If a religion was perfect, do you think it would respect nonbelievers?

[MatureMcLeod]

Religions like Taoism and Buddhism I consider religions because they do no harm and allows critical thinking. Religions like Christianity and Islam I consider cults because they justify every crime imaginable and forces people to follow on blind faith, even when all the evidence says otherwise. If God really wanted for us to know him, he would do it in a way that was provable and would answer our questions himself, instead of supposedly finding car keys and not showing up for thousands of years and making prayer almost never work. Then he blames the defective product that he purposely made defective. Most of the Bible is killing atheists, gays and idolaters, but if a religion truly was perfect, do you think it would respect these groups?

[Arturo]

I guess it would. Islam is considered a religion by most people and they have a way of dealing with non-believers. Murder.

[Asmodean]

I think at the core of it, Islam is a very insecure religion. Perhaps that comes from being a relative newcomer to the mainstream Abrahamic stage... Perhaps it's just the tiny penises though, I don't know.

In any case, what I think every theistic religion shares, is the willingness of its followers to feel slighted on behalf of their god(s), their book(s) and/or their spiritual leaders. Islam is not at all special in that regard, but don't tell this guy;


he might rupture a brain aneurysm 

I think that in many progressive societies, the fact that people are getting harder to offend by opposing points of view is a major contributing factor to religion being on retreat in the past few decades. You don't have to go too far back either. I'm certain that some of our more senior members remember the time when people were expected to dress, interact and generally behave in a certain way, and going against tradition was at the very best considered indecent. From what I understand, that is still the case in many parts of the world.

For my part, I would not object to people spending less time counting someone elses facial piercings or measuring the length of their skirts and more time brooming their own damned porch.

In any case, I digress. Where were we?

Perfection is in the eye of the beholder. Maybe your perfect god and her perfect religion would be one of tolerance and acceptance. Not so much for this guy, I think;


There is no objective standard for perfection when you are dealing with irrational human constructs. So yeah... I suppose what I'm saying is that I consider the question flawed.