Comic Strips

Is one of these murderous religious people in the room with us right now?

Way to completely miss the point of the comic. Tearing down someone out of a vain desire to be "right" helps no one. Fight people who use any belief to justify being shitty to others. Go read some Vonnegut and learn to leave people who get goodness out of shit alone.

Edit: The comment originally was about religious people being murderous. My first edit was to add an additional thought. This dude's edited now to change the core of his argument from "murder" to "opression".

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.

?

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.

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.

Don't forget the "not believing in god = sadness" one. Realizing it is fake actually brought relief for the ex-religious people that I know (anecdotal, I know. I don't have the actual numbers).

It's more of a generational issue, really. Convincing someone who was already indoctrinated as a baby and began to "pray" as early as their arm coordination allowed it is almost cruel, really. At that point it's reality-shattering. Let alone if your religion included any kind of body-modification, especially without anesthesia (that shit burns itself into the very fabric of your brain as a baby). In that case it's even worse, as it'd entail the realisation that your body has been violated (some may use stronger wording).

At the end of the day what counts is that you're a decent person, no matter your stance on religion or spirituality.

Soo what is the message here?

That proselytizing about atheism without considering the needs and character of your audience can be just as bad as religion doing the same.

Love is more important than being right, and the son in the comic very clearly didn't show any. As soon as he proved his point, he left to go celebrate with his friends rather than spend time with his mother. He failed to show her that just because there is no big sky god doesn't mean that is no love.

It's about atheists who make atheism their whole personality.

Don't be anti-intellectual about this silly comic. People can apply intellectual analysis to stupid things if they want to, and they damn-well may find deeper meaning sometimes.

Let people have their hobbies.

Even other atheists or agnostics use that caricature of reddit atheists. It's less so atheists and more like atheists who make atheism their whole personality

Not every member of a church experiences those things first hand.

I'm sure you'd feel more secure with the 9gag comment section, they love this type of stereotype (as well as others)

When I worked in a nursing home, I was Christian.

I mean, I wasn't. At all. But the dying little old ladies who sundowned so bad that they sometimes thought I was their grandchild? When they asked if I believed in Jesus, I'd bite my tongue and tell them yes. I hated having to lie to their faces, I hate even thinking about it all these years later, but some of them had nothing to look forward to except "going to heaven" by that point. Lying seemed the most ethical choice.