For the most part I respect belief.
The ones based in bullshit (like religions), I don’t.
Alright, so what? What good does treating them petulantly do? If you cannot treat them in a way where they feel understood and cared for they don’t change. If you treat someone poorly or like you are superior they are more likely to double down on their belief and spit in your face. Unless your aim is to bash their faces in and straight up use force you have to see the human in them to get started reversing the programing because a lot of religions preach that unbelievers are evil and the first step in any questioning of the whole is to show that no… You aren’t evil. You are moral and kind actually.
What’s the end goal of disrespect? To be rude to them for fun?
If you treat someone poorly or like you are superior they are more likely to double down on their belief and spit in your face.
They’re prone to do that anyway.
you have to see the human in them to get started reversing the programing
Why do you say “I have to”, like is my obligation and my work to deprogram religious nuts?
You don’t have to. Only if you want to try and stop them from being religious nuts that’s where you start.
It’s not your job to interact with them so don’t. If they are actively causing you pain where you are you have a right to defend yourself to get them to stop but like any violence there is a line where you cross from self defence to just taking out your anger and trauma on someone else to make yourself feel better. People who do that make the job harder for those of us who want to stop religious trauma from perpetuating.
Respecting religious belief is part of the healing process of religious trauma. It doesn’t mean subscribing to belief in religion. It means seeing the actual human beings inside the system that hurt you.