Reality Check
If someone owed you a hundred dollars and handed you 10 cents insisting that it was a hundred dollars, what would you do? Would it be considered proselytizing to inform them of reality? Would you claim that they are entitled to their belief? What if someone told you that they sincerely believed Elvis was still alive, would you take them seriously? Would you try to convince him or her that Elvis is dead? What if someone told you that gravity was just a theory and that it should no longer be taught in science class, how would you react?
The fact is that there is a real world and there is something called reality. There are also people in the world who mistake mythology for reality. I don’t think it ought to be considered “proselytizing” to correct people or to educate them about the nature of reality or to question them about their claims about reality. Yet there are people who want to define all education as proselytizing so that they have an excuse to actually proselytize. The view is that it is okay if Christians proselytize if everyone else proselytizes too. But education is not proselytizing.
The real question is; how do we know the difference between reality and mythology? The answer is simple; we use reason, critical thinking skills, the scientific method, and evidence to determine fact from fiction.
Reality and science are not religions. Atheism is not a religion. Atheism is calling bullshit on religion. Atheism is asking the Elvis believer to present evidence that Elvis is still alive despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary. You can’t proselytize atheism any more than you can proselytize reality. There are no real beliefs in atheism except perhaps that others have not adequately presented evidence for their claims about reality.
Theistic religion can’t have it both ways, either reason & logic are the only tools for determining reality or 10 cents can be a hundred dollars. We can’t just make up reality at our whim and expect others to respect it.
Filed under: atheism, Atheism NOT Religion, delusion, Religion
