Just catching up, so forgive me if I'm butting in here. Pondering the thread title...Rum wrote:...But really his fundie views are actually such a distorted take on a rational world view that I wonder if I should be more outspoken. But then again to what end if, as I am sure, he won't change his views. Also, yet again, who am I to say I am right and he is wrong?...
Respectable: Something worthy deferential regard, treatment or esteem.
Mutual respect: The polite reciprocating of such esteem.
One can respect another's right to hold certain views without granting respect for those views automatically, as it were.Rum wrote:...Which, to widen the point, is the thought here. How far should one challenge the stupidity!? Or should there be an element of respect? They have little for us in my experience by the way.
Any thoughts?
The trouble arises of course when a person identifies with their views to such an extent that criticism of the views is taken as a criticism of the person. This is where those 'respect' issues arise, particularly where a person's views are claimed or maintained to be worthy of default or automatic respect. The religiously inclined often (usually?) maintain this about their religious views, and indeed about religiosity in general, and so asking a question like, "What is respectable about (your) religion?" is automatically taken as a disrespectful challenge to their person, their beliefs, and their way of life.
But what is respectable about religion, really? What is it about a personal commitment to a religion which is worth of this kind of default respect and which seems to demand that religious institutions, religious practices, religious beliefs, and religious people should be granted some particular and peculiar c protection from criticism or ridicule, either generally by social custom or indeed under the law?
Well, you'll not be surprised if I answer my own questions with; nothing! But I guess I'm obliged to explain why as we so-called disrespectful atheists should be if we want at the least to have our rights to our particular views tolerated and respected in society.
My first point would be that engaging in respectful discussion of these issues we must qualify that atheism, the kind of explicitly stated atheism at least (as opposed to the accidental, implicit kind) is a rational response to the claims and assertion of theists--and the like--and therefore when the religiously inclined assert a default respectability for their view point and action we should simply ask them why. Why is religiosity a virtue-bestowing, privilege-endowing state of being? This is often enough to get their backs up of course, for it challenges a fundamental claim of their (and any) Faith. We generally get no joy from this point onwards; we are on a hiding-to-nothing as it were, for it goes against everything they have been taught about the nature of their religious beliefs and their religious being from day one - to challenge 'the truth' of religion is to promote 'the lie' of disbeleif. And so we are drawn to framing our question in more specific terms, battling on regardless to make our point.
If religiosity is personal commitment to holding certain things to be automatically and axiomatically true in the absence of evidential support, by faith alone as they say, then we might ask; what is the utility of having faith and what does it afford an individual or a community which is not also available to those without faith?
The Faithful will no doubt assert that their religion gives them a framework by which to live their lives and by which they can be a good person. if this were always the case then we might have good cause to automatically respect the religious. However, if they maintain that one can only be a good person through faith, or through their particular Faith--as they often (mostly?) do--then really they have disavowed the notion that people can, and are, good without faith - and in that have shown little or no respect for the views of others and other people's lives. So why should we grant respect to those who do not grant the reciprocity of mutual respect at the outset? Their demonstrable disrespectfulness of others certainly undermines any claim or assertion for a default esteem for their particular outlook, don't you think?
We might also note that the things people believe and hold to by faith alone are not automatically virtuous, they are only seen to be virtuous with regard to religion and religious claims and assertions. For example, what we value, to a great extent, is knowledge and we would no more wish our doctors to treat us on the basis that an un-evidenced belief that, say, hitting us repeatedly on the shin with a lead pipe was an efficacious treatment for diabetes,any more that we would value or accept the earnest entreaties of a butcher that his meat-based aeroplane could bring us swiftly to our holiday destinations. In cases like this most would rightly identify that the doctor and the butcher, in asserting a default virtue and utility for their beliefs in the face of an absence of evidence, would go against reason. In fact accepting the assertions of such a doctor or butcher on the basis of their self-declared authority and/or the depth of their sincerity would not only be unreasonable of us, but wilfully ignorant and dangerous too. It would be irresponsible to grant un-evidenced, faith-based claims default respectability, and act accordingly in forming our judgements and arriving out our decision for action simply on the say-so of the faithful, no matter how earnest, sincere or authoritative they appeared to be.
The claims and assertions of theist are no different in this regard and it is unreasonable to accept their assertions for super-nature and super-natural entities which facilitate the miracles of virgin births; speaking shrubbery; walking on water; rising from the dead; elevation by a golden light into the sky; plagues and infestations; wilful meteorological control; spontaneous healing; the wilful and spontaneous creation of plants, animals and humans in a spontaneously created Earth within a spontaneously created universe; turning people into salt; the persistence of personality after death in a place of eternal bliss or misery; demonic possession; turning water into alcoholic beverages and stone into gold; the spontaneous, wilful killing of the first born children of enemies; people taking the form of animals; communication by telepathic means; talking donkeys; the orbits of the sun and moon halted in the sky; invisibility; etc (and these are only the ones I can think of off the top of my head). What is it about holding these things to be not only true but also a jolly good reason to grant those that believe them a default respect? Such people seem far more worthy of our pity and concern than our respect, not least when we acknowledge that such acceptances are invariably the product of ignorance and wish-fulfilment, and mostly the product of past primitive societies.
Yet we still might grant people the right to believe these things, that seems only fair if we want the same rights afforded to us and our beliefs, but we should not be obliged by social convention or by the law to grant these 'believers' and special or particular, automatic respect, or to immunise their beliefs from criticism or ridicule, or to grant believers a special protections from any personal offence they may take from such criticisms.
What should be strenuously emphasised is that even though no peron's religious beliefs and practises should be afforded automatic respect (just as noone's beliefs and practises should be afforded automatic respect) all people do merit respect as human individuals. We are Human and all relationships and interactions between people take place in a social sphere were we are all essentially equalised by our shared humanity. For one person or group to dogmatically assert that their particular Faith, faith-tradition, ethnic or cultural antecedence etc, should necessarily invoke either default esteem, admiration or adoration, and thus elevate them above, and separate them from, the rest of humanity only seeks to assert special and particular rights of dominion over all others.
The respect we might have for our fellow humans, and the respect they might have for us in return, is not a right or privilege of religious adherence but the consequence of our interactions and of who we are and of what we say and do. We should respect people on the basis of their character not on the basis of their self-authorised demands. We should respect people for their kindness, their calmness, their passion, their intellect, their humour, their moral outlook, their knowledge and their aspirations to knowledge, their honesty, their courage, their loyalty, their fair-mindedness, patience and tolerance, their peacefulness, their wisdom, their affections for the world and the things and people in it, etc. None of this is the preserve of religion nor does being religious automatically impart respectibility to us as individuals, nor to our interactions with the people and communities in which we live.
Character is the proper basis for personal and inter-personal respect and assertions that Religion and religiosity should always be afford an individual respect, on their the basis of their self-declared commitment to a specific set of beliefs and practices and aside from the character of the religious indivual, are indistinguishable from the unreasonable demands of bullies and tyrants.
Anyway, that was my thoughts on the matter and it leads me to suggest that what we should consider is not how far our lack of respect for religion should go but on what basis we should extend respect for our fellow humans regardless of their religious affiliations.
