0.4.4: Do religious beliefs deserve respect or reverence?

Version 1.0 March 2013                                Previous Version

Almost every one of us, everyone alive, religious or not, believes that most religions are wrong.  How should we respond to false religions?

·       A few confused souls claim that all religions are about love, so in a way they’re all true.  But they can't be, at least not in the details.  We might be able to say that all religions are striving for the same thing (perhaps by definition, because they are all religions), but there are immense differences in their analyses of what is real and how to respond to it.  While Hindus see the world as illusion Christians treat it as a real creation of God.  While Muslims strive to save themselves from sin, in Buddhism there is no self to be saved.  They can't all be right.

·       Christians think Muslims are wrong, and vice versa.  Same with Buddhists and Hindus.

·        Agnostics think believers and non-believers are wrong to have beliefs one way or the other.

·        Atheists think all agnostics and believers in god are wrong.

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Many of us believe that other people form beliefs and adopt a religion on emotional or cultural grounds, and that this isn't reasonable.  Some go further and say it is ignorant, stupid or crazy.  Some go even further, to ridicule, or treat with contempt, people of faith or other faiths, or those of no faith.

●  We must all know that “There, but for the grace of god, or accidents of birth, go Iâ€�. 

●  We were all once ignorant children, and many of us remain ignorant, perhaps through no fault of our own.  Some of us can't help being intellectually lazy, incompetent or disabled. 

●  It takes a lot of time and money to learn a lot.  Many young people haven’t had enough time.

●  Most of us have different ideas about what the facts are.

●  Most of us are capable of making different choices even when we see the same facts.

●  We are all caught on the horns of the dilemma or truth versus causality or chaos.

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We must allow that our views may be incorrect and hence acknowledge the potential legitimacy of alternative views.  We must acknowledge the emotional attachments many of us have to our own beliefs and be sensitive to others who are similar.  In other words we must respect others views, and be tolerant of them, acknowledge our uncertainty, and seek a diversity of informed opinion that may enable us to learn, with appropriate humility.

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Attitudes of respect and humility, valuing uncertainty and diversity, do not require reverence for beliefs we reasonably conclude are false.  We are not obliged to treat others views as though they are true, when we believe they are not.  It is reasonable to use humour to point out flaws in other views.  Those of us who live in free societies do it all the time with our politicians.  Political cartoons that expose a politician’s hypocrisy are a service to the community.  But jokes that imply evil intent are unhelpful.  Just as we think it appropriate to avoid using offensive language to our grandparents, so we think it appropriate to avoid being unnecessarily offensive to those of different views

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The degree to which we avoid offence and treat others with respect will of course be tempered by

●  The degree to which we are treated with respect by those others. 

●  The degree to which the others are sincere in their beliefs and act in accordance with them. 

No reasonable belief system openly supports hypocrisy (outside Machiavellian politics) , so attacks on the hypocrites can be a shared exercise.

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We should treat all reasonable people with respect, but not all beliefs with reverence.

It is reasonable to attack the belief but usually inappropriate to attack the believer.