This isn't like these people believe in Flat Earth,

My local anti-vaxxing, Straight Pride Festival hosting, “free drinks at my bar if you can prove you turned someone in to ICE”, white nationalist just tried to primary our Republican governor, who himself is helluva bigot, and while he lost he still got 30% of the vote. He’s also a flat earther who hosts round tables for fellow believers at his bar. There’s a substantial overlap in the illogical and irrational belief community.

Now, I don’t think he personally is a flat earther. Despite being repugnant, he’s an intelligent and charismatic person, smart enough to recognize gullibility and use it to gather strength of numbers. For a person like that to change they’d have to be willing to abandon the power they hold. It’s the same problem with podcasters, celebrities, snake oil salesmen, and talking heads that push these ideas. Plenty of them aren’t true believers, it’s a means to profit and clout. There comes a point where you have to stop looking at people as victims of their own ignorance and instead intentionally harmful for their own gain at the expense of others.

There’s also the problem of religious beliefs. We allow people a lot of leeway in spirituality because humans do seem to have a need to feel connected to something “greater”. When someone does that in a manner where their belief guides them but has respect for the rights and boundaries of others, fine. When spirituality becomes religion it often ends up becoming another tool of oppression and unaccountability because people begin demanding their to practice their beliefs regardless of how it’s affecting others. Since god is made up, you can put any words you’d like in god’s mouth to justify your behavior, and worst case you disregard the people you love around because “only god can judge me”.

The US created a problematic loophole with its hands off approach to religious beliefs. If people used their liberty to pursue beliefs that nurtured their personal spirituality and self actualization it’d be great. Instead it’s become a breeding ground for hucksters to develop their own cults of “this is what the ancient book really meant”, or sometimes they just write a brand new book. And we do at times come together to quash behaviors of the religious even at the expense of an individual’s right to act on their supposed god endorsed beliefs because that practice violates the right of another. Joe Smith informed people god was chill with dudes marrying multiple teenagers, but that one’s gotten quashed (for the most part, but some sects still do it, they just have to live removed from society). We’re still fighting to quash child marriage loopholes and male genital mutilation. I don’t care if your god impregnated a teenager with your Savior, your prophet married a child, or your god commanded you to cut of the end of a kid’s penis as a sign of devotion. It’s gross. They’re gross and people are gross for abiding it.

Arguments of logic and reason don’t work on people whose core belief is based on the existence of an invisible, all powerful, universal puppet master. It results in people who do not take accountability for why they must be accountable for their actions in the here and now, judged for their behavior by fellow humans instead of some future where god decides. It also creates people who are willfully ignorant of cause and effect, prevention and accident. I’m content to let adults dance around in a church with a handful of rattlesnakes. I could tell you why that’s a bad idea, but if an adult wants to lose an arm or their life engaging in that, welp. Their life to lose. Spreading disease or denying a child access to healthcare because they’re praying over them instead; not their life to lose.

help them resolve whatever broken logic or unresolved emotional issues is standing in the way of them doing the right thing.

Like an addict, who continues to destroy themselves and the lives of those in their circle/community with their addiction, repairing broken logic and unresolved emotional issues can’t be helped by external forces until they make the decision to change for themselves and then accept the help. Otherwise they cycle repeatedly through the consequences of losing their privilege of being a part of society, turn themselves into pariahs as the community shuns them to avoid the collateral damage of their behavior, or kills themselves through their own choices. We don’t have to tolerate the fallout of selfishness while they “work on it”. At what point do we look at the pox ridden, scarred for life, maybe dead body of a child then turn to the adult that helped cause that and say “nah, fuck you, your right to chose is revoked”.

This isn’t the dark ages, people aren’t unaware of the sources of disease. We’ve had a good thousand years to figure out where they come from and our literacy rate, declining as it is, is sufficient that we can demand a baseline understanding of cause and effect out of adults. If they want to put up a fight, fine. I’ll fight them over it. If bullying them to the point their only choice is to live cut-off from society so they can’t spread their disease and die alone, unvaxxed but self-satisfied they clung to their belief to the miserable, painful end, so be it.