Freethinker's corner

Should you laugh at religious beliefs? If you have no religious beliefs of your own, you might be tempted to make fun of people who do. If you do it in their face, you risk physical attacks. The fashion today is to ridicule the various religions via social media on-line. That way they would have to find you first.

         Should you do it? There are people with incredibly weak minds, they simply do not realize that, as a friend of mine says, the only reason most believe in god is because someone told him/her that there was one.  They have not one iota of evidence for a god’s existence. They have never seen or, if they are honest, have never heard god. Some, of course, whether truthfully or not, claim that their entity speaks to them. If they are being truthful, that is when you must suspect the believer of being compromised mentally.

         Should you do it? How do you view it? If you see it as naïve and childish having been there, done that, or not, the temptation is to ridicule them into adulthood. The nature of many religions is such that it boggles the mind that anyone would believe them. Add to that the fact that many pastors, some who do not believe themselves, are hilariously rich. Somehow, this charlatan has convinced the gullible that an all-mighty entity capable of producing the Universe… needs your money. Quite naturally, he poses as the conduit for God’s wealth.

         Being a non-believer, you know that claims of the existence of gods is false. You have spent a horrendous amount of time examining the evidence and found only evidence that speaks negatively of a god’s being possible. Unless your friend, or acquaintance, is being pretentious you have to suspect a mental problem. How can you know if he/she is just pretending? You can’t. In light of what you hold as the truth you know that they are wrong. Either they are pretending or they are crazy.

         Should you laugh at the mentally ill? Of course not. A compromised mind is something to pity. You realize that the individual, whoever they may be, needs to come out of their delusion on their own. They would resist every effort you might make to help them. Religion is very much like a mental virus that takes over your ability to think clearly.

         It can’t be left there. You know that there are those who are simply using religion to feed their greed. Those can be ridiculed. You know they don’t believe. Such riches are frowned upon by religious dogma. But, no matter how you portray them there are “believers” who will hand over great sums of money. Unless they, the believers, wake up one day and realize the scam, they are permanently deluded.

         So, use social media, maybe even post a billboard or two, in order to ridicule such baseless belief. You might help a few. Realize that there are those who do not have the mental means to effect escape. No matter how reasonably you present the truth they will not accept it. Many are invested in this and they do not want to lose their seat in some kind of heavenly ever after. They will fight you tooth and nail, insist that you are endangering your own soul. They might become violent. Yes, the hold religion has on them is that strong.

         I doubt there is a solution to this. Even educating people is dependent on their ability to be educated. Some will forever be incapable of escape. “There’s a sucker born every minute”, he said. He must have been a pastor.