No, he's saying you're fine to believe as you like but that religious people have no right pushing their theology on anyone else, or on public policy. For crying out loud, look at the examples he makes in his arguments. He doesn't accuse religious people of thoughtcrime, you know.
Unfortunately, the two most widespread religions on earth, Christianty and Islam, are
evangelical by nature. The very essence of their belief system--a core value that they believe was an entreaty by their god himself speaking through prophets--includes the necessity of spreading the belief system to others. No exceptions are allowed: not if the others already adhere to another slightly different (from our point of view) Abrahamist cult; not if the others have demonstrated their own belief system to be just as satisfactory a way of life by any
empirical, objective measure; not if the others are not competing by counter-evangelism; and--for many of them--not even if the others would rather die or sacrifice their entire community to avoid conversion.
This is what happens when a philosophy is based on irrational faith rather than reason: It seems perfectly
rational to them, that they have not only a right but a
sacred duty to push their theology on all the rest of us and to enshrine it in public policy. They believe that if we do not convert to their belief system, we cannot ascend to the heaven that awaits believers in their imaginary afterlife; that we will suffer for all eternity for our stubbornness, blindness and poor judgment; that out of sheer
compassion they must take whatever steps necessary to override our own value system and replace it with theirs; and--for many of them--that this cosmic compassion not only permits but
commands the violation of secular morality. After all, what are a few million deaths, a few million heartbroken families, the loss of the motifs of a few obliterated cultures, and--for many of them--the destruction of civilization and a return to the Stone Age of tribalism, when those things only matter on this exceedingly temporary plane of mortal existence and pale in comparison to the literally infinite life of unremitting joy that awaits all of us poor confused souls in "heaven"?
So the question is, where do you draw the distinction between "thoughtcrime" and conspiracy to commit actual crime, which is a felony in my country if not yours? If one person believes he has a right to accost you on the street and preach his religion to you, and to vote for politicians who will slowly enshrine the tenets of his religion into the law of the land, that just seems like democracy and freedom of speech in action. But when an entire community of these people believe that they have the right to marginalize you and start making concrete plans to do so, that is conspiracy. When an entire nation of these people believes they have the right to attack you with violence of military proportions, to overthrow your government, to destroy your cherished institutions like music and dog ownership, and to hold you at swordpoint until you either agree to convert to their religion or agree that you'd just as soon die... This is not freedom of speech, this is not "thoughtcrime," this is not conspiracy. This is pure sociopathic evil.
We all agree that once religion reaches this stage, we have no obligation to tolerate it. But what are we to do when we see that religions reach this stage over and over, every three or four generations, and it seems to be a basic part of their nature? Do we have to wait until they reach that point every single time and then respond with miiltary defense? How many times can human civilization survive these attacks?
We have to win every time. They only have to win once!
