Comment by Cuttlefish1111@lemmy.world on What is something you encounter everyday that is completely divorced from reality?

Religion, nothing but group psychosis

Could I have my beliefs respected, considering that I’m not like those bigots who do harm to others? I have no reason to shit you for being an atheist, so please just learn to respect my values, thank you. /lh

P.S.: what I mean it’s that I respect your perspective, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t insult mine. Simple as that.

How many girls and boys across the world are literally missing a part of their body because of religious beliefs?

This is not part of my belief

Whatever, atheist. If you can’t show respect to people you don’t have credibility. I’m not even jew, that’s a completely different thing that I don’t acossiate myself with.

Utter whiny nonsense. Respect has to be earned. You can get tolerance though, as long as you aren’t harming anyone.

Belief is separate from fact.

Belief in things without proof is called delusion, expecting people to respect those delusions is called religion

Telling other people what to do, how novel

On point for religious nutters, though.

It was poignant, and you reacted to it like a sore loser, so yes, it was objectively clever

Reality is but a quip. If only it were that simple. Ignorance is bliss. Not equally nor any other fashion. There is belief in fairy tales and there is not.

Smarter than you? yes. Absolutely. You like to hunker down and talk to yourself with a very stern look on your face. You call it praying. You also like to let some old pedo effers dressed up in costumes waving a barely relevant internally inconsistent book of outdated medeival tribal ideas tell you what to do. You think accepting it without question at all, no matter how crazy it is-- faith-- is somehow a virtue. You’re a slave in a cult.

May your all powerful sky fairy strike me down if I’m telling any untruths here.

I mean, it’s the community that keeps people around. The rules and dogma push people who aren’t being served well by the community out.

So in group this is natural to say. But external, directed at religious peoples, it’s not going to do the work of bringing them into your community. It’s not welcoming and it serves to push people to build walls rather than promote a change in thinking.

So i think you’re right in the context of being in community with a believer, but the comment wasn’t about that to begin with.

Alternatively, it’s hard to see how much religion is pushed until you’re outside of it. It’s like the opposite of getting a new (to you) car or phone. When you are, all of a sudden you realize how saturated everything is with it. It’s like living off the end of the runway of an international hub airport, there’s no rest.

Taking the position gay/trans people shouldn’t exist is abhorrent.

You’d be falling victim to the outgroup homogeneity bias where you perceive individuals separate from your in-group as being alike and less diverse than yours. Just because you see many delusional participants does not mean all participants are equally as delusional.

The thing is, the second you let in a Nazi, it becomes a Nazi bar.

Also, yes we all know how indoctrination works.

a disproof of religion

You’ve got the burden of proof turned around. Its not on us to diprove the existence of your mythical skyfairy. Its not our job to respect it in any way either. Feel free to start a religion that worships toe-jam if you want to. No one cares. What if I told you that lower intelligence correlates to higher religious fervor?

I answered a simple question with a simple answer. You proved the point better than I ever could have. Now tell us how to think and talk again.

is rather disrespectful of the Christian position.

Why is the christian position worthy of any respect al all? Labeling any idea thats “religion” as automatically worthy of reverence is simply privelage speaking, at best. At worst its deep stupidity protecting itself from analysis. You’re in a cult buddy. One that has inconsistent medieval ideas and a pedophilia problem. The fact that we even need to remind you of those absolute facts doesnt speak well of you.

That doesn’t make it worthy of respect, the same used to be said of eugenics

OK fair enough on the ad homs, you are right on that and I apologize. I would challenge you on the idea that religion been examined as rigorously and freely as every other philosphical ideas. Faith is belief without question, is it not? And the christian bible is a bit of a joke-- most if not all “holy” books are. But they are held up as a standin for morality and we are demanded to respect them, and not ask too many questions about them, usualyl at threat of violence or other coercions. Isnt history littered with the bodies of scientists and philosophers who werent allowed to inconvenience the church?

It amazed me that when you find religious strife, atheists are often singled out for the worst punishments.
I think its summarized pretty well with this quote of Bakker’s: “Theres nothing the ignorant prize more than the ignorance of others.”

I think if people should generally mind their own business unless something directly impinges on their individual freedom to live. That includes not making rules about how women should use their bodies. Let women decide that themselevs, or you’re being a tyrant. (I am an old white guy). Christianity doesnt beleive in that, and refuses to honestly examine it. Dogma and whatever the oldest white guy in a funny hat says trumps rational discourse every time.

the only “god” we should be worshipping is ourselves as entities that are constituent of a human society that differentiates us from the other animals. In my opinion, everything else is someone trying to use you or get you to adopt their worldview. This forces us to be our own masters and own the outcomes we create in the world. And to treat each other better.

What do you think?

The only thing atheists should stop doing is tolerating the nonsense of the religidiots.

Belief without evidence

It’s not group psychosis or mental illness, true, but it is divorced from reality. Sadly, the human mind is capable generating demonstrably, obviously erroneous beliefs without suffering from significantly abnormal psychology.

Religion is a set of extremely successful myths, which have survived mainly by convincing people that you can’t be a good person without them, which frequently involves disparaging people of other beliefs as bad/evil.

In other words, a really shitty worldview.

Persistent delusions are actually a mental illness

But they’re not persistent delusions. Delusions are, by definition, NOT cultural in origin. This is something that gets pretty well drilled into you when you study abnormal psychology. There’s a difference between someone’s brain malfunctioning and them simply being possessed of outdated cultural beliefs or traditions. It’s why religious beliefs aren’t considered mental illness, but still believing in Santa Claus when you’re an adult would be.

religious beliefs aren’t considered mental illness

You’re right — it’s actually brain damage and cognitive impairment.

Damage to the prefrontal cortex resulting in cognitive inflexibility can result in a myriad of fixed beliefs—they’re not necessarily religious in nature.

And religious fundamentalism is a particular type of extreme religious belief; most people don’t hold to fundamentalism but are nonetheless religious, so the study doesn’t account for anywhere near all religiosity and certainly doesn’t refute the point that religious faith isn’t a form of mental illness.

I want to make something clear here: I’m an atheist and an antitheist, but I’m also a therapist and it really irks me when atheists try to conflate mental disorders with religion. It’s an example of atheists fueling their distaste for religion by giving in to amateurish ignorance about psychology. Learn what the fuck you’re talking about before trying to make claims that go against what all of the experts in a field of study agree upon. Honestly, atheists ought to know better.

that’s just them special casing it so that they can avoid calling it a mental illness.

It’s a persistent delusion fed to you by your parents, your parents feeding you it doesn’t change that it’s a delusion.

If someone raised their children to believe the tooth fairy was real and that everyone was going to lie and say that it wasn’t and that you have to believe anyway, that’d be a delusion, but religion is special because…? the only difference is that more people are doing it.

The only reason for the cultural exclusion is because they don’t want to define religion as a delusion, not because it isn’t one. It meets EVERY single other criteria.

No, the reason religion is excluded is because delusions aren’t supposed to reflect cultural conditioning. Delusions are, by their very definition, an abnormal brain process. Cultural beliefs are not abnormal brain processes, no matter how irrational they are.

Please understand that this exception is accepted by the entire field of psychology. If you disagree with it, you have 200 years of psychological debate and study to contend with. Don’t pretend you’ve read enough to claim you have grounds to disagree with something the entire field of psychology considers a settled issue. No matter how much you wish religion is a mental illness, it’s not. Sadly, the irrationality of religion is fully explainable within the bounds of normal human psychology.

How does one shove non-religion in someone’s face?

Do they just exist?

By not adhering to the doctrines of the people believing in the one true God of course!

🤡

Seriously, fuck these regressive idiots.

You are technically correct that most people that call themselves atheists are agnostics. But that’s a little like saying that .999999999999999999 is 1; it’s close enough that it’s not going to make a difference in almost all cases.

If you have empirical, verifiable, falsifiable evidence that a god exists, then most atheists will change their opinion. A person that believes in a god believes despite a complete lack of evidence.

It’s not that an atheist is saying, “I know your religion is wrong”; it’s much closer to, "you have not presented any falsifiable evidence that your religion is correct.

There is currently no way to know.

It’s true that you can’t prove a negative. On the other hand, no evidence exists that would tend to prove that a god exists. The lack of evidence is quite damning, particularly since people have been trying to demonstrate the existence of a god for well over 8000 years. Miracles have almost entirely ceased in the age of forensics, modern medicine, and photography; it’s almost like they only exist when they can’t be documented.

I agree with you

People should absolutely be free to practice any religion they want in the US.

No, Scientol0gy is criminal

People shouldn’t be able to shove religion in your face or the opposite of athiests trying to shove non-religion in everyone’s face.

No, The majority of atheists I am aware of keep it to themselves. The majority or Christians try to convert everyone they meet.

A true athiest is just as “delusional” as a true religious person. Both believe their idea is right on “beliefs.” No proof God or gods exist or not.

No, you’re speaking as a believer. A god would need to be proven first in order to be disproven.

Most “athiests” are agnostic athiests, not gnostic athiest.

Here we go telling people what to think again.

World would be a better place if “athiests” went more by agnostics.

Saying you agree there is a possibility of a god or not and denying the existence wholeheartedly are two different things.

Saying you’re athiest to a religious person is saying “I know your religion is wrong”. Saying you’re agnostic to a religious person is saying “I don’t know, but I don’t necessarily agree with you.”

Yup

There is currently no way to know. That is a fact, a hard truth. Thinking you have a way to know one way or the other is “crazy”

You can’t prove a negative, that’s a fact. Therein lies the fundamental flaw with theists, belief and opinion are not equal to facts.

The simple truth you cannot accept is understanding fact from fiction.

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