Question For Fellow Atheists...

[Brian37]

When I find out someone has an imaginary friend as an adult, my level of respect for them goes right out the window.  They might be perfectly nice people, but my level of respect for them as intellectual beings pretty much goes to zero, at least with regards to their religious beliefs.

Rational people, in the act of being rational people, are not religious, period.

Bold mine.

That is the crux of the matter. We're discussing whether someone can have otherwise respectable beliefs, as well as religious beliefs. I think it's very clear that they can. I will take whatever other things they have to say into consideration with an open mind, if they can do so without bringing their religion into it. If they insist on bringing it into everything, then yeah, intellectual conversation is pretty much a non-starter.

If someone wants to write off a religious person entirely without hearing anything else they have to say, that is up to them, but I think it's a mistake.

It is perfectly fine to say that an atheist and theist can agree on economic issues, or like of a sports team or book or movie. But it still does not change that religions, worldwide even among the umbrella label seek to compete between the sub sects for the attention of the governments they live under. In that context it is impossible to separate belief from politics, even if some say they do try to do that. 

I value the empathy of Martin Luther King Jr, but that does not prove the Christian god the one true god. I can value the likes of Ann Frank, but again, that does not prove Yahweh as the one real god. I can value the likes of Malala but again, that does not prove Allah to be the one real god.

There ARE very compassionate individuals worldwide in every nation who hold various religious labels. The only thing I dispute isn't my fellow human's capability of being compassionate. I merely dispute where anyone of any label of any religion thinks that empathy is coming from. I would argue that humans need to consider that our ability to be cruel or compassionate is not coming from above from a divine source vs a ground troll. I would argue that our morality isn't coming from a book or a patent held by a holy gatekeeper. 

I would argue it is coming from the same evolution, we can see when an elephant mourns their dead or protects their young. Why we even have a video of a cat, protecting a kid from a dog attacking it.