Conversation Between bestofyou and Watch Key Phone

[PART 2]

And anyway, my point is the difference there seems to be between religious and non-religious people in terms of their reaction to amusement. To use your analogy, if a gay person (when I said I was straight) laughed in my face and said "You are absurd and ridiculous not to be attracted to your own sex", I wouldn't feel upset, insulted or defensive. I would be just as amused myself. Amused that someone believes so strongly, something I disagree with. And probably pleased by pure human variation. I wouldn't start attacking back, saying they were being 'disrespectful' or 'disgusting'.

This is where my other point comes in - there just must be something wrong with religious belief if it is weak enough that a person doesn't have confidence in their belief. Because no-one who is upset, hurt or insulted by simply being laughed at, can possibly be rock-hard in confidence of their beliefs. Even an agnostic or seasoned skeptic would at least be confident enough in their uncertainty that they wouldn't be troubled by being laughed at.

[PART 1]

There's a difference between respect and amusement. I am never going to unfairly insult or attack a religious person because I believe their views are false. I don't do that to anyone, regardless of the reasons. Similarly, I wouldn't attack or insult a gay person if I believed their feelings were wrong, or anyone else who thought or believed or felt something I disagreed with.

And like I already said, I would not laugh in the face of someone who told me they believed in God, because I make an effort to be polite and courteous. But if I became engaged in a discussion with them about their religion, then i might be likely to use analogies like Santa or fairies, (as I said before) to illustrate how I feel about religious belief. Similarly, if I felt homosexuality was wrong (I don't), I might use examples from nature of other things I believed to be 'wrong', sick, dangerous (or whatever else I felt about homosexuality), in order to demonstrate my feelings.

I would never intend to humiliate someone about their religious beliefs, that would give me no benefit. And I think the person who posted originally may have been a bit over the mark in terms of attacking beliefs when it wasn't relevant. But that's merely a problem of it being unnecessary or misplaced, and nothing more.

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Someone holding a view towards gays such as above would be coined homophobic for showing gay people such low levels of respect. So until you can justifiy your own justification for showing religious people basically no respect in a way other than 'I find it amusing, therefore it is ok for me to laugh at those who believe,' I shall coin you as sectarian.

You missed my point, the point was that for someone who had no religion, he sure seemed to bring the topic up a lot more than anyone else.

It is disgusting because of the sheer disrespect. I doesn't upset me whatsoever. I'm a catholic, and I respect everybodys beliefs, whether it is free p. or athiest.

If you find it amusing that someone believes if something you find so absurd that is fine. I can have the decency to respect your views. However why do you feel it is prefectly fine that athiets can cross the line of decency and show a complete lack of respect for other peoples beliefs just because they have differing views?

If you find it absurd, why not write, 'due to the strong evidence ____. I think it is impossible that God and therefore sin is real'. Why do you see it as acceptable that because you are amused by it, it is ok to put of a show of hummiliation and disrespect?

If you found gay people and their sexual activities amusing, would you show the same lack of respect? Or if someone else did, would you say, 'hey, they have a completly differing mindset to homosexuals, therefore if they believe it is wrong, why should they not be entitled to say so?' Would you post in a thread were a gay guys asks for relationship advice, 'ha, the overwhelming evidence that two men are sexually incompatible, simply shows that you two are complete freaks of nature. My advice is that you should break up with him, buy a box of viagra and go hump a female. If nature intended for you to stick a penis in a guy, I'd be sure that nature would have created more conventional methods, guys are ridiculous.'


I don't care for your views towards gays, that is a hypothetical situation if you did hold such views. The point of it is, you seem to think it is fine to show religious people a rather disgusting lack of disrespect, yet find it hard to believe you would show other types of people that hold differing views to your own the same level of disrespect.