If someone were to read a Harry Potter book and believe every word of it, believe in witches and warlocks and magic, believe that anyone who didn’t believe in them was at best doomed, and at worst in league with evil, wouldn’t you say he was crazy? Maybe not a raving lunatic, but missing a few marbles? And if two people believing this raised their kids to believe it, wouldn’t you say they were brainwashing those kids?
It just seems so perverse to me that people like Bachmann or Perry can say one stupid thing after another, but if they compound that stupidity with affirmations of their irrational belief in invisible magic beings, their stupidity is ignored, and they are praised as wonderful people who should run for President! And even more amazing is the fact that anyone who DOESN’T claim to believe in invisible magic beings wouldn’t stand a chance of being elected President.
Yes. they are just powerful and numerous enough that few people are willing to admit it.But as you say, if they treated some other fiction like they do religion most people wouldn’t hesitate to call them crazy; and of course that’s exactly what happens with less popular or powerful delusions. It’s amusing watching people who believe in God act all superior about the irrationality of people who believe in UFOs or that the Moon landing was a hoax or Scientology, then turn right back to their own pet madness.
I daresay the vast, vast majority are just responding to the cues of the environment they found themselves in - get born to Christians, you become a Christian; get born to Jews, you become a Jew, get born to Muslims… etc.
The more interesting question for me is whether those kids are crazy, if they grow up believing what their parents have taught them. I’m going to say no; but if they maintain their beliefs into adulthood, I’d say they’re definitely irrational. But not crazy.
Not crazy, no. well, some of them might be, the ones who actually hear voices etc. But most religious people are just happy not to fight the dominant memes and are culturally indoctrinated, which is not the same as crazy. Intellectually lazy is not the same as crazy.
Looks like the intellectually superior non-religious/atheists/agnostics are coming out for this one. I have a better question, though. Are the non-religious stupid?
How incredibly arrogant do you have to believe that the 90%+ of people that have ever existed are not only wrong but crazy to have different beliefs than you do? Are you really that smart and have that high self-esteem?
Questions like this demonstrate how some people can pride themselves on being “intellectual” atheists while remaining profoundly ignorant of the things they criticize.
Any reasonable individual can see that there are huge differences between the Harry Potter books and, say, the Bible. JK Rowling makes no bones about the fact that her books are fictional, and the entire writing style of these books demonstrate them to be so. Her goal was to create works of fiction for people to enjoy. The Bible, on the other hand, was written in an entirely different style and with entirely different intentions.
“But I don’t believe the Bible!” some would declare. “It’s obviously nothing but a complete work of fiction as well!” Not so fast, Skippy. You’d be hard-pressed to find any historian – indeed, any scholar of repute – who claims that the Bible is nothing but fiction. People may disagree on the degree of historicity within the Bible, and they may disagree on which parts are allegorical and which ones are meant to be literally true. One thing’s for sure, though; no credible scholar treats it as though it even remotely resembles the Harry Potter genre.
I’m not here to argue about the degree of historicity within the Bible, nor am I interested in debating which parts are allegorical and which ones are not. I’m certainly not interested in discussing how the more problematic passages should be interpreted. Those are all topics that are worthy of discussion, but they’re irrelevant to the topic at hand. The salient point is that the Bible does NOT resemble deliberate works of fiction such as the Harry Potter books, and anyone who chooses to dismiss believers based on such grounds is demonstrating his own prejudices and ignorance.
Note that for the sake of brevity, I’ve focused solely on the Bible in this situation. Similar arguments can be made regarding other religious texts, such as the Koran. While I personally reject the authority of those texts, I also know better than to insist that they should be treated in the same manner as JK Rowling’s works. It would be intellectually dishonest to do so.
Some are. However the only thing the non religious have in common is not being religious. So you can’t make a judgement about a non-religious person based on his not being religious.
Every single religious person however has done a stupid act. They believe a religion without any evidence. In order to be considered religious you need to do something stupid. It’s a requisite to be in the club. This doesn’t mean that all religious people *are *stupid mind you. It does mean that you can know that if someone says they are religious they have done something stupid.
I take exception at “we atheists” as though it is some sort of club or group with an official platform of (non) beliefs. I’m not in a special club just because I don’t believe in god(s).
Most of the bible is exactly a “deliberate work of fiction”.
The purpose may not have been to entertain, but rather to elucidate the human condition, the struggles and history of a people, but this was usually accomplished through outright fabrications, half-truths, and a narrative of an incomplete or incorrect or downright made up oral tradition.
I agree with Der Trihs that religion is irrational if the religious take their doctrine literally, or try to impose it on others. But I don’t agree that the religious are crazy or stupid. I actually think that being able to be happy in a religion is a talent, much like being able to enjoy music or sport. Most psychological studies show that the religious are slightly happier, on average, then the self-describing non-religious.
I don’t know if these studies have been corrected for living in a predominantly religious culture, though. These studies could just be measuring that people are happier when they conform to the norms of the society they live in.
Nope, that’s not argumetum ad populum. He’s just saying that they aren’t crazy, and it’s a reasonable assumption that 90% of human beings aren’t crazy.
My first instinct was to say they aren’t crazy, but I’ll offer you the defense of false dichotomy instead.
I fully agree with JThunder. While I’m not particularly religious and consider myself agnostic, I was raised in a very religious home and know first-hand the power of religious beliefs that are taught from childhood. This is not “brainwashing”, as that implies there are beliefs that need to be “washed” out of the brain to be replaced by new beliefs. “Indoctrination” would be more accurate, but those who practice that would simply consider it “education”.
Up until high school, I had no doubts about the things I had been taught (including things like Creationism), and believed that non-believers were more or less demons sent by Satan to corrupt us.
The only reason I no longer believe this is because I was allowed to listen to popular (secular) music, leading to exposure to heavy metal (we’re talking the '80s when it was all the rage). It was actually a terrifying experience to listen to the likes of Ozzy Osbourne and Def Leppard for the first time, after my church had taught me for years that these bands were pure evil. It was only when Satan himself failed to appear to claim my soul that I started to listen to other things that contradicted my Christian upbringing.
I would imagine that if I lived in a more isolated environment where secular influences are more thoruoghly filtered out, I may very well have remained a fundamentalist into adulthood. I wasn’t crazy then, it was just what I was taught.
Wrong is different than crazy. I have no problem with saying other people are wrong, obviously whatever the real answer is, large amounts of people will have been wrong about it. However, thinking that people who believe differently are crazy is just so blatantly narcisstic that it beggars belief that someone would admit to that.