You hear this so often these days. “I have this belief and even though it sounds crazy you must respect my belief.” Bull shit! It’s OK for someone to believe in Unicorns or Fairies or Aliens. I don’t care. But when that belief is brought into the public square, like what’s happening with abortions, gay marriage, Christian prayer in schools or that insanity called Intelligent Design, then I care.
I came across an interesting article by Anthony Furey a columnist for the Toronto Sun saying - “If you think your god is the one and only god, well then you certainly don’t think the other guy’s is. Which means you likely don’t respect him for joining the wrong team. Nor should you. You wouldn’t be a very good believer if you did.
And guess what? That’s OK. The multi-faith crowd don’t want you to know this, but we were never meant to “respect” each others’ religions. We’re simply meant to tolerate them. Two starkly different approaches.”
I can’t respect a belief that wants to denigrate one half of the human population (women), who wants to control their sex lives and if they get pregnant, they have no choice but to carry to term. I can’t respect a belief that is OK with denying a certain segment of the population basic rights as to how to live and who to spend their lives with solely because their holy book says their sex acts are evil and they need to be killed. I can’t respect a belief that says that all Americans must adhere to their particular religious view because their god wants them to.
I’m getting tired of politicians spouting religious dogma to citizens just to satiate a minority of people that want these beliefs promulgated through out the land. And I so tired of these religious people trying to dumb everyone down to first century, stone age thinking about the world. The Earth is NOT 6,000 years old. A world wide flood NEVER happened. Get over it!
I’m astounded that some countries are now passing laws to make it a crime to blaspheme someone’s religion. What they want is everyone to stop thinking for themselves and become drones who follow some idiot who may sound good but who is only interested in what’s good for themselves. Ask any of the hundreds of mega church pastors if they are willing to give up all their wealth to help the poor. I’ll bet you won’t find any raising their hand.
Religious belief needs to be challenged. People need to speak up when people like Pat Robertson says dumb things like the gays have a ring that will help transmit AIDS. When Ken Ham promotes his “Creation Museum” which teaches kids that Noah “did” build an Ark and that he saved all those animals, including dinosaurs, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we need to speak up. Or when one Republican politician after another says that Intelligent Design needs to be taught in public school science classes along with evolution, which they claim hasn’t be proven, then we need to say something.
Respect your religion? No way!