Quote:
Originally Posted by gmc
YouTube - UC Berkeley Event (1/6) - Richard Dawkins
It's something you need to make up your own mind about. The more I read and study the less religious I become. I find also many religious people do not want to think about their beliefs and why they believe what they do. In turn They want you to just accept their truth without question and without accepting the validity of anything that might not agree with that belief. When they find themselves unable to defend their belief to their own satisfaction often the argument turns in to an attack on the character of the person disagreeing with them. Whomsoever they can't convert they would destroy instead and the most cursory glance through history will throw up umpteen examples where that kind of mentality has held sway and there are plenty around who think that way even now and given half a chance would have us all bowing heads to their one god.
A secular society can tolerate different faiths, lifestyles, belief systems and live and let live. A religious one can't, for all the sentiments about tolerance and understanding there is always an-except for-----those and such as those, and by the way never question. The problem is not that secularists won't tolerate religion it's that religious people want the right to stop anyone suggesting there might be a different way to view things and demand respect and the right to push their beliefs while at the same time trying to shut up non believers.
Biggest problem we have in the UK is in separate religious schools-it was bad enough catholic/protestant now we have Muslim in the mix as well. They perpetuate bigotry in a way that should perhaps not be tolerated. Keep religion out of schools except as a general subject.
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Very well put. I think that the only reason that there the different religions aren't exterminating each other is that the west has so many secular governments. No government with a strong religious element can resist the push to enforce their religion on everybody. No matter what they say Iran and Saudi do not have religious freedom for all.
And evolution happens all the time. Look at the latest one--swine flu. When the World Health talks about the threat of if mutating they really mean it could evolve into something more virulent. Evolution is just a mutation that gives a species a better or more efficient way of doing something, It's just the smaller and faster the life cycle the faster the changes, without evolution brought about by selective breeding every domesticated animal and plant wouldn't exist.