We’re in the 21st century, and the vast majority of us still believe in an utterly and obviously fictional creator deity. Plenty of people, even in developed countries with decent educational systems, still believe in ghosts or magic (e.g. voodoo). And I–an atheist and a skeptic–am told I need to respect these patently false beliefs as cultural traditions.

Fuck that. They’re bad cultural traditions, undeserving of respect. Child-proofing society for these intellectually stunted people doesn’t help them; it is in fact a disservice to them to pretend it’s okay to go through life believing these things. We should demand that people contend with reality on a factual basis by the time they reach adulthood (even earlier, if I’m being completely honest). We shouldn’t be coddling people who profess beliefs that are demonstrably false, simply because their feelings might get hurt.

  • no banana@lemmy.world
    89·
    1 year ago

    To be fair I – an atheist and skeptic – do not believe in a god or higher power but can not be certain that a god or higher power does not actually exist even though I would personally claim our current scientific understanding to strongly suggest that no such thing exists.

        • samus12345@lemmy.world
          43·
          1 year ago

          Agnostic atheist or theist are the only intellectually honest positions. Nobody knows for a fact whether gods exist, no matter how much they insist they do.

          And it’s important to point out that there is a difference between a specific god or any sort of god. I know for a fact that the god of the bible does not exist, because he’s a clearly defined character and can therefore be disproved.

      • rentar42@kbin.social
        54·
        1 year ago

        That’s a silly idea. I can definitely come up with a definition of an immeasurable entity that has no powers, no effects and no way of being detected and call that thing “god”. it would be unfalsifiable and thus irrelevant to scientific inquiry, but it wouldn’t be “logically inconsistent”.

          • rentar42@kbin.social
            33·
            1 year ago

            Let me guess. By your definition only definitions that match your initial statements could possibly be definitions of god?

            You’re “no true scotsman”-ing this …

            Let’s retry: by which reason does any definition of good need to be logically inconsistent?

            • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
              42·
              1 year ago

              Nope, just acknowledging that words actually have meaning. You can’t claim that something is one thing while having no qualities of that thing; it’s like saying you’ve got water that doesn’t contain any oxygen or hydrogen.

              • rentar42@kbin.social
                21·
                1 year ago

                Not all “gods” thought history were all powerful, some were very limited in their powers. not all “gods” were abrahameic.

                But let’s pretend that a good has to be all-powerful.

                Then let’s posit that there is a god that has created all life on earth by making sure that he preconditions for life on earth were just right and then leaned back and just wachted.

                That is powerful enough, right? and while I don’t believe that this (or any other) god exists, there is no logical inconsistency here.

      • no banana@lemmy.world
        12·
        1 year ago

        I don’t know. Our whole existence is resting on the ability to influence our peers. Telling other people what we think they should think and do is kind of part of humanity.