Why, exactly, do I need to respect religious beliefs?

Great Debates
61

Of course, I could equally claim that science has “skillfully” moved its belief system to be unfalsifiable.

And as well they should, because the willingness to abandon beliefs that have been falsified is in fact the hallmark of the scientific method. Of course, in describing science, I would use different words, rather than a description that seems calculated to disparage.

I’m a Catholic because my faith does not require me to accept anything that can be proved untrue, and thus I have no conflict between what my senses and reasoning tell me is true, and what my faith requires me to accept.

As you say, there are other religions in the US, and they may well demand of their adherents the belief in things that we can falsify. In my view, those beliefs can be treated just as we’d treat flat-earthers.

Moreover, and as an aside, I absolutely acknowledge that to the rational observer, any claims about God must be regarded as both unproven and, by Occam’s Razor, likely false. My reason for believing is solid, but unfortunately it’s not one I can effectively communicate. I experienced evidence that I can’t show you. It’s rational for me to accpet that evidence, just as it would be for you to accept it if you had experienced it. But since you haven’t, I can hardly demand that you in effect “Take my word for it.”

62

And in your day to day life? Are you coworkers concerned about what church you belong to? Do you have a hard time socializing with others because of religious beliefs? I bet the answers are no.

63

Your link goes to a discussion of why the Catholic Church won’t ordain female priests.

So if I understand your argument correctly, you believe that “the beliefs of the Catholic religion” are NOT a valid basis to determine who may be a priest in the Catholic religion?

64

I’m not sure exactly why I’m being accussed of hijacking this thread.

Der Trihs decided to insult me and millions if not tens of millions of other Muslims by claiming that since we were tolerant of non-Muslims we are “bad Muslims” which is comparable to in some ways(though not entirely) like saying that black people who speak grammatically correct English are Oreos.

I merely asked him to provide evidence that he had remotely enough knowledge on the subject to make such an assertion.

He essentially admitted he was completely ignorant of the subject and then went on to compare Islam to Nazism and being a Muslim to being a member of the KKK.

Bidysabba then went on to accuse me of “extreme ignorance” while displaying it himself by claiming that Akbar founded his own religion, which he didn’t."

Beyond that, based on the examples you’re giving, I’m a bit confused by the suggestion that we can’t challenge or criticize them.

You mention the sex abuse scandal and Saudi Arabia’s law banning female drivers, but those are things that are regularly criticized and condemned and I’ve never heard anyone condemned as being a bigot for criticizing Saudi Arabia’s law.

The only time people get angry is when you attribute beliefs of a fringe to an entire group. For example there are around fifty or sixty Muslim nations on Earth and, to the best of my knowledge, Saudi Arabia is the only one that has such a law. Even such countries as Iran, not known as the bastion of women’s rights doesn’t have such laws.

Similarly, nobody disputes that homophobia and the oppression of gay people isn’t a serious problem in much of the Islamic world, but it’s hardly a subject that’s ignored and I’m not aware of anyone being accused of being a bigot for condemning Iran executions of gay people.

Beyond that, the status of gay people in the Muslim Middle East is considerably more complex than many make it out to be.

My mother was first introduced to my father by a very good friend of her’s who worked for the American Embassy and he found life in Tehran of the early 70s, as a gay person vastly easier and more pleasant than life as a gay person in either Canada or the US. In fact, he was always incredibly careful to try and make sure his superiors didn’t find out or he’d be fired, which his Iranian friends and counterparts always found absurd.

Nor is his story all that unique. Since the 19th Century numerous gay foreign service personel from the West found the Muslim Middle East vastly preferable to their native countries.

Sadly, this is no longer the case.

65

There is no reason to respect religious beliefs. The trick is to convey that without insulting the believer personally, or coming across as a total dickhead. That is not an easy line to walk. My most successful method is to simply dismiss religious talk as one would santa or elves. Not be judgmental, or launch into a lecture or challenging argument; just simple disbelief that an adult would seriously believe in such a ludicrous concept.

66

You shouldn’t. Respect is personal and something you have to earn. And the same could be said of any other idea. Why respect feminism, republicanism, liberalism, humanism, communism, capitalism, Darwinism, nationalism, Java programming, helio-centrism, football, matchbox collecting, veganism, internet message board posting, … Well you shouldn’t. You may choose to respect the people involved in all these worthwhile pursuits if they prove themselves respect-worthy. Feminism sucks, but I know a couple of hot feminists whose tits I deeply respect. It’s the same respect bullshit they were crying about during the Muhammed Cartoon Crisis, although I especially remember the idiots that attacked the Swedish artist Lars Vilks who had also made some kind of drawing of Muhammed. So some whiners attacked and shouted at him “show respect you pig!” when he was talking at a University. Which kinda breaks the first rule of earning respect: you
can’t have it if you don’t show it. Anyway, respect belongs to people, not inanimate objects or abstract ideas.

67

You are a bit confused about the scientific method. Abandoning falsified beliefs does not mean that the new ones are unfalsifiable - just that they haven’t been falsified yet. Consider the interest flap about neutrinos going faster than c. There is a request for verification and more details - not in the least from those reporting the results - but no one is saying it can’t be true because it goes against the word of St. Albert. If it turns out to be true there will be a lot of very happy physicists out there.
Now, imagine the reaction if someone dug up the bones of Jesus or found a journal of a disciple that had full information about the days after his death with no mention that he rose. Or that he actually got run over by a chariot. Happy priests? I think not.

The first two items on your list are not particularly important. The third, Adam and Eve, would seem to be more so, since I though salvation depended on our sinful nature which came from a choice by our common ancestors. If God created us sinful, then there is a problem with him requiring salvation. This of course does not affect all religions. In Hebrew School they did not consider the creation story as history. and it is treated as a just-so story explaining death, having to work, the pain of childbirth, and the hatred of snakes, and is not fundamental.
You may not have to accept things that have been falsified - but those in the past who claimed a conduit to God certainly did - but you certainly also accept things that have rather shaky foundations when they fall in line with your religion and do not accept things with equally or less shaky foundations which do not.
I accept that you had a private conversion experience of some sort - but lots of people do, and they wind up in all sorts of religions and political philosophies. These seem more a function of brain chemistry and our environment than anything actually supernatural. I don’t think they represent an external fundamental truth any more than a taste for lobster or chocolate ice cream does.
Finally, the big difference between science and religion is that science acknowledges that it stumbles on a path to getting closer to the truth, a place it will never actually reach. Religion begins with a supposed revelation of the truth - most if not all religions. “Proofs” of God start from this premise and try to justify it. What religion would you wind up with if you began with evidence of the past which would be accepted by a panel of competent historians and used only solid logic? I’d guess weak deism, at best, certainly no modern or ancient religions.

68

I live in the most diverse area of the country, and I work in high tech which seems to have a higher percentage of non-believers than most. But when I visited Charlotte, NC, the paper ran a column asking townspeople to stop mentioning God and Jesus with every breath, since it was scaring the tourists. If I were gay and wanted to get married I might be affected even here. If I had to fight through a throng of protesters to bring someone to an abortion clinic I might not think religion was so private. And I’m old enough to remember blue laws.
If one of the religious fanatics get elected (Romney is not one of them, at least) we might all suffer.

69

I live in Charlotte, NC and it is indeed an issue at times, with regard to work, socializing, etc. It’s also annoying as hell. If you’re non-religious here, there’s definitely a lot of self-censoring that needs to occur.

70

The Christian one? Huh?

You believe in the God of Abraham, who is worshiped by both Muslims and Christians.

There is no “Christian god.” (And this is a separate point made outside of the question of whether there is actually a god or gods.)

71

I guess I’ve always understood “religious beliefs” to be somewhat narrower than many examples presented in this thread: Beliefs about strictly religious claims (like “Yahweh exists,” “Jesus died for our sins,” or “the Quran was dictated to Mohammed by an angel”), not social, moral or scientific beliefs justified by religion. The former should be respected (in most cases by simply being avoided or ignored), the latter not so much. And IMO it is not “disrespecting religious belief” to point out that a purely religious justification for a social/moral/scientific belief is unacceptable (at the very least a believer should admit its unworkable/arbitrary/unfalsifiable).

Here’s an example: A phrase like “God hates f*gs” may be dressed up like a religious belief, but in my experience it’s really a social perscription. If you really want to take this ugly sentiment on, arguing over whether God really does or doesn’t hate homosexuals is pointless (equivalent to arguing the color of the eggs an elephant might lay). Instead, ask the person “do you hate them as well? Do you think there should be laws against them?”. The answer to those questions do not deserve respect if you find them repugnant.

72

Agreed, but I’m not confused – I never said otherwise.

You’re right, but you seem to think you’ve proved something. I certainly would be happy to learn such a thing, because I would then have more, and better, information than I do now.

How are the reactions of priests relevant to the discussion?

That problem exists even with the story of Adam and Eve, since they were His creations also. What of it?

Correct, and in like fashion, I don’t regard the story of Adam and Eve as fundamental, and neither does the Catholic Church.

So what?

Yes. But as a general statement, the things I accept are those things consistent with my personal experience, and the equally shaky things I reject are those that don’t.

Therefore, for me, the two sets are not equally shaky.

Sure. And that’s an eminently reasonable position for you to take. But since I have experienced my experience, so to speak, and have not experienced what others might have seen or felt, it makes less sense for me to credit their experiences over my own.

So what?

I started by proposing a principled distinction between religious claims and flat earth claims. I didn’t purport to show religious claims are true, or even more likely true than not. I simply said that the religious claims I advance are not falsifiable, and that this is a reason to treat them differently than flat-earth claims.

73

Not everyone agrees with you.

Moreover there have been several attempts now to use respect or the notion of the sanctity of religious beliefs to permit discrimination against others in the UK. You can argue it’s not the same thing, but it’s related to the point I’m making. If someone’s religious beliefs are considered an exemption from the law (specifically against discrimination) then respecting those beliefs is effectively a legal requirement, no matter how odious one might find them. These cases aren’t just a thought experiment.

Why is that your conclusion? You go from saying that I am positing a situation so artificial and hypothetical that it doesn’t actually exist to suggesting that I’m going around savaging people’s beliefs and want some kind of pat on the back for doing so; which is it?

For the record, no, I don’t routinely attack other people’s beliefs because I don’t see the need to, and fortunately live in a country where I don’t have to put up with the kind of witnessing or god bothering that would make me want to. However if someone were to try and loudly inflict their religious views on me, or make statements that I find to be morally repugnant and gave their religion as justification, I would not feel required to be polite about their beliefs particularly. Is that going around being a douche? I don’t remember interacting with you on this board before so I’m not clear why you’re presuming towards such a negative view of me.

I didn’t say that, and quite frankly don’t really care about who can and can’t be a priest in the church. I linked to that to make the point that the catholic church/faith states that women can’t be priests because essentially they hold a lesser position in society and in their religion than men. My point was that that belief is at odds with my views as a feminist, so if I were in a discussion with a catholic espousing that view I would simply say I thought that notion to be wrong and the fact that it’s religiously-based no special justification.

Yes I see what you’re saying, and I think this kind of gets to the nub of it. I agree that the distinction should be made between what the belief is and the impact of it, but I would continue to question whether respect is due to a belief that is clearly falsifiable or plain nonsensical. “The world was made in 7 days by god” is simply not true, we know it isn’t, and if someone declares that’s what they believe and I have to respect that then, well, they’re wrong, I don’t, any more than I need to respect the flat earther’s world view. That doesn’t mean I would see a point in challenging it - as I said in another thread, why bother when there’s no prospect of a productive exchange?

74

I dunno about this. I show respect to perfect strangers on the subway, and they haven’t “earned” squat.

I’d say respecting others is the default position, which respect may be forefited by their actions - say, someone on the subway acting rudely.

The reason to respect religious beliefs has nothing to do with the beliefs, but with the people who hold them. Given that, to these people, their beliefs are sometimes part of their self-identity, it behooves one to show respect to the people as a default, as one would any stranger - unless of course those individual people forefit that respect through their actions.

75

Because you’re going on a tangent about something quite specific that doesn’t actually relate to the question I posed.

Rather than play semantics I’m sure you know what Der Trihs was saying vis a vis religion vs morality; I don’t think your example is very good.

Fine, I’m just asking this tangent not consume the thread.

:dubious:

Here is some summary information on the crime of apostasy (renouncing Islam) of which I’m sure you’re very aware.

Any country that has Sharia as its judicial foundation must hold apostasy as a capital offence, even if it doesn’t prosecute it, and often they do. Actions of a fringe?

76

I am a Christian.

I don’t ridicule and belittle the beliefs of Wiccans, or Hindus, or atheists because I don’t like being rude, and mean. Being rude and mean is not philosophical failing, or logically indicative of false premises in someone’s views. But I don’t like it.

I would prefer that more people chose to avoid being rude, and mean. However, I have not noticed that trend over my lifetime. Nor have I found that Christians, atheists, or any other particular subset of humans divided by beliefs are more, or less likely to be mean and rude. It’s a sad thing. (On reflection, I feel that the Hindus I have actually met seem to be less rude, and mean than other specific groups, but I have only a small sample, and cannot make the generalization with any confidence.)

Tris

77

Really? You think most Catholics (not to mention other Christians) would feel happy and fulfilled by learning that all they believed in was a lie? That the Pope would cheerfully close up shop, make the Vatican into a museum, and sell the land and give the money to the poor?
Scientists should love science, not any particular theory, though there are always Fred Hoyles out there. There should be no faith involved. There are some people who seem to love religion for religion, the ones who change faiths every week, but I think most are pretty committed to one. You might be happy, but I doubt it, since the scholarship does not point to the Gospel story being true, so I suspect you would not believe what you do if it were based on an analysis unaffected by faith.

But God gave them free will - he did not make them inherently sinful. They also stand for all of us. But my religion never rested on their sin, so I can hardly defend the story as it stands.

My understanding is that the current view is that there were Adam and Eve stand-ins amongst our true ancestors. Do you believe that mankind is inherently sinful by choice?
Given either denying the historical and scientific record and accepting it and rejiggering the justification for core beliefs based on what really happened, I’d prefer the latter and I respect the Catholic Church for preferring the latter also.

As you know better than most, people’s personal experiences are notably unreliable.
I’d want supporting evidence myself, for either.

I have no idea of which claims you advance, but as a Catholic as opposed to a deist I would suspect many of your claims are indeed falsifiable. In any case, I was talking about claims with no evidence as opposed to claims with evidence that have not been falsified. We can all make up zillions of unfalsifiable beliefs, but we tend not to act on them unless there is some evidence that they might be true, as opposed to lack of proof that they are false.

78

I have always liked the Boy Scout definition of Reverent:

While this is contradictory for many faiths (especially those who require evangelizing), it does strike at some of the issue. Follow your path, but respect that others follow their own path. Now, if you don’t like how I ACT on my beliefs, that is fair game IMHO. If I start thumping my Bible while trying to pass some new blue law - I am fair game. But acting like an asshole about me taking my kids to church camp? That means no more pot luck invites for YOU.

79

Let’s take politeness as a given. Don’t you think that you are inherently disrespectful of Hinduism if you ever say to him that his gods are false? Which is of course inherent in your statement you are a Christian. How about if you become convinced that you need to tell him the Good News for the good of his soul?

Before I was an atheist I still absolutely rejected the concept of Jesus as either the Messiah or the son of God. I demonstrated this by going to Temple. By the very act I was not respecting Christianity. The OP is about respecting religious beliefs after all, not religious people.

80

Yes, ish. That kind of ‘respecting other’s beliefs’ is mostly sensible and I just smile grimly and put up with it for some of my family. Not just for religion, but for alternative therapies.

If I get you right, what you’re talking about is the sort of thing like where a religious school in England (cite - but I also once gota teaching job at a Catholic school which I’d assumed was as secular as most Catholic schools in the UK are, and it REALLY wasn’t, so it’s not just Islam) is teaching that homosexuality is bad, and others are told that they shouldn’t do anything about it because you have to respect their beliefs?

FWIW, Der Trihs, Islam isn’t an all-or-nothing religion. There are different sects - mainstream ones - that have different views. Islam officially depends on the views of the later prophets and on the Imams. Catholicicism, in reality, often depends on the views of the later writers (like Paul), the Saints and the Popes, but that’s not the official stance.

Some Shia sects are fine with drinking alcohol, for example, so just because you know someone’s Muslim it doesn’t necessarily mean their religion says they shouldn’t drink alcohol.