Right, because it's not like your credit card information is stored on any other computer system, or on paper, anywhere other than in your home. Why don't you bury the card in a concrete slab in your basement... then no one could ever access your account, right?
There's a difference between respecting someone's *right* to have a belief, and respecting the beliefs someone has. People are free to be Neo-Nazis, but I don't respect their beliefs, and I would certainly judge them for having those beliefs. I similarly judge the religiously faithful. That doesn't make me a bigot, it makes me someone able to make reasoned judgements based on the evidence at hand. If your "beliefs" or opinons are irrational or ignorant, I can say so. If mine are, you can say so to me.
You may not be evil, but your religious faith is. Not your religion, your faith. Here's why... religious faith is not merely irrational, it's anti-rational. It doesn't merely ask you to believe in some god in the absence of all evidence, it asks you to maintain your belief in god despite all evidence to the contrary. In the judeo-christian tradition, this is made explicit throughout the bible itself: the story of Abraham, the story of Job, the story of Jesus's temptation, etc.. In each, as in many other places throughout old and new testaments, the clear moral is that any evidence which suggests that -- (a) there is no god, or "yahweh" is not the one and only; (b) said "yahweh" doesn't care about humans; or (c) "yahweh" is a petty, vindictive, cruel tyrant -- should be wholly and forcefully disregarded.
And so, for example, despite all the clear evidence that "abstinence-only sex education" leads to the same or higher rates of premarital sex, higher incidences of sexually-transmitted disease, and the same or higher rates of unwanted teen pregnancies, because its proponents *believe* they're right, even though they are also (supposedly) concerned about all of those problems, they also believe that it's virtuous to ignore all that evidence and keep forcing such nonsense down the throats of school boards wherever they can.
And *you* may not share those people's beliefs, but by promulgating, or even tacitly supporting, the idea that there is a virtue to ignoring evidence in favor of belief, you're engendering the mechanism by which those people justify their complete disregard for the actual well-being of our society as a whole. You can't make the argument that your "personal beliefs" don't effect me. We share one society in this world. The irrational disregard of its real conditions impacts all of us.
Slashdot Mirror
Right, because it's not like your credit card information is stored on any other computer system, or on paper, anywhere other than in your home. Why don't you bury the card in a concrete slab in your basement... then no one could ever access your account, right?
There's a difference between respecting someone's *right* to have a belief, and respecting the beliefs someone has. People are free to be Neo-Nazis, but I don't respect their beliefs, and I would certainly judge them for having those beliefs. I similarly judge the religiously faithful. That doesn't make me a bigot, it makes me someone able to make reasoned judgements based on the evidence at hand. If your "beliefs" or opinons are irrational or ignorant, I can say so. If mine are, you can say so to me.
You may not be evil, but your religious faith is. Not your religion, your faith. Here's why... religious faith is not merely irrational, it's anti-rational. It doesn't merely ask you to believe in some god in the absence of all evidence, it asks you to maintain your belief in god despite all evidence to the contrary. In the judeo-christian tradition, this is made explicit throughout the bible itself: the story of Abraham, the story of Job, the story of Jesus's temptation, etc.. In each, as in many other places throughout old and new testaments, the clear moral is that any evidence which suggests that -- (a) there is no god, or "yahweh" is not the one and only; (b) said "yahweh" doesn't care about humans; or (c) "yahweh" is a petty, vindictive, cruel tyrant -- should be wholly and forcefully disregarded.
And so, for example, despite all the clear evidence that "abstinence-only sex education" leads to the same or higher rates of premarital sex, higher incidences of sexually-transmitted disease, and the same or higher rates of unwanted teen pregnancies, because its proponents *believe* they're right, even though they are also (supposedly) concerned about all of those problems, they also believe that it's virtuous to ignore all that evidence and keep forcing such nonsense down the throats of school boards wherever they can.
And *you* may not share those people's beliefs, but by promulgating, or even tacitly supporting, the idea that there is a virtue to ignoring evidence in favor of belief, you're engendering the mechanism by which those people justify their complete disregard for the actual well-being of our society as a whole. You can't make the argument that your "personal beliefs" don't effect me. We share one society in this world. The irrational disregard of its real conditions impacts all of us.