We’re in the 21st century, and the vast majority of us still believe in an utterly and obviously fictional creator deity. Plenty of people, even in developed countries with decent educational systems, still believe in ghosts or magic (e.g. voodoo). And I–an atheist and a skeptic–am told I need to respect these patently false beliefs as cultural traditions.
Fuck that. They’re bad cultural traditions, undeserving of respect. Child-proofing society for these intellectually stunted people doesn’t help them; it is in fact a disservice to them to pretend it’s okay to go through life believing these things. We should demand that people contend with reality on a factual basis by the time they reach adulthood (even earlier, if I’m being completely honest). We shouldn’t be coddling people who profess beliefs that are demonstrably false, simply because their feelings might get hurt.
We should respect the other fellow’s religion, but in the same sense and to a similar extent that we respect his belief that his children are smart and his wife is beautiful.
Until he gets into politics and tries to write his religion’s millennia old moral code into contemporary law.
If someone out there writing in law that their children are the lower limit of what we should consider “smart” then we should throw them out as well.
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