QUOTE
Believe what you want. but your belief ENDS where someone else's BEGINS.
In a perfect world, that would be recognizable as respect. This is not a perfect world. Monotheistic Dogma, seeks to rule the world under the premise of one god, one way, for all people. Therefore, an institution of belief, does not cease it's intent to influence, control and assume , where others belief begins. Were that true, there would not exist missionaries, in it's name. Were it true, proselytizing, selling it door to door, where it is possible there resides a different faith on the other side of that door, would not come knocking. Were it a faithful practice of mutual respect, there would not exist in our history or in our verbiage, the phrase
holy war.
It's a fine thing to believe one's faith should be respected, beginning where they stand their personal ground. That is not reality. The history of
every sect of the Abrahamic faiths, proves as much. Indeed, even the pagans were warriors for the cause.
I've never been a believer. A life long Atheist speaks these words, when she says she does not understand how anyone could accept the council of other mortals, no more favored than she, that impart the notion that god is a bigot.
I don't understand and can not accept that a power that creates everything, prefers only a certain few. I don't understand how power can incite war to gain dominion over something else created, other people living, so as to instill dominion of itself, as creator of all that exists. I think, when man created something it could believe in, that had a personality like that, they created an excuse to express their vicious nature. Their selfishness, their racism, sexism, and hate for everything that is alive. Manifesting some material sense of right, in declaring something invisible anointed them in the truth life should be like that , and then imparted rules, to make it so. Religion is not tolerance. It is a vehicle for dominion and segregation. And I don't believe anything that is believed to have created everything, has need to flex it's muscle to prove that true. But I think mans ego, has proved long and well enough, that it is prone to such habit. Because it hates itself, in the image and likeness of others that don't look like them, don't think as they do, and live life by a different sense of rule.
Religion therefore, as I see it, is a habitat for the ego. That imagines itself superior, because it first accepts god speaks only to one, kind of people. Name a sect and each one believes it is the only one that has it right, when it declares what god is, and is not. Yet looking around, one sees that if god were particular, there would not exist so much diversity, contrary to myopic monotheistic consciousness of what's best for this world, if only the campaign carries on, to make the world in the image of one.
Don't live your life hating those that outnumber you Kratos! You'll live and die a very bitter man, and when your life is over that's what you'll have left behind as your legacy. Someone that was overcome by fiction, someone that compromised to lies and tyranny. Institutions are not sentient. They do not deserve respect because they exist, they deserve criticism for how they seek to compel others to exist, under their command, their influence, their example. Christianity preaches tolerance and yet , of all the faiths, christianity has a record for being anything but. People choose to accept the way, to behave accordingly, to see the world as a battle field for conversion of minds and spirit. And in that regard there is one thing that is absolute. One does not have to accept, what's sold to them. They do not have to see the world as one giant vestibule awaiting conversion of the masses attending, to one mind. One faith, one way, to what is only promised through other mens faith.
One can freely choose not to be religious, one can also freely choose not to let the religious destroy what they hold dear, which is peace of mind and personal sovereignty. No minister will ever change my mind, to see this world their way, rather than mine. I do not live in fear of some sky father watching , judging, what it made to be all that I am, if I am made in it's image. I read what that image is and how it's countenance presupposes it's right to rule this world, and I know that it is illogical to accept anything that made everything, is particular to one way of being. That's man's creation. Selfishness and possession, is not godly.
Stand your ground Kratos, and consider this. No one can ever change who you are, by being them, unless you give them more power to influence your living, than you hold in feeling assured you have a right to live without their permission. Some people shall always hold faith in something greater than they, making themselves less than, for the effort. Beholding and grateful to be parented by the invisible. It's a choice. When it becomes a choice to object, is when that fiction attempts to command by law, everyone to it's bidding.
And I think that's when we witness that right of faith does not stop, where another's right begins. That's when we witness what jesus is said to have preached against. That's institutionalized thinking and that's where it need be stopped. When some think they have a right to make others think differently than they do already, so as to accept one notion of one god and one way of living for all time. That doesn't deserve respect. It deserves to be crushed in it's arrogance, smited in it's audacity and repealed of it's authority to disrespect the living, as ordained by heaven. People make flesh, the religions of the world. If one truly believes their religion is about tolerance, they need stop believing in books and start living the spirit of all that means. If they did, this world would celebrate it's diversity, learn from the wisdom of the ages of all women and men alive here, and never have created in mans image, the bloody history that declares tolerance for diversity is not a part of heavens accord.
) Just as a person has no right to force his/her religious beliefs upon another, a non-believer has no right to force his/her beliefs either. It's about respect, people.
when I mention the word Deist anyway and hear "little green alien from outer space who has unfathomable beliefs". But I've been asked by people who have been downright offended by my response. "What is a Deist?" they ask... I tell them... and they go all squirly and squint at me all funny, and then they say "you'll never get me to believe in that nonsense". I didn't ask them to. In fact, I have never asked anyone to believe in anything.
was that your past or part of some gay military porn script?.....
If christians don't like the fact that in their holy book their god commits genocide against millions of people and other horrors... Tough, it won't be ignored as fact. Should I just completely ignore the horrible things in the bible and any other religious book, while giving in to all the 'good' things? 
Surely if you read the forum this is a spirituality vs skepticism forum. As a skeptic, I'm going to bring up these items in discussion... Mostly in morality discussions. 
You know that movie, 'monster-in-law' ? 
