others. He'll ask you to spread it around and send those people to him so he
can get them really hooked. Many drugs only take one use to get you
hooked, and the religious pusher man knows that his dope is one of those
that'll get you hooked quick.
Like most drugs, religion makes you feel good. It fills you with a sense of
contentment and a false sense of happiness. By the time you see what
you've lost due to your addiction, it's often too late. This realization often
just feeds the addiction and turns an addict into a junky. Many people never
see the damage the dope is doing and will write off anyone who won't accept
their addiction. In the end, the junky is often left either alone or hanging out
in the dope man's house with all the other junkies.
An Intervention
Most addicts don't like being told that they have a problem. We will make
excuses and halfhearted apologies or just outright fight with those who just
want to help us. Once we get deep enough into our addiction, we usually
develop an "us versus them" mentality, and feel that anyone who doesn't
support us in our addiction is against us.
We see this same mindset from the religious addicts as well. When we point
out the sexism, homophobia, and other bigotries their religions endorse,
they get defensive and claim that we are attacking their beliefs. But the
reality is that this mindset is no different than a crackhead that gets mad at
you because you asked them not to come back to their house because you
caught them stealing from your wallet. They think that because they are
entitled to make whatever bad decisions they want, or hold onto any bad
idea they want that others are supposed to accept that behavior. But we
aren't obligated to respect such poor behavior and we aren't obligated to
accept how their poor behavior affects the rest of us.
The only thing that can break the addiction is to first notice and accept that
you're an addict, accept that your behavior affects others, and have a
personal desire to correct that behavior. Atheist groups and communities are
rehab centers for recovering religious addicts. We seek to remind each other
of just how silly our addiction was, and we seek to open the eyes of some
current addicts. And we do so by asking one simple question - Isn't it time to
give up the ghost?
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