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] 58 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Unpopular Take:

Having superstition, religion and pseudo-science persisting and thriving in your society turns into systemic problems eventually. Including Genocide.

Why? Because it teaches people anti-empiricism, emotional "reasoning" and essentialising people. All these are the basis for every reactionary thought, conservative brainrot, religious extremism and eventually denying reality.

Studies back this up. Most of the alt-right are very religious, "skeptic" of science or inclined to mysticism. (Remember Ivermectin and Faith Healing? I do.) This shit even goes back to the OG Nazis in the Third Reich. They loved their mystical stuff and pseudo-science.

Why thing thinking pattern leads down the drain is very simple.There is no fundamental difference between between:

People cant be together because of their sign and
People cant be together because of their skin color

Both times the logic of this methode is the same. No truth, only vibes.

Why we should keep either is beyond me.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Agree, and I believe ideas like yours are more popular than you may think.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Its an unpopular take because people dont like it when you point out that their "healing crystals" might as well well be "sieg-heiling crystals".

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I'm mad that that business idea would probably be more successful than it should be.

[–] jasory 1 points 1 year ago

You might be correct on why it is unpopular, I suspect you are incorrect on why it should be unpopular. (Clearly you think it shouldn't, when your own claim is ironically not empirically supportable).

You claim that non-empirical behaviour leads to genocide. This is a deductive argument you make to criticise "non-empirical" behaviour. I.e all non-empirical behaviour should be opposed because it necessarily leads to genocide. So how do you square this with the fact that much of behaviour is non-empirical and yet we don't see a connection from all non-empirical behaviour to genocide. If there were then wouldn't genocide be far more common, and probably wouldn't have precipitously declined in recent centuries.

Let's be even more generous to your ~~incredibly stupid~~ position, and say that you actually meant "all genocide requires non-empirical behaviour". Genocide may actually be beneficial to the perpetrating party. If we look at ancient motivations of genocide and (frequently genocidal) tribal warfare, it's clear that eliminating competition for resources is beneficial, especially if a unified group can benefit it's populace more than disparate groups.

Of course this actually requires a consequentialist morality, because sheer empirical observation will never tell you if genocide is good or bad. I'm also not a strong consequentialist, or possibly a consequentialist at all so don't interpret this as anything but a criticism of your logical failures.

I do agree that pro-discrimination or even genocide individuals tend to be very stupid people, which is why I suspect you engage in post-hoc rationalisation (for who knows how long) to try to argue that it's clearly unfounded beliefs that lead to this.