Telika: You miss the point. Not all religious people (be them christians or muslims or whatnot) are conservative dickwads. The issue is how those who are push for a less diverse, more intolerant, more normed, more unfair society. Including mutual intolerance when it comes to religions themselves. The point is precisely that it is not about religion itself, but about the norms that are being enforced upon people. Bashing religions for religions sake is wrong. Assuming that all people from a religion are clones with the same worldviews, the same values, the same behaviours, the same projects, is wrong. But you can narrow it down to pass more accurate judgements. That's a function of the term 'religious conservatism', to designate cases where a more conservative society (against societal progresses and maximized recognition and inclusion of harmless diversities) gets advocated on the ground of sacrosanct ancient mythologies. That is where religion becomes its own caricature, and becomes as nocive as religion-bashers claim it always is. You cannot, for instance, comprehend and accept homosexuals when you refer to a conservative interpretation of a sacred text that denounces it. You cannot refine society if you want it to match the taboos and values if the most narrow traditionalist read of ancient religious scriptures. But most religious people go beyond that, and modernize their interpretations of these scriptures to fit our evolving understanding of humans and societies.
That is the difference between religions and fundamentalisms. A progressive or a conservative approach to religious doctrines. The latter being an issue both in the western world and in the middle east.
Do you see Christian Conservatives chopping off heads during a gay pride parade? Nope. Do you see jews and also Christians losing their heads in the middle east from Islamic fundamentalists? Yes. In terms of intolerance leading to violence, you have my total agreement. But you seem to have a specific problem with JUDGMENT, as in people with a certain religious view toward the world seeing things differently than you.
Believe it or not, there's a great many people on Earth that still think that men and women should be together, not men with men or women with women. To many of us, that's a backward and ignorant view. But that's how religious people construct their world views. They do it according to the teachings of scripture... which tends to look down upon things like women's suffrage and gay rights. Are you willing to stop them from believing that? Are any of us? What will it take to change a man's opinion? To some people it's a machete and a chopping block. All I'm saying is that when you take people to task for ignorance or being overly judgmental, just remember it's easy for the coin to flip to the other side.
I'm hoping you just have a problem with religious violence, because with that I'd agree with you. But if you're going to sit there and hope that religion is banned or something, and profess your love of freedom while you do everything you can to take it away from others... well that would just makes you a hypocritical fucking asshole, now wouldn't it?
I really think you are adressing a different person, through this conversation. Either that, or you consider yourself that religion is fundamentally intolerant and reactionary. Because you do exactly the same jump from "criticizing fundamentalists" to "forbidding religions" that do those who want to forbid religions because of fundamentalism. While i make the point that fundamentalism is not how religion works as a whole, and that religion (when not petrified by religious conservatism) is very evolutive in content. People from all ideological horizons can have religious beliefs, and can express their values in religious phrasings. Religion in and by itself is not an issue. It is only one when it serves to anchor beliefs in glorified traditionalisms for sanctity sake. That is, when religious references are instrumentalized to glorify "keeping it to our father's father's father's father's way because deviation and evolution is unholy". In practice, this is seldom how religion functions. In practice, religious meanings adapt and evolve.
Now, pointing at isis violence is all dandy, but here we have our own stakes or making a society better, more fair, more refines, more livable for a series of minorities that used to be denied or delegitimized by our traditional worldviews. Ww have our own evolutions and progresses to deal with. And in that specufic context, the religiously stuck backwardness of christian traditionalists is an obstacle. Amongst other forms of "you shall not question grandpa's views" conservatism. It is a trend that valuates faithfulness to ancient beliefs for its own sake (because faithfulness to ancient beliefs is holy in and by itself). And this is an illegitimate drag to a society's attempt at getting better (whether it us about segragation, about feminism and women vote, about gay rights, about racism and xenophobia, etc). There is the trend of wishing democracy to become some sort of theocracy, that is, to apply norms based on unquestionned ancient beliefs (unquestionned ancient beliefs = religious conservatism). It is a political ideolological current that should be opposed, be it through mockery (desacralization) or education or information or criticism or deconstruction, etc. The nature if the fight (public debates or civil wars) is independant from that.
And again, it is not an "atheists versus believers" opposition. It is transversal. Religious people disagree amongst themselves, like atheists do, on societal issues. But there is one type of conservative self-justifification that is entrenched in glorified obscurantism, and this is worth being pointed out. And it is also pointed out by more progressive religious people, without them attacking religion in itself.
Just like islamophobes and islamists agree that "real muslims are fundamentalists" (concluding, respectively, that islam must be forbidden and that fundamentalism must be enforced), both religion-bashers and religious conservatives will claim that criticizing religious conservatives is the same thing as stigmatizing religion. And in both cases, most religious people (and most educated people) will point out the fallacy. Christians, muslims and atheists consider the most restrictive conservative interpretations of religious texts as backwards and harmful to societies, and consider it an issue distinct from religious rights.
Not to mention (once more) that religious conservatives themselves tend to be the most vocal ones against our societies' perfectly necessary and harmless religious freedoms.
