We’re in the 21st century, and the vast majority of us still believe in an utterly and obviously fictional creator deity. Plenty of people, even in developed countries with decent educational systems, still believe in ghosts or magic (e.g. voodoo). And I–an atheist and a skeptic–am told I need to respect these patently false beliefs as cultural traditions.
Fuck that. They’re bad cultural traditions, undeserving of respect. Child-proofing society for these intellectually stunted people doesn’t help them; it is in fact a disservice to them to pretend it’s okay to go through life believing these things. We should demand that people contend with reality on a factual basis by the time they reach adulthood (even earlier, if I’m being completely honest). We shouldn’t be coddling people who profess beliefs that are demonstrably false, simply because their feelings might get hurt.
What is “count”, physically? Precisely, it’s just another concept - it exists only as a perception. Thus, perception itself must be something. I.e. things which aren’t symbolically linked to the stuff that makes the universe also exist.
A dust mote can have 1264 dust particles, whether we invented the number 1264 or not.
Which is completely irrelevant. The universe doesn’t care if a Helium atom has two protons or if there are trillions of stars moving in a galaxy. Those are human concepts which we need to understand the universe.