An adult that still believes in Santa might not lead to anything bad, but it leads to them indoctrinating their children to also believe in Santa into adulthood,

And if some dude can live on the north pole and travel to every home on earth in one night, then other equally ludicrous ideas might not sound so far fetched

And before you know it you're wearing radioactive stickers to rebalance your chakras, sticking jade eggs up your ass to bring luck and you're blowing up a shopping mall because your imaginary friend hates gay people

[–] The_Vampire@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago

This is a classic slippery slope fallacy. Millions of religious people exist from all sorts of ideological spectrums. The vast, vast majority are not evil and don't do bad things.

The extremism present in religious people is also apparent and present in atheists, agnostics, or whatever generic belief system you can think of. Religion by itself doesn't cause extremism: ad hominems, whataboutisms, and disinformation causes extremism. Constantly comparing yourself to an enemy and convincing yourself you are in the absolute right causes extremism. Sure, you see some 'religious' people going crazy and shooting up places. They also have manifestos that are completely detached from reality in a way that reeks of far-right propaganda and disinformation, and never any real coherence or thought given to the religious teachings they supposedly follow (if they mention their religious texts at all, it's often cherry-picking or outright incorrect).

We should not try to fix the issues of mental health that plague a lot of countries by going after religion. If anything, that would only backfire by virtue of validating any persecution complex religious people might have. We should instead focus on providing affordable mental healthcare that is easily, immediately accessible and normalized for the wider population, as well as providing clear sources of valid information and having any questionable sources that construe facts and claim to not be news sources in lawsuits or elsewhere be forced to clearly denote themselves as not news regularly.

[–] hardcoreufo@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

What if I keep a jade egg in my ass just for fun?

[–] ignotum@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

That sounds an awful lot like sexual depravity, which makes god sad for some reason so i believe you'll be cast into a fiery pit to have your skin melted off, regrown, then melted off again, for all eternity. And this will be just, a punishment that fits the crime

And while you're in excruciating pain for all eternity just remember: god loves you ♥️