Why does one belief get respect when other, identical ones do not?

[cleanhippie]

[mr blur]

1. No TRUE alien

would believe the fantastic nonsense in that book!

[Curmudgeoness]

2. You never know,

they may have written it.

Seems to me that Ron Hubbard or some other kook wrote a book about how we are a settlement of aliens and "the aliens" are the god we believe in today.

[Tunkamerica]

5. His name is Lafayette Ronald Hubbard. I always thought they believed that earth was

a prison planet for an alien race and that the planet was "cleansed" of the prisoners at some point by Xenu and the ghosts of the alien prisoners attach to us and cause us all of our problems.

That was my understanding of Scientology. It's been a while since my last audit though.

[Iggo]

3. I give all of them the same amount of respect.

[Ninjaneer]

4. Time and reason has taken away all credibility of the first two books (for the most part).

I'm optimistic that time and reason will do the same to the 3rd.

[iris27]

7. In parts, it is, slowly. (Too slowly for many of us.)

Already, the parts about owning slaves, and about blacks and Jews not deserving equal rights are discredited, and anyone who actually believes them is rightly called racist and considered a white supremacist on par with Stormfront. This was not the case just a generation or two ago, when anti-segregation arguments often used biblical justifications. And the wheel is turning with respect to gay rights, too. Within our lifetimes, "all good Christians" will think it is terrible to use the bible to justify hatred of gays.

But, sadly, the book "as a whole" will continue to be revered as the basis of a popular faith.

I appreciate Christianity's adaptability on the one hand, because it means the morality of a majority-Christian society can still progress and "bend toward justice" and MLK would say. (Unlike certain majority-Muslim countries that still practice a Dark Ages morality, enforced by "religious police".) However, it is that very adaptability that ensures the continuation of Christianity as a faith that can be embraced and practiced by largely modern people.

[AlbertCat]

6. Even atheists do this.

I can't count how many think Richard Dawkins is "rude" and "hurting the atheist cause with his smug arrogance".

When he is just not even considering religious ideas as any kind of helpful solution or explanation for anything. He is simply placing religious ideas on the same plate a scientific ideas. That "non overlapping magistaria" thing Gould came up with is simply not true. Religion asks questions that science can answer, or falsify.