Religion
In reply to the discussion: How can religious moderates be said to enable hateful fundamentalists? [View all]dmallind
(10,437 posts)Not an atheist on earth would deny that religion is a product of human nature, or that laws etc are too. After all absent Matrix-like absurdities, the only alternative violates the basic idea of atheism and entails us being imbued with these things by an intelligent creator.
But human nature and its products are treated very differently by society. Claiming religious motivation and devotion can get you out of prison or keep you out. It can get you a job and losing it can definitely lose you a job. Claiming it's human nature to want to steal or lie in on Sunday can do neither. It's rude and bigoted and nasty to question (majority-sanctioned) religious motivation for lifestyle choices like soccer teams of kids or demeaning women. If people claim, accurately, that it's human nature for men to be promiscuous and unfaithful, then it's rude and bigoted and nasty to NOT question their motivation.
Because of human nature and its offspring mores in current US society, religion has a protected, elevated status as a motivating factor in behavior, and is given a latitude far beyond any other influence. Because liberal believers dare not or cannot challenge this, they indeed have some responsibility for the nefarious actions it permits in their less liberal co-believers. Human nature per se has no such status and no such willing defenders among the liberals who understand it.