Don’t hate people.

Hate the perverse, uncivic, inherently tribalistic ideas of “belief without evidence”, “felt truth”, and “chosen people”

They are all toxic memes antithetical to a modern inclusive pluralistic society.

When they stop legislating their doctrine.

I consider every form of religion to be highly dangerous and I think every religious person is delusional, irrational and illogical, to say the least. I simply avoid them like the plague and mind my own business. It’s a massive dealbreaker for any personal relationship with me. Nope, thanks. I don’t need that in my life.

This falls under the paradox of intolerance for me

Religion is a choice

People can’t choose their skin colour, their sexuality etc.

Bigotry is hating someone for an intrinsic part of who they are

Religion is fair game as far as I’m concerned

I don’t care about someone’s religion, until they make it my problem

They’re free to have their stupid beliefs. I’m not going to respect them, but if they leave me alone, I will return the courtesy

As soon as they want to force me to abide by their backwards superstition, to pass laws in its name, to shit on others using their fairytales as justification, then I have a fucking problem.

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Lots of assumptions in this thread that the concept of ‘religion’ is interchangeable with ‘theism’. It isn’t. There’s quite a few large religions that are, or can be practised, in a nontheistic way including Buddhism, Hinduism, Taosim and Jainism. There’s even a branch of Quakerism that is nontheistic.

Wider definitions of religion exist than simply ‘belief in a supernatural deity/deities’, including my own - that of modern atheistic Satanism.

In terms of bigotry - being shitty to whole groups of people based on their belief in a non-existent being feels weird to me. Being shitty if they then use that belief to justify their own bigotry is not weird and is called activism. Or to put it another way - if someone believes in a god and prays in a church and makes no comments that support the infringement of other peoples rights to exist and live their lives as they want to then that’s totally fine by me.

Never, religion is an opinion and you can hate dumb opinions all you want.

If you hate them just because they’re religious that’s bigotry

but there are a lot of people who use religion to justify bigoted or harmful beliefs. for those I have no tolerance and I’m not sorry 💅

I think this is a great question because it absolutely gets the point. The enemy is the system, not the people. This informs you both who and how you fight back. So when someone is saying something bigoted for religious reasons, the problem isn’t necessarily that particular person, but the religious system that brainwashed them. In fact, it was a specific flavor of that religious system.

I think a more clear distinction can be found in feminism. Feminism isn’t about fighting men, but fighting patriarchy. So, sure, there are men who are dickhead misogynists, but they are also potential allies that are also hurt by patriarchy. It’s the system and those who specifically aim to perpetuate said system. Social philosophers tend to point to systems rather than people constantly, because it’s so common for people to point out symptoms rather than the cause. So when we know to identify patriarchy rather than misogynists, yeah, we’ll still call out misogynist men for sure, but also women that perpetuate patriarchy.

So if I’m blaming the system rather than the person, maybe I’m recognizing the religious person’s commitment to truth and appealing to that rather than labeling them the enemy and writing them off completely. I think something that gets lost in all the polarizing bullshit as of recent is recognizing that a great way to make another bigot not exist is to persuade them to not be a bigot anymore. The enemy isn’t people, it’s the fucking system. Like the great poets have said: “Don’t blame it on the Needy, don’t blame it on the Poor, don’t blame it on the Jew, blame it on the system. Blame it on the fucking system.”

I just think hate is generally an unproductive feeling regardless of who it’s towards. Don’t get me wrong I’m not trying to claim that I’m perfect and never find myself feeling it, I just try to avoid it.

Free blocklist in the comments!

Nothing good comes from hate. Hate is an emotion, and when you’re emotional, you cannot fix or improve things.

I decided I don’t mind if people are religious, there’s a lot of religious people who I’d rather be allies with than enemies

If they are against fascism we have something in common

Pretty much immediately. You can hate extremism, you can hate corrupt and damaging institutions and you can hate intolerance. But don’t hate someone just because they believe something you don’t or you believe the same thing in a slightly different way.