Ronin

The anit-religion pill should be developed along with the anti-skeptic pill...and then let everyone decide which one they should take.

beth

HelenM

But if you give people choices you'll open a huge can of worms...

Bree

Yes, but you've already made the choice. Now you have to understand why you made it .

dangin

There's no choosing allowed, everyone must take my new antireligion pill. The world will obviously be a better place as soon as the morphine kicks in. . .


But seriously, back to the idea that the majority decides sanity, or more correctly, the "social norms" may be, but it remains beside the point, that faith is the thing that this is about. It's not about a variance in social norm on mowing your lawn, or the clothes you wear, it is about a mental condition wherein one believes in something with absolutely no evidence to back it up, and usually evidence to the contrary that must be ignored.

This is called delusion if this faith is in anything other than god, astrolgy, tarot cards, prayer, or some other at least partially accepted form of delusion or chicanery. But if it is a large rabbit named Harvy that only you can see, or the ghost of Elvis living in your cubicle carpet that only you can talk to (true story), or that the tin foil hat is protecting you from the evil alien space rays, then it is delusion.

The only difference between the two is that the alien space ray folks are not the majority. If they were we'd have aluminum foil churches springing up all over.

Actually, isn't reynold's wrap and minor deity below the IPU?

beth

Perhaps the pill should wipe the slate clean and those who take it should be instructed in a philosophy, including atheism. Then it would truly be their choice...

dangin

Maybe babies can be made in batches on assembly lines, with chemicals being added to different batches at different times to make "leadership" baby batches, and "worker" baby batches. Don't forget the Soma, lots of Soma. And feelies.

HelenM

Maybe this has already been said on this thread: as long as atheists are in the minority, it seems to me that such arguments are more likely to be used against them than to their benefit.

This seems like none other than modern-day formulation (now it's more acceptable to talk about mental illness than demons) of the arguments that were used against atheists in the past. If you think things have improved for non-believers since then (at least in some countries), why would you want to go back to that?

Helen

dangin

Because atheists don't believe things with no evidence. Faith is uniquely tied to delusion. The counter comparison is that atheism is uniquely tied to rational evidence.

Calzaer

But you're ignoring the fact that theists think they HAVE evidence, mostly in the form of Subjective Religious Experiences. Hell, having had my own SREs, I can't be an atheist even though I feel totally irrational about it. The inability to have an SRE is only evident in a tiny minority of the population. It's not "believing without evidence", it's "believing because we can see something we regard as evidence that atheists can't see". When put into those terms, who do you think is more likely to get a pill?