You know, Ive been thinking...

[Reincarnate]

Originally Posted by 3lijah

Ive been thinking... Ive had/seen/heard multiple discussions with multiple people about science versus the belief of a higher being. One of the things I realized was that "some" of those people were a little trigger-happy with derogatory and uncalled for comments towards individuals who do believe in a higher being. But why? Why is throwing insults a viable option towards stating an opinion? When you do that, you are basically spitting in that persons' face and stomping their beliefs to the ground, shitting on that persons' way of life and telling them they are wrong. That being said, a lot of events in history resulted in bloodshed solely because of religion, Im not ignoring that. But ridiculing one's beliefs? That's ignorance in itself. Ignorant because of the result of hate from what would always would have been simply a discussion from two different stand-points. This is coming from someone who is one of those believers. Everyone accepts a certain something, a very certain something, into their hearts in their own way. Every living human being on this planet walks only one path: their own. What we learn while we are alive carves what we become, science and religion are two of those things.

What do you guys think?

How would you feel if I told you that I adamantly believed that the earth was flat? And that I think your kids should learn flat-earth theory in the science classroom? And that I should be free to enter public office and divert funding away from important things to support flat-earth projects and promotions? Or that, for some reason, because the Earth is flat, it means I can mistreat and legally discriminate against certain kinds of people?

You'd think I was utterly insane. We all know the Earth is not flat, so this example is easy to understand.

However, as you extend the analogy further, it gets into areas that are less well-known. Everyone understands the Earth is round, but not everyone understands how evolution works. Not everyone knows how our Earth was formed, or how basic physics work, or that we are all born out of stardust, or what statistics and logic imply in various contexts, etc. It becomes less intuitive, but plenty of people do still understand all of this.

And so imagine how frustrated these people are to watch everyone around them believe in things that are either outright wrong or incredibly improbable, especially when better explanations exist for all of it. Hearing people say "it's just my opinion!" is frustrating because at some point, it's not your opinion if your opinion is, frankly, wrong.

Of course, telling people that they need to learn more / get educated in the underlying subjects is seen as arrogant. So in many ways, it's a lose/lose. You either have to explain a huge collection of complex frameworks to people who have little exposure to that kind of thinking (and have it fall on deaf ears), or be labeled arrogant for telling them that they are not educated enough to understand why their arguments are poor.

So, in using the analogy, it's a lot like dealing with someone who thinks the Earth is flat. There's just no polite way to tell them that their stance is untenable, especially if they're heavily invested in it emotionally. Some people simply don't care. Even if they can understand the counter-arguments on a rational level, sometimes it's just easier to keep on believing in a higher power like they were before. This is especially easy to do since unfalsifiable beliefs are, well, unfalsifiable. But an atheist would say that if your belief is unfalsifiable, why are you believing in it in the first place? There are infinitely many unfalsifiable beliefs to hold -- so why this one?