Religions don’t deserve no respect!

Rodney Dangerfield said “I don’t get no respect”. Religions demand respect and they usually get it, but they don’t deserve it.

From Butterflies and Wheels I learned of this article in the Guardian:

It is time to reverse the prevailing notion that religious commitment is intrinsically deserving of respect, and that it should be handled with kid gloves and protected by custom and in some cases law against criticism and ridicule.

It is time to refuse to tip-toe around people who claim respect, consideration, special treatment, or any other kind of immunity, on the grounds that they have a religious faith, as if having faith were a privilege-endowing virtue, as if it were noble to believe in unsupported claims and ancient superstitions. It is neither. [Snip].

On the contrary: to believe something in the face of evidence and against reason - to believe something by faith - is ignoble, irresponsible and ignorant, and merits the opposite of respect. It is time to say so.

It is time to demand of believers that they take their personal choices and preferences in these non-rational and too often dangerous matters into the private sphere, like their sexual proclivities. Everyone is free to believe what they want, providing they do not bother (or coerce, or kill) others; but no-one is entitled to claim privileges merely on the grounds that they are votaries of one or another of the world's many religions.

And as this last point implies, it is time to demand and apply a right for the rest of us to non-interference by religious persons and organisations - a right to be free of proselytisation and the efforts of self-selected minority groups to impose their own choice of morality and practice on those who do not share their outlook.

Read the comments to the Guardian article – overwhelmingly favorable. Richard Dawkins seems to have started something.

Comments

[Chayanov]

I was just informed by my ultra-religious neopagan friends recently that it's so much more difficult to be a spiritual person in a secular community than it is to be a secular person in a spiritual community. I find it most annoying that the religious never feel like they're getting nearly the amount of preferential treatment that they think they deserve. I have come to the conclusion that every religious group wishes they lived in a theocracy so they could make their religious beliefs a part of the everyday lives of all of us.

[Edwardson]

Barbara Smoker, former president of Britain's National Secular Society, says quite the same thing:

"Should we respect religious faith? Certainly not. But should we respect religious people? Yes--as long as they are not antisocial and do not aim to impose their religious views on others.

"However, even if we respect them as good-living people, we cannot respect their beliefs. Faith, which means firm belief in the absence of evidence, betrays human intelligence, undermines science-based knowledge, and compromises ordinary morality. If there were objective evidence for its doctrines, it would no longer be faith; it would be knowledge."

http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=smoker_26_6

[BronzeDog]

I've been all over that, myself.

[Luc]

Amen, brother. No pun intended.

[emkay]

What a fine, articulate, rational argument that essay presents, than you for the Guardian link. I nominate AC Grayling for Preznit! Barbara Smoker's comments (as above)are icing on the cake--Barb for VP! In our dreams. Can anyone envision any Murkin politico standing up and making a speach like Grayling's essay?

[Infophile]

It seems Ebonmuse is saying much the same thing right now, as well. Mass atheist uprising against theocratic control, or coincidence?

[Acteon]

I can't believe a mainstream paper has the courage these days... Maybe there is still hope...

[ocitpeks]

you mean religions DESERVE RESPECT?? Please re-read your heading.. so i should not lose respect on the entire article either..

[ocitpeks]

you mean religions DESERVE RESPECT?? Please re-read your heading.. so i should not lose respect on the entire article either..

[Ramshackle]

Well yeah, it IS a British newspaper, though...

[Skeptico]

Skeptico replies to ocitpeks

The headline was a play on the old Rodney Dangerfield quote – “I don’t get no respect”. I realize it’s a double negative and is technically incorrect. It’s a pop culture reference – you’re overthinking.

[Little Old Lady]

I agree with the article, but I must admit that I used the "my religion" excuse just a few days ago, even though I am an atheist.

I was in an outpatient medical facility, and the crass young person seeing me through my care did not understand when I said:

"I'm sorry, I'm not going to walk around the hospital from department to department all day in blue paper hot pants. Would you please get me a hospital gown?"

Health care aide: "But that's what everyone wears."

Me: "I'm an old lady and I don't feel comforatable going out in public in paper short shorts."

Health care aide: "Those are what we have."

Me: "It's against my religion to show that much flesh."

Health care aide: "Oh. I'll get you a gown."

I used religion to get my way, which is what religious people do every day. I should have been more articulate, and the health care worker should have listened to me, but instead religion became shorthand for "I'm not yeilding. Get me a gown."

[McEwen]

I heard Richard Dawkins on the radio, sufficiently persuasive to make me part with hard cash so that I can read it for myself.

[beajerry]

Yes! Revoke religious tax exemptions.
Wouldn't that bring a few down?