one thing that i *haven't* outgrown from my teenage atheist phase is the great anger i feel when i see people uncritically discussing pseudoscience/astrology/magic/whatever
though tbh i'm actually not super eager to get over that, i still think that stuff is garbage
(inb4 why are you on "witches.town" then I JUST REALLY LIKE SKELETONS)
i think the big difference between me then and me now is that now i understand (at least on like a knowledge level, i don't think i've fully internalized this) that for most people religion is not like based on some kind of logical process by which they reason their religion must be true, it's just that like, they feel like it's true and that it's useful
and therefore the sort of thing that a lot of young (and unfortunately adult) atheists are prone to, where you try to "debunk" the existence of god, isn't actually really relevant to the way religion exists in the world
but there's still always this feeling whenever i meet someone who's like *genuinely religious*, especially if they're around my age, where i'm just like
are you for real? like seriously?
it's sort of like how internet shitheads assume anyone who talks about like, institutional racism or sexism or classism must be "virtue signalling" to get the respect of their peers, because they assume everyone is as shitty as they are and so anyone who espouses beliefs more progressive than theirs *must* be faking
because i've literally *never* felt like that. and there's this temptation that i think a lot of people have where you just kind of assume that everyone else is fundamentally like you, so if i see someone who claims to believe in god then my immediate feeling is that they must be faking it to try and fit in or to try and feel better about their own mortality, because if *I* was claiming to believe in god that's what *i'd* be doing!