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I've had a lot of personal struggles with religious belief, and I've travelled a lot of different roads. I find some people's religious beliefs (among which I include atheism) confusing, or sad, or disturbing, or even just silly. (Others I find honourable or worthy or uplifting, but I'm not concentrating on those at the moment.)
I may disagree, mildly or strongly, with someone's beliefs, but I try very hard to remember that they are *their* beliefs, not *mine*. Unless they are trying to force their beliefs on me (or on everyone, by giving them the colour of law), what someone else chooses to believe or not believe is really not my business. It's certainly not appropriate, I think, to mock someone else's beliefs just because I don't share them. And it certainly doesn't behoove me to distort and misrepresent them for the purpose of mocking them further.
Of course, in the same way that everyone has a right to their own beliefs, they have a right to their own opinion and course of behaviour regarding others. But I expect people whom I think of as friends and peers to abide by certain standards of decency and courtesy. And those include not ridiculing people whose only "offense" is to believe something different. To me, that just seems mean and small-minded. As nearly everyone's mother or grandmother seems to have said, "If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all." Now, obviously, there are going to be people who make it all too easy to make fun of them. But unless someone is working hard to give offense to other people, it doesn't seem worthy attack them.
Sometimes I'm going to slip and say or do something that's beneath me, and I expect some of my friends will call me on it. And I will do the same. And if someone's response is not, "Oh, you know, you're right: that was kind of a cheap shot," but more of the same, well, that's going to make me question whether I want them as a friend.
"I know that there are people who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that!" Tom Lehrer was joking, certainly, when he said that. But beyond the joke was something deeper. Two wrongs don't make a right. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. And if someone seems foolish or misguided, but is doing you no harm, is sneering at them really going to make the world a better place?
I may disagree, mildly or strongly, with someone's beliefs, but I try very hard to remember that they are *their* beliefs, not *mine*. Unless they are trying to force their beliefs on me (or on everyone, by giving them the colour of law), what someone else chooses to believe or not believe is really not my business. It's certainly not appropriate, I think, to mock someone else's beliefs just because I don't share them. And it certainly doesn't behoove me to distort and misrepresent them for the purpose of mocking them further.
Of course, in the same way that everyone has a right to their own beliefs, they have a right to their own opinion and course of behaviour regarding others. But I expect people whom I think of as friends and peers to abide by certain standards of decency and courtesy. And those include not ridiculing people whose only "offense" is to believe something different. To me, that just seems mean and small-minded. As nearly everyone's mother or grandmother seems to have said, "If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all." Now, obviously, there are going to be people who make it all too easy to make fun of them. But unless someone is working hard to give offense to other people, it doesn't seem worthy attack them.
Sometimes I'm going to slip and say or do something that's beneath me, and I expect some of my friends will call me on it. And I will do the same. And if someone's response is not, "Oh, you know, you're right: that was kind of a cheap shot," but more of the same, well, that's going to make me question whether I want them as a friend.
"I know that there are people who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that!" Tom Lehrer was joking, certainly, when he said that. But beyond the joke was something deeper. Two wrongs don't make a right. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. And if someone seems foolish or misguided, but is doing you no harm, is sneering at them really going to make the world a better place?
