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.
Yeah especially pseudo science. Like I saw a video on isntagram a while back of a Latin American family in the US whose cat was sick and instead of taking it to the vet they were just rubbing an egg on it? Because apparently the egg will soak up the “bad energy” and make the cat better? And all the comments were telling them to just take it to a fucking vet, and saying what they were doing was animal abuse and the poster was just saying stuff like “This is a traditional remedy, you need to respect our beleifs” no. No we don’t.
You do need to respect their beliefs, not because the remedy works but because cats are morally worthless.