is detroying someones religious beleifs unethical?

Exactly. We can't answer this question just by looking at the immediate consequences for the well-being of the parent. We need to take the consequences of the religious beliefs into account (because beliefs do have consequences) and weigh those up against the consequences of challenging the beliefs.

Some argue (e.g. Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens) that faith - or the notion that faith is some sort of virtue - has consequences which lead to, for example, violence in the name of religion. Even the more "personal" kinds of faith that we find amongst liberal Christians, Muslims etc. (or "religious moderates") are a problem, because faith is anti-rational; to have faith is to section off some of your beliefs and refuse to subject them to scrutiny. Depending on what it is you have faith in, this isn't necessarily a problem in itself. But by perpetuating this idea of faith - of believing in something regardless of whether there is good reason to - all religious people (and many agnostics and atheists too, who often see faith as something to be respected) make it easier for fundamentalists and extremists to get away without having their ridiculous beliefs weighed up against the evidence or subjected to rational debate.

Extremists do terrible things in the name of religion, partly because of the widely accepted view that faith is okay, or even that faith is great. Since every single faithful person (no matter what it is they have faith in) is somewhat guilty of perpetuating the idea of faith, it is arguably always the case that religious beliefs are harmful to our collective well-being, to some degree. It is plausible that the most ethical thing to do will often be to challenge somebody's religious beliefs rather than "respect" them.

But by "challenge" I don't mean "attack ruthlessly". I mean: ask questions, pose objections, hold debates, exchange ideas etc.

And when I say that this is better than respecting religious beliefs, I do not mean that it is better than respecting religious people. Of course you should show respect to your Dad, and this is perfectly consistent with showing no respect for his far-fetched and unsupported beliefs. People say that religion is a very personal thing, but I don't see how belief that there is a deity is any more personal than, say, belief that atoms contain electrons. Nobody demands special respect for their beliefs about subatomic particles; what is so different in the case of beliefs about the structure or origin of the universe (i.e. whether it was created by and is governed by a God)? And just as you can respect a physicist without respecting his physics (e.g. maybe you think string theory is stupid), you can respect religious people without respecting their religion.

Spreading hate speech and being a part of an organization that seeks to kill people are criminal acts, you turn them in. We are talking about religious beliefs and the correctness of do-gooders going around trying to align others peoples views to meet there own. What are you implying, that holding beliefs that you don't agree with should become an illegal act?

If that were the case i wouldnt be arguing anything with my father. or visiting with him. I guess I dont see that I have a place in sculpting his values (at his age).

As far as Agrote's agrument goes. I argee that faith in and of itself does not command respect. Nor do I offer it. As a "good guy" though I try to maintain respectful relationships with those poor misguided souls who have attached themselves to crazy religious ideas.

This past weekend I had a converation with a muslum woman in he early seventies. She had obviously served her role in life that her cculture had prescribed. (uneducated family servant) The things that she talked about were "bat-****" crazy in terms of reality. What would have come out of me laying the smack-down on her with my views? I figured that the best I could do was to have a nice conversation, humor her crazy ideas and learn something that I could never have learned in a book. I think this is about the same as the original question.

What is the only logical next step????..... Here it comes..........."I do not understand religion, therefor I need to figure it out before I start my lecture tour on the relationship between religion and truth".

I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

Go and read all of the history that you can find about religion, about the role it has played in the lives of men, about the importance that has always been placed upon it.

Go and read all of the personal accounts of our ancestors, when they talk about the importance of spirituality in their lives, about how their spirituality is not only personal to them but part of them.

Talk to able2know members for whom spirituality and/or religion is important, find out what makes us tick.

Spirituality and religion have always been one of the most important parts of the human experience, yet you dismiss it all as a lot of nonsense. You not only dismiss all who claim otherwise, but all whom have ever lived whom claimed otherwise. Either most of the human race that have ever lived are fools, or you don't know what you are talking about. I go with the latter.

You are qualified to talk about what you believe, but not to say and single word about spirituality or religion. You don't know anything about that part of the human experience.

What makes you think I have that sort of time on my hands?



Wrong. I dismiss many of the truth claims of religion as nonsense, just as I dismiss the claim that fairies live at the bottom of the garden as nonsense. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I think "religious" or "spiritual" experience can be interesting, wonderful, mysterious and perhaps important. But I think it can be accounted for without appealing to the supernatural. I'm in favour of having the experiences without believing the false claims, where possible (e.g. go ahead and meditate, but don't expect to levitate).



I don't think religious people are necessarily fools. You don't have to be a fool to believe false things. You just have to subscribe to this idea of faith, where you believe things for the sake of it, without looking at whether there is any rational reason to believe in them. Plenty of perfectly intelligent and likeable people have faith in the supernatural. My parents are Christians and I don't think they are fools.

So what you should have said is: "Either most of the human race that have ever lived have believed in false claims about the universe, or you don't know what you are talking about."

Isn't it plausible that most of the human race that have ever lived have held false beliefs about the existence of God, the soul, heaven etc.? I certainly think I have (I was a Christian for 16 years). Chances are I still hold some false beliefs about the universe, as most of us probably do.

The other option is that I don't know what I'm talking about. THis is possible, but why don't you try and assess whether this is true, rather than assume that, since a lot of people disagree with me, I must be wrong. A lot of people used to think that the world was flat or that the sun revolved around it. But they were wrong. It is possible for large numbers of people to get things wrong, whilst small numbers of people get things right. It happens all the time.

Rather than looking for a show of hands, you should look at the reasons for people's beliefs, and assess their truth value based on the validity of these reasons. Look at the arguments I have made, and think about whether the premises are true and whether my conclusions follow from them. Don't just observe the fact that lots of people disagree with me, and assume that I must be wrong without even listening to what I'm saying.



You don't know very much about me, so I don't think you can safely make that assumption. As I've said, I was a (church-going) Christian for about 16 years, so I do know what it is like to be religious.

You admit that you don't understand the emotion connection that people have to their spirituality, and you can only not know if you have never had a spiritual life. I don't need to know a single other thing to know for sure that you are untouched by the spiritual. Setting in a church for 16 years (are you counting as a newborn) means nothing. You hear the words, but they don't touch you.

I think I do know something about you. Your words indicate that you are a person who is struggling to resist the truth of the irrational. You are desperate to keep reality sanitary, rational, unemotional. Been there, done that. You'll grow out of it, if your spiritual struggle does not do the trick women will. Women are notoriously irrational, emotional, not swayed by facts, you will grow to appreciate them none the less.

I was talking specifically about religious beliefs (the word "spirituality" implies something more general than that), and I said that I don't see how they are any more personal than other sorts of beliefs about the world. I didn't mean to suggest that this emotional connection is too complicated for me to understand; I was trying to imply that there is no good reason for there to be any such connection. It shouldn't be more offensive to say, "you are wrong to believe that God created you" than "you are wrong to believe that string theory is correct." But in our culture, it is. This is because, for no good reason that I am aware of, more emotional weight is attached to the former.



Could you define what you mean by "spiritual" here? If you mean something supernatural (spirits etc.), then I agree that I am untouched by the spiritual because I don't believe that the spiritual exists.

But the term is sometimes used to describe certain experiences without implying that these experiences are caused by anything supernatural. I accept that sort of spirituality; undeniably, people have certain strange/wonderful/mysterious experiences which we could call "spiritual", and in that sense I believe in spiritual experience. But I think that these experiences can be accounted for in physical or psychological terms without appealing to the supernatural.



What do you mean "truth of the irrational"? By rationality, all I am referring to is the practice of assessing your beliefs and changing them if they conflict with your reasoning.

Suppose you hear a noise and form the belief that there are monsters under the bed. Then somebody explains to you that there are other more likely explanations for the noise that you heard (e.g. the normal creaking sounds that houses make at night). After hearing this explanation, you judge that you have good reason to believe that there are not monsters under the bed; in fact, you started to think that this is what you should believe.

If you are rational, you will then come to believe that there are no monsters under the bed. Your belief about the monsters will be sensitive to your deliberations about what you have good reason to believe. If you are irrational, you might continue to believe in the monsters despite having judged that this belief is unreasonable.

With your phrase "truth of the irrational" you seem to be trying to tell me that irrationality gives you some sort of privileged access to truth. Could you elaborate on this?



No, I am desperate to leave reality as it is, while keeping our awareness of reality as accurate as we can make it. I think that rationality is helpful to this end.

I have no desire to "keep reality sanitary", whatever that means. If reality is messy, so be it.

And I am definitely not desperate to keep reality unemotional. Emotions obviously exist; they are part of reality. I want to understand them as much as anything else. Where we differ may be that I do not think that emotions are reliable guides to truth. Just because you feel it, that doesn't mean it's there. Emotions have evolved because they are useful, not necessarily because they give us special insight into the nature of reality.



I'll suppose for the sake of argument that your sexist generalisation is true: Women are swayed by emotions more than facts. So what? I can (and do) appreciate women without thinking that they have greater access to the truth. It isn't their (alleged) irrationality that attracts me, believe it or not.