RE: Anyone else struggle with cynical/rude thoughts towards religious people?
October 10, 2024 at 11:06 am
You're meant to feel that way. Soft control. When theism was in charge, it was stakes and gallows. Now that it's lost just a tiny bit of purchase we need so much tolerance and it needs so much privilege that intelligent people will be banned from thinking to avoid offending the imbeciles.
In fairness, I don't know your friend or the exact details of the conversation you've summarized for us. It could be a comment on an altered state. Altered states are (imo) more credible, consequential, and serious than their contents or narration may seem. FWIW, that you even worry about it goes some way to demonstrating that you're a properly functioning human being. One wonders how many theists wind up in a sharing and self critical mood over such things in their lives.
Would your friend worry that he was being an asshole for saying silly shit to you? I run into that one alot of the time in interactions with the sorts of trolls and apologists we get. Where it seems to me that a person would have to have utter contempt for anyone they tried to sell this or that line to. I struggle to remind myself that they may be generally or specifically incompetent, rather than malicious.
In fairness, I don't know your friend or the exact details of the conversation you've summarized for us. It could be a comment on an altered state. Altered states are (imo) more credible, consequential, and serious than their contents or narration may seem. FWIW, that you even worry about it goes some way to demonstrating that you're a properly functioning human being. One wonders how many theists wind up in a sharing and self critical mood over such things in their lives.
Would your friend worry that he was being an asshole for saying silly shit to you? I run into that one alot of the time in interactions with the sorts of trolls and apologists we get. Where it seems to me that a person would have to have utter contempt for anyone they tried to sell this or that line to. I struggle to remind myself that they may be generally or specifically incompetent, rather than malicious.
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