Voluntary Ignorance

When I die I want to be cremated and then have my ashes put into an ice ball. The next time a comet gets near Earth, I want to be shot into it...

Last Sunday I attended a "country" Baptist church in Alabama. I left the church with the feeling that humanity is doomed. Without going into detail, I want to say that I don't understand how people can be so willfully ignorant at such an extreme level.

This is a quote from a Canadian girl named Laura, who operates the popular YouTube channel Facts vs. Religion. She is responding to this question: Would you be more tolerant of religion if it had never caused any harm or interference with science?

I don't think I would have felt compelled to rippel water, so to speak, if the religious community on the whole had been Janists. I think it was when I realized religious nut jobs were trying to get stem cell research banned is when I relized how dangerous religion was. If it hadn't been for stem cell research, the reaction with the Mohammad cartoon, and the Catholic church trying to ban condoms, I don't think I would have been so moved to respond. I would probably have seen religion as being simply pitiable rather than actually dangerous.

It's the fact that the fundamentalist religious person is so fervently, avently, and belligerently ignorant and wants to stay that way. That's actually dangerous. If they have to do it, it's their right to believe what they want. But I think it's actually dangerous for the people around them, especially if these people are having lots of kids. To be brought up in that kind of surrounding would certainly be akin to child abuse. You're going to be severely fucked up mentally.

I do thank my mom for occasionally beating me over the head with her cross because I don't conform to her religious beliefs. She uses a combination of guilt and manipulation to tear me down and to make me feel like I'm a rotten person. Anything bad that happens in my marriage, or any problem related to my children, is because I didn't have my untanned fanny glued to a pew. And now I'm paying the price by having a messed up family, or something like that. She continues to pound me even when I cite statistics. For instance, the divorce rate between couples who attend church and those who don't is virtually the same, so talking about magic Christian "powers" is a mute point. But if you ever get a good zinger on my mom, she simply refutes it without attribution or ignores what I said, and continues on with her sanctimonious sermon. Again, to be so willfully and hopelessly ignorant is dangerous, VERY DANGEROUS, for society.