Scott is a surprisingly sly and competent writer. Don't miss his "God's Debris", which is available as a free download.

Thanks - he's fantastically subtle in his approach to this, which I admire; subtlety of this kind not being one of my strong suits!

Will I Disrespect You In The Morning?
Respect the beliefs of others? Depends on what they are. No, I won't respect yours -- if you believe, sans evidence, in Zeus, Allah, Santa...oh yeah...or god. A few days ago, I was criticized for failing to show respect for "believers." Here's an excerpt from an essay by Scott Adams that puts that kind of "respect" in perspective:

People keep telling me that I should respect the beliefs of others. That sounds entirely reasonable, at least until you think about it. The problem is in knowing where to draw the line. I can understand why, for example, Presbyterians should respect the beliefs of Methodists. They’re practically the same thing.

But what about those Heaven’s Gate guys who believed they should kill themselves so their souls could follow a comet? Am I obligated to respect those beliefs too? How about the people who give away all of their possessions because they have determined the exact date that the world will end? Do I respect their opinions up to the predicted end-time and then, after it passes, keep on respecting their opinion while they are begging the neighbors to give back their crap?

I respect the Mormons for doing a great job of creating good citizens. Whatever they’re doing seems to be working. You rarely hear about a gang of violent Mormons terrorizing a town. But must I also respect their practice of wearing special underpants to ward off evil? Is it a package deal, no pun intended?

I suppose you could argue that we should respect any religion that is peaceful and has good intentions at its core. And I certainly agree with treating all people with respect even if you’re not feeling it on the inside. But it seems to me dishonest to display respect for all beliefs equally. Surely there are beliefs that deserve slightly less respect than others.

This has to be an even bigger problem for those of you who have a religion of your own. You’re thinking something along the lines of “My prophet talked to a real angel whereas your prophet was evidently taking a drunken forest wiz and thought a tree stump was talking back to him.”

I also wonder if showing respect for all beliefs is causing more problems than it’s avoiding. The only thing that keeps most people from acting on their absurd beliefs is the fear that other people will treat them like frickin’ retards. Mockery is an important social tool for squelching stupidity. At least that’s what I tell people after I mock them. Or to put it another way, I’ve never seen anyone change his mind because of the power of a superior argument or the acquisition of new facts. But I’ve seen plenty of people change behavior to avoid being mocked.

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> I’ve seen plenty of people
> change behavior to avoid
> being mocked.

It's good to see people ready to use shame to contain the bad behavior of others. But reconsider the target. There's an old joke about how PETA assholes are more likely to throw fake blood on Beverly Hills society matrons wearing fur than on Hell's Angels motorcycle riders wearing leather.

In an urban setting like this, your safety is threatened much more by youthful gangbangers than rampaging Christians. Ask your sister what she thinks of when she has work-a-day worries for you living in Los Angeles: She doesn't fear finding you behind a (chartruse) burka in her next visit, but she has very real concern about your car breaking down in a bad neighborhood at night. Marauding teenage rapists also have arrogant, fundamentally unreasoned beliefs, but nobody ever tries to talk 'em out of it.

On a blog like this, or in the circles you're likely to have the discussion, you're not likely to face any passionate, practiced argument. Beliefs as strong as yours deserve it.

Maintaining and toting a rhetorical saber for these arguments is a lot of trouble. A smallish, well-oiled & finely-honed switchblade fits neatly in purse or pocket, and is better suited for the close-quarters combat we're likely to face... At least here in the States. I was named for my grandfather, the Methodist minister... Pulling out of those currents took only a few brief, nasty battles. Once people found out that their feelings would be quickly and badly hurt after they offered their inane judgments, everything went fine. They don't need to be pestered day-to-day, especially when they're nice people.

(Nonetheless, I too wear underpants to ward off evil.)

Aw shit. Sorry about that.

I was overwhelmed with holiday feeling. He is risen, you know.

I don't mean to be disrespectful of religion, but I would like to propose that the National Day of Prayer be changed to April 1st every year.

I think Mormon underwear is a fairly easy target. And the Mountain Meadows Massacre might have been a while ago, but the LDS church has had more bloodshed than any other Protestant sect in the US. Remember the bombings in Salt Lake in the 70s?

And Methodism, which believes in salvation through good works, and Presbyterianism, which believes in the salvation of the elect (God's chosen already, and ain't nothin' you can do about it) are not even close to each other, except for having dull hymns. Research is a wonderful skill, and Scott might try it.

And mockery just makes some people hold more tightly to their stupidity. Scott's okay, I guess, but he's uniformed and not all that subtle.

You rarely hear about a gang of violent Mormons terrorizing a town, but the sex clubs in Hollywood are filled with Mormon boys on methamphetamine. Mormons are second only to Catholics in their proclivity for the dirtiest sex possible.

I agree with KateCoe that mockery often just makes people cling to their stupidity more tightly. I love your writing; you're insightful, clever, and sharp-tongued enough to make your insults and mockery really sting. But every time I read one of your pieces on religion, it really sets me on edge and makes me uncomfortable, even though I'm not religious.

Mockery is rarely helpful, I think; it's a disservice to those who have serious, well-thought-out, defensible positions, and almost totally useless against those who believe only for social conformity. Scott Adams is wrong: people change their minds not because of mockery, but because of social pressure and their desire to conform. As long as their peer group agrees with them, all of our mockery will just cement us as the other, the outside, and make religion a more important signifier of belonging. Thus mockery will drive most people to cling even more strongly to their original beliefs, to show that they belong to their own group, and not to ours. The mockery just makes us look intolerant and a bit unpleasant, and highlights the fact that we're different, separate, "other." Far better, I think, to treat religion as unimportant, to defuse it as a social signifier, to make it so no one cares.

This may sound like I'm splitting hairs, but while I respect the rights of individuals to hold whatever beliefs they have, or do not have, I don't necessarily respect their beliefs. Not even those of my fellow Christians. Their right to believe whatever they want, even practice as they want, so long as their rights to swing their fists stop where my nose begins.

Some Christians seem to think that if they do something wrong -- "sin," as it's called in the lingo -- all you have to do is get down on your hands and knees, beg forgiveness, and you'll be forgiven. "Sorry, God, for mowing down a playground full of children with an M-60. Thanks for forgiving me." Don't think so.

Some Christians seem to think that if you want something good, you have to ask God for it. In other words, God, who is supposedly good and omniscient, needs to be asked before He gets off His ass and does something good that's needed to be done. Or, to quote "The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail," by Lawrence and Lee, "is the Lord so Almighty absent-minded that he needs a tap on the shoulder to remind him that Adam had children?" So, omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent God needs to asked by fallible, limited man to do something, and man is God's advisor? Don't think so.

Some Christians like to think -- and this is the sickest, most bigoted thing I've ever heard -- that those who don't believe exactly as they do, often down to the minutae, are going to suffer unspeakable agony in hell for all eternity. These same people would call Hitler and Stalin monsters for what they did in the space of a few years. So, what must the comment be on their supposedly omnipotent God, who would consign individuals to supposedly much greater torture, for all eternity?

You can believe whatever idiocy you want to. I'm not going to stand on a street corner or stalk you in public places, pleading, demanding, threatening you to believe what I believe, under the threat of damnation after you die.

I have wondered for a long time why God would want or need to be worshiped in the first place. (Would God even have "needs" if he was all-powerful?) What would God get out of being worshiped?

I know. Even I don't demand worship, I merely ask politely for it.

Jadagul -- I went to your website and read your profile. Are you really only 19 years old? At the risk of sounding paternalistic, I just want to say that I'm incredibly impressed by your work. -- Lena

"What does God need with a starship?" James T. Kirk

Lena: yeah, nineteen, college sophomore. Do this to avoid having to do my math homework :) And thanks, that means a lot to me. Maybe I should start updating my blog again, if there's someone who'll actually read it... :)

Oh, and Amy, since I was a bit negative in my last post, I wanted to thank you for hosting this. I really appreciate your work; that's the only reason I bothered commenting in the first place, that I have a lot of respect for you. I meant to add but forgot that of course you have a perfect right to write in whatever tone you like; that was just my comment on how I reacted to it sometimes. Thanks again!

Congrats on being a brilliant young person, Jay. I'll check out your blog from time to time. You're a great writer.

KateCoe writes: "And Methodism, which believes in salvation through good works, and Presbyterianism, which believes in the salvation of the elect (God's chosen already, and ain't nothin' you can do about it) are not even close to each other, except for having dull hymns. Research is a wonderful skill, and Scott might try it."

I disagree with your perspective, Kate - I would say the same thing as Scott and I'm well aware of the doctrinal differences you mentioned. Scott may simply share my view - namely that the differences between most Protestant denominations don't amount to a hill of beans - particularly compared to, say, the differences between Christianity and Buddhism, or belief in a diety versus non-belief.

As for respecting religious beliefs, I think you can respect the rights of others to have religious beliefs, and the fact that those beliefs are often very deeply held, without respecting the beliefs themselves, and I think that's what most people mean when they talk about respecting the beliefs of others.

Personally, I draw the line at respecting religious beliefs that harm people overtly, like human sacrifice or drinking the Kool-aid or letting your daughter sleep with David Koresh - as opposed to the less overt harm from religious beliefs like "nyah-nyah, we are the only ones who have The Truth" (which leads to intolerance, laws imposing beliefs on others, and justification for terrorists).

In general, I don't have a separate problem with the silliness factor. As a non-Christian (Unitarian), I find some core parts of Christianity pretty silly - even sans special underwear (which, btw, Sikhs also have - though presumably not the same type of underwear as the Mormons). But most Westerners don't "register" this fact simply because of their lifelong familiarity with Christianity - not due to a lack of strangeness or silliness of Christian beliefs and practices.

LENA, as a Recovering Mormon (clean 12+ years now), I can echo your comments about LDS and their love for dancing and screwing.

Steve in Clearwater FL

Hmmm...I'm all for dancing and screwing!

Good site. Thank you.