This is probably the most popular criticism I get from writing these articles. It usually goes under the guise of tolerance, with the reader arguing we should respect other people’s religious beliefs. It always irritated me when people would bash other people’s religious beliefs, while still subscribing to their own arbitrary claims. For example, the whole deal about Mitt Romney being Mormon even though some of the people who criticized his beliefs believed Jesus is imbedded in a cracker or that there is a spooky sky daddy watching over all of us.

First of all, you have to realize that this sort of criticism is an ad hominem fallacy. It says nothing about the content of the claims and simply directs the criticism on the person. Suppose I disagree with you in an argument and then you counterpoint with “you should be more respectful.” This puts me in an untenable position because either I agree with you on some level or I am deemed disrespectful. Merely disagreeing does not mean that I am disrespectful. This is the same as the “you’re not listening” argument. Either I agree with you on some level, or I am not listening, yet another ad hominem. There is a difference between disagreeing and not listening. Also another one is “you should be more tolerant.” Either I agree with you, or I am intolerant. Ad hominem.

For some reason people seem to have this strange intuition that the way someone presents their argument somehow affects the content of their claims. In the academic realm, although it is more pleasant to argue against somebody who is “respectful”, the claims are completely detached from presentation style. Someone could be friendly and courteous when saying 2+2=5, but they are still wrong while the person who pompously and angrily yells 2+2=4 is correct. It makes no difference how somebody packages their claims and scientists could care less how somebody presents a theory. They are more interested in what the theory explicitly states.

The only way the respect criticism could be considered a legitimate criticism is if we are only talking about how someone presents his material. This is actually important if one plans on speaking to the public, as the American populace is not all that educated about modern science. Many people do not have the critical thinking skills to distinguish between science and pseudoscience. So many people are just trying to navigate through this 21st century information age with only their intuitions on how nicely someone presents his argument. It should be of no surprise that the Discovery Institute has so many supporters when they spend so much time on public relations. I actually went to the Evolution vs. Design conference hosted by the Discovery Institute and I realized the Discovery Institute was just an organization devoted to marketing a failed philosophical proposition, full of flashy graphics and colorful diagrams with not really any new scientific material, which is ironic to an organization that hasn’t discovered anything.

So perhaps you could claim that my presentation style should be more “respectful.” This is a criticism I have considered many times and always try to analyze my speech to make sure that I am not insulting someone, both their pride and intelligence. It should be understood that these articles are directed not so much to the general public but students of SMU, which I assume to be at least decently educated with a somewhat good understanding of science. Thus, I hope the level of criticism exceeds the why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along-proposition and focuses more on the academic rigor of the claims themselves.

Quite frankly, I don’t think some of the claims that the religious make deserve my respect. For instance, if your religious beliefs accommodate a notion that someone could be erased of their sins by merely confessing to some arbitrary person, then I simply cannot respect this claim. It is the height of immorality. In fact the word scapegoat has its origins in the Bible (Leviticus 16:8), where they would transfer one’s sins to a goat that would be sent into the wilderness to starve and die, thus somehow transferring moral responsibility from a human to an innocent animal. I cannot respect the religious claim that women are inferior to men, no doubt an expression of outright oppression and male chauvinism.The fact is there are things that we should not tolerate. Civil society could not function without some moral guidelines and things we do not tolerate. For instance, we do not tolerate murder, stealing, vandalism, assault, etc. and it seems to be the case that this sort of “intolerance” is ok. There are some who criticize me as being “intolerant” but of course, if your standards are so low that somehow you think that any old religious belief should be tolerated, then I think it would be expected and even a compliment to be called intolerant. I am “intolerant” of racism, sexism, dogmatism, and a whole host of other things that would seem like things we would naturally be intolerant about but somehow gets a free ride under the guise of religion. Suppose that the student who wrote about homosexuality last semester said that gay people are naturally bad people and do awful things without any mention of religious motivation. People would naturally criticize this person and yet when he mentions that it’s religiously motivated, somehow I’m the intolerant one.

Just like in epistemology, you need standards for morality and ethics for it to mean anything significant. When it comes to knowledge, any belief cannot have the title of knowledge without having some additional requirements, mainly justification and truth. If your sense of morality and ethics accommodates any sort of moral claim, in the sense that you tolerate any sort of moral position (like it is ok threatening cartoonists with fire bombing), then the definition of tolerance, morality, and respect all become meaningless because everything is allowed.

We live in a country where we do not have to give undeserved respect. We are free to worship whatever we want so long as it is peaceful. We can peaceably assemble. We have no state religion and we have the freedom of speech. I think that I speak for many atheists when I say that we are tired of having religion crammed down our throats, with legislation constantly being passed to pander to the religious, with decisions on science education by those who know nothing about science, with having to tip toe around religious issues so no one is offended and with having to constantly give this assumed respect to beliefs, simply because they are religiously motivated. I have never suggested any sort of physical harm on the religious but I will use my first amendment to the fullest extent. They are protected by the constitution. That is respect enough.

Ken Ueda is a senior math, physics and philosophy triple major. He can be reached for comment at [email protected]