What is wrong with theistic beliefs?

[Aliza]

Okay, most of the theists who come here are suffering from something if only a persecution complex.  But I'd like to know what we atheists think is wrong with theistic thinking in most cases.  Your gut reaction will do fine but feel free to say why you think that.

Theistic thinking is off because believers are:

1) suffering from a delusion, defined here as a persistent false belief;

2) under the spell of an illusion, defined as misinterpreting an actual phenomenon;

3) just plain crazy;

4) or something else altogether, please elaborate.

5) Of course I should include a fuck yourself with your damned poll option too.  

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But I didn't, fuck you too.

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Now there may be a variety of causes for the wrong thinking but here we are looking for a diagnosis of the variety of bad thinking they ended up with.  I'm going to limit you to one choice for the reason you think is most often to blame.  Also I'm making the poll public just because I'm nosy like that.

I know you posed this question to atheists, but I'm going to answer anyway! Absolutely nothing is wrong with theist beliefs in and of themselves.

What's wrong is when theism interferes with getting along with others, or if theism inhibits progress. If you think Jesus died on the cross to "save you," and you're a productive, well-adapted, law-abiding member of society (bonus points if you can also solve the clean water crisis in India), then why should I give a shit that you think this thing is true? Knock yourself out. I have real problems to worry about and your being wrong about this doesn't rise to the level of needing my attention.

We start to have a huge problem if someone can't separate their religious values from their RL values. If you can get academia --- Shit, if you can get 51% of mainstream scientists to agree that your creation crap warrants serious consideration then I'm all for it. Give us the evidence, and let's evaluate it like adults. I am more than open minded to the possibility that I'm wrong and that the world really was created in six 24-hour days.

But your religious shit doesn't supercede my science shit, and those are the fucking rules.

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And by the way, the thing that's wrong with a some beliefs held by atheists is that some of them think all theists believe the same thing!

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