The woman on the floor is thinking about all the gay people she screamed at about God's wrath, and all the beatings she took from her husband because he was the Head of her, and all of the time and money she wasted on the church, and all of the beatings she let her husband give to her kids lest she "spoil the child," and all of the bs she swallowed from Republicans, and all of the shame she carried for masturbating, and all of the abuse she hurled at women outside abortion clinics, and all.of the children she'd terrified at Sunday School, and all of the things she never tried because someone had told her not to.
Religious people might be polite, might even do good things, but they vote for people who do terrible things. Ideally, the whole thing would be done away with. Convincing people to reject facts and vote their feelings is never a gpod combo.
If religious people recused themselves from voting, I wouldn't care much. But they're dragging our country down. They're gullible tools of awful rich men. They fight any forms of progress.
And yeah yeah you're about to tell me about your aunt Maple who isn't like that, she's really lovely and doesn't preach at you and just likes going to church for the social element. But who does she vote for??
Being religious doesn't mean you vote for Trump. Thinking that way just encourages them.
Plenty of religious people actually vote for the person more likely to feed the hungry, liberate the captive, take care of the earth, etc. You know, the way the Bible teaches.
White evangelical Protestants are an extremely numerous and extremely politically active denomination in the US. If they're not a majority of religious people, they're at least a plurality.
The person who replied to you went on a rant about voting. Which I agree, religious people tend to vote against their interests. But spending 3 paragraphs talking about voting and nothing else doesn't really elaborate on why it's a shit lifestyle does it? I'll add what I think are the worst aspects of a religious lifestyle.
The biggest issue with a religious lifestyle, in my opinion, is the fact that truly believing in a religion, especially a deity means you have been convinced, and are able to convince yourself to believe in something for which there is no evidence (ive heard religious arguments that faith is a "radical" belief in something that defies logic). The concept of God, for the most part, isn't that bad. The issue is, if you've let in one truth about your life that you believe is true despite any supporting evidence and no logical reason, that opens the door for more random beliefs that aren't founded on evidence. Or more accurately, they may believe new things (good or bad) for one reason or another but the idea that something needs evidence or solid reasoning to be believed doesn't factor into their calculations nearly as much.
This means that a religious lifestyle is random, based on where and how they were raised with an ethos of not questioning their foundational beliefs. This means many religious communities grow up fine, and it means many grow up in the bizarre bigoted looney-tunes world I'm sure you've seen if you know religious people from disparate backgrounds.
Idk exactly what that person necessarily meant, but to me, a lifestyle based on beliefs that the person has been trained not to question and doesn't need evidence to be true is kind of shit.
And in before people say that not all (or even most) religious people are like that. I agree that a religious person could easily be raised as someone who engages in logical reasoning and only accepts new beliefs if they think they have sufficient evidence etc. That's probably true. I'm explaining why I think religion opens the door to a shit lifestyle because of religion.
I kid you not, all that kind of personal history creates a massive sunk cost fallacy that will make it impossible for them to admit that they may possibly be wrong.
I've decided that I can't change my mother's beliefs nor should I. I told her that we have a no-politics rule as of summer 2020. It saved our relationship.
Part of this was what finally got me off Facebook. People I liked, family members, posting dumb shit, and me letting it trigger me. It was literally only on Facebook, family gatherings were fun times. And honestly, since Trump, and despite the dichotomy that exists in my family and probably every other family, we seem to speak less about politics.
I've been off Facebook for somewhere between 10 and 15 years. I quit it because I didn't care about what friends and family posted because they were all very religious, and I couldn't post what I really wanted without offending said friends and family.
Instead of having faith in God, I have faith in the next generation to do slightly better each time. I can't really bring it to myself to tell my grandma there's no heaven or hell and her entire life has been a lie. Ignorance is truly bliss sometimes.
Slightly being the key word. I used to think we'd be fine after boomers die and millenials take over (sorry Gen X yes we always forget you) but then realized there are plenty of terrible Gen Y and then for a moment Gen Z was going to change labor politics gun control environment gender/sexuality and be super accepting but there's still a huge proportion who still want to MAGA... we'll see how bad alpha is
like my nephews say the same racist shit on their discord and valorant as I saw on 4chan 20 years ago and it's just sad
Doesn't mean people can't change. Kids just wanna feel powerful/invincible. I used to say and hear the craziest of slurs in cod lobbies back in the day. My friends and I who have said those things have just grown up when we learned their real impact and we've stopped.
I wish mine did that. I said one thing about Trump not having as much money as he claims, and my mom got all insulted. She said that maybe we shouldn't talk about politics, etc, and I agreed to be nice. I don't like to talk politics at all, even with like-minded people. But she'll blame a company getting hacked and losing my personal info on democrats, and tell me that she can't wait until all democrats die off.
But now she just spouts of any shit that comes to her mind without a care, while I'm keeping to our dealt and shutting up. I doubt she even remembers our promise, because the moment it wasn't convenient for her, she dropped it.
Be pragmatic in your atheism advocacy. Lay out your arguments why supernatural thinking is bad, both from an epistemological and pragmatic sense, poke at contradictions of the other person's religion with reality, and warn about the dangers of organized religion specifically, just don't cross the line of actually engaging in nuclear warfare.
If they haven't been brainwashed enough, they'll bite, even if it takes them months. If they have been brainwashed enough but they have intellectual honesty and curiosity, they may begin a self-questioning process themselves that will eventually make them crash, and it will be painful, but once they get recovered they'll be grateful. If they don't have that intellectual honesty, you've at least planted the potential seeds for them to decide at some later point that superstition was indeed bullshit, which may or may not come into fruition in the future. If the person you're talking with is an intellectual donkey (in terms of unwillingness to reason), you have nothing to gain from that conversation.
When it comes to old religious people, though, I limit myself to relentlessly attacking the church. Due to their material conditions, they have the lowest chance to ever leaving their beliefs anyway, so my goal is just to make them wary of any dumbfuck hate preacher they may find.
Meh. All reasoning is grounded in emotion. Even atheistic reasoning. That's why argumentation does zip. It's like trying to fix a warped floor by moving the rug around.
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