Atheist Memes

If you think about it, we are all born atheist.

There is definitely bubble wrapped around theists in their own religion. Ask an average people what they know about a given religion and they would either say they don't know or would give a grossly inaccurate response. I came from a pre-dominantly Catholic culture, and my parents don't even know what makes Protestants different to Catholics. I had to tell them that Protestants simply don't believe in the authority of the pope. And then there was a pastor telling me to "just believe" in just about anything, after I stated I am agnostic atheist. He mentioned everyone believes in a religion, like how Muslims believe in Muhammad, or Buddhists believe Buddha is a god. And I was like, no, Buddhists don't believe Buddha is a god-- he simply was a human being believed to have attained enlightenment.

It is many of those instances I realised people are generally ignorant and have pre- and misconceptions. Not only that, even way before the idea of post-modernism, people generally want to stick with information that comforts them, whether intentional or not.

Religion is a product of oral tradition, taboo, and superstition. These features of human behaviour played a valuable role in protecting humans from dangers we did not individually understand. Fires, lightning, floods, drought, poisons, diseases (especially sexually transmitted diseases) underlie much of the religious beliefs and other cultural superstitions you can see even today.

A favourite of mine is the processing of cassava aka manioc by indigenous Amazonian tribes. Their cultural practice involves a long, multi-stage cooking and washing process which removes the cyanide that is naturally present in the root. The amazing thing is that the cyanide levels are high enough to cause chronic poisoning but low enough to not present any short term symptoms besides a bitter taste. However, taking shortcuts with the process leads to a reduction in the bitterness without actually removing enough of the cyanide to prevent chronic poisoning.

This means that this cultural practice maintains a complicated process that can’t be immediately supported by the available evidence (bitterness) but nevertheless provides a strong protective effect against chronic poisoning. In the absence of modern chemistry, this complex practice could only have developed through a long process of cultural evolution selecting against tribes who suffer from the chronic cyanide poisoning.

I have to think the reality is more about wishful thinking. My path to naturalism was coming to terms with bad news, specifically my own mortality. Not just that, but any legacy I might leave is going to be extremely brief.

(Of course, in recent times I learned that Pythagoras didn't actually work out the Pythagorean theorem, rather one of his cult minions did and attributed it to him. And it's quite possible that the same theorem was known by cultures that were millennia older, so even brilliant Hellenic mathematicians are forgotten.)

When we're raised to believe in heaven, and then find out that all our hopes of salvation are dubious, it's tempting just to pretend that believing in Jesus will make it so like clapping for Tinkerbell. Confronting our absence of spirit or divinity, especially in light of 20th and 21st century understandings of the the universe (it's huge and we're microbes on a speck of dust), especially as the human species is on the brink of self-annihilation (a run of 250,000 years, contrast to the 2,000,000 of Homo Erectus, or the Tens of Millions of some dinosaurs), really makes life feel like a candle-flame in the wind.

When the DSM lists religious belief as a mental illness, I'll grudgingly begin to respect psychology.

A lot of mythology originates from someone's dad or older brother or uncle messing with them.

Let's examine the myth that you'll find a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. There isn't an end to a rainbow, someone was messing with a kid and it got passed on. It's like sending the new kid at work to go down to the basement or go ask for a long weight.

I grew up in a religious household. My parents made me go to church and youth group until about 16-17 when I pushed back (still had to go to church but not youth group).

I was always more skeptical of it all. Even as a kid I remember having these "wtf, that doesn't make sense. So dinosaurs were..on the ark?"

Anyway, after a couple decades of separation from it all you realize how absolutely bonkers religion is. The amount of mental backflips you need to make for it to make even a little sense is borderline insanity.

It's crazy how otherwise very intelligent people just...go with it and never challenge it. Then will fight with you if you challenge it.

They're not insane. They're just desperate for answers to life's great questions. They're afraid of death and can't cope with life. They're affraid to face reality that this is just what it is and death is just death. This is their way of dealing with all that, hiding reality behind a fairy tale to give it some artificial mean, because "life cannot be just an accident. We....I am too important for that"

It's not simply insanity, they don't have an affliction, it's a very conscious, well thought out decision to run and hide. It's, at best, a fault of emotion, not a fault of mental capabilities.

The one question I ask people that always grinds their gears: “if you were born in India, where 80% follow Hinduism, do you still think you would have been Christian, or just believe whatever your parents taught you?”

I honestly believe that theists that do not need their faith as escape from reality, eg. that aren't in war or poverty, are to some degree mentally disabled.