Against my better judgment ...

[chrisa]

171. Religion is an idea, like any other idea. I can mock it as I choose, and so should everyone else.

An idea that demands no criticism is no idea at all. It's a falsehood that is fighting desperately to not be disproved. All ideas should be mocked and challenged.

I will respect your right to believe, but that's where my line in the sand ends. If your religion is unreasonable, or spits in the face of science and logic, I will laugh at it. I will not pretend your ideas, like the earth being 6000 years old and God flooding the whole earth, have any validity as to not offend you. I will not tell others not to draw Muhammad, because that's juvenile and ridiculous. I will continue to laugh at those who get enraged at cartoon characters and feel that killing others is a worthy response.

Nance, your argument sounds like Christians who say, "Why do you have to point out the ridiculous stories in the Bible? Don't you have anything else to do? Why can't you just accept it for what it is?" You're telling us to turn our brains off and pretend that, for example, that someone named Moses pulled a staff out and parted the Red Sea, and then closed it again drowning an entire army, despite there being no evidence that such a thing ever happened. If there's no evidence for a story, then it's just that - a story. Fiction.

You also use the strawman attack that Atheists are trying to convert believers to Atheism. That's wrong - pointing out the faulty logic of religion does not mean that Atheists are trying to convert others to Atheism. Most Atheists don't care if other people become Atheists - they just want to point out the problems and impossibilities of religious texts.

In closing, I'd like to say that attacking and making fun of religion is not being narrow-minded. This is especially true when using evidence that certain things in the Bible, for example, are impossible. It's almost Orwellian to say that using logic is being narrow-minded. Like I said, if a system of ideas demands that others not disprove it or mock it, then how good are those ideas in the first place?