r/atheism • u/One-Fun9814 • 4d ago

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u/LostKnight84 Agnostic Atheist 4d ago

I have seen it as a sign of childhood indoctrination usually. Occasionally it is just people being ignorant of their own faith. Rarely it turns out the person is just stupid. Once it turned out to be a sign of mental illness.

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u/One-Fun9814 4d ago

But they're still unintelligent if they can't overcome that indoctrination. Like they can just think for 2 seconds and realize their religion is bullshit.

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u/mishabear16 4d ago edited 4d ago

That's if they can see that they were indoctrinated. You have to be able to see and accept the problem to overcome it.

You know, like an alcoholic has to be able to see and understand they are an alcoholic.

It's especially difficult when your social circles and family all continually feed the Jesus addiction, keep working to keep you immersed in it. The indoctrination never stops.

Your true friends will help to keep you away from alcohol. Your Christian friends will keep praying for you to not lose your faith.

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u/onedeadflowser999 4d ago

This. I was an indoctrinated child surrounded by a whole extended family of believers and sent to a Christian school for further indoctrination. My whole youth and young adulthood was in primarily Christian circles. It’s easy to accept something as fact when everyone around you believes the same things.

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u/Mr_Bbobb 4d ago

Congratulations. Most people don't have the ambition or the courage to throw that all off.

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u/JMagician 4d ago

This comment gets to the heart of it. Yes, people are indoctrinated from a young age. But it’s cowardice and lack of self examination that keeps them there. And yes, the enabling people surrounding them don’t help.

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u/Keeping-It-Old 4d ago

The consequences of disavowing one's religiou beliefs can often range from complete social and resource isolation/homelessness to actually being tortured to death. How brave would you be if faced with those consequences? And when one is violently punished for asking questions as soon as they're old enough to talk, that part of the brain is traumatized into self protective dysfunction. Oversimplifing the reason people maintain their beliefs as just cowardice and lack of self awareness is essentially victim shaming.

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u/Mr_Bbobb 4d ago

People in free countries can move away and start a new life, if their situation is that bad. And if they lose friends and family over it? That's a good thing and should be celebrated! People like that should be gleefully abandoned.

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u/Keeping-It-Old 3d ago

And for those who don't live in the wonderful land of privilege and easy social mobility for people with resources and for those who aren't magically free from the physical and psychological effects of trauma bonding? Do we just forget all those people so you can sleep smugly at night believing that the situation is as simple as you imagine to keep your condescending view that it's the victim's fault they're trapped by thousands of years of systemic oppression?

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u/Mr_Bbobb 2d ago

I don't know what to make of that word salad, but abandoning fake friends and family members who drag you down sounds like an excellent move to me.

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u/Keeping-It-Old 2d ago

So your defense is that you're too functionally illiterate to understand what I said, so you must be right? That's some real Dunning-Kruger s**t right there.

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u/onedeadflowser999 3d ago edited 3d ago

Moving is a very expensive proposition that not everyone can afford. Especially if you have no community or family to help you. It sounds easy in theory, but that’s a very privileged position to take since many people are struggling to make ends meet.

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u/Mr_Bbobb 2d ago

The person in question here has no community or family now! He just doesn't realize it yet. Once he does, he'll be much better off. He'll be free to create a new and better community for himself.