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.
As a Taoist, I don’t believe in any deity and my beliefs boil down to letting people be who they are meant to and want to be and supporting them as much as I can in their personal journeys. That’s not an outdated or childish belief system. You’re conflating Abrahamic religions and mysticism with all religion and you don’t seem to have invested much time in understanding religion as a tool and concept outside of those areas.
Respecting people’s cultures and religion boils down to respecting people - if you believe that people shouldn’t be generally respected then your views are no more developed than that of a selfish child and you are the thing you’re complaining about.
You’re technically right, but the vast majority of religious people fit OPs description and you know it. They’re not talking about people like you.
I actually disagree on the majority. As someone who grew up in the Christian south I’m well aware of the misguided beliefs people can have but a majority of religious practitioners are not extremists and are much more malleable on individual topics and beliefs than many in the atheist community would care to accept - I say this as someone who considered themselves an atheist for a time but stopped when I realized religion has many benefits when used as a tool and any community, including atheists, is prone to having toxic extremism that makes the whole seem worse than it is. Take Islam for example, there are two major divisions of Islam, Sunni and Shia, and most people in the west think the extremist views of the Shia are what most Muslims believe but in all actuality they only make up about 15% of Muslims. The extremists are what get attention, not the majority of folks that use their religion and culture as a tool for living lives they think are good, beneficial or fruitful.
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You’d be surprised how many religious people are also skeptics and scientifically minded, open to changing their minds with new evidence.
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What makes you think they aren’t? They aren’t the ones you’re noticing.
How do you construct a moral framework with science and statistics? I’m not saying it can’t be done, but I would like to hear how you think it is possible to do so, and how you think we ought to go about it. I have thought about it a little, but I don’t see an obvious way to go about it. That is to say that how you would go about it is not obvious to me. I don’t very well understand what you are imagining.
The following are just ideas you might use as a jumping off point or an example. I don’t expect you to answer all of the questions or anything like that, that would be unreasonable. I don’t have a problem if you don’t touch any of these examples. Just explain how you think we ought to approach this. How would you change the law with respect to murder or assault? How would you change the tax code? How would you change law with respect to financial institutions? How would you resolve the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians? Why is religion impeding us from making these changes?
I’m concerned you seem to imply here that we require some abstract deity to determine what our moral guidelines should be. Take the following hypothetical: if it was proven tomorrow beyond any reasonable doubt that no deity exists or has ever existed and all religious texts were hogwash written by crazed lunatics, would it be ok then to go out and do whatever you felt like, whether that was murder, robbery, or something else?
In other words, is it solely a belief in a deity that is keeping you from going out and committing extremely immoral acts?
To answer your question though, you would use philosophy, of which science and statistics play a role, and common sense. It doesn’t take a genius philosopher to figure out that maybe we shouldn’t randomly kill other people.
No. That was not my intention. I’m trying to better understand where and why you (or anyone) think religion is holding us back and how we can move forward.
“How do you construct a moral framework with science and statistics?”
How do you construct a moral framework with essentially a book comprised of a roughly translated 2000-year-old telephone game that originated with goat herders in the Middle East? What a total bullshit argument.
It isn’t an argument or a rhetorical question.
It’s not just about being an extremist, it’s about applying fairy tale logic to your very real life. I agree with OP, these people need to be shunned.
“People like them” are a greater majority than you assume, issue is we aren’t vocal about it, so nobody is head counting.
Walk through life as if others are equal to you regardless of belief, and you’ll be fine either way. Never hurts you to respect someone else’s sanctity.
Should we apply that logic to Nazi beliefs? I’m not taking sides here, but it’s not so black and white.
If you read my comments elsewhere in the
threadpost you’ll get the answer to your poorly baited question.Next disingenuous question please
There’s Taoism as philosophy and as religion.
As a philosophy you are correct, there’s no need to have magical thinking.
But pretending that magical thinking is somehow only an ‘Abrahamic’ thing and not part of Taoism is wild, and ignores Taoist texts like A Chart of the Magic Art of Being Invisible from the Han period when the beliefs were promoted under the false promises of acquiring magical powers through commitment to its teachings.
Maybe you don’t believe that cultivating a practice of physical alchemy is going to let you turn invisible or become immortal, but it wouldn’t be true to say that the umbrella of Taoism doesn’t include those beliefs.
The Abrahamic Sadducees in antiquity didn’t believe there was life after death or that a God was watching and caring what people did or didn’t do. But their existence doesn’t negate the Pharisees believing that bringing animals for the priests to slaughter and eat was a cosmic exchange for committing sin. Similarly, less theistic practice of Taoism doesn’t mean that the broader religion isn’t filled with supernatural beliefs.
And no, I agree with OP that there’s no need to respect the belief that you’ll be able to turn invisible.
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Poly-theistic and non-theistic Taoism exist. Buddhism, too.
Got me curious so I looked up non-theism:
Sorry the citation links didn’t come through.
In other matters I’m going to spend the next little while reading about Dudeism and abiding.
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Not an authority but I was raised as a Buddhist child. Just clarifying a little here. Yes, Buddhism is non-theistic, in the sense that it does not regard any being as supreme. (Not even the Buddha.)
In Buddhism, heavenly beings exist but they are not supreme or authoritative. They are also subject to old age, decay, death, and reincarnation. Basically they’re just another part of cosmology, and of course you get reborn into different things.
In fact, there are instances where heavenly beings asked the Buddha for advice. Of course those are just tales, but it kinda illustrates hoe Buddhism works.
But they are no gods and have no authority over man.
If that’s all your “religion” consists of, then I wouldn’t categorize it as a religion. In my view, belief in supernatural processes as a requisite component of religion.
You’re wrong. I know a lot about the benefits of religion–as well as how all of those benefits can be acquired without it.
No, it doesn’t. I can respect a person who happens to be racist without respecting their racism. Likewise, I can respect a religious person without respecting their religious beliefs.
Raised as a Buddhist, I learned that while religions might be a problem of others, whether it’s also your problem is only up to you.
Also: sometimes problems are problems only if you make it so.