Why respect religious belief?

[Polwarth]

I KNEW it!

[Scottish_Republican]

The Poles are complaining about the Teletubbies too. There is a campaign by RCs there to get it off their TV.

[southern]

It is hard to imagine how people make presumption on a child’s cartoon...one reason stated was due to one holding a purse...what?!

[Scottish_Republican]

Originally Posted by southern

It is hard to imagine how people make presumption on a child’s cartoon...one reason stated was due to one holding a purse...what?!

I just hate the Teletubbies because I think they're plain creepy (for non-homosexual reasons).

[southern]

true

[steaphan_et]

Originally Posted by CreepingJesus

Here is a quote from something I read recently.

It perfectly encapsulates my own attitude towards believers.

If you claim that something is true, I will examine the evidence which supports your claim; if you have no evidence, I will not accept that what you say is true and I will think you a foolish and gullible person for believing it so.

Given the complete lack of evidence for a god, I am compelled to think of believers as foolish and gullible.

I believe in God. IMO, questioning the existence of God and trying to prove or disprove that God exists will not work. Think about an ant moving on a string. The ant's world is this string. The world will allow it to move in one dimension. But we live in a three dimensional world and we can do things which the ant would regard as impossible. The ant cannot explain what happens in the three dimensional world. So it cannot prove or disprove things which happen in this world. Now if someone tries to explain God it means they are making the assumption that God is an earthly being, that He obeys our reasoning or our scientific theorems.
I hope you remember about the base system from math courses cause i'm going to give you a good example based on it. A teacher claims that 01 + 01 = 10. The student will conclude that is rediculous. But the teacher is not talking about the base 10 system where 01 + 01 = 2, but he's talking about the base 2 system where the only possible numbers are 0 and 1. The counting goes as 0, 1, 10, 11, etc. You see inorder to say something is wrong/right you have to be able to be in the same system as that something is. You have to be able to know what the rules of the world are. So being a human being, I believe that I will never be able to explain and question God's work.
BTW this is one of the reasons why I didn't believe in God a while ago. One other question is: "God created everything and he saw that it was good. How come something evil came out of good?". There are many other things which I can't answer. I will simply have faith in God. This is only to give you an idea of how one believer reasons.

Originally Posted by CreepingJesus

Given the amount of conflict between rival superstitions and the huge numbers of people being murdered in the name of various interpretations of the unprovable and improbable god, I am also compelled to think that religion does great harm in the world.

If you write a book, there will be as many interpretations of your book as the number of people who read it. The Bible/Quran/other religious books are interpreted in different ways. The religious books that I know (at least the Bible and Quran) do not tell that it is ok to do wrong things. So I take this as people deliberately using the name of God to their benefit or people misinterpreting the instructions given by God.

Originally Posted by CreepingJesus

Given that each rival god cult believes that they will be rewarded for their piety upon their deaths by a deity who will eventually take terrible revenge on followers of all the other "wrong" faiths, heretics, and unbelievers, kill us all and consign us to burn for eternity in the pit of hell (no evidence for that either), I am compelled to think that believers themselves have trouble respecting the beliefs of others. (The first commandment forbids other faiths.)

Again, there are many interpretations of the Bible. Personally I think if you kept on saying God does not exist but if you have lived your life as a good person, then God see you for who you really are, a good person.
Jesus has thought that if people don't accept you when you teach about God, then do not argue, just leave. The Bible does not tell us to disrespect others. That will infact be a sin. And that is why I respect other religions.
PS. Also try to consider the good things that come due to religion.

Originally Posted by CreepingJesus

Given the above I'm compelled to ask. Why should I, who cannot see the tiniest atom of value in religious belief respect the religious beliefs of others?

If I'm to respect someone's beliefs then they would need to provide evidence that these beliefs were true.

That's not going to happen so can anyone tell me why I should respect religious belief?

I'd really like to know.

Hmmm. It depends on how you define respect. One definition of respect that I agree with is "To avoid violation of or interference with". But if your definition of respect includes "agreeing" then I agree that you can't respect religious beliefs. Based on this definition I can also that that I can't respect other religious beliefs. But I think the former definition is widely used. As in someone says "I don't agree, but I respect your opinion". So I choose to say I respect all religious beliefs.