Oh please. I'm tired of /r/atheism's love for moderates.

EDIT: tl;dr:

Moderates beliefs are just as insane as funnies beliefs.

Moderates want it to be taboo to criticise religion, not being able to criticise religion is dangerous.

Moderates are guilty of cherry picking.

--------------------------------

Yes, moderates are better than fundies. I'd rather have every religious people in the world be moderates rather than fundamentalists. But there are two main problems with moderates. First, they make the world safe for fundies. Two, they're guilty of being intellectually dishonest.

Moderates make the world safe for extremists because moderates want religion and religious views respected. I agree that most moderates are good people, but unfortunately they have made it taboo to criticise religion.

If we can't criticise religion we're telling ourselves faith is a good enough reason to believe in something. This will just make it difficult for us when we encounter groups or people who say "my faith tells me we should kill people". Because it's so taboo to criticise faith we then start to blame things that are not responsible for atrocities that were committed in the name of religion. Either that or we ignore the issue completely.

There are many people who think that the terrorists in the Middle East are acting the way they do because of political factors, or socio-economic factors, and of course neither are responsible.

Look at the 9/11 hijackers. They were wealthy and were educated in western universities; and if what they were doing was politically motivated because of occupation by foreign forces, we should be seeing Buddhist monks who suicide bomb Chinese government buildings. We don't see monks blowing themselves up though because in Buddhism using violence isn't a part of their beliefs. In Monotheism, it is. These terrorist, the people who shoot up abortion clinics and the other religious crazies have spent large amounts of time talking to religious leaders, and studying religious texts to come to the conclusion that what they would do would be supported by a divine being.

Secondly, moderates are also intellectually dishonest. Sorry, but saying "I'm not insane" doesn't make your beliefs any less crazy then the beliefs of a fundamentalists. Moderates and fundies believe in the same holy books they believe in the same deity. But the difference between a moderate and a fundie is that fundies show some sort of consistency. If it's in their holy book then yeah they probably believe it. Moderates on the other hand pick and choose to what they believe in then they ignore that parts that their world view doesn't agree with.

If you're a moderate who says "I support gay marriage", or anything else that goes against biblical law. You're cherry picking. Your holy book tells you that homosexuality is prohibited. If you want people to respect your philosophy don't adapt a philosophy that hold barbaric views. If you chose to adapt such a philosophy then don't act like you have the authority to pick which verse are valid and which ones aren't.

We should respect people if they can show us that they are good people, regardless of weather or not they're religious. But we shouldn't give any heighten amount of respect to religious beliefs.