People crying about dawkins
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I've described these "atheists" as having a religion shaped hole they try to fill. They still need someone or something providing direction and morals instead of figuring it out for themselves. They still need an evil to oppose. I'd feel sorry for them, if they weren't dangerous lunatics in denial of reality.
I've got little sympathy for them because they are simply the stereotypes that Evangelicals threw at us.
There are atheists that deconverted, but the interesting thing is that those people became atheists after years of internal conflict about it, and experiencing a genuine "loss of faith". The whole process is actually almost traumatic before it gets to be liberating.
They didn't just watch a YouTube video and go "obviously God is silly". They actually tried to prove God existed to themselves, and then realized that not only was it impossible, the whole effort of failure was the larger message that the whole concept of God simply couldn't be true. In science, there's a point where you test all the boundary conditions, and you're getting repeated failures, and then you have to start questioning whether the very assumptions of your model are wrong. That is an unpleasant and difficult place to get to, but that's what happens to deconvert.
Once you get past that point, the entire idea of worshiping a God just wouldn't even make sense. That's why I agree with the claim that the atheists who re-engage with theism, really weren't atheists. They never genuinely de-converted, because otherwise you have to build your faith purely on things you know aren't true, and that's a whole different moral dilemma.
I know. Went through it myself during my formative years. Didn't officially make the leap until thirteen years after I first questioned the existence of god. But deep down I still want mentally ill people to get the help they clearly need and to stop throwing themselves at the nearest pseudo cult. I'm a bit of a softy in that regard.
Those people are actually far to few.
I think the horrible truth is that we are surrounded by normal people who have been exposed to emotional and psychological abuse on an industrial scale for most of their formative years, particularly with the assistance of schools, the media, and social media.
They're not really mentally ill. They're abused.
The signs look similar only because the outlandish behavior would come from either/or. But in our case, it's coming from the result of abuse. These are actually perfectly normal people who have been grievously abused by an industrial system that profits and consolidates power off it, while claiming to care about them. It's truly evil.
Put it like this. If you found a Church where 30% of the kids killed themselves after having attended it for 15 years. Is that just because there's a weird fluke in the population where the children keep having depression, or is it because they're depressed and suicidal as a result of being raped by the priest and having no ability to get help?