Atheism

The funny thing about religion is that, not only do people only subscribe to various fractions of the theology, if you don't believe it all then by some degree you aren't a true follower.

So you end up with a spectrum of believers where any one individual will claim that that who don't believe enough aren't true followers, but those who believe too much are extremists.

It seems to me that if you don't fully believe the theology you shouldn't be a follower. And if you do believe all of it you need psychiatric help.

I think every religion comes with a dessert, I am just not why we need to sign up for the whole package.

A lot of it is just historical baggage and superstition, stacked atop what are fundamentally secular morals and legal codes. You could ask much the same of any modern democratic(ish)ly produced legal system or any cultural obligation/taboo common to your neighborhood. South Carolina just legalized pinball this year, after a 70-year (largely unenforced) moratorium. Imagine if that proscription had been etched into a stone tablet under Hammurabi.

I am curious what are the things that are so special there that you like?

Prohibitions on usury (common to all Abrahamic religions) are a big one. Loan sharking is generally a bad social practice. A state policy that refuses to apply public law enforcement to the job of collections is a net-good for society.

For another, Muslim society supports as many as five distinct genders, which is a vast improvement over traditional western interpretations.

Even just getting down to the core tenants - the Five Pillars of the Islamic belief system - I can count three I generally like. Almsgiving, Fasting, and Pilgrimage all contribute to a plural society of shared wealth, shared sacrifice, and shared identity.

I don't even strictly hate the obligation towards modesty, as sexual tension among young people is a very well-documented and long-standing problem in any mixed-gender space. In the same way we must learn to control our bodily functions as children, we do well to learn to control our hormonal urges as young adults. Westerners largely recognize the utility of prohibition against outright nudity in public and the need for dress codes of one degree or another in schools. So a lot just boils down to the degree of undress.

So much of what rubs people the wrong way about any religion tends to be the mechanisms of enforcement. For the same reason you shouldn't be spanking your kids for wetting the bed, you shouldn't brand someone's face or cut off their nose for showing cleavage or chopping off fingers for shoplifting. Or for the same reason Americans generally support immigration restrictions, but have soured on ICE as a vehicle for enforcement.

It’s not the nice things that annoy me about religion, it’s all the hidden fine details that are buried on page 120 of a 1000 terms and conditions.

In my experience, Atheists can recount the aspects of religious organizations they despise by chapter and verse. But when it comes to the far more benign and broadly held tenants, you'd never know they existed.