#religious arrogance

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

hi there!

listen, man, just because you’re an atheist doesn’t mean you have to push that onto other people. just because you don’t believe in religion doesn’t mean you have to attack others for having a faith.

also, i want to point out that what you think religion is…is fundamentally wrong (as far as i can see). you’re basically operating off of the assumption that every religion follows the exact same framework, and that just isn’t true. for example, not every religion involves God. i’m Buddhist myself, and my religion is based on enlightenment and finding peace. Hinduism, as another example, is a polytheistic religion, involving many divinities. i also want to add that i’m not attacking atheism - i think it’s totally valid to not follow religion, and it’s cool that you’re so open about your atheism. however, and that’s a BIG however, it’s totally not okay to attack other people’s religion just because you don’t believe in it. have a nice day.

-Linny

What a completely retarded reaction. I get to say what I want. I get to criticize any idea that I want. I get to point out that it doesn't work, that it's nonsensical, that it violates all known science and history.

Your reaction, you feeling "attacked" is your problem. You're wrong and you're upset at me for pointing it out. That's not my problem. That's yours.

I don't have to sit here quietly and meekly while you're wrong just because it would hurt your delicate little feefeez. You want me to lie - by omission - to spare your delicate little feefeez.

No. Get some better feelings. Grow the fuck up. Take responsibility for managing your own emotional state instead of trying to make me responsible for it just because you can't handle it yourself.

"Faith" is not a virtue. "Faith" is unfalsifiable. There's no corrective. And even believers describe the things they believe in as being compeletely untestable, so there's no way to test which "faith" is correct and which one is incorrect. Because at most, all but one are incorrect. "Faith" is believing things not just in spite of there being no evidence to support them, but because there is no evidence to support them. If there was evidence, you wouldn't need faith.

"The most charitable thing that we can say about faith - the most charitable thing - is that it’s likely to be false."

"Faith" is pretending to know things that you don't know, and can't know.

There's nothing someone can't believe based entirely on faith. Nothing. There isn't a single thing too abhorrent, bizarre or ridiculous that the person who believes it can't defend by saying, "I have faith," when challanged. So, you rambling about "faith" does not put you on the intellectual or moral high ground. It's a condemnation, not just that you have no justification, but that there can be no justification, even in principle. Otherwise you wouldn't need to resort to mere "faith."

Also, I want to point out that what you think I think religion is... is fundamentally wrong.

Your stupid supernatural beliefs are no more true just because you fetishize eastern cultures. Everything you rambled about involves literal magic. They involve magical claims which are as false and bogus as a man riding a mutant donkey to heaven (Islam) or flying up into the sky after coming back from the dead (Xianity).

Nonsensical ideas like how the universe is keeping track of the good things and the bad things you do and is actively moving things around in the universe to balance them out, looking to reward you. You know, including actions where the actual results or effects can't be known until much later... if at all. Because you're so special that you deserve it.

They involve the horrific idea that life is cheap because you'll just respawn as something else over and over and over again, meaning death is trivial and you're living for the next life, not the one and only life you actually have. We don't have to fix famine in Africa because a baby who dies there will just be reincarnated as something better next time. And you won't do anything good in the world for its own sake, because you're playing a self-interested long game of karmic reward in this life and upward mobility in the next one. And people disparage capitalism, when this idea is far, far worse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebirth_(Buddhism)

While nirvana is the ultimate goal of Buddhist teaching, much of traditional Buddhist practice has been centered on gaining merit and merit transfer, whereby one gains rebirth in the good realms and avoids rebirth in the evil realms.

These religions and ideologies - Hinduism and Buddhism - are false, because they violate known science, fact and history.

https://religion-is-a-mental-illness.tumblr.com/tagged/buddhism

https://religion-is-a-mental-illness.tumblr.com/tagged/hinduism

No, your ridiculous superstitions aren't better than Xianity or Islam or Judaism, despite your arrogance and condescension. You obviously hold them largely as status symbols to elevate yourself above the average superstitionist and religionist.

Even amidst your generalized nonsense of lecturing me about what I should and shouldn't do on my blog, you can't resist bragging and telling me how even if I won't comply with your demands for those *sniff* *waves hand disparagingly* other religions, yours truly is special.

No, it's not. It's the same. It's magic, it's morally corrupt (as I've already shown) and it's false.

It totally is okay to go after false ideas. It's how you live in a safe, luxurious, prosperous world you take for granted. It's how your illnesses aren't treated with demon exorcism and you can have any job you're qualified for. You are completely surrounded by, dependent upon, and the beneficiary of what happens when we go after and eliminate false and bad ideas.

So, no. Shut the fuck up with this bullshit. I will not be told what ideas and beliefs I can go after. Your arrogant, misguided belief that you do get to tell me this is the very first idea that goes in the trash. Beliefs that are true don't need protection, because they're true. When you try to cordon off particular ideas from scrutiny, it tells the world that they can't stand up to that scrutiny. They're so tenuous and ready to collapse that the merest puff off examination or criticism will cause the entire house of cards to come down.

Your determination that false ideas should never be criticized, and we should never try to dissuade people from believing false things telegraphs what you actually prioritize and value. Not truth, only how they make you feel, not whether they're accurate or true. That is, you're willing to believe false things if they make you feel good. And I must be conscripted to play along.

All your ramble boils down to is "don't harsh my buzz, man."

You know, cocaine and MDMA make people feel good, too.

If you feel attacked, then you're just not that secure in your faith, are you? What could I possibly say to shake your justified, completely not-misplaced, totally not magical thinking "faith"?

You're here because I touched a nerve. You couldn't just scroll on. You had to go out of your way to stop and ramble all that out because something I posted got to you and made you insecure about your "faith".

Far from discouraging me from doing what I do, you've made me even more determined. Thanks for reminding me how pervasively toxic religion is.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Religion is a mental illness?! For fuck’s sake, let people believe whatever they want to. I believe in God. You don’t. That’s perfectly fine. Stop being so rude about it.

Schizophrenia is a mental illness?! For fuck's sake, let people with a distorted, delusional view of the world believe what they want to and influence society. I believe in a cabal of walruses who monitor me through my microwave. You don't. That's perfectly fine. Stop being so rude about it.

"Faith is a belief without evidence and reason; coincidentally that's also the definition of delusion." -- Richard Dawkins

That's quite pithy, but it's also accurate. Here is the dictionary definition for "faith" in the religious sense:

faith | fāTH | noun strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof

Here is the definition for "delusion" in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders:

“delusion A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly held despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary.”

Among the subtypes is:

“grandiose A delusion of inflated worth, power, knowledge, identity, or special relationship to a deity or famous person.”

Such as a "personal relationship with god/Jesus." Now, they cowardly go on to couch that in an unjustified exception:

“The belief is not ordinarily accepted by other members of the person’s culture or subculture (i.e., it is not an article of religious faith).”

Except, whether a belief is generally accepted or popular doesn't actually make a false belief true. This is a fallacy called Special Pleading.

You're allowed to believe in your god. People are allowed to be wrong, mistaken or simply not care what's true.

But I don't have to facilitate or enable that delusion, mistake or disregard, or play along with it. We don't live in the Dark Ages anymore when people like you called the authorities to have people like me arrested, tortured and put to death. I don't have to shut up to protect you or others like you from figuring out it's all nonsense.

Because I'm allowed to notice and point out that your beliefs are ridiculous, and are a delusion based on many things including ignorance, superstition, fear, childhood indoctrination, social pressure, primitive magical thinking and emotional reasoning, and that believing there's a magical space wizard monitoring whether you're naughty or nice, for which there is literally no verifiable evidence, is exactly the same as believing in a cabal of eavesdropping walruses, for which there is exactly as much verifiable evidence. You might not like that, but it doesn't mean it isn't true. (If you had evidence, you wouldn't need faith, would you?)

Don't like it? Keep scrolling or block me. You've had the power to resolve your discomfort all by yourself this whole time, without involving me at all, instead of making your emotional wellbeing my responsibility.

"You've always had the power to go back to Kansas." -- Glinda, the Witch of the North

My blog is for my thoughts, not yours. I don't demand you reconfigure your blog to suit me, yet you demand I comply with your sensibilities. You demand I allow your freedom of belief, which I do, but doesn't mean your beliefs aren't open to scrutiny and criticism, while you overtly deny mine.

That's like going into a town square, seeing a big noticeboard, and there's a notice, 'Guitar Lessons,' and you go... "BUT I DON'T FUCKING WANT GUITAR LESSONS!!" -- Ricky Gervais

You're arrogant and out of your lane. Get yourself back in order. You think my blog is "rude"? You ain't seen nothing yet. Next time I won't be this pleasant.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

"Being religious does not make you a good person by default. This notion is why so many rotten people hide behind their religion."

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

"Your religion does not prohibit me from anything. It prohibits you. Learn the difference."

You don't get to make me obey your religion for the same reason people of other religions don't get to make you obey theirs.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

"Nothing says 'I'm an entitled, arrogant, self-absorbed twat' quite like believing that your god grants you special favours, such as finding lost keys and scoring touch-downs, while at the same time allowing children all around the world to suffer and starve to death."

There goes the "free will" excuse.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

"I've said repeatedly that this stuff [(religion)] cannot be taken away from people, it is their favourite toy, and it will remain so as long - as [Sigmund] Freud said, in The Future Of An Illusion - it will remain that way as long as we're afraid of death and have that problem which is, I think, will likely be a very long time. Second, I hope I've made it clear, that I'm perfectly happy for people to have these toys, and to play with them at home, and hug them to themselves and so on, and to share them with other people who come around and play with the toys. So that's absolutely fine. They are not to make me play with these toys. I will not play with the toys. Don't bring the toys to my house, don't say my children must play with these toys, don't say my toys, might be a condom - here we go again - are not allowed by their toys. I'm not going to have any of that. Enough with clerical and religious bullying and intimidation. Is that finally clear? Have I got that across? Thank you." -- Christopher Hitchens

If your privately held, personal beliefs are going to become a matter of public policy or concern, then we're going to have a say in them. We're going to test them, we're going to ask questions, and we're going to make you do all the work of justifying them that you spend all your time avoiding. "Mysterious ways," "just have faith," "I feel it in my heart," "why are there still monkeys?" and pointing to some fallacy-riddled apologetics website aren't going to cut it.

Your beliefs only get to go unmolested as long as they remain within your head.

"I will not play with the toys."

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Your religion is not a we thing; I don't have one. Your religion applies to you, not me.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

"Religious persecution is when you are prevented from exercising your beliefs, NOT when you are prevented from imposing your beliefs."

Your religion holds no special or protected status. Expecting to impose your beliefs onto others is an invitation for others to impose their beliefs onto you.