All the mistakes of the godly are merely metaphor

Imagine you found a population in the US where the majority of the people believed that 2+2=5, and that attempts to correct them with the actual, correct result of adding two numbers were regarded as insults to their revered traditions. I think we'd all agree that they a) they were wrong; b) they were misled, misinformed, and miseducated; c) that they were ignorant of arithmetic; or d) might very well have been maliciously deceived by someone in their midst. Somehow, though, if the ridiculous error involves God, some people take a big step backwards and are appalled that anyone might criticize them. Those "revered traditions" become more than mere excuses, they are inviolate.

You guessed it, once again someone was aggravated that I have dared to call adherence to religious belief a case of being "ignorant, deluded, wicked, foolish, or oppressed." This time our indignant contestant is Mark A. R. Kleiman, who considers it atheistic bigotry to enumerate the reasons why people might come to absurd and erroneous conclusions. That 80-90% of this population, which is not hypothetical at all but is the entire US, believes that chanting their wishes into the sky might get them granted by a magic being, or that over half use the excuse of their religious dogma to reject the basic facts of modern biology, is something we must not question and especially must not criticize. Because it is religion, it must be respected.

Except, well, Kleiman has an out. There is a "childish" religion that can be criticized, but then there's this mature, adult religion that is "always metaphorical." He's not really defending those ignorant, deluded, wicked, foolish, or oppressed religious kooks that believe the earth is 6000 years old or that we go to war in the Middle East to smite the wicked brown-skinned Muslims, oh no — those are the negligible, unrepresentative fringe elements. True Religious People™ know that everything in their religion is a metaphor. They don't really believe in an anthropomorphic god … why, that is only a symbol for "an infinite, omniscient, beneficent, immortal being".

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