There isn’t anything wrong with having a community of people who share your beliefs and values and holding ceremonies and celebrations with them. The problem is when you try to force your religion on everybody else.
The problem is when you try to force your religion on everybody else.
Which religion does by existing. Everyone gets to vote. And as long a religions exist, some will do so based on things that are not real.
Additionally, respecting different ways of life, and being religious, are mutually exclusive concepts.
Someone that can genuinely think the way I live my life leads to eternal damnation, and also respect my right to choose, is not a good person. To merely treat others decently, the religious must reconcile internal moral beliefs in ways no-one should have to.
Non-secular thinking is not compatible with a secular utopia on earth. And I’m not talking about horoscopes. But religion, which by definition, is a set of rules for how society should work and how people should live. Often applied on the pain of death, or worse.
Pushing those rules on non-conformers is a intrinsic systemic component. Religion without it is not religion. It’s just a nice idea, which subscribers get to hold dear while somehow accepting that anyone who doesn’t must inevitably rot in hell, and they have to be ok with that.
All religions, consist of rules for how things should be.
That is not compatible with live and let live. That I reference the worst of them does not make the lesser ones innocent. Just lesser. Half bad is still bad. So is a quarter. Or any fraction.
Religion is informal law, which unlike actual law, is not up for a vote. And believers do get to vote, which can make their laws, our laws.
Trusting them to “live and let live” which in their frame of reference might doom others to some purgatory or other, isn’t as valid an option as you make out. And I don’t think anyone should have to make that internal moral compromise.
I don’t subscribe to the idea that people shouldn’t try to change how others live.
When does saving someone from drowning, become trying to force them to live like you do? Meddling for someone’s own good, is not a bad thing.
Advocating for bicycle helmets is good. Why isn’t saving people from hell?
The difference, is whether you meddle based on something that is real.
Some people do not believe helmets do anything. Should we not try to save them anyway?
Religions introduce a bunch of bullshit that has made saving people from themselves a shameful thing to attempt, just so that we can all semi-functionally co-exist.
Atheist?
We call ourselves antitheist.
(Yes, I’ll talk about the ills of religion and why it should be abolished. No, I’m not doing it at grandmas deathbed.)
There isn’t anything wrong with having a community of people who share your beliefs and values and holding ceremonies and celebrations with them. The problem is when you try to force your religion on everybody else.
Which religion does by existing. Everyone gets to vote. And as long a religions exist, some will do so based on things that are not real.
Additionally, respecting different ways of life, and being religious, are mutually exclusive concepts.
Someone that can genuinely think the way I live my life leads to eternal damnation, and also respect my right to choose, is not a good person. To merely treat others decently, the religious must reconcile internal moral beliefs in ways no-one should have to.
Non-secular thinking is not compatible with a secular utopia on earth. And I’m not talking about horoscopes. But religion, which by definition, is a set of rules for how society should work and how people should live. Often applied on the pain of death, or worse.
Pushing those rules on non-conformers is a intrinsic systemic component. Religion without it is not religion. It’s just a nice idea, which subscribers get to hold dear while somehow accepting that anyone who doesn’t must inevitably rot in hell, and they have to be ok with that.
So you’ve made up a very narrow and arbitrary definition of “religion” which sounds very much like evangelical Christianity.
All religions, consist of rules for how things should be.
That is not compatible with live and let live. That I reference the worst of them does not make the lesser ones innocent. Just lesser. Half bad is still bad. So is a quarter. Or any fraction.
Religion is informal law, which unlike actual law, is not up for a vote. And believers do get to vote, which can make their laws, our laws.
Trusting them to “live and let live” which in their frame of reference might doom others to some purgatory or other, isn’t as valid an option as you make out. And I don’t think anyone should have to make that internal moral compromise.
I don’t subscribe to the idea that people shouldn’t try to change how others live.
When does saving someone from drowning, become trying to force them to live like you do? Meddling for someone’s own good, is not a bad thing.
Advocating for bicycle helmets is good. Why isn’t saving people from hell?
The difference, is whether you meddle based on something that is real.
Some people do not believe helmets do anything. Should we not try to save them anyway?
Religions introduce a bunch of bullshit that has made saving people from themselves a shameful thing to attempt, just so that we can all semi-functionally co-exist.