Of course Rob, and it's exactly what he says. The point goes both ways though, you know this.
As far as I can tell, everyone here is capable of respecting people's beliefs, even if they find them unbelievable.
However we also understand that being logically consistent is pretty important in the real world, especially when it comes to running a country, deciding what to fund, what laws to make or remove, etc.
Nobody can prove that Christianity is wrong, but when people accept it as true without evidence, and reject the things that have tons of evidence, suddenly it becomes possible for anything to be accepted as truth no matter how poorly supported by evidence. And when a country is run by people like that, and there is a majority of voters who think like that, who can know what absurd laws might be passed.
I don't have a problem with religion. I have a problem with people who aren't concerned with facts. It just so happens that if everyone was as concerned about evidence and facts as they should be, there probably wouldn't be so many religious people. Again, I don't have a problem with religion, but it should have absolutely no influence on government, whatsoever. And as long as there are so many religious people, it always will.
The only way to change this is to teach kids the importance of evidence and logic. If every parent and teacher did this, there would be no problem, even if religion still remained at the same time. But of course this in not the case. Childhood indoctrination is common everywhere, and it is really unfair to the kids. When parents teach their kids that something is true, even though they have no evidence for it being true, then they are not only intentionally forcing to child to share their beliefs, they are also causing the child to understand that evidence is not required to believe something. Except in some cases, where children grow up to realize the importance of evidence and thus discard the idea of a God, everyone else grows up believing what they've been taught.
And depending on how strictly they believe, they may be willing to disregard even the most compelling evidence for things that go against their beliefs. And they may be willing to disregard other people's rights because their beliefs are more important, allowing both acts of violence and voting for unjust laws, mostly the latter I'd say.
I've been very general in all of this. Not every Christian is oblivious to the importance of evidence, and in fact I doubt anyone could function if they had literally zero concern for evidence. However I think it is clear there are problems in society that wouldn't be there if people thought logically and looked for facts rather than going entirely by religion. There are enough "illogical people" (which is not to say religious people) to hold back society from becoming what it could. I can tell you gay marriage would not be an issue. There would not be such opposition to planned parenthood and birth control. And there would probably be more funding towards science and especially schools.
To summarize, religious people are not the problem, illogical people are. It's just that these two groups tend to intersect quite a bit, by necessity really.
