Respecting Christians

For me the question or whether or not I have to respect someone's religious beliefs is meaningless.

The question is to what degree I have to respect someone's opinion and it every topic except religion it's just understood that I only have to respect that opinion to the degree that the person can support it.

What I've spent my entire adult life opposing is the very concept of faith. The very idea that there is some magical special subset of opinions as to how the world works that a person can hold without even pretending they have evidence for it simply by slapping the arbitrary category of "belief" on it.

If we reject the idea that beliefs are special kinds of opinions that operate under a different set of rules then any other opinion, the whole religious respect thing becomes... well sorta absurd.
 
jhunter1163 said:
Let's try the last dozen posts or so again, with more civil and polite and less personalization, shall we?
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: jhunter1163
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Those bloody Christians, sowing dissent among the atheists.
 
Religious beleifs or lack there of are entirely unimportant for life. Life goes on regardless of whatever people beleive or how strongly they beleive it. What does matter is how you treat others.
 
Dogdoctor said:
Religious beleifs or lack there of are entirely unimportant for life. Life goes on regardless of whatever people beleive or how strongly they beleive it. What does matter is how you treat others.
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True. I judge people by what they do, not what they say.
 
Legend said:
Right, so, once again, racists are perfectly fine folks, are they?
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To oversimplify it somewhat, If the don't act on it, yeah.

To delve a little deeper into it the question becomes a lot more muddled. I mean on a certain level you can't completely separate opinions and actions. I long ago grew weary of the "Think whatever you want, just don't act it out" line of rhetoric from many apologists. Our actions are based on thoughts and if 100 people think X then 99 of them are going to try to put it into some form of action, that's just human nature.

So acting right isn't completely dependent on thinking right but it's a hell of a lot easier to act right when you are thinking right.
 
I guess the question becomes a definition of what it means to "act" on a thought.

My problem was with daffyd saying "not what they say." To me, saying something is an action (a racist joke is an action, racial slurs are actions, etc).
 
To me it's more a question of how wide a rift between their opinions and their actions is it reasonable for a person to maintain.

I get that looking at this from a certain angle it sorta seems like a creepy thought crime sort of idea, but I do think that it's sorta unreasonable to expect people to hold certain opinions and not act of them, so in certain cases opinions themselves do have to be opposed.

It's a hard line to walk I'll admit.
 
And the difference between a personal argument and an intellectual argument.

There is a world of difference between discussing the values of Opinion X in an open intellectual discussion and walking up to someone that holds Opinion X in the street and demanding that they personally justify Opinion X to you.
 
I repeat: I'm taking issue with the word choice of "say", because to me, "saying" is doing something. To me, "doing" doesn't exclusively mean muscle movement; what a narrow definition that would be.
 
You're slinking out of a legitimate line of questioning again, one which I've justified in subsequent posts. It's a little hard when people want to engage your opinions rather than just listen to you explain the degree to which God doesn't exist, huh?
 
Legend said:
You're slinking out of a legitimate line of questioning again, one which I've justified in subsequent posts. It's a little hard when people want to engage your opinions rather than just listen to you explain the degree to which God doesn't exist, huh?
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It is not my fault if you do not understand why no gods exist. I have made my opinions quite clear. There is a difference between respecting people and respecting their opinions. I know a woman who is a Wiccan. I think her views on this are total nonsense. She knows this, but I respect her as a person because she has brought up two children alone in difficult circumstances and is one of the most honest people that I know and we get on very well with each other. Asking me if racists are nice people is not exactly the quintessence of legitimate debate. I don't know any Christians to respect or disrespect, Flanders is a sane, secular country. The church has been in decline here for a long time. I know quite a few youngsters who have never been inside a church.
 
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You really need to brush-up on your comprehension skills.

If you don't plan on answering the question, why do you keep coming back to this thread I started?
 
Legend said:
You really need to brush-up on your comprehension skills.

If you don't plan on answering the question, why do you keep coming back to this thread I started?
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Masochism. What was the question again? I have a suspicion that you are a closet believer.
 
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Legend said:
You're slinking out of a legitimate line of questioning again, one which I've justified in subsequent posts. It's a little hard when people want to engage your opinions rather than just listen to you explain the degree to which God doesn't exist, huh?
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Alas, some atheists are very dogmatic. They will shout "God is a fairy tale" to everything just as reliably as some Christians punctuate each sentence with "praise Jesus". About all you can do is skip past their content-free posts. But a lot of us atheists find it annoying too.
 
Tricky said:
Alas, some atheists are very dogmatic. They will shout "God is a fairy tale" to everything just as reliably as some Christians punctuate each sentence with "praise Jesus". About all you can do is skip past their content-free posts. But a lot of us atheists find it annoying too.
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Honestly, the first time I've found a fellow atheist who I can legitimately compare to a Christian in terms of his approach to the subject.

You're right, it's bogging me and this discussion down.
 
People aren't perfect. Even people who think they are perfect aren't. Every one has bias. Everyone is prejudiced in some way. Everyone believes stuff that isn't true. If you can't stand others who have different thoughts than your own that's your problem .
 
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