Many years ago, I spent several years online debating with Christians in a chat room called "God Is A Myth" which was basically just a bunch of Atheists sitting around, waiting for a Christian to come in the chat room, and then the Atheists would pig-pile on the Christian and basically control the direction of the conversation so they would always "win" the debate.
At the time, i considered myself (an Atheist) to be logical, reasonable, scientific, evidence-based, facts-based, ...
And i considered the opposition (Christians) to be the exact opposite of all that. they were illogical, unreasonable, unscientific, faith-based, feelings-based, ...
And after many hours of debates, with many different Christians, it eventually became clear to me ALL people have within them at least TWO completely different minds, that operate on TWO completely different ways.
The first mind, is like the Atheist mind.
The second mind, is like the Christian mind.
At the time, i considered the Christian mind to be a lower mind, a defective mind, an inferior mind, a mind that needed more education, training, facts, logic, programming...
And yet, even with my supposedly "superior" Atheist mind, i still was not able to "understand" the mind of a Christian, i could not understand how they "think",
And eventually it occurred to me that i didn't even know "what" they thought, because all i was seeing was the superficial answer to a loaded question.
i was seeing the leaves on the trees, but i had no idea what the roots of the trees looked like.
one day i asked myself, "why can't they, think like me"?
and in that moment, i knew i had asked the wrong question.
and that the right question was, "why can't i, think like them?"
What was wrong with me, that i couldn't "think like" these supposedly inferior people?
One area that i noticed, was in morals and ethics.
Another thing i noticed, was that these Christians didn't necessarily feel the need to be "right" in the debate,
And they would readily admit when they didn't know something, or that they didn't fully understand something.
They seemed to be rather humble, and pleasant, and hard to get a reaction out of.
You could insult Jesus Christ right to their faces, and they would shrug it off.
You could tell them their faith in God, was by definition a belief without evidence, and they would simply agree with you.
Fast Forward 20 years, and i find myself debating Vaccines with "Scientists", who are presumably Atheists.
To my surprise, many of the same arguments that i saw deployed by Atheists against Christians, have now been re-purposed and deployed by Anti-vaxxers against Pro-vaxxers.
So now, the anti-vaxxers are the atheists. (show me the evidence that viruses even exist!)
And the pro-vaxxers are the religious zealots (just trust the science bro!)
And i can say, that after debating science with Christians, and debating vaccines with Atheists,
That the Christians are far more humble, reasonable, patient, logical, scientific, peaceful, thoughtful...
OPEN MINDED...
Atheists think that they do not believe in God,
Yet every Atheist has the capacity to believe in God.
And this capacity to believe in God, is like a vacuum, and will be occupied by something,
And in the case of the Atheist, this capacity to believe in God is occupied by "science" in general, and vaccines in particular.
Science is a form of idolatry.
Idolatry is the worship of Idols, or things that are man-made.
Science is a man-made construct, to explain the world.
Science is their God
Vaccines are their Savior
It must be understood that the PRO-VACCINE side is, at its core, a RELIGION.
And that this RELIGION is actually BIGGER than Christianity.
And that this RELIGION is WITCHCRAFT,
and its EVIL,
SATANIC.
And that the only hope we have in defeating this EVIL RELIGION,
Is our Faith in God,
https://i.redd.it/qdqn1t8t5hx21.jpg
and Jesus Christ
https://i.redd.it/0bjnz4nwnnz21.png
and The Scientific Method
by http://reddit.com/u/Gurdus4
Atheists are probably more pro vax than theists, and I think it may be the case that vaccines are one of many replacements for God, you can worship them, make them sacred, attack heretics, censor heathens or '''vaccine deniers'', you can say they saved the world and that they are our saving grace.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateVaccines/comments/14pp24a/atheists_are_probably_more_pro_vax_than_theists/
Disclaimer so I don't get insta banned for 'insults' (all words that could be insults are in '''' because I'm using the words in context of how people talk about these things, not because I actually want to say it, for example ''religious nut'' because I know a lot of people use that term or say ''religitard''. I'm not aiming them at anyone, I'm just putting them in as a known term that people understand the meaning of, and because I don't know what else to replace it with)
People almost worship vaccines, in fact, I'd say they do. Theists also do this, but I think atheists more so, and other than maybe their tendency to believe in anything associated with the word science (by the way I'm literally a hard atheist (well I'm not gnostic, but I absolutely do not believe there's any evidence for god at all and ever could unless the world changed drastically)) I believe it's genuinely got so significant because it's part of a new, aimless, unorganised religion that's naturally built up over time. As they say, if you remove someone's religion, they don't become irreligious, they just don't believe in a supernatural God anymore, all the other baggage remains.
In summary I think a lot of this vaccinism, is in part due to the lack of God in society, which has caused it to become one of many replacements for God. We instinctively NEED to believe in something, and we innately are prone to dogma/bigotry/tribalism/worship/greed/selfishness/denial/groupthink traits, those traits have simply taken hold of things like vaccines in society, especially in the left/atheist types.
Really, I would say with my experience being on the anti vax side for nearly 5 years, the way atheists defend vaccines (and other similar topics) and the way they treat anti vaxxers is FAR FAR more dogmatic/bigoted/hateful/ignorant/fallacious/brainwashed/religious/delusional/violent/irrational/-based than the way any religious ''zealot'' or ''nut'' or ''apologist'' ''fundamentalist'' defend their beliefs and the way they treat non-believers, and that's coming from someone who spent nearly 2 years arguing with ''crazy'' religious apologists.