• Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Oh they live in reality. When reality bites them they feel it. For the most part I respect belief. These people legitimately believe that there is a power which will inevitably maliciously destroy us and that to save other people they must be discouraged in any earthly way possible. They believe that to be a noble thing because the foundation comes from a rock solid belief in the divine and honestly there’s not much you can do to shake that belief so what they are doing makes sense from that perspective.

    The issue with that being around people with that belief who act on it as though it’s their job to dissuade people from what they perceive as that particular danger is miserable. Like okay, you believe that we’re gunna burn do so quietly because LGBTQIA folk aren’t going to change because even if you believe in God with those tenants it’s really hard to believe he is actually benevolent. Most of the LGBTQIA Christians who believe that God hates the only terms under which they can be happy end up killing themselves. That’s part of why conversion therapy is considered a human rights issue.

      • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Alright, so what? What good does treating them petulantly do? If you cannot treat them in a way where they feel understood and cared for they don’t change. If you treat someone poorly or like you are superior they are more likely to double down on their belief and spit in your face. Unless your aim is to bash their faces in and straight up use force you have to see the human in them to get started reversing the programing because a lot of religions preach that unbelievers are evil and the first step in any questioning of the whole is to show that no… You aren’t evil. You are moral and kind actually.

        What’s the end goal of disrespect? To be rude to them for fun?

        • richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one
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          8 months ago

          If you treat someone poorly or like you are superior they are more likely to double down on their belief and spit in your face.

          They’re prone to do that anyway.

          you have to see the human in them to get started reversing the programing

          Why do you say “I have to”, like is my obligation and my work to deprogram religious nuts?

          • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            You don’t have to. Only if you want to try and stop them from being religious nuts that’s where you start.

            It’s not your job to interact with them so don’t. If they are actively causing you pain where you are you have a right to defend yourself to get them to stop but like any violence there is a line where you cross from self defence to just taking out your anger and trauma on someone else to make yourself feel better. People who do that make the job harder for those of us who want to stop religious trauma from perpetuating.

            Respecting religious belief is part of the healing process of religious trauma. It doesn’t mean subscribing to belief in religion. It means seeing the actual human beings inside the system that hurt you.

            • richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one
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              8 months ago

              Respecting religious belief is part of the healing process of religious trauma. It doesn’t mean subscribing to belief in religion.

              Not if I’m moderating an atheist site and they come to provoke me and to flaunt their ignorance. Whey they come to my place, they will eat shit if they don’t behave.

              It means seeing the actual human beings inside the system that hurt you.

              If “the actual human beings” are indoctrinated beyond any chance of redemption, who says I need to keep trying?

              • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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                8 months ago

                If “the actual human beings” are indoctrinated beyond any chance of redemption, who says I need to keep trying?

                Honestly, you probably shouldn’t try. You seem like you are in a bad place at present to attempt to do so. If you do attempt your first motive should not be to change someone else but to do so for yourself.

                Harboring an active grudge can be embittering. The brain is plastic. You can over many iterations of leaving the emotion and stimuli connection unchecked can reinforce it and strengthen the connection beyond what logic can undo. It can be unhealthy. A lot of traumatized atheists, or those who continually allow themselves to reinforce that religious people are inferior humans in a meaningful way, can be quite harmful in pluralistic spaces because they become blinded to the line between religious people existing and religious oppression in the exact same way a lot of religious people do. When you allow that to happen it means that religion is still controlling you. If it can hammer your emotional buttons whenever it’s present and make you feel attacked just for being around it that is power that owns you. The further down that path you travel the harder it is to undo.

                The ability to gain distance and a level of neutrality is actual freedom. It makes dealing with religion feel less personal and gives more space to react in a wider range of ways. The righteousness of perceiving yourself as justified in an overreaction is seductive. You want to bite back harder than you were bit…But every time you do you lose a little bit more of your objectivity. There is a freedom in letting go.

                • richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one
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                  8 months ago

                  The freedom you’re advocating is the freedom to continue letting religious people to cause damage without obstacles and without feeling complicit about it.

                  • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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                    8 months ago

                    No. It’s the freedom to engage with them without acting like you’re an abused dog reacting at every man in a hat.

                    I am trans. My advocacy has involved engaging with people who hate that I exist and who are primed to think that I am mentally ill, a logistical problem or that I am a moral threat. I have minor religious trauma myself though I know a lot of my fellows who suffer aggregious mental health problems because of religious trauma due to their parents. Some queer people still believe in that Christian God and detangling that trauma takes a lot of gentle work. I have been learning how to engage debate and advocate with religious people on different levels to de-escalate the harm being done as a matter of long term survival plans. Every person requires different tactics. Being scornful or rough can be used as a goad in the tool kit because some people need to be approached in ways they recognize as authoritative but more often then not it’s the tool likeliest to lose ground rather than gain it.

                    Recognizing the values they have is the first step to getting them to recognize you which is the first step to them re-evaluating what they believe. They have to feel understood and seen before there is a chance they will offer that to you. And sometimes they will snap as a fear response to their veiws being changed but will feel bad for that response later when they don’t have their back up against the wall. It’s a process and some of that processing happens when you aren’t around. If you leave on a note where their take away is “fuck that person is an asshole” they aren’t going to spend that time reflecting on their own bad actions. They are going to reflect on yours.