Religion's evil and social apathy

[Rye]

Essentially, whenever I bring up religion on local boards, everyone just sort of says "bringing up religion like this is immature, christians and muslims are fine people for the most part, only the extremists ruin things for everyone."

For instance, I brought up how the majority of anti-gay violence in the UK has a christian religious element, and I get people saying "there's no fundamentalists here, move along," or "there are more important things to care about," and general apathy. In a country like this where almost nobody is christian and we've had it drilled into us that tolerance of different ideas, even ones based on hate speech, should not be aggressively criticised, religion as a source of human misery is hard for people to get "righteously" worked up about.

What can you do to deal with that?

[Alferd Packer]

Attack their apathetic position as unethical? I mean, you can't argue with someone who appears not to care, so the best you can hope for, really, is to point out the absurdity of his position.

And if that doesn't work, flame the shit out of him. Phrases like "cock mongrel" come to mind.

[Darth Wong]

Essentially, whenever I bring up religion on local boards, everyone just sort of says "bringing up religion like this is immature, christians and muslims are fine people for the most part, only the extremists ruin things for everyone."

For instance, I brought up how the majority of anti-gay violence in the UK has a christian religious element, and I get people saying "there's no fundamentalists here, move along," or "there are more important things to care about," and general apathy. In a country like this where almost nobody is christian and we've had it drilled into us that tolerance of different ideas, even ones based on hate speech, should not be aggressively criticised, religion as a source of human misery is hard for people to get "righteously" worked up about.

What can you do to deal with that?

Point out "But none of you moderates really do anything to stop or speak out against the fundamentalists, do you? Do you kick them out of your churches? Do you protest against their protests? Does it enrage you that these horrible things are being said in the name of your faith? It sure doesn't seem like it. And that makes me think you agree with them, at least partially. In fact, I'll bet you think that someone like me, who speaks up for their victims, is just as much of an "extremist" as they are. So what does that say about you?"

[Alferd Packer]

Point out "But none of you moderates really do anything to stop or speak out against the fundamentalists, do you? Do you kick them out of your churches? Do you protest against their protests? Does it enrage you that these horrible things are being said in the name of your faith? It sure doesn't seem like it. And that makes me think you agree with them, at least partially. In fact, I'll bet you think that someone like me, who speaks up for their victims, is just as much of an "extremist" as they are. So what does that say about you?"

''...I think it says you're all a bunch of cock mongrels." Sorry, couldn't resist!

Anyway, that's an excellent point. Now that I think about it a bit more, their apathy may be the result a strange application of the Golden Mean fallacy. They view the fundamentalists as bad apples, but they think that people who disparage what they do are equally extreme, so they consider themselves, existing somewhere between these two positions, as the correct ones. And since they think they are correct, they don't need to care about either extreme, because both are wrong.

[Rye]

While none of them are moderates (everyone around here seems to be an atheist) they do consider me as bad as them for merely pointing out religion's lameness. The most irritating thing I hear is "I agree with you, I am an atheist, I just know most religious people are decent for the most part. There's no need to keep on ranting about religion because religion isn't important around here. You're just as bad as they are for attacking the beliefs of normal people that live ordinary lives. Join the BNP if you hate muslims so much."

Now, obviously, since other places aren't moderated that well, all I can do is say "Do you dislike Naziism, Mein Kampf and the other words of National Socialism? They're the core of that philosophy, and it's not qualitatively any worse than what's in the Bible or Quran, I'm just consistent and hate both. I don't hate the people that are benign, regardless of what invisible man they believe in."

It's like people are more offended that someone alerts them to religious violence rather than said violence existing, and are even more offended that someone openly criticises the religion itself when doing so because most religious people are alright around here.

[mr friendly guy]

I wonder if this is due to the PC environment pervading society. The need for tolerance applies to all, but they don't understand why we want tolerance. So to them lack of tolerance for Nazism is as bad as lack of tolerance for someone based on race. In fact I have seen some morons use the argument that if you advocate tolerance but are intolerant to racists then you are a hypocrite. I guess it just shows people are morons.

On another note, I love the irony of religious people complaining about how political correctness "prevents" (it doesn't really) them from criticising gays, atheists as it would label them intolerant, but doesn't realise its the same thing which prevents others criticising their religion.

[Darth Wong]

Unfortunately, people have confused tolerance of human beings with tolerance of ideas, no matter what those beliefs may be.

It's like taking the phrase "we shouldn't torture anyone, not even Nazis" and distorting it into "we shouldn't outright reject any ideology, not even Nazism".

[Talanth]

For instance, I brought up how the majority of anti-gay violence in the UK has a christian religious element, and I get people saying "there's no fundamentalists here, move along,"

As a minor side point I can understand why British people are likely to have that atitude. I've met anti-gays and racists in my life, and many people over here have, but I've never met a bad christian (point to note: I do not consider someone trying to convert me as being bad). In fact I don't know many christians at all. That isn't to say that fundies arn't here and arn't a problem, but we do seem to have far fewer here than many other countrys seem to.

I guess in America fundies realy are in your face a lot of the time, like racists are in your face a lot of the time when you live in Britain, but because we don't see fundies around we forget they're their at all.

[Darth Wong]

American Christians wear it on their sleeves. I've seen fucking billboards driving through the US. You see it on bumper stickers all the time. But don't tell yourself that there are no fundie assholes in other countries just because they don't have the public clout that they do in the US. They're there, and in a way, they're more insidious because they're working furtively, behind the scenes.

[salm]

Just look at the sheer amount of christians who came to the catholic world youth day in cologne and celebrated Papa Ratzi like a fucking pop star.

[Darth Yoshi]

I responded once that if a factory consistantly produced faulty cars, blaming the cars is fucking retarded. It was fairly effective at shutting them up.

[Darwin]

For instance, I brought up how the majority of anti-gay violence in the UK has a christian religious element,

Actually, 25% of the anti-gay violence in the UK is inflicted by muslims. (Who make up 2% of the population) Not that the other 75% is justified, just putting it into persepctive.

[Keevan_Colton]

Gee the asshole New Coke of Abrahamic Religions...say it aint so.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all just the same shitty ideology with different make-up on. Dont let the fact they dont get on confuse you, they are fundamentally all thanks to the same drugged up mysoginist little shit heads...

And frankly evangelicals preying on people in the streets is bad.

We do have them in the UK, they're often led by exported american dipshits, but they're out there in the streets with quaint little leaflets with questions like "If you were hit by a bus today, would you go to heaven?"

My answer has usually been "No you retarded little fuck, I'd go to the fucking hospital."

I've just had a walk along Princes Street with little shits trying to force bibles onto people so my mood is less than chipper.