Unpopular Opinion

6186 readers

113 users here now

Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!

How voting works:

Vote the opposite of the norm.

If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.

Guidelines:

Tag your post, if possible (not required)

If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].

Rules:

1. NO POLITICS

Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.

2. Be civil.

Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...

Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.

5. No trolling.

This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.

Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

455

Religious and superstitious beliefs should not be respected. (lemmy.world)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

416 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

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.

I’m not familiar with Taosism, but the way you described it doesn’t in any way sound like a religion to me, but rather a philosophy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Poly-theistic and non-theistic Taoism exist. Buddhism, too.

Got me curious so I looked up non-theism:

Nontheistic traditions of thought have played roles[1] in Buddhism,[10] Christianity,[11][12] Hinduism,[13] Jainism, Taoism, Creativity, Dudeism, Raëlism,[14] Humanistic Judaism,[15] Laveyan Satanism, The Satanic Temple,[16] Unitarian Universalism,[17][18] and Ethical culture.[19]

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

I believe you, but the way they described it, it doesn’t sound like a religion at all. They basically said “I don’t believe in any gods and people should be free to live how they wish”; that’s very much the opposite of religion

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

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.