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The drawing of him kicking in the door is hilarious.
I didn’t realize neckbeard atheists oppressed and killed so many people compared to religion, thanks to the author for opening my eyes
There’s a difference between religion and faith. Faith is belief in a higher power. Religion is an institution that exploits faith to opress people. This neckbeard atheist didn’t thwart religion, he just destroyed his mom’s faith. I have my doubts that his mom was doing a lot of oppressing.
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I get it. Never grew much hair on my neck but I went through an edgy Internet atheist phase. I saw myself as a champion of science and rationality, leading poor deluded people to the light.
I got better, but it took time.
The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.
Werner Heisenberg
That’s a beautiful quote thank you
neither of those definitions are correct…
They are sufficient for the topic at hand.
No, incorrect definitions are never sufficient. That is just making up stuff
It is not. Those are, roughly, what those words mean. I could use more precise ones, but this isn’t a serious philosophical discussion with serious people so the effort would be wasted.
Substitute whichever words you prefer, there’s a difference between an individual’s personal belief in a higher power, and the institution which exploits that belief to oppress. Half-baked semantic objections do not make you clever. Engage with the content of the argument.
Is one of these murderous religious people in the room with us right now?
Sharing your beliefs with family is pretty common. Would you not want your relatives to reflect the way you see the world?
Just because it’s going against the generational direction doesn’t make it somehow wrong.
Nor is making a relative upset necessarily wrong.
Now, freed from the expectations, worldview, and belief systems of a religion, she is able to choose her own way of living?
I don’t really see how this is a negative. Religion gives easy, comforting, often bullshit answers to difficult questions. Who are you supposed to be? What’s the right thing to do? How should you treat others? What happens after I die?
Now, freed from the expectations, worldview, and belief systems of a religion, she is able to choose her own way of living?
In the same way that throwing a child into the ocean is “free to learn how to swim”, sure. You can’t go to all this work to convince someone you are right, and then as soon as they start listening and agreeing with you, abandon them to despair. If you want to help someone see the world more clearly, you also have to show them how to handle this new world, especially if it’s your own family you’re trying to help.
I do agree that abandonment is cringe.
On their own journey, I’d be wary of introducing my own biases.
I feel that easily could’ve been excluded from the comic either for the author’s narrative, or simply to keep it a 3 panel. Could also just be alone time to process.
Is one of these murderous religious people in the room with us right now?
No they’re just ruling some of the most powerful and genocidal despotic countries in human history.
If you are an adult and that is your reaction to understanding that god isnt real then you need serious psychological help.
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“If you have a deeply emotional reaction to your entire worldview being shattered in your middle age and having everything that once brought you a sense of comfort, however manufactured, suddenly ripped away from you, then you need psychological help.”
At least your brain-dead snark somehow still brought you to the correct conclusion, unintentional as it may have been.
Ofcourse if you think that peoples practical view of the world is strongly dependent on religion, then that would be your reaction to my comment. I just dont believe that this is true. At least in my experience with people old and young, no matter the ethnicity or religious background, barely anyone is so deeply religious anymore that their understanding of reality depends on belief in god.
This comic just doesnt make any sense in large parts of the world where people live either completely secular or only vaguely influenced by religion.
This might be a popular opinion here on Lemmy but this is definitely NOT really rooted in reality.
Conceptually going from belief in a something you earnestly want to believe in to being proven it’s wrong will shatter who you are.
This is not much different than learning your partner is cheating on you or that your parents aren’t actually you parents and they hid it from you, or something like that.
Yes believing in religion may be absurd but c’mon this take is pretty off
Or finding out Santa isn’t real!
Yeah, I agree with your statement. Not in a degrading way though. I know people whose lives have been so difficult, agonizing and full of abuse. Religion is what got them through those times and gave them hope. I am an atheist too, a very radical one at that, but I can imagine these people would have similar reactions if their only source of spiritual comfort was aggressively denied.
So they do need serious psychological help, but not because they are stupid to react that way, if that was what you meant.
That was very insightful. Thank you, gay_sex.
To be fair, a lot of people need serious psychological help and get God instead.
Religion is often used as cognitive dissonance to avoid dealing with trauma.
Fight people who use any belief to justify being shitty to others.
Yes, fight religion. Fight it with logic, science and facts. Otherwise you’ll get people like RFK jr, and a whole bunch of sick and potentially dead children. Or you might end up like the middle east, dead in the name of god.
Totally random question chud: how do you feel about support for drug addicts?
Actually yes religious justifications for violence are fairly common, the comic is stupid
?
The last panel is ambiguous about whether the woman is having an emotional breakdown and lying on the ground in tears, or if she was killed by her son and was crying as she died. Both would work as someone being “convinced” their religion is wrong, as being dead would “convince” you about god.
I think it’s the former, but i see the latter.
Honestly I initially interpreted the comic as a joke about the dichotomy of how the son would feel good about it but it’s a lot of emotional processing for the mother.
The last panel isn’t ambiguous. She’s emotionally shattered because her fantasy was destroyed.
Genocide is worse than murder but murder is still bad
Where did murder come into this?
Around the time religion started.
It didn’t. I’m using an analogy to show that criticising atheists like this does not mean I support religion. Quite the contrary, in fact.
Gotcha
Them religious zealots with their evolutionary biology and eugenics!
Nobody said reality was all smiles and rainbows. However, it’s entirely possible to find happiness without believing in fairy tales so you can sleep at night.
It’s possible but unfortunately when people have spent their entire lives with religion being their (seemingly) only source of happiness, it can be really hard for them to find a different source.
And her son completely failed to demonstrate any of that. She presumably spent her life trying to take care of her kid, (the quality of which can only be guessed at, but she cared enough to listwn to his points about atheism) and as soon as her child shows her a new way of thinking he completely abandons her without giving her any ways of handling it.
Whew. Must have been hard work carrying all those assumptions in.
Name three.
There are two big ones, both of which imply other assumptions like she didn’t argue or tell him he was going to hell or a ton of other negative stuff that religious people tend to toss out when someone anknowledges atheism in their presence.
She presumably spent her life trying to take care of her kid
she cared enough to listwn to his points about atheism
People are far more receptive to listening to someone they trust over someone they don’t. It therefore follows that the mom was far more likely to have trusted/respected her son enough to hear what he had to say than the opposite. It’s all the same assumption.
But sure, let’s go with the alternative; she’s a complete asshole who used religion as her crutch to do horrible things to her son all her life, and her son finally talked her into realising that she is the monster who has been causing issues this whole time. This is its own assumption too; we don’t know what their relationship was like.
Her son, after showing her how horrible she has been her whole life, runs off to celebrate this victory with his friends, and leaves her to cry on the floor, alone.
He cared more about being right than anything else, including helping her through this discovery or damn, even just calling someone she trusts to talk her through it.
So the point of the comic stands regardless of this assumption. The son abandoned his mother after turning her worldview over completely. The consequence of that was his mother lying on the floor, devastated. (Whether she deserved it or not)
Does anyone really deserve that? Did you enjoy having to figure out what to do with yourself when you realised that it’s entirely likely that nothing outside of this single life exists, all on your own? Would you have appreciated a friend or family member walking you through the way to handle that?
A little bit of empathy goes a long way.
Or they just talked it over calmy and respectfully and she didn’t break down crying until well after he left and the reality of all of the time she wasted not being herself because of being told her natural attraction to women was a sin hit home. The son is happy when telling his friends because his mom can be herself!
Or he could be an evil, heartless athiest like you apparently want him to be.
I mean, I guess that’s one interpretation. If you go with those assumptions, the takeaway is that, what, changing changing your views can be devastating? Where’s the value in that? ‘Big worldview changes can be stressful’ is not at all a valuable takeaway from this.
My point really has nothing to do with his atheism. Obviously he cares too; he wouldn’t bother talking with her if he didn’t care. My point is that there are better ways to care, and it’s worth keeping them in mind whenever this sort of situation comes up.
I’d be happy knowing our family wasn’t financially enabling organizations that hide and protect rapists and pedophiles.
YMMV.
I mean, the celebration was not unwarranted. It’s just that he left quickly enough that all the emotional breakdown happened to her while she was all alone, instead of with him there to support her.
Im an atheist and I listen to The Lord of the Rings audiobook so I can sleep at night. Reality is fucking awful and I like my fairy tales.
Yes! Exactly this! So many atheists love fantasy and sci-fi. Why not? It is wonderful to have some magic in the world. We just know the stuff is made-up.
If those who share such things with us, demand crazy shit from us, we call that out for being toxic fandom or corporate enshittification and go away, if we please. In religions, that is just another day.
And also I don’t see how life looks better while believing in a greater power. Starting with people going to war and desolation all the time in the name of their god…
So… It’s better to live in the matrix, gotcha.
For some people it is. Hell, there’s even a character in the actual movie who thinks so.
Yeah, and he doesn’t mind killing other people for that
Which shows he would have been better off living in the Matrix considering how badly he reacted to leaving it.
What a shitty meme to get blocked over
So many militant atheists. Saying so much, all just to prove the comic right.
As long as they aren’t doing horrible things in the name of religion, then I have the controversial opinion that religion isn’t all bad. Not everyone is an intellectual, therefore some religions can be considered a way to promote and preserve morals. While it’s unknown how his mother used religion, the neckband portrayed in the comic had no regard for his mother’s feelings or beliefs, showcasing the bad side of atheism. In the same way, religion could have similar effects. In the end there needs to be balance, a yin and a yang.
As an atheist I have a deep mistrust of proselytizing.
That includes other atheists who think they need to spread their beliefs like a religion.
I have atheist, christian and esoteric friends and family who keep their beliefs to themselves (unless asked for it) and it’s part of my worldview to (while being able to talk about it) not trying to convert someone to my beliefs.
Live and let live, yeah.
But once they try to convert me I go full out.
As long as they aren’t doing horrible things in the name of religion, then I have the controversial opinion that religion isn’t all bad.
You just described the avg Trump supporter.
And this exact sentiment is what let them spread their cult this far.
I mean it is bad, it’s the base of the pyramid that builds up to the tip which is religious extremism. That said religion can’t be banned out outlawed, it will just dig its self in deeper under the pretense of oppression so it’s more a matter of having to tolerate a minor evil and staying vigilant it doesn’t evolve into its final form by keeping life balanced
I’ve got a somewhat different take, but similar
We are shedding light on the world through science and philosophy. We first figure out the most effective ways to think about things with philosophy, and then we apply that thought process with the scientific method to further our understanding.
Eventually, we will always reach the shadows on the edge our understanding, whether personally or as a society. Past that point, we are really just making up apparitions in the dark, until we can shed light on that edge.
That process of spotting forms in the dark is always going to be informed by some unfalsifiable ideation, either because we can’t test the ideas we have, or because the ideas we have are inherently unproveable.
To me, it really doesn’t matter what kind of ideation you have past that point of shadow, be it religion or nihilism or panpsychism or determinism, but I hope that whatever idea you have faith in brings you solace and makes those dark forms in shadow less daunting.
The problem comes, when you chose to be in the dark about something and apply faith-based arguments where light has already been shed, or when you use apparitions you made up as an excuse to do harm to others.
I’m an atheist but I understand that religion and/or faith makes a lot of people happy and I don’t want to take that happiness away from them.
Agnostic here and yeah, most atheists and agnostics I have ever met are about the same. We don’t care if YOU believe. We care that you care we don’t. Most of us will never utter a word against your religion and beliefs as long as you “do unto others” and all that jazz. This comic reaks of being drawn by a Christian about how they think Athiests behave and feel. This video is ancient now, but I get the same vibes off this comic.
I take this comic to be more poking fun at the portion of atheists who make their entire personality around disproving God’s existence - people who try to spread atheism the same way christians spread their own gospel. It’s largely not applicable to other atheists.
Yeah, those aren’t athiests, they are assholes. Anyone who prosthelytizes is an asshole. Period.
I do. It’s such a waste of time. I’m not going to start anything with people, I don’t have the patience or energy for that. And honestly, i don’t have any debate skills. But I really wish I could just take it all away. Isn’t it better to be right than to be happy?
Isn’t it better to be right than to be happy?
First of all, no it isn’t. If you think it is, please explain why.
Also, Is that a decision that you would want someone else to make for you?
If not, why do you want to make that decision for other people?
So many people in this thread completely missing the satire. The author is clearly also an atheist poking fun at the highschool reddit atheist stereotype. Taking this way too seriously.
I didn’t catch the self-deprecation. What makes it clear?
To me, what this comic is saying is that even if you’re able to debate someone out of believing in God it’s cruel to do it to someone like your mom who has God as the central pillar of their emotional well-being.
It presupposes that you’re able to “prove” that God doesn’t exist and to me it doesn’t necessarily paint the idea of being an atheist in a negative light, just the neckbeard atheist attitude that you should try to emotionally destroy people who do believe in God.
It’s a three panel comic so yeah, it’s a bit ambiguous, I just think that people are missing that the punchline is really only funny from an atheist perspective. From a Christian perspective the comic is awkward. The last panel wouldn’t be a punchline and wouldn’t make sense at all, how would these obviously loser neckbeards be able to prove God doesn’t exist?
Hmm, that is a pretty insightful point. On the other hand, I think most people I know who are religious are the sort who can appreciate self-deprecating humour themselves – they might think it’s funny for taking an absurd premise to its logical conclusion.
What suggests to me that this author is trying to paint atheism in a negative light is quite straightforwardly “score one for atheism.” It doesn’t really have a hint of irony to me. I think the author clearly thinks atheism just isn’t cool anymore.
With how sad and empty my geriatric mother’s life is, the last thing I’m going to do is take away her imaginary friend.
Me at 13 discovering I wont see my loved ones ever again and there’s nobody’s hand on my shoulder holding me up:
Me when I try and pet a cat but they run away.
this guys stuff is great. heres a bit more
Throwing a stone is a dick move. Now he’s imperfect Pete!
Dick move… But not a sin! Still perfect pete!
Yeah, I warn those who are challenging their own faith that naturalism isn’t for everyone. For me it was a stark process to come to terms that I’m thinking meat, and my species is looking at some imminent great filters even before we are able to create a dependent colony on our own moon, so mostly harmless is going to be more of a footnote than our society deserves.
As someone who had an early aspiration to add something significant to the collective community that it could take with it into the future, this proved to be a bit of a let-down.
Don’t get two hung up on great filters. We could’ve easy passed a few of them in the last hundred million years. You’re much more than thinking meat, you have feelings and a perspective over time. its amazing not a liability.
Even if boom over, it was loads of fun.
What aspects of naturalism do you feel negate the reality of our collective community? I really don’t see how the one led you to the other.
Religion may be a lie but it’s a comforting lie and that helps a lot of people get through their daily life.
Thing is it shouldn’t be comforting to anyone if they really take the details seriously. You could do as much damage really educating someone about Deuteronomy and other fun parts of the Bible and ultimately leave them in a worse state than finding a way to make them an atheist.
We forget an atheist is just a non-theist. Someone who doesn’t believe in any specific canonical god. I’m an atheist with a genuine faith the universe has more in store for “me” (whatever that is; I don’t believe it’s necessarily or eternally “ynthrepic”) than a mere human lifetime given what we know about the universe as a whole and how mysterious and seemingly fundamental consciousness is to it all. That gives me some relief and comfort from the existential dread. More than I could possibly get from Yahweh and his totally uncompelling biblical heaven and hell dynamic.
You’re forgetting that some people have coping mechanisms for life around systems containing a kind god that’s there looking after them, and will reunite them with people they desperately hope to see again when they die.
Your coping mechanism is hoping the universe is magical and mysterious and has something more for you when you die. You’re not an atheist, just a non-denominational theist with a different hope for continuing on after you’re dead. I hope it brings you comfort, but don’t shit on people who have a different post death comfort they hope for.
Most people I know who are religious don’t take the bible very literally; most haven’t even read it. The comforting lie is stuff about the after-life, heaven, and a caring universe.
And that’s great so long as it’s a source of comfort and not dread. The fear of God and hellfire is real. We need people who carry faiths to recognize that this is by definition an uncertainty for which no real evidence exists, when it comes to consequences in the real world. Maybe that’s a contradiction to some, but it doesn’t need to be.
You really made a difference right there, bud!
