aprilstarchild (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
aprilstarchild) wrote2009-02-09 10:18 am
aprilstarchild) wrote2009-02-09 10:18 am
Now that just warms my atheist heart
Story Here!
There was a campaign on buses in England, paid for by a Humanist group, that just says: "There's probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."
Christian groups predictably threw a hissy fit.
no subject
I might think they have value as human beings--for instance, I don't want them murdered or tortured or made to go hungry.
But I don't have to respect their opinions any more than I do a schizophrenic person's.
no subject
I think there is a difference between respecting a person's opinions and respecting their intelligence and then also respecting them as a human being.
I think respecting someone as a human being is a minimum level.
Respecting someone's intelligence or faculties is another step. And that would mean that whether or not you agree with them or came to the same conclusions you would respect that they had worked things out for themselves, or at least give them the benefit of the doubt. I think it's really easy for us to believe that people who disagree with us are just plain wrong or that they aren't thinking or being willfully ignorant. While that might be the case sometimes, I'm still not sure if that makes a person unworthy of respect. Everyone fucks up at something. I think on those grounds it would be just as reasonable to disrespect anyone who cut in line or made fun of someone. Because kindness is also a value. But best of all, I think, is to try mightily to continue respecting people.
Then there's respecting someone's opinion. But an opinion is separate from a person. So that's not too troublesome, though I think it's good to try to give people the benefit of the doubt on their opinions too, as long as those opposing opinions aren't doing any active harm.
But that's me. You have no responsibility or duty to do this, of course. But everyone likes to feel respected and valued and I think it's the best environment for free discourse.
no subject
I respect people as people.
But I can strongly disagree with people's opinions. I don't respect someone's opinion that I am Teh Evil because I've had sex with girls and boys and I'm not married and I don't love Jesus. I don't respect people's belief in an entity they cannot prove exists.
no subject
- people believing you're evil because you're bisexual is a form of other people disrespecting your beliefs and lifestyle and deciding that you are wrong and they are right, and I would say that disrespect and judgment are at the root of that, rather than religion
whereas, unless it is used to dictate how things are taught in school or some other matter of public interest a simple belief in an entity that someone can't prove is fairly innocuous and doesn't really hurt anybody in and of itself.
And - I would add - by the dictates of philosophy where you throw out all assumptions including whether and how much one can trust one's senses - you can't prove anything exists. Maybe your own consciousness and even that is on shaky grounds.
For the practical purposes of day to day life we must assume that certain things are provable but absolute proof of anything? You can measure things with instruments, but then you have to prove that the instruments exist.
Hell, I'm such an agnostic, I'm not even sure if I believe in doubt.
no subject
no subject
I know that type of philosophy isn't for everybody, but I do think it's a legitimate tradition.
no subject
Aw aw! Aw aw!
(this is getting too tense and I need to let out some pterodactyl noises....)
Aw aw! Aw aw aw!
no subject