(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Shocker: Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, God & Gods are Fictional! [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-16 This man's father demanded he be tortured and murdered! We see right-wing theocrats attempting to take over our country, and wonder why it’s happening. One reason is that many of us were raised by parents who told us mysterious, supernatural beings like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and an invisible Sky God exist and are paying attention to us. In other countries, children are told of different supernatural beings and Sky Gods, with various names, personalities, and powers. Centuries ago, children were told that Thor, Loki, Zeus, Hanuman, Coyote and thousands of other invisible gods and demigods existed. One of the main impacts of such teachings even today is children are programmed to accept mythologies and other claims without questioning them. Critical thinking is actively discouraged. Religious vertical hierarchies run by men are presented as supernaturally authorized. This helps explain why tens of thousands of children and their families endure sexual abuse from religious officials without protesting early or fiercely enough, or at all. Another impact is that children are led to believe that magic and supernaturalism are established facts and can be relied on to explain the unexplainable. That’s why people turn to religion, Q-Anon, astrology, New Age woo, “miracle cures,” snake oil, cultists, pseudoscience, anti-vaxx, science denialism, creationism, “intelligent design,” astrology, palm-reading, psychics, and many other irrational, illogical paradigms, especially when they’re suffering. Humans are born with a mind that insists on finding answers and eliminating suffering. They often feel that any answer, no matter how ridiculous, is better than no answer. The ability to embrace fictions that aren’t evidence-based makes a person susceptible to being conned. This explains why a sizable percentage if not actual majority of Trump, GOP, Q-Anon, MAGA cultists are hardcore evangelical Christians. When your mind has been programmed from birth to passively accept fantastical claims made by “authority figures,” it’s easy for a skilled salesman like Trump to worm his way in to your mind and control it. Religion and other unscientific ideas came along because humans needed them. Scientific studies show that sincere believers who control their lives and thoughts to comply with what they believe is contained in old books such as the Bible, Talmud, or Koran often have more peace of mind and less worry than scientifically-minded, rational, non-religious people. This is totally understandable. Religion is the “opiate of the masses.” If an atheist experiences a horrible life event, the atheist has no comforting deity or worldview to fall back on. The religious person has “the opiate.” Atheism and existential despair are often inherently linked. In contrast, when a true believer experiences a horrible life event, they mitigate the upset, suffering, and implications of the event by telling themselves it was God’s will, God is in control, God loves you, God will not “test” you beyond what you can endure, and other comforting ideas. It doesn’t matter to the believer that these ideas are mere claims without evidence, because if you blindly believe the ideas, they work at a neurochemical level to boost dopamine and other feel-good chemicals. The true believer often could feel better in bad circumstances than someone who has no religion to rely on. Religion provides social networking, plug-and-play ethics, epic heroes, reassuring fictions about what happens after death, vertical hierarchies, ceremonies, customs, pageantry, a sense of belonging. Atheists have no invisible being or comforting ideology to turn to. No pastor, priest, mullah, or rabbi. No holy book that contains “all the answers.” They know from observation and science that the only life they have is the one that started at conception and ends when their heart stops beating and their brain dies. So if believing in unscientific myths helps people be happier and assuages their fears of death and the unknown, what’s the problem? One big problem is many of these myths are propagated as facts by individuals, tax-exempt businesses (churches, etc.), politicians, and cultures. I got to age nine before I realized my parents had lied to me about Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny. It hurt me that they lied, and their explanation for why they lied didn’t make sense. Lying to children, especially by installing deity belief systems into them before they have a chance to understand reason, science, and consent—that’s not good parenting. It took me longer to realize their claim that an invisible sky father was in charge of the whole world had as much evidence and reality as their claims about the fat, bearded dude flying around with reindeer. When I discussed this with them, they admitted they themselves no longer believed in an invisible sky father. My real father explained that he read the entire Bible, something most MAGA Christians haven’t done. He decided that even if the invisible sky father of the Bible existed, the Bible god was a mean, stupid being. As my real father pointed out: The Bible portrays the invisible sky father as an incompetent deity that makes terrible mistakes and later regrets them. The invisible sky father made humans and yet allowed Satan to exist, knowing ahead of time Satan would corrupt humans, transforming the perfect Garden into a sinful, harsh planet. The invisible sky father got so angry at humans that he drowned all life on the planet other than what could fit on a boat. The invisible sky father also had another fit of rage, during which he murdered the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all life on the vast plain around those cities. The invisible sky father was still angry, and demanded an ultimate blood sacrifice. The sky father than raped a married virgin (Mary) by proxy (using an angel to do the deed), and later set up his only son to be tortured and murdered. My real father stated that even if this god actually existed, he’d want nothing to do with him. Another problem with religion and other irrational ideas is that religionists tend to think they know more than everybody else. They believe the creator of the universe is paying attention to whether they score a touchdown or not, is listening to their prayers, is on their side. They believe their old “holy” book is THE authority on human morality and existence. With god on their side, they become missionaries in their own social groupings, and in politics. They believe their holy book should be law of the land. Of course, it’s only their interpretation of the holy book that counts, given that there are hundreds of Christian sects each with its own unique understanding of what the book says. These people often become zealots. They force their way into government and social issues, insisting that their god beliefs take precedence over secular society and rational peoples’ beliefs. We see them on SCOTUS, where they make specious rulings to force women into gestation slavery. We see them insisting that every fetus is sacred and should be born. We see them every time a gun nut kills people—they offer thoughts and prayers rather than commonsense regulation of technology that is only meant for one thing—shooting people and other animals. We see them insisting that only heterosexual humans are acceptable to the sky father. Anyone who loves someone outside the heterosexual box is a sinner going to hell. We see them trying to take science out of schools and force ludicrous creationism in. We see them referring to ancient stories for which there’s no solid proof as if those stories are established historical fact. We see them actively trying to install a Christian theocracy in the USA. One truly troubling fact is that every self-proclaimed Christian I’ve ever spoken to has been less knowledgeable about their Bible and “savior” than I am—and I’m an atheist, lol. I told a Trump lover that Jesus repeatedly condemned rich people. Look it up, I said. The Trump lover said he’d never heard that at his megachurch, and God wants us to have all the money and toys we want. I told a Christian pacifist that Jesus said he came not to bring peace but to bring a sword. Ironically, I also told a Christian gun fetishist that Jesus repeatedly counseled against using weapons, with the prime example of what Jesus did when Peter drew a sword as Roman soldiers came to take Jesus away for torture and crucifixion. The gun lover said this pacifism was only for Jesus in that one moment, not meant as instruction for Christians, and if Jesus came back today, “He’d be locked and loaded with automatic weapons.” The gun lover even went so far as to refer me to a South Park episode in which an armed Jesus rescued Santa Claus after Santa was kidnapped by Saddam Hussein! That episode was hilarious. When I told an Islamist his prophet Muhammad reportedly had sex with a nine-year-old girl, Aisha, the Islamist first became very angry, then argued “this was the custom in that time, and our prophet has all rights from Allah to whatever female he desires.” When I told adherents of Hasidic/Haredi Judaism that their aggressive, isolationist, ultra-conservative Zionism and apartheid against Palestinians are unethical and stupid, they spit on me. When I told followers of New Age, Q-Anon, Marianne Williamson, Deepak Chopra and other profiteers who spread vapid woo that they were victims of non-critical thinking and misleading mythologies, they reacted with near-violent hostility. When I told astrologers that the position of planets at time of conception and/or the day you’re born have nothing to do with your chances of finding a suitable romantic partner in your 20s, they laughed at me like I was pathetically ignorant of Jupiter’s immense psychological power over humans. And on and on. One main takeaway from this discussion is it’s hard if not impossible for humans to live without having some comforting fictions to smooth life’s rough edges. Many times I’ve realized that if I believed an invisible sky daddy was on my side, it might make me somewhat happier. I am all alone in a challenging world, with no god wisdom book to count on, no religious authority to tell me what to do or think. When I die, I die. No sky father loves me. No tortured son of sky father died for me. So of course I understand why people embrace religion and other magical things. It makes things easier if you believe in magic. But me, I’m one of those people who relies on facts and reality. If an invisible sky daddy or his son presented themselves to us now, when video cameras are everywhere, we’d all be sure that these beings existed. Isn’t it puzzling that all these gods, prophets, miracles, people coming back from the dead, angels flying around…none have been seen since the invention of photography and videography. You ask what kind of a god it is that intervenes on a planet, then walks away, never to be seen again, leaving behind only old books that have been revised, altered, edited, cut up, mistranslated, and misinterpreted…so nobody really knows for sure what they say. What kind of god persona would create a world—knowing ahead of time it would go so badly that most of its human inhabitants would end up in hell. What kind of god brutally murders his own son? What kind of god authorizes his prophet to have sex with a pre-pubescent girl? These are questions all open-minded, cognitively-capable people inevitably ask themselves about religion and other unscientific paradigms that claim to explain our existence, origins, and what our behavior should be. Unfortunately, you’ll see even some people who claim to be “progressive” here at DK reflexively lash out against anyone who challenges archaic beliefs and theocrats. What’s funny, and I mean very funny, is that the late, great comedian George Carlin has explicated all of this already. Take a look at this euphoric Carlin video compilation, have some laughs, and as Bob Marley sang, “free yourselves from mental slavery.” [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/16/2153292/-Shocker-Santa-Claus-Easter-Bunny-Tooth-Fairy-God-Gods-are-Fictional Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/