How can you gain respect for religion through knowledge of them?

Answer 1

Anything's possible, but I've known quite a few people who rejected and detested their religion after reading The Bible cover to cover. Thought the below story is merely anecdotal, it is amusing nonetheless. It is from a reading of Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion which speaks of the more terrible parts of scripture: "Those of us schooled from infancy in his ways can become desensitized to their Horror. A naif blessed with the perspective of innocence has a clearer perception. Winston Churchill's son Randolph somehow contrived to remain ignorant of scripture until Evelyn Waugh and a brother officer, in a vain attempt to keep Churchill quiet when they were posted together during the war, bet him he couldn't read the entire Bible in a fortnight: 'Unhappily it has not had the result we hoped. He has never read any of it before and is hideously excited; keeps reading quotations aloud "I say I bet you didn't know this came in the Bible . . . " or merely slapping his side & chortling "God, isn't God a sh**!" Thomas Jefferson, better read, was of a similar opinion: 'The Christian God is a being of terrific character - cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.'" ==new answer== It could give you a good way to understand how different people think and why by seeing how they were enfluenced.