It's hard to talk to people of 'strong faith' because no matter what you say, sooner or later they go into a kind of shut down mode.
Take my sister, for example.
She tries to hit me with the ol' "where does morality come from?", and I'm retorting with morality being beneficial from an evolutionary stand point, and I also bring up bible stories.
I bring up Abraham being told by God to sacrifice Isaac and how immoral this is.
And the wheels are turning in her head and she tries her best to rationalize it. She says its a test of faith and I'm telling her that by today's standards there is no way this could be considered moral, and saying that God stopped Abraham at the last moment is a cop out - he still directed a human being to sacrifice their child. And I gave my sis the imagery of the scenario, Abraham rising his knife into the air as the child lays there on the rock. If a person did that today, they would be considered to be insane.
My sister KNEW she couldn't rationalize it, she has kids of her own, but that didn't stop her trying to find a way around it.
What's your relationship with your sister? According to your story, she asked you a very loaded question, and her question and your response seem to both originate from the attitude of "I'm gonna show him/her up" for what they believe. That's kind of a ****ed up way for a family to act.
Religion needs to be confronted.
I agree. In fact, I'll take it one step further
and one step back (because I'm a dick like that). Religion needs to be confronted, as should all belief, religious or otherwise. Great thinkers don't answer questions, they raise them. At the same time, traditions should be upheld, and throwing all babies out with the bathwater is not only wasteful, but flat out stupid.
It's not enough to be arm chair guys that only defend atheism when we ourselves are confronted, as is usually the case with me.
So you're advocating militant atheism?
Religion, it trains people to ignore reason and logic, it trains them to either accept things blindly, or to rationalize things that can't be rationalized.
Does it? Considering that a large number of scientists, thinkers, and other "rational" people are or were religious, I doubt that it does.
Organized religion may push blind acceptance, but that's more of a case of humans using something to control other humans, and that's separate from any sort of belief in a higher power or some other answer to the unknowable question of "What is the order of the universe?"
This isn't a "religion causes all the wars" speech, but religion, every single day, holds humanity back. The UK, today, in the year 2011, still has a monarchy, still has a House of Lords, still holds to the idea that certain people are just born into power and that is just fine. The monarchy has political power, it has royal perogitave.
The monarchy is largely ceremonial and is kept around due to tradition. They don't really rule the UK. Also, "divine right" aside, what about someone being born into power makes it a religious thing?
Another example, creationism being taught in the science classes of American schools. Creationism is not held up to the same standards of the scientific method as evolution and other theories.
The tricky thing with Creationism is that it's both unprovable and (in my opinion)impossible to teach. It's unprovable in that in order to prove its existence or nonexistence, you'd need to prove or disprove the existence of a guiding force, and you can't do that. It's an unanswerable question. It's impossible, at least from my viewpoint, in that it's taken from literal interpretation of a story and aside from retelling the story, I don't see any other lesson plans.
Abstinence only sex education is taught, let's not kid ourselves, because of peoples' religous beliefs, it is a violation of the seperation of church and state.
Personally, if sex education must be taught in school, I'd prefer kids to be taught to abstain from sex until they're older, but I see the wisdom in teaching protective measures. Honestly, if I had my way, human reproduction would be taught as part of a biology or health class, and all politics over the kids having sex be left out of it. Whether or not to have sex at whatever age is ultimately a moral decision, and thus should be left to the parents.
People accept these things, and many other things, because of religion.
The average person accepts these things, and ALL other things, because they've been told them.
I am confused as to the extent that I should express my views and when it is appropriate.
People should be free to express their views freely, and I have no issue with you doing so (lest this post be misunderstood). What I, and many others it seems, have problems with is people not only expressing their views, but expressing their judgements as well.
For once, I'd love to see a discussion go like this:
Person A: I believe in God.
Person B: I do not.
Persons A and B: That's cool man, lets go watch TV.
