Those of us who grew up without it literally can’t imagine scenarios like this, though I’ve heard disturbing things from people who seem otherwise sane that make me understand what drives some to do these things. When you’ve internalised fables of good vs evil and that’s how you define reality, it’s a small step to think you have to commit atrocities to save the innocent. You don’t have to have a very divergent mentality to convince yourself of this.
We will all be better off when the vast majority of people give up these fables and begin to live in the real world.
Ehh I dunno… I’m as atheist as anyone with an IQ above 60, but I think religion is just a convenient scapegoat for mental illness here. I’m pretty sure someone who shoots strangers on the highway would have done it in a world without religion too, and they would say it’s a different mystical force that made them do it. I don’t think Christianity actually moved this person to do this.
Religion isn’t a scapegoat, and it has nothing to do with IQ. Very smart people are roped into it, and that’s what I mean by it being a social cancer.
Very smart people are raised with stories that they take as reality – that supplant their ability to judge reality for what it is – and it at best colours how they interpret everything for the rest of their lives, and at worst amplifies and gives focus to mental conditions they already have.
Religion is a warped lens through which people are forced to see reality from such a young age, they are incapable of seeing actual reality, and in some cases it just amplifies the otherwise mild mental illness they’d likely have had already.
Without it, some people would already have been disturbed, but with it those people are given a purpose for their delusions.
Organised religion is a cancer of the mind.
Those of us who grew up without it literally can’t imagine scenarios like this, though I’ve heard disturbing things from people who seem otherwise sane that make me understand what drives some to do these things. When you’ve internalised fables of good vs evil and that’s how you define reality, it’s a small step to think you have to commit atrocities to save the innocent. You don’t have to have a very divergent mentality to convince yourself of this.
We will all be better off when the vast majority of people give up these fables and begin to live in the real world.
Ehh I dunno… I’m as atheist as anyone with an IQ above 60, but I think religion is just a convenient scapegoat for mental illness here. I’m pretty sure someone who shoots strangers on the highway would have done it in a world without religion too, and they would say it’s a different mystical force that made them do it. I don’t think Christianity actually moved this person to do this.
Religion isn’t a scapegoat, and it has nothing to do with IQ. Very smart people are roped into it, and that’s what I mean by it being a social cancer.
Very smart people are raised with stories that they take as reality – that supplant their ability to judge reality for what it is – and it at best colours how they interpret everything for the rest of their lives, and at worst amplifies and gives focus to mental conditions they already have.
Religion is a warped lens through which people are forced to see reality from such a young age, they are incapable of seeing actual reality, and in some cases it just amplifies the otherwise mild mental illness they’d likely have had already.
Without it, some people would already have been disturbed, but with it those people are given a purpose for their delusions.