Understanding Religion's Relationship To Human Social Systems

As for the question of any "god" existing, it's like arguing whether the Eternal King of the Leprechauns exists.  Nobody is ever going to prove or disprove it.  But honestly, I never try to. Nor do most atheists.  Instead, we just point out how counterfactual, fallacious, and unethical the claims and arguments are. Few of us care about people believing in fantastic things. For most of us, our attitude is: "Worship dryer lint, for all we care.  Notice how we never really tangle with Wiccans, Buddhists, or Native Indigenous spiritual persons about their beliefs.  That's because those people are not troubling us with it. In fact, they hardly ever harm or intrude into other people's lives as a consequence of their spiritual beliefs.  Whenever someone's weird relationship to dryer lint threatens to (or actively does) greatly intrude on non-consenting people's lives, ... now we have a problem that can't be ignored." As Will Smith's character in...

@Christmas1914-dg5xc 3 hours ago  @BionicLatino  "murder is still wrong" How would you try talking someone out of it, if they don't care that it is, and if it's to their benefit? You know what politicians are capable of. Their believing in God isn't a guaranteed way to stop it, but it's something. At least you can then try to introduce some cognitive dissonance, if their motive is purely personal gain. --- --- My thoughts about it:  ​ @Christmas1914-dg5xc  I understand your point.  As someone once said, "I may not believe in God, but I sure hope my maid does". I get it. And by "I get it", I mean ... I truly and deeply understand it.  The easiest counterpoint would be to offer this: However, Weinberg really underestimates the problem.  Now, I do understand that some Christians are genuinely loving people.  But that actually makes it worse. Because those people are taught to rob themselves of their credit for being decent people. -Believing...

  LOL He was about to plug my channel, but, ... mid-sentence, he realized he shouldn't. I'm too hated by the cult. And that cult is ever-present in every channel within that network. -always ready to ensure "consequences" for violating social doctrine. #TheShunningIsReal This was why the only person in chat who was willing to say Hi to me was Dave, as always. Even people who do talk to w/ me privately via Facebook ... just refuse to talk to me in front of a specific social-cult of atheists, which I call "The Mean Girls" (pop culture movie reference). So the host (Chris Mallard's) brain grabbed the first random safe channel he could think of and inserted it to complete his sentence. The stress of trying to make that sudden shift appear natural ... resulted in momentary decoherence of his thought process. That, in turn, resulted in putting his foot in his mouth, insulting Joe (Kentucky Atheist). And then Chris had to do some messy and awkward...