Why do you care?

Am avut o discuție cu cineva pe YouTube legat de faptul că promovez în mod activ gândirea critică, critic religia și așa mai departe. Persoana cu pricina are niște idei destul de ciudate și susține că "Dumnezeu e un concept" și că toți ateii sunt spălați pe creier, îndoctrinați și toți oamenii sunt religioși. Are niște idei destul de incoerente și nu poate înțelege că nu contest că "Dumnezeu e un concept", problema e că majoritatea oamenilor religioși (toți?) cred că Dumnezeu există cu adevărat, nu e doar în mințile noastre. Acestea fiind zise, iată răspunsul meu la niște întrebări de-ale lui (în engleză, n-am avut timp să traduc). Cu litere cursive și dublu-citat sunt cuvintele lui, cu font normal sunt ale mele.

"why would you find it necessary, meaningful, or important to post a video that advertises atheism? Isn't that kind of odd? If you really simply didn't 'believe', wouldn't you also simply not care? If you don't believe in someone else's god, what matter is it to you? And, if you do care aren't you really claiming to have something better than what they have? And if you make such a claim, are you any different than they?"

Religion and all these beliefs do not exist in a vacuum, they have tangent and real repercussions in the real world. They teach people to chuck away their humanity in favour of being submissive to a set of antiquated rules and ideas, to take for granted some religious ideas, even vilifying critical thinking in regard to these ideas (blasphemy, anyone?). The idea that beliefs are just beliefs and don't matter is wrong. These ideas influence the decision making process and can induce real harm in the real world since they are not in accord to the way the world works.

Do you want to see cases of true and sincere believers?

Here are just a handful: 9/11 attackers, Michael & Debi Pearl (To Train Up a Child authors) who advocate beating children with pipes and other household objects because the bible says not to spare the rod, fundamentalist Christians killing doctors working in clinics offering abortions, idiots working to forbid abortions for raped women because there is 'true' rape and 'fake' rape since they wrongly think 'the female body secretes a secretion that prevents the pregnancy if is a true rape' - Rep. Todd Akin, and many more.

Do you want to talk about parents killing their children because they think they are possessed? Don't get me started: Meghan Lippiatt, Andrea Yates, Banita Jacks, Alexandru Gavril, Latisha Lawson and so on.

These people would have probably had had a better chance of being identified as mentally unstable, if it wouldn't had been a social norm to hold beliefs ungrounded in reality. If when somebody comes and says 'I believe spirits exist' the most common answer is 'you must be nuts' and not 'I do, too' or 'well, is your idea', maybe, just maybe we could identify and help these people who have issues distinguishing reality from fantasy and prevent some people dying.

Just look at the site whatstheharm.net and see just a few cases of what false beliefs can lead to.


In order to make room for the truth, false ideas must be criticized and exposed as such and purged from the ground of ideas thought to be generally 'acceptable, just because they are religious in nature'.

What if there are really only two options for humans when it comes to belief? What would you do if you learned that it isn't even possible for a human to be an atheist? Has the skeptic in you ever entertained that possibility? What if 'god' is the same as hunger, food, reproduction, joy, pain, survive, escape, embrace? What would you do if god is just something all humans do? That would take away the superiority complex of all religions, including atheism, wouldn't it.

The fact that people have the urge to believe false things just because is easier doesn't prove that there are justified grounds to believe those ideas are indeed true. You are again confusing human predisposition with objective reality.

As I said before at least 3 (three) times already, I have no problem with the idea that god is a concept, not an actual thing, but that is irrelevant from my PoV because I care what is true and what is real, not what people think or want to be true.

Acesta e una din persoanele cu care mai poți vorbi ceva, nu-i din cei care chiar sunt decuplați de realitate, cum e acesta:

Eu: Cu intenția de a insulta, prietenul tău imaginar te fortează să spui tâmpenii sau o faci din proprie inițiativă... a stai! Prietenul e IMAGINAR!

tudorraneti: daca e imaginar, inseamna ca exista, la fel cum exista programele intr-un calculator. Deci... esti prost, la fel ca orice ateu. Mai dai exemplu si pe Hairy Pawter ca si cum e o analogie valida

Eu: Se pare că ai trecut pe la limba română ca rața prin baltă. Programele ălea nu-s fictive, ele există sub formă de sarcini electrice, conexiuni sau stări într-un sistem și au efecte în lumea reală, deci nu-s imaginare. Că sunt produsul imaginației și creativității umane e altceva, dar nu sunt imaginare. Harry Potter chiar e o analogie validă, dar nu te duce pe tine capul să îți dai seama. Ce să-ți cer, când confunzi cartea Harry Potter cu personajul Harry Potter?

O insultă inteligentă știi?

Logic, nu? Dacă e imaginar înseamnă că există. Nu, nu inventez, individul ăsta chiar există și nu a murit de prostie.