So I was reading Isis the Scientist’s blog, as I quite often do. (I’ve become a semi-regular over there, getting involved in discussions mostly involving forms of discrimination, usually based on sex and gender, discussions which end up getting quite heated, and philosophical, and eerily similar) And I read this post, which talks about a post (I’m getting involved here - a post about a post about a post, ad infinitum…) by PhysioProf which basically says that religious people are out of touch with reality, etcetera, that they do not care about science, etc etc. 

I replied to Isis’s post thusly:

What ever happened to tolerance?

I have strong religious beliefs. At the same time, science and facts are what make my world go round. To me, they don’t clash at all. Science is facts, the here-and-now I can lay my hands on and work my mind around. Religion is faith, my emotions and belief. It’s the transcendal, the incorporeal, the things we can’t prove and don’t need to, because it’s not about what factual or ‘real’ or measurable, but about what I believe in my heart.
It’s abstract concepts, not hard data. Condemn religion for this reason, and you might as well condemn ethics or philosophy or anything else that is purely conceptual.
I don’t understand why some people are so virulently opposed to religion and religious views. When fundamentalists ignore or attack science because they believe it conflicts with their religion, I can understand opposing that… but just normal, more-or-less rational people with faith in the ethereal? I don’t get it. It just seems so emphatically closed-minded to me… not only because it’s so inflexible to religion itself, but because it dismisses and discards those people who are religious as lesser in some way because of their faith.
And that’s bigoted and prejudiced on a very strong level.

I understand some of the atheists claims – that religious people believe things that directly contradict science, that they obstruct scientific progress, blah blah, that they are morons.

Having met some really stupid fundamentalists, I can sympathise with the last part, although I think that sticking all people with some form of religious belief in the ‘moron to be dismissed’ box is discriminatory in the extreme.

But the problem is not religion. The problem is ideology, and the fantatical pursuit of its goals and dedication to its precepts while disregarding everyone else’s point of view and right to them.

Your standard, normal person with religious leanings isn’t a fanatical fundamentalist. They believe in science, but they also believe in something beyong the realms of science.  They might not have all their facts right, but then most of them haven’t studied science in much detail.  They’re more or less sensible, reasonable people. Just like everyone else. They use religion as a moral and ethical guide, mostly. They don’t oppose scientific fact, because it’s a fact – right? Religion doesn’t really dictate their scientific beliefs, just as their scientific beliefs don’t particularly affect their religious ones.

Then there are those few who are True Believers. They believe, all right. They know that they are Right and not only that, everyone else is Wrong. This wrongness is dangerous and harmful and needs to be utterly anihilated for the good of all humanity. They’re relentless in their pursuit of their beliefs and no amount of logic or reason will stop them, because thye don’t want to hear it. They already know what they answer is.

The thing is, this description can apply to atheists just as much as it can the religious.

Whether people are religious or atheist, whether they can’t decide if there’s a god, or whether they’re devoted to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, they shouldn’t be told that their belief in something ethereal and transcendent automatically makes them a lesser person, that they’re intellectually inferior, that they aren’t ‘truly’ interested in science and that they’re deluded people who aren’t in touch with reality.

Because that makes them as bad as the rigid, narrow-minded people on the other side that they really oppose.