At work yesterday I had a situation where I had to inform someone from the Unification Church (the Moonies) that he couldn’t proselytize or solicit sales or “donations” on the premises. I then when I shared that detail with a few other members of the management team (as an out atheist, I’m always careful to report any situation like that involving religious people so as to cover my own ass), I ended up partaking in a conversation about how crazy the Moonies are and then it went to another crazy cult, Scientology. I very quickly had to exercise great restraint, especially when some of the jabs being made just as easily fit with the Mormon religion of the two people I was talking with.
When it comes down to it, everybody’s religious beliefs are crazy to anybody and everybody who doesn’t share them. For those of us without any religious beliefs, they’re all hilarious.
Is it any more ludicrous to have a few dozen levels to advance through in your religion than to have three levels of the priesthood?
Is it any less ridiculous to think (borrowing a line from Dawkins at the American Atheist convention) that a 19th century man found some gold tablets, put them in a hat, and translated them from an unknown (to this day) ancient language into 16th century English than to think that a 20th century science fiction author wrote a book on “psychology” and discovered the “truth” about people’s problems?
How is it any crazier to think that a 20th century man was God in the flesh than to think that a first century man was?
While we’re at it, it’s just as crazy for hundreds of millions of people to confess their deepest of secrets to closet gays, pedophiles, and virgins so that the same closet case, pedophile, or virgin can say a few magic words and turn wine and bread into the “actual” blood and body of a first century Jew, but that’s no less crazy than to think that the same first century Jew turned water in to wine or rose from the dead.
So as to not leave my own former church’s unique brand of crazy out of the shit storm that is religious nuttiness, to think that a young woman suffered sever enough brain damage to leave her with sever headaches and vision difficulties to the point that she had to drop out of school at 11 years of age, who then went through the “Great Disappointment” where her entire community of believers who quit their jobs and let their fields waste away when Jesus didn’t return, who then start having visions a few months later is a prophet is bonkers. She had brain damage, obviously not the type that would severely impact intelligence, but the type that causes hallucinations and a loss of reality.
Anything you believe on faith is something you don’t have evidence to support, otherwise its would be knowledge, not faith. To anyone who doesn’t believe your bullshit, it’s obvious that it is just that, bullshit. So keep it to yourself or grow up and finally embrace reality.