On the surface level, yeah. But if you dig a bit deeper a religious person upholds the idea that religious belief is reasonable. When people have the opinion that religious belief is reasonable it causes measurable harm to everyone on this planet.
An individual believer cannot be separated from the religion.
My point was that people fear the average person who works a common job raising a family but is also Muslim. There’s definitely crazy religious zealots in Islam, but they are the minority of the ~1.5 Billion.
Yeah individually religious people can be fairly benign. The fundamental problem is with religion.
Extremists are able to hide behind the guise of religion because non-extremists enable them. Because the only way for “moderate” religious people to oppose religious extremists is to admit that it’s all metaphorical bullshit.
I think you mean that the problem is with extremist, not with religious people. Also, people where I live do oppose them because being an asshole is generally against Islam. (I live in a Muslim majority region)
Not all religious people are fundamentalists. The vast majority of Muslims (and Christians and Hindu and Jews and Buddhists etc etc) are moderate to progressive believers who aren’t necessarily any more toxic than those of us who aren’t religious.
Not separating individual believers from the religion and each other is every bit as bigoted and stupid as claiming that all atheists eat babies just because I do.
This is a very narrow viewpoint in my opinion. I’m not denying religion has caused harm, but a large portion of people have found it to be a means to do good (and I mean legit good that almost everyone can agree on, things like foodbanks, stopping addictions and so on)
That’s ridiculous, secular people do lots of good all the time. In fact, religious people have a far greater chance of doing harm, because they sometimes believe in things like homophobia, misogynism, genital mutilation etc. If people didn’t have religion to back up these evil ideas then we’d see less of them.
On the surface level, yeah. But if you dig a bit deeper a religious person upholds the idea that religious belief is reasonable. When people have the opinion that religious belief is reasonable it causes measurable harm to everyone on this planet.
An individual believer cannot be separated from the religion.
My point was that people fear the average person who works a common job raising a family but is also Muslim. There’s definitely crazy religious zealots in Islam, but they are the minority of the ~1.5 Billion.
Yeah individually religious people can be fairly benign. The fundamental problem is with religion.
Extremists are able to hide behind the guise of religion because non-extremists enable them. Because the only way for “moderate” religious people to oppose religious extremists is to admit that it’s all metaphorical bullshit.
I think you mean that the problem is with extremist, not with religious people. Also, people where I live do oppose them because being an asshole is generally against Islam. (I live in a Muslim majority region)
I meant oppose in the theological sense. Religious extremists are given legitimacy by religious moderates. (I live in a Christian majority region)
Not all religious people are fundamentalists. The vast majority of Muslims (and Christians and Hindu and Jews and Buddhists etc etc) are moderate to progressive believers who aren’t necessarily any more toxic than those of us who aren’t religious.
Not separating individual believers from the religion and each other is every bit as bigoted and stupid as claiming that all atheists eat babies just because I do.
This is a very narrow viewpoint in my opinion. I’m not denying religion has caused harm, but a large portion of people have found it to be a means to do good (and I mean legit good that almost everyone can agree on, things like foodbanks, stopping addictions and so on)
That’s ridiculous, secular people do lots of good all the time. In fact, religious people have a far greater chance of doing harm, because they sometimes believe in things like homophobia, misogynism, genital mutilation etc. If people didn’t have religion to back up these evil ideas then we’d see less of them.
Any culture can be harmful and secular people can and often do good.
I’m not a Catholic, so I don’t consider bad deeds to be ok so ling as you do a few good.
Someone call a plumber, /r/atheism is leaking again