Personal feelings of offense are used as a defense all the time by religious people to keep criticism or disagreement of their views from being heard or expressed. This indeed has been popularly accepted as a way to handle opposition and at the same time protect themselves from opposing views and simply put almost a blind eye to religious views by making it taboo and "disrespectful" to talk against. I think as nonbelievers we should speak out whenever possible and as many times as possible. Their beliefs shouldn't get any more special treatment than our disbeliefs. When something is wrong, inaccurate, or unjust their are grassroots movements to fight back and correct those inequalities and speak up against them no matter if the oppressors or opposing view feels offended or uncomfortable about what is being said against them when all is said is the truth and they don't like that the truth is being spread. We need to treat religion in this similar form while unfortunately we are the minority, that hasn't stopped all other types of minorities from speaking up when the majority encourages not to and tries to use whatever excuse or flawed reasoning to oppose the truth. Promoting religious views are treated as more important than exposing them for their flaws and that's not progress. If every other minority allowed their issue to be cast as taboo just because the facts aren't liked or immediately accepted then there definitely wouldn't be progress and we would be living in dark times where we base our society according to what the majority wants the truth to be. Just because a majority agrees on something doesn't make it a truth and isn't always the ideal thing to follow. In a world like that the majority might not like the fact that gravity keeps us from floating in the air every now and then but it won't change the fact that it's not how things function as much as we may want or believe that we can float in the air from time to time. In a world that is susceptible to what the majority says, the KKK would run free to do what they want to colored minorities on the basis that they believe that white people are supreme above all others just because they say so and because they have the current power or majority. Because of this we should treat our disbelief in religion like a movement. Movements make progress over time even if they're not resolved in our lifetime at least we get the ball rolling for future generations that slowly start to make a more significant impact and would of otherwise been much slower if we didn't get the ball rolling in the first place.
- Cesar Valencia
