I don't fight religious beliefs because they let us / do not let us be. I fight it because they still won't refrain from psychological child abuse.
It should be illegal to tell your child you will burn in hell if you don't do x.
It should be illegal to tell your child they were born sinful - and will remain that way.
It should be illegal to mutilate the genitals of a child.
It's a form of child abuse - and I will remain active until I die because of this.
But my question would be - is it MY right / left or THEIR right / left - Cause you know - If I choose my left it would be their right. ; /
I think it is a matter of choice for believers, not for us.
Had I been able to choose, I would have chosen to believe, just because it would have made my mother happy.
Conversely, believers choose to not listen, to not read and to not reason.
I wish I knew the answer to this question.
My sister recently converted to Pentecostal. Now this is her words to me "You being an ex-christian you know how important it is to us that
we share our new found love. It can not possibly be as insulting to you,
for me to talk to you about my god as it is for you to tell me he is
just a figment of my imagination!"
I shit you not she really said this! She was never really all that religious, though we both grew up in a church, we moved in with my
mother when I was around 12 she was about 7, due to my grandmothers health
problems, so she kind of left the church scene behind then. Then one day
she has a kid and become a holly roller, tongue who knows it all and can't even the 23rd psalm..
As I have said a million times, if we walked into their churches and started preaching evolution over their preachers we would go to jail, If
we walked on to one of their forums and started debunking them there
they would kick us out. Why they feel the need to be here I have no
The answer to that, lies in social psychology. It bothers these religious fanatics deeply that people think differently then they do (remember, most religious people have been either brainwashed from birth, or have joined out of loneliness, peer-pressure (sense of belonging), or they are simply LOST); these religious people for the most part are weak-minded, spineless hypocrites... religion attracts the worst types of people. Knowing this, then, it becomes easy to figure out why they wish to spread religious convictions so badly:
1) they are extremely insecure about the fact that someone may think about something differently, and are bigoted assholes (think herd-behavior and in-group/out-group behavior).
2) manipulative people tend to use religion (think of the pope, who used to be part of the Hitler Youth) as a safe-haven, to allow them to get away with their acts of sedition (think child molestation); they quickly realize it affords them control over weak-minded fools, and once in power, THEY ARE UNTOUCHABLE. and then they preach for the spread of religion to control MORE PEOPLE.
3) lastly, you have the weak-minded fools. These people are psychologically conditioned to "believe" that they will be doing the world "good" by spreading religion (every sunday, in church, they hear about how you must spread the "The Love of Christ" to all of God's children). So, in order to feel like they are selfless (I love how religious people are the first to vocalize how selfless they are) and that they are "good", they proselytize their ideals. But, deep down, most of these people, I think, have an enumeration of doubts; they are just too weak to question, because they face ridicule by their peers (remember when I mentioned in-group/out-group behavior?).
Hmm...I don't know if belief is a matter of choice. However, perhaps I am just projecting my own inability to consciously direct my beliefs onto others for whom it is a possibility.
Letting go of any deep-seated belief in the face of new information is an uncomfortable and frightening experience. Maybe the choice is that theists choose to allow fear to dictate their beliefs rather than rational evaluation of information?
Eek, sorry for the rambling derailment that amounted to little more than semantic jibberjabber, lol.
But maybe the fear that motivates theists to cling to belief is also the driving force in their continued persistence of atheists/heretics/heathens/whatever the flavor-of-the-century dictates. Nothing is more uncomfortable than being confronted with someone who has overcome or rejected things that you are afraid to live without.
It's like when someone quits drinking and forces (unintentionally or otherwise) other alcoholics to confront their own addiction.