(January 1, 2022 at 3:49 am)Anomalocaris Wrote: The sad thing isn’t that in the 21st century there is still Stone Age idiots like mercyvessel amongst us.
The sad thing is less idiot people are still idiotic enough to think reasoning with them will make them better.
Sure, I would much better be doing other things like exploring the Galaxy in a spaceship than trying to convince religious people that their imaginary friend is not real. It may seem futile but refusing to respect religion shocks the religious into realizing that serious criticism is allowed and can indeed be beneficial to everyone. Hearing someone call Bible or Quran a fairytale book, religion a myth, or addressing a preacher by his first name, or asserting that Jesus is an obvious rip-off of earlier gods, may even get some in the flock to think about their religion critically for the first time. We as atheists do no good for ourselves or for others by hiding in the closet.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
