Why...

[YDOAPS]

From Dolly and the Cloth Heads:

Religious lobbies, spokesmen of "traditions" and "communities", enoy privileged access not only to the media but to influential committees of the great and the good, to governments and school boards. Their views are regularly sought, and heard with exaggerated "respect", by parlimentary committees. You can be sure that, when an Advisory Commission is set up to advise on cloning policy, or any other aspect represented. Religious spokesmen and spokeswomen enjoy an inside track to influence and power which others have to earn through their own ability or expertise. What is the justification for this?

 

Why has our society so meekly acquiesced in the convenient fiction that religious views have some sort of right to be respected automatically and without question? If I want you to respect my views on politics, science or art, I have to earn that respect by argument, reason, eloquence or relevant knowledge. I have to withstand counterarguments. But if I have a view that is part of my religion, critics must respectfully tiptoe away or brave the indignation of society at large. Why are religious opinions off limits in this way? Why do we have to respect them, simply because they are religious?

 

...

 

Society, for no reason that I can discern, accepts that parents have an automatic right to bring their children up with particular religious opinions and can withdraw them from, say, biology classes that teach evolution. Yet we'd all be scandalized if children were withdrawn from Art History classes that teach the merits of artists not to their parents' taste. We meekly agree, if a student says, "Because of my religion I can't take my final examination on the day appointed so, no matter what the inconvenience, you'll have to set a special examination for me." It is not obvious why we treat such a demand with any more respect than, say, "Because of my basketball match (or becuase of my mother's birthday) I can't take the examination of a particular day." Such favoured treatment for religious opinion reaches its apogee in wartime. A highly intelligent and sincere individual who justifies his personal pacifism by deeply thought-out moral philosophic arguments finds it hard to achieve Conscientious Objector status. If only he had been born into a religion whose scriptures forbid fighting, he'd have needed no other arguments at all. It is the same unquestioned respect for religions that causes society to beat a parth to their leaders' door whenever an issue like cloning is in the air. Perhaps, instead, we should listen to those whose words themselves justify our heeding them.

[Thurisaz]

Brainwashing. At least in societies formed (partially) by the jebus cult, of course that cult is automatically "good", "holy", younameit. Opposition to it, then, must be "evil". And those who pursue "the good" are of course to be respected.

 

Not that I wouldn't honor a religious person if it does good deeds... but the deeds, not the religious motivation, would matter to me.