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.
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Abrahamic religions generally do but it’s far from a universal. (Most, at least in the west) Buddhists will tell you to avoid faith like the plague, to suspend disbelief or become an empty cup, and see for yourself. Discordians will right-out tell you that it’s all bullshit, which is beautiful, because that’s what makes flowers grow.
I get the hostility many people have against religion, it seems to come largely from the US and it’s really not hard to have atrocious experience with religion there. But that’s just, like, you know, your experience, man.
To a degree i don’t count buddhists to religions/cults They usually don’t do harm to others based upon their faith. That is fine. Might include sikhs and mmaybe others, but never dug deeper. It’s exceptions to the general rule.
Religion did nothing good to this world. Without the worshipping of invisible sky-daddys we would probably be advanced many centuries ahead already.
And I’m not from the US. Religion where i live was basically non-existant, besides our infiltration by muslims for decades now. Critical thinking happens everywhere, you don’t have to be surrounded by cult nutjobs like the muricans.
There are different definitions of “religion” that people use, and in fact there’s no scholarly consensus on one definition, but I assure you “stuff I don’t like” generally gets you laughed out of the room. It is not, how should I put this, the pinnacle and end-all-be-all of all critical thinking. One does not need to be religious to lack humility.
As to sky daddy: Yahweh doesn’t even really qualify the closest Semites got to a proper sky-daddy was Shamash and Yarikh, the sun and moon gods. The ascription really came from further up north as sky daddies are very very common in Indo-European cultures, short story short during Christianisation people ascribed ideas relating to Tyr, Zeus, Jupiter etc. to Yahweh.
So. There are maby definitions hm? Ok. Let’s cut the word out and just use the general consensus description of “gathering around under the same set of beliefs”. There can’t be any good coming out of that.
As to youe other argument: And? What is your point here? You know of some “very common sky-daddies in Indo-European cultures” and such? And what about it? For many moons, people, who believed to see ghosts or have imaginary friends, were proclaimed mentally ill. Unless they call their imaginary friend the same like everyone else does. Then it’s sane.
I’m no atheist. Atheism is the same ignorance as theism is. Just 180° turned around. I’m agnostic.
Yet name one single good reason, why one should join ANY cult at all? No one happens to accidentally come to the same conclusions like e. G. The catholic church comes to and says “wow, they exactly believe what i belive. I shall joinn them”. It’s the other way round. It offers lazy or dumb or frightened and simple people an easy answer to everything. Not to be meant condescending, it’s just what it is.
So you can’t join sportsball teams (belief that the game is grand and the rules sensible), you can’t join a company (joint belief in, if nothing else, providing a certain thing and earning renumeration for it), you can’t join a choir because they all believe that singing is a thing that’s nice, you can’t even visit the cinema as others also believe that the movie is worth watching. You can’t join any political party. You certainly can’t be a metalhead.
Generally speaking: You cannot, possibly, partake in society as you are unwilling to share a social contract with others.
Please, just, fucking stop trying to defend your off-the-cuff definitions. At the least do some basic diligence and read this first.
Have I ever said anything about joining any group? It’s you who brought up the topic, who blindly assumed that religion is necessarily a social activity.
That makes you more theological than me.