Religion is Rudeness

 
Religious belief should be kept in the private sphere. People should not publicly speak of God or their religious faith. Freedom of speech is a must. We make the request not like we make a law but like we request people to keep opinions to themselves.
 
People must distinguish between religious beliefs and non-religious beliefs. The belief that an unborn baby of 30 weeks is a human being and must not be put to death is not necessarily a religious one. The belief that a newly fertilised egg is a human being with equal rights to grown men and woman is certainly a supernatural or religious one. It can only be defended on religious grounds. We all have disagreements with one another. We must not take our beliefs so seriously that we cannot live as beings of the world. For example, a person who believes that eating pigs is sinful and starts a political campaign to stop people eating pigs is behaving as a religious person not as a person of the world. The person of the world will keep his beliefs out of the public sphere.
 
Christianity is one faith that gives an example of religiosity to the world. It is a bad example for it encourages bad religions like Islam to grow and thrive. Religion might lead to good religion but can just as easily lead to bad.
 
Religious belief is bad enough but religious dogmatism is evil. Dogmatism says that such and such a doctrine is the truth, it is not a belief, it is the truth. It naturally implies that contrary opinions must be silenced just as a child who wants to believe that Australia doesn't exist during school must be silenced. It leads to fanaticism. If religion was really as sure of itself as it pretends it would not have had Catholic at the throat of Protestant and Christian at the throat of Muslim over religious differences. You know weakness of your position when you feel you have to liquidate anybody who contradicts it.
 
The Book of Atheist Spirituality claims that it is not religious faith that leads to religious terrorism but bigotry and hatred (page 76). This is stupid for religion advocates hatred in the guise of loving the sinner and hating the sin and demands that God be valued above all things. The Bible commands much violence and killing and says God required it to. Faith does lead to religious terrorism.
 
Religion is rude and expressions like, "Oh my God!" and "Please God" need to be dropped from public discourse and relegated to where expressions like, "F##k off!" and "c##t" are. Unbelievers should demand that people don't speak of God in public. Many believers get through the day without thinking of God or mentioning him and so it is inexcusable.
  
The ultimate insult in religious circles is attempting to pass off a child as a Catholic or whatever.
 
Whether it works or not, the reason a religion claims a baby or child as a member is so that the child may be conditioned to believe and serve the religion.  This is unfair for children are so easily conditioned. It is part of their condition! And also the child will be treated as an excuse for validating the existence of the religion.  People don't take religion seriously these days and indeed many clergy don't. But that doesn't justify the child being enrolled in the religion. For all the child knows, he or she could be enrolled in the Nazis. You may say a child can be a member of a particular race and so he or she can be a member of a particular religion. But the two are not the same. You can be a member of any race without being a member of any society. You can have a white recluse or a black or whatever one. But you can't become a religionist without joining some society. You can't exist or be human without being of some race. But you can exist and be human without being a member of any religion or group.
 
Religion is divisive. It puts up barriers. No decent parent would want to make their child a part of all that.
 
Roman Catholicism claims that a baby that isn't baptised doesn't have God indwelling it. Doctrines like that are the stuff, discrimination and arrogance, from which racism is made. A racist is only a racist because he or she wants to be and to copy others who are racist or who pretend to be for their own ends. People adopt dangerous and irrational positions for all kinds of irrational reasons. It is simply wrong to tolerate religions that imply there is a difference between a baptised and unbaptised baby and things like astrology or fortunetelling which condemn people and warn against them on the basis of what is seen in a horoscope or tea cup.
 
People often say they believe in God and encourage the belief in their children because life would be harder to endure without faith. That flatly contradicts God in the Bible. God says we are to love him totally but not to love ourselves or our neighbour totally. We are to love God totally and love our neighbour as ourselves - that is less than God. To love God for comfort is to love comfort not God. If we love God, we will love him for himself even it kills us. If he cannot give us any benefit for this love we must still do it.
 
No religion has the right to insult babies. Religion should be formulated within human needs and not be about rules in Bibles or from popes or God.