Broadly speaking, any group of people of sufficient size is likely to contain at least one person that would generally be considered a 'bigot'. The word bigot is somewhat subjective, so some people would consider different people to be bigoted under different circumstances. I imagine most people have been accused of being a bigot at least once in their lives, I know I have been accused of similar on these very boards.
However, Bertot
recently brought up the "bigotry and intolerance of the Atheistic Secular Fundamentalists twords nearly all religion and Theism". I'd like to discuss this in more detail. Two examples have been suggested:
quote:
...the comments by Pope Dawkins that religion is a mental disorder and it should be outlawed.
I have not seen any such comments from who I presume is Richard Dawkins. He did mention that certain specific beliefs of certain religious characters should be considered delusional in the sense that they are fixed false beliefs held despite evidence that contradicts them. I think he may have even clarified that he didn't mean it strictly in the psychiatric sense but more in the colloquial.
Further, I've read a lot of Richard Dawkins' work, seen a lot of his talks and debates. I've never once seen him call for religion to be outlawed - quite the contrary in fact. He
has put forward his opinion that teaching children certain religious beliefs might be considered child abuse - but not as a call to outlaw the behaviour but more as a call to raise consciousness about the mental harm done to a young child that genuinely and completely believes (because they were told so by their trustworthy parents) that its recently deceased best friend is roasting in eternal hellfire because they were a Protestant.
So, if those examples are not sufficient, does anybody have any examples of intolerance or bigotry coming from 'atheist secular fundamentalists'? If anyone wants to supply actual evidence that the above positions stated by Bertot are positions Dawkins has actually taken, maybe they would serve at least certain definitions of bigoted - depending on context of course. Either individual cases, or better still events or actions of intolerance supported or carried out by organised groups of same?
As a point of order, I'd like to discount a certain possible 'kind' of bigotry and intolerance. If, for example, a group of people are deliberately lying about the way a lethal virus is spread resulting in thousands of deaths per year - being intolerant of that group's actions doesn't count for our purposes even if that group is religious or their actions religiously inspired. Let us call this 'kind' of intolerance constructive intolerance. It is intolerance against immoral actions rather than simply intolerance against beliefs or skin colour or what have you which we might call 'destructive intolerance'.
Nor am I looking for examples where someone or some group has simply criticized religion or religious belief as a whole. Bigotry can be done under the guise of criticism, so I guess this might be tricky to unravel - but a philosophical objection that just happens to equally apply to all religious belief is hardly to be considered bigotry.
My terms aren't precise, but I'm hoping everyone involved will be able to understand the spirit of my request.
Theoretically, this could continue at
On this day, let us all be proud of America, but I thought it might be nice not to distract that thread with such specific side issues such as this one which it is in danger of doing. This is a Coffee House topic, but I thought it wise to run it past an admin given its unfortunate potential to blow up out of proportion quickly.
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