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You can challenge religion respectfully, I think. The idea is to be genuine and to honestly attempt to understand the perspective of your interlocutor.

That's just flat out rude.

I can't even debate that, you're just wrong.

I'm sorry to hear there are people that self-absorbed in the world. Other peoples beliefs deserve as much respect as your own, common decency should tell you that.

To have a civil debate/discussion, some degree of respect is required. If you are not willing to show this, what are you doing here? I (and I think most of the people here) am not interested in a shouting match. There's always the main forums to troll if you want that.

Didn't you all hear my explanation? Is it not reasonable?

Fine, how about we debate why religion does not deserve any respect instead of me saying that it doesn't and then you guys telling me that I'm wrong and telling me that I do not belong here. I will admit that my post was rash and did not have any sort of explanation.

I will give more reasons for why I think religion does not deserve any respect:
1) It gives a reason (albeit a bad one) for homophobics to be homophobic. Gay marriage is and the rights of homosexuals is something that really ticks me off especially living in California with Proposition 8. There seems to be no legitimate reason for homophobia except religious ones.
2) It has no evidence in most, if not all claims. It does not deserve the same level of respect as an established and accepted scientific claim. "Gays choose to be gay" is such an example. So are the creation myths that are slowly entering some schools.
3) 9/11.
4) It gives you false hope. Same idea as the lack of evidence argument.

Here's some ideas as to why religion may deserve respect:
1) They help the poor, feed the hungry etc etc.
2) It gives people a reason to live.
3) The other obvious ones I don't care to list.

Any others? Maybe my cons for religion just outweighs the pros of religion in my mind. As an atheist I believe the world would be better without religion. <-- that probably sounds really arrogant to you religious folk and will probably be very very disrespectful. But can we please argue seriously about this? It will be interesting and you could change my mind. Tell me why the world is better as it is with religion.

The only religion that I seriously respect is Buddhism. It has done no harm to me and has not managed to upset me in any manner. There's probably others out there, but I do not know them.

I think you can, too. Here's how I see it:

-Discussing religion respectfully: rationally and civilly questioning the precepts/teachings, reasoning, or any other aspects of a religion. Acknowledging when someone has a good point or shows you wrong on a point.

-Discussing religion disrespectfully: calling names, making unfounded accusations, derogatively stereotyping all members of a religion based on the actions of a few of them, acting like those who disagree with your perspective are stupid or ignorant, claiming that the religion you are discussing is inherently evil in some way, goading someone on by mocking beliefs that they place great value on, etc.

Respect is key to a rational discussion.

If someone is stupid, you don't call them that. You simply demonstrate how they're stupid by pointing out the giant holes/contradictions in what they're saying.

EDIT: I like your sig, btw; I think it applies to loving God as well as to loving another person.

1.) Not all religious folk are obsessed with sexuality, and people can find more than one mode of support for their hatred and fear. An absence of religion doesn't mean that their would be an absence of homophobia or even a smaller amount of it present in humanity.

2.)Religion and science are not the same thing and so cannot be expected to follow the same rules of engagement.

3.)Radicals distort religious tenets and use that distortion to manipulate others into doing their bidding. People unfortunately seem fairly good at finding ways to control a population in doing it's bidding, just look at what we saw happening when communism was more wide spread, children ratting out their parents for not carrying that little red book. People getting beaten and killed and what about the Rwandan Genocide, the ethnicity of the Hutu's and Tutsi's were the same but as political groups they were turned against each other through negative propaganda and neighbors turned on the people they once cared about and killed them.

4.)What false hope?