Ironically I agree. You should be exposed to every religion after learning how to think critically.
That way you can train your propaganda filter instead of falling prey to sophistry.
Sure, isn't that what every believer does, picks out the parts they like and ignore the ones they don't, showing once more they are their own moral guide and they know better than their god what is good and what is not. I wouldn't go as far as call it sophisticated. Sophisticated would be seeing the bronze age ramblings for bullshit that it is and devoting your life to learning what we actually do know of the universe we live in.
But of course this is USA, where pandering to the religious is a must for any public figure, even if they don't agree with it themselves.
It's fine and defensible to reject the religious perspective, but to refuse to admit religious perspectives to the discourse at all is to take pride in ignorance.
In the Christian faith alone, there are over two thousand years worth of literature to contend with, much of it concerned with evergreen concerns like how to be a decent person or what our relationship to be to money and possessions should be. That literature is being added to every week: fresh sermons, both populist and abstruse, are written and delivered every week.
Rejection of the keystone of that writing is something I disagree with, but not on any rational basis. Many who do so, however, also admit into their own hearts and minds a false caricature of the religious intellectual tradition. And that is well worth knocking down.
There are many intelligent people who purport to be Christian/Muslim/etc, which all require severely flawed thinking to seriously believe.
What you’re doing is conducting an ad hominem attack, assuming that this dude’s views on one topic have any relevance to the accuracy of a completely different topic (with a nearly decade gap nonetheless).
No decent, intellectually curious person should deny religious perspectives in topics like this. Religious writing is literally the prior art here, and still where one can find the richest live discourse.
This right here. Religion is more like a hobby (if you are not a politican with a clear agenda and in need of propaganda material and no solid evidence to back it up) not something you need to tout everytime you go on camera.
Wow, is this some sort of religious propaganda because it got too religious too quick (I stopped after reading the story about the Jew being bad and the Zoroastrian being a good Muslim). This is a classical example of confirmation bias - the author is seeking to confirm his theory about the supeemacy of one religion over others and finds positive evidence wherr se deems fit.
This is not to say that one religion is truly better than other - all religions are equally unprovable so dont bother. Hacketnews is about computer science, not religious propaganda.
My point is that "accepting all faiths" has gone too far.
> It's better to let people have the freedom to make their own choices.
But accepting the people's choices without examining the content is strange. Don't you think?
Would you accept anything that you don't understand?
I understand there must be some balance. And we might be biased to accepting a faith. But, at least, we should exercise some common sense before accepting it.
And I know. The problem becomes: whose common sense is right?
Perhaps it won't be as marvelous to you when you consider that some of these freethinkers have spent years open-mindedly trying to integrate these systems into their lives. Years listening to testimonials, trying to find something to grasp onto. Yet still failed to find enough interest, passion, or problem that it solved in their lives.
I don't have to re-install Windows 8 on my laptop once a week to re-confirm the opinions I formed the previous week. To do so would be an irrational waste of time. Your audience is similarly rationally choosing not to re-evaluate until they see a new perspective on the religion or a way of addressing a fundamental flaw that keeps them from embracing religion.
And when they argue with you, have you considered that perhaps they're trying to push through a personal hangup they have that keeps them from embracing it themselves? That they are not trying to put you down, but instead to understand?
For some of us, we've already searched long and hard to no avail.
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