Religion is Fair Game for Debate

[BridgeTheGap]

Should nonbelievers shy away from examining or criticizing the religious beliefs of the devout because it might offend them? Certainly not, writes senior editor Ronald A. Lindsay at Free Inquiry in his commentary “Expressing One’s Views on Religion”:

Religions make certain claims about reality, for example, that there is a god, there is an afterlife, and natural disasters constitute divine punishment. Believers assert these claims and in many cases try to persuade others to accept them. These claims should be subject to examination and criticism, just like any other claims about reality. In other words, there is no principled reason for placing religion off-limits. Religious claims and religious beliefs should be treated the same as claims and beliefs relating to physics, politics, or pottery. If we maintain that a religious belief is mistaken, unsupported, or vague to the point of being incomprehensible, we should feel free to say so. If the expression of our views offends a religious person, that person has no more right to tell us to keep quiet than a Democrat offended by criticism of President Barack Obama, a physicist offended by criticism of string theory, or a potter offended by criticism of the clay mixture in his or her earthenware.

Well aware that he’s wading into the debate stoked by the anti-religious fervor of the so-called new atheists, Lindsay proposes a measure of civility and religious tolerance tempered by the clear-eyed gaze of the secular humanist:

Of course, we must respect the religious. But respect is not manifested by treating the religious like children for fear they may be upset when someone questions their beliefs. That would be deeply insulting to our religious friends. They are our peers in all relevant respects, intellectually, morally, and otherwise. As fellow members of our moral community, they are entitled to have their beliefs treated seriously; they are entitled to have their beliefs probed, questioned, and critically examined; they are entitled to work with us in our efforts to understand reality.

http://www.utne.com/Spirituality/Religion-Is-Fair-Game-for-Debate-Criticism.aspx?utm_content=08.30.10+Spirituality&utm_campaign=Emerging+Ideas-Every+Day&utm_source=iPost&utm_medium=email

[DeSwiss]

1. K&R

…once we can look at religion objectively and impartially, it becomes entirely obvious that religion has all the characteristics of a form of insanity. To one degree or another the religious mind must accept, and believe in, another world; a supernatural or unnatural world, a world filled with all sorts of imaginary beings called gods, devils, angels, saints, demons, etc. These imaginary creatures are talked to, asked for favors, guidance, “signs,” or miracles, and then blamed or thanked for natural events that follow. Except for the cloak of religion, such beliefs and actions would otherwise cause an individual to be judged insane, and committed to an institution for treatment. ~ Emmet F. Fields

[BridgeTheGap]

2. i.e. when george bush said god told him to invade Iraq. n.t

[Raster]

9. That one should have been a dead giveaway. The divine, all-powerful skygod...

...giving manifest revelation to the National Village Idiot? I think not.

[DeSwiss]

10. Yes indeed, George Bush is insane......

...the absolute proof of this being when he decided to go to war against these guys.





on edit: spelling

[Raster]

12. For the love of fictional diety....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/aug/10/religion-george-bush

Bush, Gog and Magog

Just when you thought it couldn't get crazier, a well-sourced story claims Bush invaded Iraq because of Bible prophecies

Here's a story we should all be ashamed of missing: George W Bush attempted to sell the invasion of Iraq to Jacques Chirac using biblical prophecy.

In the winter of 2003, when George Bush and Tony Blair were frantically gathering support for their planned invasion, Professor Thomas Römer, an Old Testament expert at the university of Lausanne, was rung up by the Protestant Federation of France. They asked him to supply them with a summary of the legends surrounding Gog and Magog and as the conversation progressed, he realised that this had originally come, from the highest reaches of the French government.

President Jacques Chirac wanted to know what the hell President Bush had been on about in their last conversation. Bush had then said that when he looked at the Middle East, he saw "Gog and Magog at work" and the biblical prophecies unfolding. But who the hell were Gog and Magog? Neither Chirac nor his office had any idea. But they knew Bush was an evangelical Christian, so they asked the French Federation of Protestants, who in turn asked Professor Römer.

<snip, regrettably, more>

Bush* will probably go down in history--or at least should--as the most manipulated pResident in American history...

and this "arm of God" bullshit is probably just one of the many ways Darth cheney*, the Texas American Petroleum Mafia and the MIC manipulated ol' feeble brain into thinking he was some type of player in a divine plan.

[frebrd]

3. Thank you!

[humblebum]

4. Nor should the positions and opinions of the atheists and atheism

be exempt from critique. Nor will they be.

[cleanhippie]

5. Who said they should be? Another strawman put and knocked sown by you. Nice job.

[humblebum]

7. I think you have strawman on the brain. Seems to be your programmed response.

That response BTW is a strawman by your definition.

[cleanhippie]

8. Its on my brain because its in nearly all of your posts.

I see your hypocrisy machine is working at full efficiency.

[cleanhippie]

6. Exactly! K&R!

[rrneck]

11. People can believe anything they want,

when their beliefs impact us we have the right to deny them that influence.

Your rights stop at the other guy's nose.

[struggle4progress]

13. I'm reading Abraham Heschel's "The Prophets" from 1962

Heschel was deported from Germany to Poland in 1938 and from there fled to London before immigrating to the US in 1940. He was active in both the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement in the Vietnam era, before dying during Nixon's presidency

There is a constant drumbeat in this forum that "religion makes truth claims." That, of course, is not always the case: in this book, Heschel says: There are no proofs for the existence of the God of Abraham -- and so Heschel is listening to the Hebrew prophets to hear something other than "truth claims"