Anyone else struggle with cynical/rude thoughts towards religious people?

[Gwaithmir]

I probably feel that way only toward Kent Hovind when I see him on YouTube. 

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I’m no more likely to have cynical or rude thoughts about religious people than I am about people with any other sort of mental impairment. They elicit my pity, not my scorn.

Boru

[Ahriman]

I'm kind of a religious person but not so much that it informs my decision-making in any way. I don't know why people who are more religious than I am think their way of seeing things is doing them any good, I don't think they understand that beliefs can't be trusted if those beliefs weren't decided upon on the basis that they have been considered deeply and brought to their logical conclusion in a person's mind. Religious beliefs are fine IMO as long as they meet the aforementioned criteria, but most religious people's beliefs don't do that.

[Mister Agenda]

Especially in the USA, it's not really their fault. It's not like we do a good job educating people on science and critical thinking K-12 and it's human nature to believe what the people who raised you believe, especially if everyone else around you that you love and respect believes it too. It's an evolutionary feature. When you think about it, questioning the religous basis of your community is a fairly recent luxury. Throughout most of human history when it wouldn't get you ostracized or worse, you were too tired from a hard day of peasanting to give such things a lot of thought.

[Angrboda]

I recently had an epiphany. There was a commercial where a couple at a wedding was watching football on a phone and they absent-mindedly cheered after a good play. Everybody else at the wedding thought it was a reaction to the best man's speech or some other normal wedding thing. And it made me remember a time in my youth when I did something embarrassing at a wedding, something I've felt regret about since then, and it made me realize that what I was doing was no more heinous or worthy of regret than what the people in the commercial did. We all do stupid things on a pretty regular basis, especially growing up, and we can choose to feel bad and feel shame about it, or we can just chalk it up to our being stupid, just like everybody else. We're just as human, fallible, and stupid as everyone else, and that's okay. It's really okay that I did that stupid thing 40 years ago. I don't have to drag it around the rest of my life like the Albatross in the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. It's okay.

That, and the topic of this thread bring to mind how I've felt about religion. Yes, from the outside it can look stupid and silly, but so can a ton of other things we humans do. We aren't rational creatures. I'm sure an alien peering at me through a remote observation device would wonder what the hell I'm doing when I sit down with my XBOX controller and play videogames. Or why I don't simply cook the things that I know how to cook instead of constantly making bad food trying new recipes. Or why I tell the white lies and lies of omission that I do instead of just bluntly, if impoliticly, telling the truth. Humans are a silly species. As Dostoevsky said, if the world was rational, nothing would ever happen. Our reasons and rationality are a veneer on top of a maelstrom of emotions, desires, sexual attraction, obsession, and other stuff which from the outside probably looks rather silly and stupid. So I give religious people a pass. The things they do and believe aren't significantly sillier or less rational than a ton of other stuff that we accept as normal. I think being religious is an okay way to be. I accept the individual. I may think differently about religion as a movement or as an institution, but on an individual, personal level, it's no more something to get bent about than that someone is of a different political party, or collects porcelain cats, or dresses up in fake armour and gets together with their fellow SCA members to beat on each other. At a distance, it's all silly. That's what we are. And that's okay.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

^’I once knew a man who collected postage stamps. He spent hours tracking down particular stamps, researching their history, sorting them by country and year of issue, and pasting them in little books. I knew another man who did the same thing with women’s garters. Which one was crazy? Both? Neither? Not for me to say.’ - Robert Heinlein

Boru

[syntheticadrenaline]

Yeah I think I'm going to have to just wait for this particular thing to get out my system. In the meantime I just keep my mouth shut when a well meaning religious person says something dumb and focus on interests such as creative writing and chess.

[brewer]

I don't get mentally bent by the religious until they start attacking non believers. Happened the other day, the things being said were coming from indoctrinated ignorance.

I just left the room. I don't think anyone else in the room knew why and I'm certain it will happen in the future.

[MR. Macabre 666]

^’I once knew a man who collected postage stamps. He spent hours tracking down particular stamps, researching their history, sorting them by country and year of issue, and pasting them in little books. I knew another man who did the same thing with women’s garters. Which one was crazy? Both? Neither? Not for me to say.’ - Robert Heinlein

Boru

I collect die cast cars along with our grandson, as well black/death metal concert shirts from all the shows I've been to in the past 40+ years, and I'm still normal. Right?

[Modern Atheism]

I also certainly find it very tempting to mock and ridiculize certain religious ideas...it just gets waaay too dumb at some point.