-Use your religion as an excuse to be a smug, superior asshole
-Indoctrinate your kids into your religion without exposing them to other beliefs or ideas
-Try to use religion to argue against scientific theory
-Use your religion to commit heinous or generally illegal or immoral acts
-Try to covert people who don't want to be converted
-Get angry in arguments when people disagree with you
Lets take this one by one, explain what it is, and how not to do it.
Man, this is going to take longer than I thought
Using Your Religion to be a Smug, Superior Asshole
This is the whole mentality of "I'm of the Church of so-and-so, you're obviously all blasphemous heathens, I hope you all burn in hell because you don't believe what I do". They completely ignore anything anyone else says, hiding behind the shield of "You Heathen!", which is basically the equivalent of a 4 year old sticking their fingers in their ears yelling "LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU".
Be open-minded. Realize that the people around you are thinking, feeling human beings. Try befriending them, instead of pointing fingers yelling "Heathen!". Have an informed discussion, buy them a beer, realize that you are not the only person in the whole damn world, or that your church isn't the only church in the whole damn world. Stop living such a provincial, closed-off existence and just live.
Indoctrinating Your Kids Into Your Religion
There are a lot of reasons people do this. Often, it's because of overprotective parents. Maybe they're afraid their kids will turn against them and turn into rebellious Satan-worshipping blasphemers. Here's a protip: if you try and suppress and indoctrinate your kids too much, they'll want to rebel more. If you give them too much freedom, they'll rebel more. You have to give your kids enough freedom to express themselves, hang out and be themselves, while enforcing the idea of hard work and morality, they'll grow up to be good people. You don't need to indoctrinate them into abstinence, because then they'll get pissed and try and contradict everything you do. The same thing with sex. If you tell them sex is the devil, you're either not going to have any grandkids, or have too many grandkids (or too many abortions).
The major part of this is the idea of creationism and evolution. Evolution is the basic theory of biological development. It makes sense. When you indoctrinate your kids into a closed-minded, provincial concept like creationism, then tell them everyone else is wrong, no matter what, all of a sudden we're moving backwards in terms of education as a country. This denial of basic scientific theory is holding us back as a society. Here's what you do to fix this. Teach your kids creationism, sure, but teach them evolution as well. Teach them that there are cultures beyond your smug little circle of "Praise Jesus" and allow them to experience all of them, and choose which one they want for themselves.
Using Your Religion to Argue Against Scientific Theory.
All this ever really accomplishes is that it makes you sound like an idiot
Nuff said.
Using Your Religion to Commit Heinous or Generally Illegal Acts
I'm looking at you Muslim extremists, Christian pedophiles and Westboro Baptist Church. This is probably the worst possible thing to do with your religion. I'm looking at you Crusades, 9/11 and Anti-Gay Rights Protests. Not only are your hurting people for the sole reason of "I'M RIGHT, YOU'RE WRONG LALALALA", you're doing it in a way that pisses literally everybody off. The only people the benefit from this are the people doing it. Whether it's for their own gratification, pleasure, or whether it pleases "God" or "Allah", I'm pretty sure the almighty is going to be pretty fucking pissed off at the fact that you had the gall to do it, the gall to be an asshole enough to harm people, physically or mentally to refuse to give people dignity in their final rest, the gall to piss on the ashes while the rest of us try and move on with our goddamn lives. If whatever god you believe in is truly just, he or she will be shitfuck pissed with anything that involves harming innocent people.
Try to Convert People that don't Want to be Converted
I'm looking at you missionaries and Jehovah's Witnesses. This is similar to indoctrinating your kids. If you go out to some third world country and tell a bunch of tribals that they're going to burn in eternal hellfire if they don't convert, that's not really helping them at all. It'd be better if you showed them the concepts of science and educated them to be contributing members of society. Hell, it'd be better if you left them them alone and allowed them to develop their own culture and science as they see fit.
Then there's the people that try to convert people who already have their own beliefs, are aware of the would-be-converter's beliefs, and respectfully choose not to convert. It's their own choice to have their own beliefs, not yours. Leave us the fuck alone, I haven't accepted the Lord Jesus as my savior and I'll be damned if I do.
Getting Angry in Arguments When People Disagree With You
There's never any reason to get angry in an argument, unless the other person is people a total dipshit and repeating the same moronic phrase over and over. When you're actually having an intelligent conversation, if you bring up religion, there's no reason to get angry about it. If you remain calm and open minded, people will respect your right to have your own religion, as long as you respect theirs.
In Defense of Religion
Go ahead, be religious, it's your right, I'm not going to stop you. I'm not going to stereotype you with the stupid extremists of your religion, unlike some people.
You know who you are.
I got into this debate with a guy that was completely convinced every Muslim ever was a fascist that followed the Quran to the letter. I was trying to argue that people, as individuals, can choose to agree or disagree with certain aspects of their religion. I started when I brought up that there could be Muslims that support gay marriage. it went downhill from there. To describe the situation better, I made a flowchart for you.
This is not an exaggeration. This was the same guy that inspired this post. He legitimately believes all Muslims are fascists, and that Jews run all the major corporations, governments and economies in the world. Ranked on my Arrogance Scale, I'd say he's on the border of Psuedo-Intellectual and "The Omnipotent One".
"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones." -- Marcus Aurelius
At a scientific standpoint Evolution is not proven, neither is creationism and neither is the Ancient Alien theory. I found it hilarious that liberals found it offensive that Christian believers wanted to point out that the Evolution Theory had strengths and weaknesses within Texas school books. Which in reality it does. So my question would be, to what point are you well rounded in your beliefs and at what point do you take up ignorance to defend yourself from other "Retarded" beliefs? I'm by no means religious, and actually have what some people would look at as an "esoteric" belief in religion as a whole, but still took a religion class to understand the beliefs or even extreme beliefs that each religion holds, just for understanding.
ReplyDeleteAs with the Muslim thing; Islam is actually the most liberal of all the Abrahamic religions at it's core. The Ottoman empire and other earlier Islamic empires were the first to give Women land rights, they donate of portion of net wealth every year to charity, the list could go on. It's only the governments created around Islam that's conservative to conserve the religion. Christianity and Judaism are far more conservative, i.e. Judaism introduced the existence of interest, and there's a reason why hyper conservative democracies are called "Christian Democracies". One instance you could tell your friend that believes there's no such thing as a Liberal Muslim would be to direct him to understand how the Lebanese government works, despite having a mostly Muslim population the president must be Christian, with the prime minister and the speaker being both major factions of Islam (Sunni, and Shi'a respectively) forcing all major religions within' the country to work together and put extreme beliefs to the side to manage the country in a tri-partisan kind of way. Which is beyond reasonable in the Middle East which is just a region with insane amount of devotion (Jordan leading the pack with over 90% of its population going to the church or mosque every week or day respectively).
Evolution theory may not be proven outright, but is the basis of modern biology, and has mountains of evidence supporting it. Yes it has its weaknesses, it isn't perfect, but it is currently the theory that makes the most sense. Intelligent design does have some credence, and should evidence arise that this theory is more valid than evolution, I would have no problem accepting that theory. However, this is currently not the case. When I said "Using religion to argue against scientific theory", I was pointing closer to young-earth creationists.
ReplyDeleteI understand people have the right to believe what they want to, but my problem with "science deniers" is that they don't really seem to understand what science is. It is man's attempt to understand the world around us through observation and experimentation. Science is not some magical entity that throws out an idea every once in a while and says "Hey guys! Blindly believe this theory because I said so!" The beautiful thing about science is that it doesn't ask for your belief, it only asks for your eyes.