No one is free from criticism. Harmful ideas should be condemned, when they are demonstrably harmful. But theist beliefs are such a vast range and diversity of ideas, some harmful, some useful, some healing, some vivifying, and still others having served as potent drivers of movements for justice; that to lump all theist religious belief into one category and attack the whole of it, only demonstrates your ignorance of theology, and is in fact bigotry.
By saying that religious and superstitious beliefs should be disrespected, or otherwise belittling, or stigmatizing religion and supernatural beliefs as a whole, you have already established the first level on the "Pyramid of Hate", as well as the first of the "10 Stages of Genocide."
If your religion is atheism, that's perfectly valid. If someone is doing something harmful with a religious belief as justification, that specific belief should be challenged. But if you're crossing the line into bigotry, you're as bad as the very people you're condemning.
Antitheism is a form of supremacy in and of itself.
"In other words, it is quite clear from the writings of the “four horsemen” that “new atheism” has little to do with atheism or any serious intellectual examination of the belief in God and everything to do with hatred and power.
Indeed, “new atheism” is the ideological foregrounding of liberal imperialism whose fanatical secularism extends the racist logic of white supremacy. It purports to be areligious, but it is not. It is, in fact, the twin brother of the rabid Christian conservatism which currently feeds the Trump administration’s destructive policies at home and abroad – minus all the biblical references."
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/5/4/the-resurrection-of-new-atheism/
So, I have been typing out responses to each person. You are the last one, and kind of like you said. I have covered pretty much everything, but I want to leave you with one final thought.
Let’s pretend that I start a business. Let’s say that I call this business “Save The Whales”. Now I start running advertisements and I say that for a small donation every Sunday I will feed the whales. So, people start donating and things are going well. Until, you find out that only 10% of the money you donate actually feeds the whales. The other 90% goes to killing whales.
The point to this is that regardless of what you claim to be. You are what you do. Religion often talks a big game about love, and tolerance, and forgiveness. But then says unless your gay, or black, or whatever. Where as it may not say it in the book. Religion is what its followers do.
When I was 5 my mother kidnapped me and ran to Florida. We were in church every time the doors opened. When I was six she got sick. I had to learn to cook, but we were still going to church. When I was seven she died. I didn’t know this then, but she couldn’t afford her insulin. I watched her die slowly just she and I. Where was god?
When I moved in with my dad. We kept going to church. I started being sexually abused by a neighbor when I was 9. Where was god?
I mean if god deserves credit for my sobriety. When I was old enough to make my own decisions. Then certainly god deserves credit for the things that happened to me as a child when I had no clue right?
As I said previously I'm not interested in debating religion in itself, but I guess I could give my two cents anyway. If you don't believe in any deitys, that's totally fine. It's completely valid to have those beliefs.
Or on the other hand if you do believe in a higher power, or powers, then it becomes a question of what ontology you believe in. Somewhat similar to what I mentioned previously, I lean more toward a panentheistic framework, with somewhat of a gnostic leaning. By gnostic I mean to say that I do not accept the idea of omnipotence, omniscience, or omnibenevolence. In that model, "God" is everything, though I believe there's room for polytheism within that framework - that there are potentially countless beings, corporeal and incorporeal.
In my view there's no disparity to reconcile, because everything in life works the way it works and we have no way to know if it could be otherwise. Maybe there are just fundamental constraints on what a physical reality can be? Maybe some beings are malevolent to humans, others benevolence, and sometimes one group has more success than the other?
So I would agree that the deity of the Abrahamic religions is a cruel one. I have my criticisms of their ways, many criticisms. But I don't use those criticisms to attack theistic belief as a whole, because I know there are a wide diversity of beliefs out there with fundamentally different ways of viewing and relating with life.
I believe that we are nothing more than accidental chemical robots. When our batteries run out our systems cease to function and we exist no more. Life is like a game of pac man. Over several generations it’s pretty cool to see how high of a score we can get, but in the end there is no real reason or goal to our existence. I believe that absolutely no god exists.
With that being said. I also think that anyone that claims to know the answer is full of shit. Along with any religion that claims to know who his is. I’m willing to concede that having a nebulous idea about what god might be is fine.
For that matter, as I have previously stated. As long as religions stay in their lane and out of my life and affairs I don’t care what you believe. I only have a problem when your religion affects the freedoms and rights of other people.
I’d also like to point out that you mentioned abrahamic religions, but hindus and to a lesser extent sikhs are also problematic.
So, to wrap up this mental diarrhea. Believe whatever you want as long as you don’t mess with my life. Heavens Gate is a great example. If you and a bunch of friends want to castrate yourselves and commit suicide to jump on a comet. Be my guest. Just don’t take kids with you, and don’t lobby to have abortion made illegal. That’s literally the simplest terms I can put it in.
If you don’t want people to hate you. Leave people alone.
I decided that god didn’t exist when I was 8 for obvious reasons. But I never cared if people were religious or not. That is until I became older and realized just how much religion affects our lives. It’s disgusting how many lives are put at risk daily because an imaginary sky daddy might get pissed.
By all means your beliefs are fine, and you have every right to express them. What fundamentalists and evangelicals are doing to attack our rights is awful and I look forward to every ounce of power that we can take away from them — hopefully permanently. Church and state should be separate, and the state's goal should be supporting diversity of belief and practice within a secular framework.
Here's one of the problems I'm having right now though: there is so much hatred and stigma directed toward non-atheists as a whole these days, particularly in online spaces, that there's been a sort of soft-censorship going on. In many public spaces, a theist can't openly talk about their beliefs without immediately being mocked, stereotyped, and stigmatized into silence by antitheists. It's roughly on par with the people who claim that anyone lgbtq+ can do what they want as long as they keep it out of public.
People should not have to seek isolated pocket communities just to be able to express their ontology.
Yeah, I mean it’s one of those things where you get a knee jerk reaction out of a lot of people just by mentioning religion. I don’t know in what ways or spaces you're trying to talk about your religion. Nor can I speak for other atheists.
What I can say is that if you aren’t one of the big religions, I personally don’t care. Personally, I like the idea of quantum immortality. I don’t think that’s what happens when we die. But man that’s a fun idea.
Anyway, maybe next time try leading with “I’m not one of the main religions”. See if that helps. Maybe, try saying “I have some ideas that I’d like to share”. Instead of whipping out religion and waving it about. Because in the end that’s all that any of us have is some ideas, and anyone that says differently is a liar.
Anyway, I don’t know in what context you’re trying to talk about your religion. For all I know you could be trying to recruit people and they’re telling you to kick rocks. Who knows?
At any rate. I hope you find some people willing to talk about your religion with you.