We’re in the 21st century, and the vast majority of us still believe in an utterly and obviously fictional creator deity. Plenty of people, even in developed countries with decent educational systems, still believe in ghosts or magic (e.g. voodoo). And I–an atheist and a skeptic–am told I need to respect these patently false beliefs as cultural traditions.
Fuck that. They’re bad cultural traditions, undeserving of respect. Child-proofing society for these intellectually stunted people doesn’t help them; it is in fact a disservice to them to pretend it’s okay to go through life believing these things. We should demand that people contend with reality on a factual basis by the time they reach adulthood (even earlier, if I’m being completely honest). We shouldn’t be coddling people who profess beliefs that are demonstrably false, simply because their feelings might get hurt.
The fact that they are all faith based.
With careful study and consideration.
Not in the remotest. I try to believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
And there you go with denigration of those you hate. Keep your bigotry to yourself to get along in society.
No clue what this is actually intended to mean, but you are close with the fictitious idea of human life. For in fact we are nothing but animals that taught themselves pattern matching and now attempt to impose our belief in that pattern on the world.
No one has any basis for anything they belief outside of their own belief. That is the point.
I don’t know why you brought hate into this, for I don’t hate in this regard.
Yes, that is exactly my point: there is no “inherent” value in any of this. Without some value system of some kind, there’s no way to know if a given situation or behaviour is good or bad.
And what I’m trying to say is that pure science (as in the ideas behind the scientific method) do not and can not give you that value system. They are as far from having “values” as is possible.
Agreed.
Some people just decide to call their own belief “religion” and others don’t.
So telling someone “your made up beliefs are less worthy of consideration than my made up beliefs” doesn’t really have a strong place to stand on.
However, if the argument is “your made up beliefs have effects that go against my made up beliefs” then that might be an argument, but we have to be aware that at the end of the day we’re all dealing with made up beliefs.
If you don’t know why I brought hate into it, perhaps you should think about the subject more before criticizing.
Perhaps, part of your study of “some People” should include your own personal denigration of others.