Testimony is Evidence

[Astonished]

Frankly, it's sick.  This is not how a psychologically healthy person engages with their fellow human beings.

All of the rest of that was fantastic, but really, this is all that needs to be said. And to think how trivially easy it would be to avoid that mental castration in the first place, or how quickly that could be cured if their self-maintained barrier could be broken through.

I was pondering this on my way home from physical therapy a few minutes ago and recalled an episode of Doctor Who where even in the far-advanced future, people were living in a bubble of unskeptical buffoonery and ignorance, and when the Doctor confronted one of the people behind it and accused him of enslaving those people, he is met with the question, "Are they still slaves if they don't know they are slaves?" The Doctor vehemently, without a second's hesitation, responds "Yes." Because of the nature of religion and how it instills this slave mentality into people, it's unjust and immoral of people who were never inculcated or who are emancipated from it to extricate those still being enslaved, much as they might fight us off with a bloody vengeance like Agents in the Matrix.

Everyone still in the trappings of faith is demonstrably delusional, bar none, and while degrees vary, that does enslave them. It's impossible for it not to affect at least some aspect of their life or behavior. Even if it drives them to be a good person, it's meaningless if someone is nice to people because they're afraid of being anally raped with a flaming chainsaw for eternity than because they're simply of the mind that people should be nice to each other because it makes them and others happier, something rational and demonstrably true.

So to the slaves-come-Agents, wake the fuck up, please. You're fooling no one but yourselves and nothing but improvement to your mental state and lives will come from liberating yourselves. You have literally nothing to lose.