And liberals think that liberalism is a universal ideology. Is it any surprise that someone who was raised believing a certain view of the world, whose viewpoint is confirmed by being the prevalent view among overwhelming majorities in the communities in which they live, and by their national media, and by so-called "experts" who give certain views authority in their country, and in countless other ways, believes that their view of the world is right, and that other perspectives are inferior? [insert cliche about what if you were born in a religious-dominant culture in another time and place you'd probably believe whatever beliefs are dominant in that culture]

But again, if that's your goal, then we're just at the point which I'm arguing its worth getting past: without considering the reasons why the opposing perspective comes to its conclusions, your giving your own justifications for their views, in order to affirm your own point of view. As I put it before:



You're assuming that they're wrong, and you're right, and that they need to be disabused of their wrong ideas by you. Can you imagine being on the other side of that?

holy ****, it's starting to look like a sextuple rainbow!

(In other news: last September, it appears that zombie Who bassist John Entwistle rose from the dead in order to put rainbows in our rainbows.)

Appreciating religion for its cultural value strikes me still as a critical approach. The original debate is really more or less about the existence of god (and, tertiarily, about the validity of various religious views). Saying religion has value for its cultural impact seems to deviate a bit from that. A faithless approach to religion seems against the grain of the topic.



I'm not making those comparisons directly, it's to bring up examples which serve as obvious counter-examples to certain claims. It just so happens that the most obvious counter examples are to bad things.

There is clearly some good to be gained from religious belief.

No, it's no surprise. I fully agree with you here.



Yeah, I agree with you on this, completely.



I absolutely concede you can't reasonably deny a point before understanding it somewhat. I think many atheist-leaning people do understand these perspectives a bit, though? I used to be very religious myself, for a time.



No, I don't think all religious people should be disabused of their views. That's not and isn't the debate. Nor would I speak so candidly to someone who really believed these things.

As per wrong beliefs, if I believe something that's wrong, I hope someone comes along to convince me otherwise, so long as the way they do it is sufficiently polite. Here I feel we're speaking behind closed doors. Do people of like mind not speak candidly?

According to polls, amongst faith groups "atheists" are generally more knowledgable about religious groups that they don't belong to than any other faith group. But knowing that -- I don't know -- that according to Islam Muhammad received the Quran in a cave as dictation of the words of the angel Gabriel, for example, doesn't necessarily promote understanding of the sorts of questions we're talking about.