This if unfortunate but Christians can’t exactly call it unfair based of some of those among us and their words and actions. It sucks, but if you like a beer, you’re forever tarred by the image of people who have 28 of them and punch a cop in the face. In any circumstance extremists ruin it for the considered, pleasant majority of people.
Despite the fact the few bad apples ruin the barrel, it’s fairly easy to divorce religious faith and nuttery with a thought experiment.
Consider for a moment, that on the afternoon of January 1st one year, God is somehow irrevocably, indisputably vacated. He does not exist. The earth goes to bed that evening united in their understanding that there is no deity and our faith was misplaced.
We all wake on the morning of the 2nd.
One of two things must now be the case.
Option 1. Homophobia and all other bigotry based on condemnation of others, and all other moralising of any kind, are decimated. The reason that the extremists within the earth’s religions gave - that such behaviour was condemned by the highest authority - is set aside and destroyed. We now have no other manner in which to treat each other than to live and let live, if people are not demonstrably harming each other we have no reason to pass judgement on them. The world lives in peace. Hatred exists in relatively rare pockets of people who are mentally ill and consider that teen pregnancy is the work of aliens.
Option 2. Judgement of our fellow man continues despite the fact that the proffered reason for bigotry seems to have been removed. The bigots reposition, declaring homosexuality to be against the “natural order” or “traditional values”, scrambling to find other, secular, stands on which to hang the hat of moralising. In our newly atheist world, the divisive behaviour of religious extremists is simply replaced by newly minted heretics who are still intolerant of differences in others. This hatred is perpetuated for the same reasons any fear and hatred ever has existed - fear of the unknown and that resentment that insecure, unprincipled people feel when they see someone different to themselves and inexplicably consider those differences to be an assault on their own choices and composition.
So what do you think? If we waved a magic wand and removed religion (ignore for a second I just used magic to vacate religion), are you confident in the idea that the things you blame it for would similarly disappear? Are you confident that religious intolerance is the product of religion, and not intolerance?
