to):

• A car
• A building
• A painting
• A coke can
• Words spelled in rocks on a beach
• A sunset
• A mountain range
• etc., etc...

 

[SkepticThinker]

“Sometimes when I'm faced with an atheist, I am tempted to invite him to the greatest gourmet dinner that one could ever serve, and when we have finished eating that magnificent dinner, to ask him if he believes there's a cook.”

― Ronald Reagan

I think the major difference is that when I asked to see the cook, you could actually show him to me.

 

[First Baseman]

Interesting quote, how ever did you find it??

 

[First Baseman]

I think the major difference is that when I asked to see the cook, you could actually show him to me.

The point is that it is so obvious that a cook created the meal that one did not need to see him to easily believe a cook must have prepared it. Kind of like the verse,

Romans 1
20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

There is no acceptable excuse to dismiss the Creator when He is so obvious in creation.

 

[viole]

The point is that it is so obvious that a cook created the meal that one did not need to see him to easily believe a cook must have prepared it. Kind of like the verse,

Romans 1
20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

There is no acceptable excuse to dismiss the Creator when He is so obvious in creation.

Is that the same cook who baked the Ebola Virus and parasitic wasps?

Ciao

- viole

 

[SkepticThinker]

The point is that it is so obvious that a cook created the meal that one did not need to see him to easily believe a cook must have prepared it. Kind of like the verse,

Romans 1
20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

There is no acceptable excuse to dismiss the Creator when He is so obvious in creation.

I don't find it obvious at all. Especially when the "cook" has never made himself known and/or seems to be invisible.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

The point is that it is so obvious that a cook created the meal that one did not need to see him to easily believe a cook must have prepared it. Kind of like the verse,

There is no acceptable excuse to dismiss the Creator when He is so obvious in creation.

"It's obvious" is not an acceptable argument. Clearly it isn't obvious, otherwise forums like this wouldn't exist.

As for your quote, all it really demonstrates is how embarrassingly flawed Reagen's reasoning faculties were. The reason we know that food is cooked by chefs is because we have seen food being cooked. We have a comprehensive understanding of gastronomy. We know that such things as Duck a l'orange and bagels do not form in nature. However, not once in the entire history of humanity has anybody reliably documented a single instance of any kind of God creating anything.

Let's make the meal analogy more accurate in order to illustrate how badly it misrepresents the issue. Imagine you lived in a world where food merely "appeared". Nobody ever saw how it was made, it just seems to appear out of thin air. Imagine we had never seen any fruit or vegetables growing in nature, and had never encountered any edible animals in our lives, and we have no understanding of the cooking process. Would you be justified, in this situation, to assume that a chef must be behind it all?

 

[jonathan180iq]

The point is that it is so obvious that a cook created the meal that one did not need to see him to easily believe a cook must have prepared it. Kind of like the verse,

Romans 1
20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

There is no acceptable excuse to dismiss the Creator when He is so obvious in creation.

Interestingly, the creator of the whole Universe just so happens to be the same one that your parents and friends taught you about. It just so happens to be the predominant deity of choice for the culture you were raised in.

That's not an interesting and convenient coincidence at all.

 

[Skwim]

“Sometimes when I'm faced with an atheist, I am tempted to invite him to the greatest gourmet dinner that one could ever serve, and when we have finished eating that magnificent dinner, to ask him if he believes there's a cook.”

― Ronald Reagan

Yeah, Ronald Reagan wasn't the brightest bulb on the tree.

Often his self-perceived acumen and wit was an embarrassment to everyone who had to endure it. "Yes mister president that was very clever."

"Get me out of here before I puke."

There is no acceptable excuse to dismiss the Creator when He is so obvious in creation

Obvious to those who absolutely need him to exist. For the rest of us there are plenty of acceptable reasons.

​

 

[viole]

“Sometimes when I'm faced with an atheist, I am tempted to invite him to the greatest gourmet dinner that one could ever serve, and when we have finished eating that magnificent dinner, to ask him if he believes there's a cook.”

― Ronald Reagan

I am sure he practiced that (useless) argument with his son. Who is still a known atheist.

Ciao

- viole

 

[columbus]

There is no acceptable excuse to dismiss the Creator when He is so obvious in creation.

That is why I am a deist.
The reason I am not a theist is because there is demonstrably no Creator who cares enough about what we humans do, believe, or what happens to us to give us the information needed.
God, if s/he exists, doesn't match the claims made by humans. God exists, but religion is fiction.
Tom

 

[roger1440]

By default everyone deserves respect. By respect I mean everyone deserves to be free to believe what they want. That freedom is forfeited when someone infringes on someone else’s freedom.

 

[Nietzsche]

I don't think anything deserves respect by default. But that's me.

 

[miodrag]

.

People deserve respect, according to their conduct. To talk about religion, first define it. Is Satanism a religion and does it deserve respect? You can tell a tree by it's fruit. It is conduct that is worthy of respect.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

People deserve respect, according to their conduct. To talk about religion, first define it. Is Satanism a religion and does it deserve respect? You can tell a tree by it's fruit. It is conduct that is worthy of respect.

You're kind of getting to the root of an important problem with this thread, in that I think we need to define exactly what David Silverman meant by "respect" in this quote. Personally, I interpreted it as a kind of reverence - i.e: treating religion with respect basically means not questioning its tenets or criticising it, or giving it undue prominence. However, many in this thread seem to have interpreted respect in a more general, colloquial meaning - i.e: the respect for people's rights and for individual freedoms. Unfortunately, the source doesn't really give much context as to what David Silverman really meant, but I think if we can make the distinction between respect as an act of reverence and respect as an act of tolerance, we could probably move forward in this debate a lot quicker. I summed up my position earlier, but I'll just clarify by using this new dichotomy.

I do not believe that religion deserves respect as an act of reverence by default, as no ideas should be revered in and of themselves and should stand entirely on their merits with regards to individual benefits and truth value. The fact that religion is held so closely to the hearts of so many people in such a personal way makes it all the more necessary for us to question, criticise and, yes, even mock religious ideals when we feel it is warranted and justified.

However, I also believe that religion deserves respect as an act of tolerance just as well as any other ideological system does. People should have the right to believe what they wish without persecution on consequence, provided they live in accordance with the rights of others. Religious individuals should have the freedom to practice their beliefs without fear, and nobody should have the right to force their beliefs upon others or have their particular beliefs given precedence in law. All human beings, regardless of beliefs, are entitled to free speech, freedom of religion and freedom from persecution, political or otherwise.

 

[SkepticThinker]

You're kind of getting to the root of an important problem with this thread, in that I think we need to define exactly what David Silverman meant by "respect" in this quote. Personally, I interpreted it as a kind of reverence - i.e: treating religion with respect basically means not questioning its tenets or criticising it, or giving it undue prominence. However, many in this thread seem to have interpreted respect in a more general, colloquial meaning - i.e: the respect for people's rights and for individual freedoms. Unfortunately, the source doesn't really give much context as to what David Silverman really meant, but I think if we can make the distinction between respect as an act of reverence and respect as an act of tolerance, we could probably move forward in this debate a lot quicker. I summed up my position earlier, but I'll just clarify by using this new dichotomy.

I do not believe that religion deserves respect as an act of reverence by default, as no ideas should be revered in and of themselves and should stand entirely on their merits with regards to individual benefits and truth value. The fact that religion is held so closely to the hearts of so many people in such a personal way makes it all the more necessary for us to question, criticise and, yes, even mock religious ideals when we feel it is warranted and justified.

However, I also believe that religion deserves respect as an act of tolerance just as well as any other ideological system does. People should have the right to believe what they wish without persecution on consequence, provided they live in accordance with the rights of others. Religious individuals should have the freedom to practice their beliefs without fear, and nobody should have the right to force their beliefs upon others or have their particular beliefs given precedence in law. All human beings, regardless of beliefs, are entitled to free speech, freedom of religion and freedom from persecution, political or otherwise.

This is exactly how I feel about this. It's like you read my mind.