(October 3, 2015 at 2:11 pm)EvidenceVersusFaith Wrote: Religion, as much as I disagree with it, isn't a mental disability.
Merely because you can still function day-to-day and be religious. It may be mentally irrational to me and ultimately harmful, but it isn't mentally unhealthy enough to hinder functioning in society day-to-day.
If everyone took every word of it literally then it fucking would be, but if that includes the old testament, the unhealthiness of it would be the least worry, it would be things like killing your children for talking back at you that would be of greatest worry.
As much as I detest cherry-picking, thank fuck for cherry-picking. It's an irrational cognitive bias that keeps a lot of religious people sane and harmless.
I think cherry-picking is different from open disagreement or rejection - Most believers I know who don't follow all the bible claim that they rejected certain verses for many reasons, so they're not really picking, just rejecting some as unworthy. I agree that the standard used to evaluate religion are biased, but there's not an easy way to tell and convince people that magical sky daddy doesn't exist.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you
