Reply #263: Perhaps More To The Point, Ma'am [View All]

[The Magistrate]

Respect is a reciprocal matter. Persons who do not share your beliefs have a right to express that disbelief, and believers have an obligation to respect that expression, which is precisely equivalent to the degree to which they desire respect for their own views.

Let us suppose, for mere purposes of demonstration, that there exists a person who, after study and meditation on the matter, reaches the conclusion that the basic creeds of a religion are false, and that the most common effects of adherence to them have a pernicious effect on that person's own life, and on society as a whole. Suppose further that this person has come to the belief that there is a positive virtue to people not incorporating falsehoods into the structure of their mental and moral lives.

It seems to me, you would expect such a person to keep silent in your presence. And yet such a person may very well feel a deep sense of offense at the confident statement of belief in the credal materials that person feels to be false, and a deep sense of offense at claims that living by them is good and virtuous, when doing so is wholly counter to what that person believes to constitute positive virtue. That person might just a rightfully, it seems to me, expect you to keep silent, and proffer exactly the same grounds for the feeling you might.