Question For Fellow Atheists...

[Neo-Scholastic]

Thinking otherwise is the epitome of narrow mindedness and bigotry.

@Catholic Lady



To understand what I'm talking about, try and imagine that almost everyone that you know believed in the Tooth Fairy.  You can't call them delusional because belief in the Tooth Fairy is a shared belief within your community.  You can't call their beliefs absurd, irrational or idiotic because you'll be branded "narrow minded and bigoted" and you'll be vilified and bombarded with countless ad-homs and insults.   

Society demands that you afford the Tooth Fairy believers respect even thought you know that such a belief is complete and absolute nonsense.   Picture yourself in that situation and perhaps you might be able to better understand what the Atheist is dealing with... 

You really don't have any idea how insulting and ignorant it is to compare God to the Tooth Fairy do you?

[Jesster]

You really don't have any idea how insulting and ignorant it is to compare God to the Tooth Fairy do you?

Insulting? Perhaps. Ignorant? Nah, it's pretty accurate.

[The Grand Nudger]

What's ignorant, is not realizing that whats being compared is the special little caveat for peoples god beliefs with any other belief, if it met the same criteria that grants god belief the free cultural pass.

Since we're on the subject, though, whats different about one fairy or another Neo? Insulting, to whom? Are you taking offense for godfairies?

[Autolite]

You really don't have any idea how insulting and ignorant it is to compare God to the Tooth Fairy do you?

You really don't have any idea that the evidence for the existence of either is exactly the same do you?

In any case, the Atheist is quite often going to look like they're just being an a..hole. The Atheist is basically saying that the Theist holds irrational, profoundly absurd, ridiculous beliefs. I haven't yet figured out a way to state this honestly without it sounding offensive...

[energizer bunny]

Well when I say 'messed-up', I'm talking about the mental illness of being delusional.  IIRC, the medical definition of a delusion is " an unsubstantiated irrational belief not shared within one's community". Now of course religion does not meet the medical definition of 'delusion' because it is a 'shared' belief.

However, does anyone here disagree with this definition.  Does anyone claim that being delusional is not a mental illness?  Do we all agree that there are in fact people who are delusional???

It depends on how extreme their delusions are for me to consider it a serious mental illness. The belief in god is understandable so i wouldn't say its completely irrational. So would you consider a person who believes in god and promotes peace to be more mentally ill than an atheists who kills and rapes for pleasure?

[Cyberman]

Actually, I agree; it is insulting. Both entities are invisible, work their wonders mysteriously, and have had billions of believers over the centuries. But only one has had the deaths of countless innocents in its name; or taking the mythology as fact, commanded them directly. Insulting to mythological creatures everywhere.

[Minimalist]

You really don't have any idea how insulting and ignorant it is to compare God to the Tooth Fairy do you?

Of course we do.  The Tooth Fairy complains bitterly about it.

[energizer bunny]

You really don't have any idea how insulting and ignorant it is to compare God to the Tooth Fairy do you?

Of course we do.  The Tooth Fairy complains bitterly about it.

lol

[Angrboda]

The purpose of psychiatric diagnoses is to group people who may respond to the same medical treatment together because it has been found that people with similar symptoms respond similarly to treatment. Your use of the term delusional has nothing in common with these aims. Yours is an exercise in pure labeling, an attempt to invoke the stigma of mental illness against those who have religious beliefs. Your labeling is basically a claim that the religious are broken and have defective brains. I don't think this usage is supported by anything we know about the religious. The religious seem just as healthy as non-religious people do concerning non-religious matters. And I would dispute your claim that religious belief is "irrational" (lacking reasons for belief) or unsubstantiated (without justification). Their reasons may not be your reasons, but they are reasons all the same. So what this comes down to is little more than a slur aiming to stigmatize religious belief.

I must also note as a person with schizoaffective disorder who has suffered from delusions the bulk of my adult life, there is a qualitative difference between a bona fide delusion and something that is merely an irrational and false belief. To compare the two as if they were similar only highlights the weakness in relying upon a pat "definition" of what a delusion is, and a distinction between the thinking of an armchair doctor and someone with actual clinical experience.

I would also point out that the belief in invisible sentient beings is not as far fetched as you make it seem. We all seamlessly infer the presence of an invisible mind inhabiting the bodies of other humans we interact with. We even infer a mind behind the eyes of a dog or cat, without the additional component of speech. This "instinct" to infer the presence of non-visible minds is very powerful and operates non-consciously; we do it automatically. It's not that strange that this instinct might misapply itself and infer the presence of invisible minds where they don't exist. This would not be a malfunction of the brain, an unhealthy degenerate condition, but a mere side effect of the brain functioning in its normal manner. If nothing else, this theory of mine points out how intimately intertwined our views of religious behavior are with our theories about why they've adopted this behavior. If you just view religious behavior as a symptom of ordinary belief, you may be missing the true nature of it.

[Faith No More]

I'm inclined to agree that it's insulting to compare god to the tooth fairy. When I was a kid I would put the tooth I had lost that day under my pillow, and there would be money in its place when I woke up. That's more evidence than anyone's ever been able to muster for god.