“You are biased against me because you don’t accept my ‘ancient’ belief system as implicitly true and defer to me on all matter on which I have an opinion. Also every other belief system is implicitly false and must be suppressed, and if you don’t let me do this you’re oppressing me!” - someone who exclusively believes deeply heretical and self-serving 20th century reinterpretations of 19th century heretical reinterpretations of medieval heresies based on known scriptural fraud in the late classical period which was trying to claim association with an earlier classical heresy which was overturning earlier heretical deviations (which are the most like the 20th century heresies of any of this) that came from a long history of genocidal heresies where one sect of a broader polytheistic religion invented a henotheistic heresy and exterminated all the other sects back in the bronze age.
Like the whole thing is so absurd in an absolutely terrifying way. I mean I can kind of understand why people get that way: I was raised with an incoherent new age animist religious framework and even if I don’t believe any of it, I still find myself understanding and feeling sympathetic towards animist beliefs and perspectives, while monotheistic beliefs and perspectives have always been something alien, external, and actively hostile. That stuff sticks with you even if you don’t cleave to it yourself. And of course when you weren’t raised with a given framework, that framework will almost always come across as implicitly false: they see the whole concept of spirits of places and things as being alien and implicitly false in the same way I see their domineering and cruel cult of an all-encompassing divine host as being alien and implicitly false.
I do have to say that I find some considerable irony in the fact that I, an atheist who was raised with pagan beliefs, generally know the theology and history of Christianity better than your typical Christian. Being able to look at it from the outside makes it like any other mythology, for all that the understanding that this mythology in particular is actively believed in by cruel and hostile powers that actively and openly both want me subjugated or dead and have actively tormented me my entire life makes it rather more unpleasant to learn about.
“You are biased against me because you don’t accept my ‘ancient’ belief system as implicitly true and defer to me on all matter on which I have an opinion. Also every other belief system is implicitly false and must be suppressed, and if you don’t let me do this you’re oppressing me!” - someone who exclusively believes deeply heretical and self-serving 20th century reinterpretations of 19th century heretical reinterpretations of medieval heresies based on known scriptural fraud in the late classical period which was trying to claim association with an earlier classical heresy which was overturning earlier heretical deviations (which are the most like the 20th century heresies of any of this) that came from a long history of genocidal heresies where one sect of a broader polytheistic religion invented a henotheistic heresy and exterminated all the other sects back in the bronze age.
Like the whole thing is so absurd in an absolutely terrifying way. I mean I can kind of understand why people get that way: I was raised with an incoherent new age animist religious framework and even if I don’t believe any of it, I still find myself understanding and feeling sympathetic towards animist beliefs and perspectives, while monotheistic beliefs and perspectives have always been something alien, external, and actively hostile. That stuff sticks with you even if you don’t cleave to it yourself. And of course when you weren’t raised with a given framework, that framework will almost always come across as implicitly false: they see the whole concept of spirits of places and things as being alien and implicitly false in the same way I see their domineering and cruel cult of an all-encompassing divine host as being alien and implicitly false.
I do have to say that I find some considerable irony in the fact that I, an atheist who was raised with pagan beliefs, generally know the theology and history of Christianity better than your typical Christian. Being able to look at it from the outside makes it like any other mythology, for all that the understanding that this mythology in particular is actively believed in by cruel and hostile powers that actively and openly both want me subjugated or dead and have actively tormented me my entire life makes it rather more unpleasant to learn about.