Western atheism and antitheism often exist as reactions to Christianity on a factual or ethical basis, while remaining within a Christian cultural and moral context. Historically, Christians and atheists have worked together to attack other religions, such as in the case of the stolen generations in Australia or the cult panic in America. This pattern of behaviour is counterintuitive if you're culturally Christian (as most atheists are), but from a broader cultural perspective it's kind of obvious. Christianity and white atheism exist as offshoots of the same history in the same way that Catholicism and Protestantism do.
If you have an actual understanding of pre-roman polytheism, then you're capable of seeing the difference between belief and worship. A difference Christians have tried to erase, and white atheists have not challenged. Giving up cultural Christianity is beyond most white atheists' ability to even imagine. What I call cultural Christianity, they would just as soon call "common sense" or "reality".
Also I've never met an antitheist who has spent longer than an hour thinking about whether they're advocating cultural genocide of indigenous people.
I don't think it's that people like being mad. I think it's that they just care about things and think they're important. It's very nice to be able to be carefree, but a lot of people place things like honour or duty or morality above their own happiness at times.
If you get banned from one instance with any level of drama, the admins will gossip about you to their friends who admin other instances. Then you're banned from two to three instances, and the next time you get into any kind of debate or disagreement, "ah, I see you were banned by three different instances, you must be a troublemaker." Before long the situation is, "I see that a dozen instances all completely independently decided to ban you. You must be a piece of shit." ONE person can get you kicked off most of the fediverse because of the level of trust and respect for authority there is here.
Ah, okay. I misunderstood you because you used the word cult in a very sweeping way right after I said it was a slur. I understand you now.
I would make the contention that at least one religion exists and has evidence: The worship of money. Money isn't real, it's a social construct given power and made part of our reality by our belief in it. It's mystical. Many people spend their entire lives worshipping it. They want it, they venerate it, and they seek wisdom from the people who have it. The worship of money is misguided, and unwise, and it fundamentally mistakes the point of life. But it is evidence-based. People worship money because they see its material power over the world and respect it as the giver of life, love, and happiness. That sounds like a religion to me, and there's no empirical proof which can dismiss these claims about money that are the core belief system of Mammon.
A cult is any small religion. Often pagan religions, the remnants of genocided indigenous religions, and many religions descended from the golden dawn. Oh, and it's also that thing Jesus had up until Rome declared it their state religion. And personally, I like the religion of Jesus a lot more than Post Roman Christianity.
If we're talking about abusive religions, there's absolutely no difference between one rapist's religion and an international religious organisation of rape apologism like the Church. There's no reason you need a different word to describe the two. They're both abusive religions.
And here we have an example of an atheist picking up a weapon made by Christians to persecute indigenous and pagan religions... and using it to persecute indigenous and pagan religions but also big ones too. And that's what many people consider to be social progress.
You mean alleged abusive religion leader bad. Cult in the definition you're currently using is a slur created by Christians to push the narrative that small religions are inherently abusive. Cult didn't mean abuse before the Satanic Panic.
On average, you have one boob and one ball