For those who aren’t familiar with the term, it means believing something that probably shouldn’t be believed, or being influenced to believe something that’s not necessarily in your best interests.
For those who aren’t familiar with the term, it means believing something that probably shouldn’t be believed, or being influenced to believe something that’s not necessarily in your best interests.
I still think organized religion is a net drain on society but I’m generally ok with private faith. (I was raised secular though, never had my own faith to lose)
Me too, I just also think that the antitheist movement (mostly vocal and unempathetic antitheists such as I was) is also a net drain on society.
I think people create god in their own image. They use doctrine to justify what they would have believed anyway. I was taught to be homophobic by homophobes, Leviticus was just the tool used to deliver the lesson.
Stopping being Mormon didn’t stop my homophobia, the lessons were deep and that came later. I think instead if I had internalised homophobia=bad earlier, I would have left the church as a by product. Internalising bigotry=bad got me to leave antitheism, is where I got that from.
So that’s where I’m at: champion human rights and people will leave toxic structures as a by product.
That’s a big part of the problem but I think the worst part is that religious upbringings train people to accept irrational explanations for things. Magical thinking, unfounded claims, unquestioning adherence to authority, this is the fertile soil for all manner of nonsense from astrology to vaccine hesitancy to “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.”
Perhaps. Irrationality in itself isn’t evil though. We’re all irrational about somethings sometimes, that’s just what it is to be human. We just be meat sacks powered by cornflakes, it would be weird if we weren’t irrational.
My biggest problem with religion is the bigotry, religion certainly doesn’t have a monopoly on it though, and antitheism doesn’t make you immune. Antitheism is fertile ground for bigotry and the irrational justifications for it.
Anti-intellectualism, and the harm spread from anti-intellectualism, is awful though, no arguments from me. A lot of evil can arrive from believing one is “rational” while they’re blind to their own limits of perspective.