this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
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Unpopular Opinion

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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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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You're anti-theist, not an atheist. Get your bearings right for a start.

I'm an atheist and I don't care what others believe, as long as their personal belief does not intrude on my life, which is safeguarded on most modern countries.

Try to get away from fundamentalists and get to know people that keep some sort of creed for personal comfort or some other aspiration unatainable by the unpassioned scientic analysis.

What we all should be aware of is that science constantly reminds us there is more to what we don't know than what we effectively know and the tools we have available to push back our ignorance are few and limited by our own nature.

Your disgruntle and discontent with belief is not a new subject. You are not alone and what you perceive as a low in our colective history is just a very slight down turn on a very long climb towards moving away from the darkness that hides in our minds.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

as long as their personal belief does not intrude on my life, which is safeguarded on most modern countries.

Shame the US is not a modern country I guess.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That is a US problem. There is more in the world than that single country.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's not just a US problem...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

We can add Brasil, India, Israel, Hungary and Poland to the mix.

Yet, all of those together can't cook up the turd storm raging on the US by the grace of the evangelicals and a political system rooted on an outdated constitution.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You’re anti-theist, not an atheist. Get your bearings right for a start.

I'm both; they're not mutually exclusive. Get your bearings right.

Honestly, I find the rest of your statements whimsical and unspecific, so I'm not going to respond to them individually. I will say that while my post was meant to convey the wish that modern society and culture not cater to these false beliefs in the ways we do today, I am staunchly of the belief that you cannot legislate culture and that attempts to do so always result in unjust authoritarianism; so, I would never advocate for laws that prohibit religious belief or the personal expression thereof (with certain limits based on context, of course) and would vote against them if they were proposed and I was in a position to oppose them. But I do find the fact that I'm expected to nod and smile when someone professes a patently false belief both nonsensical and detrimental to society as a whole. This opinion is unpopular by virtue of the fact that most people today disagree and think we shouldn't correct people when they profess these kinds of falsehoods. As other atheists have pointed out, we don't afford this luxury to flat earthers or people who believe Elvis is still alive. I simply think that's as it should be and religious beliefs shouldn't have this cultural privilege of being protected from casual criticism.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago

Cumulative. You need to be an atheist in order to advance into being an anti-theist.

Your examples with Elvis and flat earthers are poor.

It is possible to clearly demonstrate how and why the flat earth theory falls flat; it's proposers are intellectualy dishonest individuals that won't even accept their own findings that disprove their theory.

Regarding Elvis... where is the harm in that? At some point, just by the simple accumulation of time, the belief will die out. The King was a mere human and humans are finite.

The same can not be said about religions, where its crux resides outside the realm of what can be proved or disproved by scientific endeavor. It is not possible to disprove the existence of a supernatural entity; what can be attacked are tenets and demonstrated as obsolete or invalid.

I have nothing against your position but find it banal at this point. It is not new, it is not something previously unconsidered and offers no real solutions just like its counterpart.

My lack of belief stems from a long process of self analysis, through which I systematically removed from my worldview belief. I feel no need to demand from others the same, even if they are educated, as you state in your post.

Belief and the lack thereof must be personal and private affairs.