RDFRS US:
The mission of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science is to support scientific education, critical thinking and evidence-based understanding of the natural world in the quest to overcome religious fundamentalism, superstition, intolerance and suffering.
The Magic of Reality
for the iPad
Sean Faircloth:
Attack of the Theocrats!
I'm not so sure it would work. People's desire to buy cheaper cannot be construed as meaning that they'd buy nothing at all. People who spend on a religion may still want, and feel that they need, a religion, just as a person who goes to a cheaper drugs outlet still wants, and feels a need for, drugs of some kind. The only real remedy is like that of any psychological illness: prevention before it hits, counter when it is trying to hit, and cure once it's hit.
Prevention would be teaching people about religions before they encounter anyone trying to persuade them to join one, so that they know what features to look for and to question.
Counter might be conspicuously arguing with someone trying to persuade fence-sitters to join. As the debate continues, those who were considering joining a religion might change their minds.
Cure would be a Socratic dialogue encouraging a person to examine their own assumptions, or a friendly discussion in which you provide an alternative and explain why the alternative is truer, happier, and more moral.
Lurkers on this thread may be upset about my treating religion as something to be prevented or cured, but since religions propagate untrue or unverifiable ideas, claim a moral superiority that is at odds with actual "moral" teachings or that show non-religious bases, and are too often confused by association with useful things like comfort, art, and community that actually aren't exclusive to religion, I justify my stance on these mismatches and on the fact that religions are interchangeable, intellectually misleading, peripheral, and incidental at best, and actively harmful, deceptive, and destructive at worst.
Permalink Fri, 20 Jul 2012 13:30:35 UTC | #949629