Tooth Fairy Bullshit

[downbeatplumb]

I think most of us can agree it is intended to be insulting when spoken out loud.  However, it is how most of us actually feel.  Hell, even Christians have acknowledged knowing their beliefs are childish, though not directly.  Why do you think they are so desperate to get religious teachings into schools?  The children whose parents already hold those beliefs already teach their children these things.  But they want to teach all children these things.  Why?  Because they are well aware that you can only plant the idea of magical beliefs in the head of a child.  Any reasonable adult, hearing about God for the first time, is far more likely to reject the idea outright than to seriously consider it.  You have to plant magical ideas in the heads of children if you want them to stick.

Now, I can understand that most Christians here won't want to accept that, but think about it.  If I approached you on the street and told you about a magic guy who runs around healing people, predicting the future, raising people from the dead and the like, but these claims had nothing to do with what you already believe, would you even bother listening to it?  Even if they weren't in conflict with what you believe you wouldn't even consider it as possible because you weren't raised from childhood to accept such fantastical claims without question and proof.

In that respect a guess an atheist is really nothing more than someone who has rejected the propensity toward belief of certain fantastical claims without question planted in our brains during childhood.  If you really examine your own psyche you'll likely be amazed how many things you have been programmed simply to accept, either purposefully or accidentally.  In my life I have doubted climate change and vaccines and accepted, or at least entertained ideas of global conspiracies, alien visitation and ghosts.  For each one I had to do a thorough examination of why I believed or doubted and in each case I came to the same realization.  Like Fox Mulder, I wanted to believe.  But I had no reason to believe, so I rejected the belief.

I find the "yo can't say that its insulting" tactic is just a way to stifle a constructive way to articulate a point.
Censorship by outrage.

If I were to say that I find mention of Thoamsd Aquinas and his five ways offensive it shuts down a vast amount of debate for no benefit other than to shut down the debate.

When I mention I think of god as the same as the toothfairy I am in no way meaning to offensive. It is a shorthand for how I think of their deity, They are being offended by how I feel!