Respectful Silence

Do you respect fans of professional wrestling? Do you respect people who drive 4x4 vehicles off road down green lanes? Do you respect easy listening music? Do you respect people whose only interest in motor sport is watching crashes? Do you respect every idea, every taste, every activity known to man?

It is one thing to respect people, freedom and choice and it is something else entirely to respect what people can do with their freedom. People deserve respect, freedom deserves respect and choice deserves respect. But that does not mean that we have to endorse what people decide to do with their freedom, we don't have to celebrate bad choices, we don't have to applaud every endeavour that is not illegal and we don't have to respect ridiculous, perverse and hateful religions.

There is no more reason or need to respect Islam or Christianity than there is to respect prostitution, alcoholism or country music. There is a huge distinction between supporting the freedom of people to do what they want to do and the idea that whatever people decide to want to do must be worthy of your respect because it is a choice freely made.

There is no liberal requirement to respect religions or religious beliefs. The requirement is to allow people freedom and to respect that freedom and to respect them as people. Religion itself deserves no automatic respect. A tolerant person should say that people should be free to play and enjoy country or rap music, there is no requirement to pretend to like the stuff yourself or to like those who make or enjoy it.

Religious people have a vested interest in trying to get people to believe that being a member of a tolerant society requires everybody to respect religion. This is not the case. Religion needs no special respect and does not deserve any more respect than any other part of modern life. We no more have to respect Methodism than we have to respect Pop Tarts, gay bars, fake tans, socialism, wearing baseball caps backwards, toy boys, morris dancing, the colour puce, wheatgrass enemas or smoking. The deal is we recognize and accept each other's rights to do what we each want to do. No more than that. There is no need at all to pretend that we respect or approve of religions, just the right to have, choose or invent one.

Your choice is your choice, my choice is my choice and other people are free to follow you, me, somebody else or their own whim. That's it. I don't have to pretend that I respect your absurd beliefs. I don't have to pretend that I am cool with you attempting to spread your ideas and I don't have any obligation to be helpful to you in any way. My respect for your religion is minimal indeed. Expecting me to be respectful to your religion is going too far. Religions have no shame in describing people outside their number as lost, bad, sinners, evil, condemned, irretrievably flawed or destined to spend eternity receiving well deserved punishments. If there was an obligation to respect other people's ideas religion would forfeit that right on those grounds: but there never has been.

Liberal secularism does not require blanket mutual respect of, by and for all religions. It makes no sense to try to pretend that it does. If a man is a Methodist he cannot be a Hindu or a Baptist or a Muslim. Religions are mutually exclusive and as such by definition they are in competition with each other. Their scope for co-operation is limited because their fundamental aims will always be at odds. A Seventh Day Adventist is not pleased that somewhere out there a prayer is being said to Krishna or a Rastafarian is making a special burnt offering.

The things disparate religions have in common are small, secondary and largely political rather than “spiritual”. Churches and religions want to pay less tax; have less interference from government; have more power; have more input into politics, the drafting of laws and the conduct of public administration especially education. Religions want to have a bigger say in government and public life in general while making a smaller contribution. More power, less responsibility. They want more influence on us while they want government to have less influence over them. That is their shared agenda: more respect for religion, more influence for religion, greater scope for religion to interfere with politics while politics must interfere less with religion. Once you have said that you have run out of things they are agreed on and the united front dissolves.

The churches and other faiths are united in trying to get religion and religious institutions more respect from government, the media and the public. They have a common interest in maintaining the lie that the whole world owes them respect. We don't. Religions, religious institutions and religious beliefs do not need to be respected. It is perfectly reasonable to treat religion as a scourge, a joke and an insult to civilization. You don't have to give lip service to respecting religious beliefs just because you respect the right of people to have and express those beliefs.

The way atheists behave makes little difference to the way the religious treat them. The religious will always pretend to respect you as long as they have no power to suppress you. But do not expect equal treatment from the religious. Do not expect them to refrain from insulting you and certainly do not expect them to suggest that a disbelief in gods, myth, the supernatural and faith is somehow deserving of respect and public recognition. The respect thing is a one way street, they demand it from you and offer nothing in return. If you act politely and respectfully towards them they will continue to ignore you, denigrate your views and marginalize you. They know no other way. No matter how carefully you tread they will claim that you are offending them and their feelings are hurt if you do anything to make yourself visible. They see the existence of atheism as an affront to them, and a rude and personal affront at that. The only atheists that the religious get along with are silent atheists who keep their disbelief to themselves and refuse to make comments about such matters. It is understandable why Bill Gates keeps his atheism very quiet and low key, the religious have the power to ruin his company if he was more outspoken. But why should anybody else be cowed into silence by the threat of a Christian or Muslim witch-hunt?

To keep silent is what the religious want. They want all atheists and agnostics to maintain a respectful silence. Silent atheists are no threat to them. It is atheists who express atheism that they object to. No matter how carefully you explain your grievances as an atheist the religious will find a way to be deeply hurt, cut to the quick. Simply expressing the thought that there are no gods and that faith is a form of mental sleight of hand will be enough to make the religious think you are rude and offensive.

To a religious person a good atheist is silent, non-demonstrative, non-confrontational, and anonymous. Or in other words as good as dead.

The transitive verb to respect has two main definitions, this is where the confusion comes in.

1 regard with deference, esteem, or honour.
2 a avoid interfering with, harming, degrading, insulting, injuring, or interrupting. b treat with consideration. c refrain from offending, corrupting, or tempting (a person, a person's feelings, etc.).

The religious people demand that everybody respect their religion, meaning one, regard with deference, esteem and honour. That has never been the true definition of religious respect, the correct definition is the second definition. Of course this definition also makes offending a no-no, which I think is going too far. Muslims will claim that they can be offended by an illustration of a pig in a schoolbook and yet they themselves feel they have a perfect right to call Jews apes. Avoiding any chance of offending people would eliminate any religious freedom of speech. Simply saying that you don't believe in any gods will be taken by some religious people as being the same as saying you hate their god and you want to see them die. There is no way that this widest sense of respecting religion can be acceptable in any society that wants to be free. For me there is no contest, freedom of speech and expression is far more important than protecting the feelings of religious people, some of whom seem to get a kick out of the righteous indignation that follows being offended.

It is absurd to say that it is alright for Muslims to insult Jews because at least the Muslims have a religion, but for an atheist to insult Jews, even in identical terms, is not allowable. The religious want the freedom to insult all humanity and yet be immune from any insults, especially from people who don't have a religion. Having a religion does not give a person a licence to insult and not be insulted in return. It may come as a surprise to you but as an atheist I can tell you that I do feel offended when religious people describe my species in the terms of their mythology. I resent being called a sinner. I am offended at being called a handful of dust or a clot of blood. I am offended by religious people's characterization of human nature. I am offended even more by many religious people's description of women.

Respecting religion is going too far and it is not required. The modern secular state recognizes, accepts and tolerates religion. I have no problem with recognizing, accepting or tolerating religion. Respect is something that should be earned not just demanded by right and the claim of religious ideas to special treatment and honoured status seems weak in the extreme. Beliefs which are religious in nature do not deserve special respect beyond the sense of acceptance that they exist and the assumption in the absence of contradictory evidence that they are sincerely held.

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Respectful Silence

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© 1999 - 2010 by Martin Willett.

mwillett.org: Debate Unlimited