Religious Intolerance (mine)

This subject is not easy to write about. Like most people, I like to think of myself as relatively tolerant and respectful. And you often hear that we all should be respectful of other people's religious beliefs. But I don't think I really do respect everyone's beliefs, and I'm not even sure I should.

I don't think I really even know what it means to respect someone's religious convictions. Respect can mean many things. If respect means "To have a high opinion of" or "To recognize the worth, quality, importance, or magnitude of", well, quite frankly I don't. In fact, I have a pretty damn low opinion of most religious beliefs, and certainly don't recognise their "worth" and "quality". And most religious people probably don't recognise the worth and quality of other religion's beliefs, and probably never will. So I don't think that's what people are asking for when they say to respect the beliefs of others.

I'm guessing that being respectful probably means that I shouldn't, for instance, loudly proclaim 'that's the stupidest thing I've heard since the guy at Noel Leemings told us that a Pentium III 900Mhz computer with 128MB of RAM could play all the latest 3D first person shooters'. Practically speaking, it seems that respect means that I can think their belief is dumb, but I can't actually say so out loud.

But what about non-religious beliefs? What if someone thinks that having sex with a virgin cures HIV? Or that pregnancy only results after female orgasm, so if a rape victim gets pregnant then she must have enjoyed it?

I certainly don't "have a high opinion of" those beliefs, and I have a very low opinion of the knowledge of the people who believe this kind of stuff. Should I "respect" these beliefs by pretending to agree?

And there's the reason that I fear that I'm not tolerant enough. I don't see why stupid religious beliefs should be accorded any kind of special status over stupid ordinary beliefs. I usually do keep my opinion to myself, but I just can't stop my opinion of the belief from influencing my opinion of the person. If I discover that someone holds irrational religious beliefs, my respect for that person's intellect goes down a notch.

Most of the time, this isn't really an issue. I mean, there are literally thousands of things about a person that influence our respect for them both positively and negatively. Someone's religious beliefs are only a very small part of that picture. And of course, some of my closest friends are religious :)

Really, the only place I'm conscious of this is if I happen to be talking to an attractive male (attractive to me, that is, not necessarily good looking). If the guy happens to mention that he's going to a Christian camp, or church outing or something similar, my attraction vanishes at light speed. My interest in the guy ends up the same as if he'd just told me he was a 60-year old married grandfather of 15.

Does that make me a bad person?