Delusion?

[Angrboda]

This may end up being an ETA, but whatever.

There is an even more vicious problem with looking upon theism as delusional, and that is best illustrated by example.

The communist regimes of Lenin and Stalin were ruthlessly brutal, and many were killed for religious reasons (and many, for other reasons). The communism of post-revolution Russia was thoroughly atheistic. Generally, atheists like to hurry past this example, and blame the communist purges on politics or personality, but there is instruction to be had here if you linger. (Indeed, former Methodist bishop "Jack" Spong even claims that the authoritarian regimes of Stalin and Lenin served as de facto religions, and that, rather than being a crime of irreligion, was simply one more religious excess!)

For those unfamiliar, communism preached the overthrow of classed society, delivering all capital into the hands of the worker -- or, in its intermediary forms, the state. Thus, anything which impeded or blocked this goal was not simply acting against the interests of the state, they were acting against the interests of the common man, perpetuating their enslavement to capital, and ultimately their suffering. Quite rightly so, religion was seen as a major stumbling block and barrier on the road to a worker's paradise. (And think of Nazi Germany, particularly post-Weimar Republic Germany -- people didn't sign on "just to kill Jews" -- they were bringing about a New Jerusalem in modern Prussia; anything the ideology opposed, opposed goodness and prosperity.) True, it might be better to characterize this attitude as anti-religious, rather than atheistic, but then, where do we draw that line in our own thinking and behavior? I meet few atheists who aren't also anti-religion, or at least, anti this or that specific form or forms of theism.

Then the other shoe drops. If we embrace the idea that theism -- or religion in general -- is delusional, it's hard to avoid sliding headlong into the medical model, where religion is not just error or mistake, but pathological -- a disease, wherein the reasoning organ is not functioning correctly. Do we ask a tumor if it wants to be removed? Do we let the psychopathic killer go free because he doesn't understand right from wrong? Do we ask the schizophrenic who is going around hurting people if they want to be medicated?

No. No, no, and no. Once you embrace the medical model, you come to embrace the idea that the religious have no rights. Their religion is "a danger" to our paradise, well-being, or whatever. And the flip side of that is the arrogant notion that you alone have rights, are healthy, and in the human sense, acceptable.