[ExI] Tolerance

[Emlyn]

2009/12/10 Olga Bourlin <olga.bourlin at gmail.com>:
> Yep, satire.
>
> But - and this is no satire -  Dawkins is a wuss. ;))
>
>
>
> He aligns himself with “cultural Christians,” and even goes along with
> singing those treacly, annoying $$$mas carols.  Gads, there’s just no
> accounting for some people’s taste.

Me too, I guess!

I think it's important to separate religion into culture +
metaphysical beliefs; they're not as tightly bound together as it
might seem. The metaphysical beliefs are the crazy stuff, culture is
the tradition+ritual+values which live separately from the crazy
beliefs, and are what underpins community.

The conflating of these two is one of the reasons so many religious
people are suspicious of atheists; they think we want to smash their
traditions & communities. I don't think that's the case at all. I'm
happy to do christmas & easter and all that stuff (although I'm not
cool with consumerism, a separate issue). Just don't expect me to
*believe* this stuff; it's myth, culture, stories.

Also, once you separate these things out, you can also excise the
odious stuff that some traditions include (eg: female genital
mutilation), because you can no longer have special pleading for these
things based on metaphysics; it's got to stand alone as a defensible
human behaviour. Walking around in funny hats, it's all good.
Mutilating people, not so much.

-- 
Emlyn

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