I don’t happen to think this particular symbol points at any tangible moon (i.e. god as real), but it certainly could point to things like service, charity, hope, love (unfortunately this particular symbol could also point to things like exclusivity, murder, incest, bigotry, and so forth).

Sounds like maybe the person in the story isn’t seeing the moon.

But history is fraught with examples of people, over time, coming to revere the symbol, long after they’ve forgotten about the moon.

No kings,

Robert

Doesn’t a moral and intellectual honesty demand that we disrespect certain ideas? Even ideas popularly held at times?

Reading what you wrote, I can’t tell if you’re clearly saying that we must respect other people, their right to hold their own opinion… or something else, which is that you are demanding that I respect THEIR opinions.

I understand the fuzziness point you make, in part because I believe that both statements are true in many (most?) cases. Respecting people includes respecting their thoughts – even if you disagree with them. That doesn’t mean you can’t disagree with them. It doesn’t mean you can’t state you disagree with them. Of course you can. But it also means that generally some of the mocking tones we often take (and I include myself in that)around ideas we disagree with quickly descend to personal mocking by default.

At least until you understand another person’s thought well enough so that you can articulate that person’s reasons for holding a viewpoint (which is rare) then while you may still disagree with them, you (and I)have no basis to disrespect them. A few years ago I taught a class in Christian ethics in Nebraska. I asked people to tell me whether they were for or against the death penalty as a part of the first class. I then made them research and write a paper on all the reasons supporting the OPPOSITE opinion. Students hated the assignment. It caused huge angst for them. But what I hoped they would learn is to not just disagree with others but to try to understand them. After checking and listening – some ideas are still wacky and worthy of little attention. But we tend to decide that based on lack of information and curiosity because we let our world view speak for us rather than thinking them through in a more intellectually honest and open way.

Take for example, the tone about how a specific small group of Roman Catholics handled the presence of someone who didn’t think what they thought about communion. It quickly included a somewhat mocking disagreement about the presence of Christ in communion (which is actually a distraction from the central issue which is how the Christians and the atheists treated each other during the incident). Rather than comments on church and state, public funding uses in state universities, treatment of guests in public settings, etc. more than few comments easily descend into what a foolish thing it was to think what Catholics think and so it wasn’t a big deal anyway.

The truth is that disagreeing with the idea doesn’t automatically give us the right to be disruptive in the midst of it. It may in some cases involving intentional civil disobedience. Nor does the presence of outsiders as visitors in public settings give the Catholic Church the right to make a mountain out of a molehill in a campus worship service(which I believe they did in the campus incident and they were wrong to do so).

Anyway, at the moment those are my thoughts as a lurking “friendly Christian.” I hope it clarifies what I meant a bit.