How many of you would punish religious people for being religious?

[Belacqua]

At work.

I don't think that wisdom is quantifiable, so it doesn't seem as if there will be a metric available. You might make a judgment call as to whether a person was wise or not, but you'd have to be wise to do so. 

I suspect we all agree that punishment is justifiable in some cases. Wisdom is here the important term, because getting the balance right between justice and mercy may be extremely difficult. And of course just because punishment is justified doesn't mean that a person enjoys meting it out. 

The question on the thread is whether anyone would like to punish people for being religious. It seems to me that if words calculated to make a person feel bad count as punishment, then there are some people who are more than willing to punish people for being religious.

Hmmmmm.... so, you've got no way to tell if some one or some 'Thing'(Words, concepts etc) actually is/are 'Wise'?

 That seems to be a tad problematic.

I don't think that wisdom is something we can be sure about. It can't be detected by empirical methods. It can't be measured or photographed. 

Maybe that will seem problematic if you require some kind of certainty. To me it seems more like something that experts -- experienced people, people who have lived and learned -- will be better able to discern than others, but even such people may disagree. 

Can you propose an alternative? Do you have a checklist for wisdom which we could apply to form an objective standard?

You then wax lyrical about something I've already answered with a 'No'.

 Frankly I'm nonplussed as to your reply.

I wasn't talking about you, as someone who wants to punish -- you don't seem to me like the type who would go out of his way to make someone feel bad because you disagree with him. You seem very even-tempered to me, and not at all cruel. 

Sadly, not everyone is so easy-going.