How do you deal with religious fanaticism?

I am a newbie in the forum and to philosophy. Having been here only for a short time, I am already amazed by many of the intelligent posts. And I see those same intelligent posters sometimes politely responding to ridiculously fanatic views in the religious threads. My question is how can very intelligent people be tolerant to the obviously stupid beliefs? (I hope you are not just tolerant fearing being kicked out of the forum) I am having a hard time with the religions and trying hard not to say anything that would offend the religious people. How do you guys who are far away from religion handle when faced with ridiculously fanatic beliefs? ( I know one solution: Not to visit the religion forum at all but I am asking for the real world too).

I would appreciate your replies.

Well, when I’m faced with a belief like the ones you describe, I usually just reference the espouser to an alternate, friendly view. The best thing possible is to remind and teach that the educated, philosophical and theologically active wing of a religion is not necessarily the same as what the average, uneducated church-goer says.

Unless by 'ridiculously fanatical religious belief' you meant 'all religious belief', and then you can just go to hell.  :wink:

With pleasure, Uccisore. Adapting what someone said “I would happily go to hell with Plato and the like rather than going to heaven with the religious bigots”. And I am sure I would meet many ILP legends there too. That would be very exciting and we can continue our discussions there and if we have any doubt we can directly ask Plato or Russell what they think about it

I haven’t figured out yet whether “ridiculolously fanatic” is redundant or not.

Since you introduced the term, I think you’ll have to clear that up.

In all seriousness, you mentioned something chiding people about being too tolerant for the sake of tolerance. I’d really like to know what you consider ‘fanatic’ ‘rediculous’ and so on. I mean, one gets the impression that you don’t mean to condemn ALL religious believers, just, you know- those guys.

The way you deal with anyone else who is wrong in a discussion forum: Prove they are wrong.

If they really are ridiculously fanatic, then they probably won’t give up or recognize any of your argument points, perhaps flooding you with a cycle of five or so taglines. Then you can just make a mental note of their irrationality, and avoid responding to them on topics close to their fanaticism anymore.

In the real world, when recognizing a fanatic, my personal thinking is to realize that a person’s beliefs aren’t something you’re worthy of passing judgement on them for, and treating them like a person. Hence, when/if they do something blatantly irrational that disrupts or damages, I respond according to the act itself, and push aside any kind of bias I might have knowing the ridiculous justification they probably have for it.

lets see; a fanatic. noun:someone who will always preach at you without listening to you or consider your feelings on the subject.often accompanied by bigotry or piety.(-me. i made that definition up.)

i dont like them ether.by my definition. i just disassociate. arguing elaborates a battle.trying to prove them wrong leads to frustration.by thier standards you will never prove them wrong,and who else’s standards would they possibly use?

thats how i deal with it. dunno what y’all do.

i am taking into account the worst kind:the unchangeable broken records. a frozen mind.usually speaking ludicrously.

hmmm. yah that post by alun looks highly appropriate.

I said I am not sure whether all religious beliefs are ridiculous although I think they are. The main reason I think they are ridiculous because it puts humans at the centre of existence/life/universe etc., but in reality humans didn’t come in to the picture untill after a very long time since the origin. Because some of the beliefs like doing certain acts (like loving your neighbor) will get you to heaven are ‘good’ even though it doesn’t need to be true. So, I am little hesistant to put a blanket statement that all religious beliefs are ridiculous but think that most of them are.

To make it clear, I am not ‘chiding’ people instead I am ‘commending’ people for their tolerance towards the fanatics and I would like to develop that. That’s why I started this thread to learn how to be tolerant with the religious fanatics even though we know for sure that what they are believing is ridiculous.

Hi robo

A good diet, enough sleep, and good sex helps in maintaining emotional stability. But it isn’t just religion but politics as well. I have to listen to liberals for example but what else is there to do; it is part of life. I just try to be polite unless they are threatening something important. I’ve found that practicing tolerance, even in the presence of absurdity, is good practice for maintaining societal skills.

So yeah, when you say “fanatic, rediculous religious people” you really mean to say “religious people”. You can take my ‘go to hell’ not as a literal suggestion, but more of a comment like “I find the cocky way you dismiss the beliefs of just about everybody but you, combined with the half-assed way you try to conceal said cocky dismissiveness, to be unpalatable”. I really wasn’t expecting a “Why yes, I WILL go to hell” self-righteousness speech, but you know, that’s my fault for being naive.
Why am I being harsh? We’re both being harsh. I’m just being more clear.

I don’t want your tolerance. I want you to tear my beliefs apart and pee all over them- if you have what it takes.

Great! You put words in my mouth so that you can attack me. I said several times I am not sure whether all beliefs are ridiculous. If someone says to me that by default I am sinned and if I do not grovel at their lord’s feet, I will go to hell. How would that sound to me? Ridiculous. Or, if someone flys planes in to buildings because he would get 71 virgins in his heaven, would you call that insightful? I can go on. I do not want to tear upon your or any other religous person’s beliefs but to completely avoid and be tolerant because I know that it will be a losing battle to argue with the people who only talk to gods.

If you look carefully, with humility, you will see that most of them refer to self as centre; and then not. It represents an important realization. The one’s that don’t focus on self do seem to put notions of family and gender before the notion of ‘human animal;’ opening the door for different kinds of perception.

Tolerance is for the arrogant; i suggest respect.

There is justice in all of this. Mohammed knew the middle east was prime spiritual territory; i think he saw evolutionary necessity. Western culture doesn’t respect that: WAY bad karma.

Thanks to all those who have given suggestions so far. I am all ears and listening.

I gave you several outs. I said Go to hell if you think all religious folks are rediculous, and you jumped all over that position, embracing it like you expected applause. I asked again- which religious people are the rediculous one, and your reply was to say 

With the addendum “Although I think they are” which you left out of the above for reasons we can only guess at. All I want to know is your position.

Yeah, read what someone else said here about respect, just a moment ago. You, in your ego, already KNOW that all religions are stupid, (you use a different words), the issue is made up for you- even though better minds than both of ours still seem fit to argue the details. What you want is to find some way to wear a happy face even though you’re surrounded by idiots (to you). That’s your tolerance- to hide your disgust for the people you already know are lost causes. Tolerance isn’t a virtue, taken as such.
I’m really not as big of a jerk as I’m playing in this thread. There’s a lesson here.

EDIT: The lesson is, you said you were trying hard not to say anything to offend the religious people. Well, you said something extremely offensive. You’re faced with a choice. Either, don’t say what you really mean anymore, or learn to live with the consquences that come from an honest, offensive life.
What you should be seeking to learn, if you’re after real tolerance and not a charade, is why so many intelligent, reasonable, sophisiticated people are religious people.

I repeat again. Anything trying to explain existence/universe/purpose of life etc., with humans at the centre is ridiculous for me. Humans came in the picture very very late and might disappear while the universe/existence will still be around. Would it not make all religions that put humans at the centre ridiculously wrong? I am a Biologist and for me humans are just one more insignificant species among the billions that inhabited this planet. There is nothing special about us. Who is egotistical, then? A Biologist who thinks that humans are insignificant or the reglious people who put the humans at the centre of everything without any respect for the other things in the universe? If a bacterium which was around here for really a long time, can think, it would also ridicule all our human-centered explanation for the existence/universe. If we claim god created the bacteria just, just for us so that we can make our fermented milk products for lunch , it would be what else other than ridiculous.

Or if we came to know that rabbits have their own religion and have their own rabbit gods and explain everything based on rabbits. Would you prostrate at the rabbit god’s feet or ridicule that? For me, all human religions are as ridiculous as the rabbit’s.

I would choose the seond choice, then. I do not have any belief or dogma to defend. I unlearned my religious conditioning and starting to look at the world with an open mind. I haven’t found what is true yet but I am learning and ignoring what cannot be true. And religion tops the list.

The intelligent people I admired are NOT religious in anyway and the posts I admired are in the philosophy forum and nothing to do with the religion. In fact, for the first time I am seeing the two words “intelligent” and “religious” in the same sentence without the word “design” in it.

 There ya go.  Just realize your knowledge is limited- a philosophical newbie, you called yourself, and I'll hold you to that. If your take is that "I may not know much about philosophy, but I don't HAVE to know much to know that all religion is B.S.," then you are mistaken.  

Personally, if there’s one thing I wish to accomplish here on ILP, it’s for the total body of my posts to serve as empirical evidence that not all religious people are stupid, and not all religious positions can be discarded without careful examination. Maybe that’s why I took your post a little personally- not that I expect people to read my past stuff (I would scarely wish some of it on an enemy!), but for someone to come to the Religion board with the attitude “Everybody who’s smary knows that Religion is bullshit, so now what?” just strikes me not only as arrogant, but very
very uneducated. I mean, you found THIS website, so you know how to use the net. If you wanted to, you could have known how complex and subtle religious arguments can be.

What you need to see is that that’s YOUR FAULT, not the fault of the religious community. You’re considering something to be a closed case, apparently without having looked into it properly yet. And yes, I know you’ll tell me you looked into it carefully, and yes, I know by ‘looked into it carefully’, you mean you talked to a couple of your fundy friends and found you could ask questions they couldn’t answer.

Welcome to ILP.

No, I am not mistaken. I might not know what the truth is but I know enough to call that all religious beliefs are ridiculous because I struck the root which you do not want to address.

Any religion that puts the humans at the centre of everything is fundamentally flawed. You have to address this before telling how great you are or how newbie I am. If something is fundamentally flawed with ridiculous assumptions what else is there to know further about it. Case closed.

I do not want to continue the discussion further if you do not address my central issue.

Yes, nuts and bolts. Here.

1.) What do you mean by ‘centre’? In what sense do religions put humanity at the center of everything?

2.) Which religions do this? I’m really only interested in defending Christianity in particular, or general theism, I don’t know enough about others to do justice.

3.) What’s the flaw? It’s obvious that you disagree, but that in itself isn’t a flaw.

I need to know exactly what you’re saying the problem is, before I can address the problem. If I had to toss an answer out there without suffecient information, I’d have to say that Christianity actually doesn’t put humanity ‘at the center of everything’, but let me hold off until you explain yourself.

BIG EDIT: Oh, I you wrote two posts to me, sorry, I only read the second. Let me see here…

Kropotkin is on the dime for one thing. Religion puts God at the center, not humans.  Religious practice and teachings are human-centered because they are [i]written for[/i] (if not by) humans. For example, the Bible is God's Word to mankind. Wouldn't you expect the emphasis to be on humanity?  If God has a special relationship with dogs, Alpha Centaurians, or methane crystals, not only is it none of our business, but it's well beyond the scope of a Holy Scripture for humans or a religion of humans to address. 

First of all, who cares? Does the least-egotistical belief system win a prize or something? Second, unless and until another species starts posting on these boards, it's safe to say that there is something unique about us.  Thirdly, since Christianity at least doesn't place humans at the center of everything, I'm not sure what the point of this is. 

Another thing you’ll need to learn about in philosophy is a concept called ‘charity’. If at every turn you’re always going to portray religious people as the sort of people ‘without any respect for other things in the universe’ or ‘the sort of people who fly planes into buildings’, you aren’t really discussing my views, your discussing the views of other people who aren’t here to defend themselves- presumably because they are an easier target. If religious beliefs are as ridiculous as you say, you shouldn’t have any trouble attacking them at their most sophisticated.

Again, you really need to re-think this. I don’t know of any religion that teaches there’s a self-centered explanation for the universe. Humans didn’t create the universe.

If the best religious thinkers you’ve talked to or read from actually make claims like this, then that’s entirely YOUR FAULT for sheltering yourself from intelligent religious people (assuming your an adult). But, perhaps you coming here is the end of all that.

"robo_sapien:
Any religion that puts the humans at the centre of everything is fundamentally flawed. You have to address this before telling how great you are or how newbie I am. If something is fundamentally flawed with ridiculous assumptions what else is there to know further about it. Case closed.

K: Easy big boy. Learn to pace yourself. Religion by its very
definition doesn’t put humans at the centre of everything.
Religion put god/gods at the centre of everything.
Religion is about the relationship between god/gods and man
usually with man kowtowing to god. Humanism puts humans
at the centre of everything which is why humanism has been
attacked by religions for 500 years. (see Erasmus)

Kropotkin

Robosapien, I first must say that I love your sig. It is wonderful. I bought a crappy roboraptor for my brother, I now really wish I had chosen the sapien.

Now, I will not participate in what I see as a pointless attempt at proving religion as fundametally flawed. I have always and will continue to assume that it is. If you guys come up with a different conclusion at some point in your argument, tell me.

This is important, though. Make sure that you don’t say that religion is useless. Though logically it is stupid, logic is not its purpose. It doesn’t have to be logically sound because it isn’t a scientific theory. It is a social doctrine.