Fundamental questions

[aardvarklf]

Several weeks ago I watched part of a TV documentary on religious fundamentalism. The bit that I saw profiled a Christian fundamentalist in America; apparently they'd also interviewed some racist monks in Sri Lanka and a hate-spouting Muslim preacher in London, but I didn't see either of them (although I wish I had, as it would have given me a

Comments

[belgand]

A valid criticism. At the same time it can be a tough issue to work with. Not implying too much, but convincing a member of a cult that they are as you say "pathetically weak and misled" is bound to cause problems and make you come off as a bit of an asshole. Some Christians (not to exclude other religions, but most of the time in our local context we're dealing with Christianity) can approach their religion in that manner. Many more just accept what they've been told since birth and had reinforced by society. Is organized religion itself a dangerous cult? Uhm... no comment? ;)

Sometimes it can be tough. I presume many theists occasionally wonder why atheists don't just wake up and understand how god is real and all-powerful and just accept it. The same thing happens on the other side and sometimes we can't understand how people don't just see the obvious human influences that have made up religion and accept that non-interventionistic agnostic deism (there may be some sort of divine entitiy or entities, but they are unknown to us and shall likely stay that way) is the only reasonable religious belief and equatable to fervently believing that invisible dragons exist somewhere in the universe without any evidence.

It can be hard sometimes, at an ideological level, to respect each other's point of view while trying to prove that they are hopelessly and completely wrong about everything. At the same time it's often surprisingly easy to respect each other's beliefs and opinions at a personal level and not shout at each other about how stupid they are whenever the chance arises. Sometimes that's a lesson we both need to learn and taken in that context, yeah, Dawkins can be kind of a dick.