I was having a thought along these lines.  There's a large number of atheists who believe that everything in the world is predetermined. There is no God, and so the basic idea is were just particles interacting due to the laws of physics, and that's it. So "free will" is an illusion, and we're all just robots moving about the world.  And every time I hear this argument, I always think: "if that's true I'm going to punch you in the mouth to get you to drop that belief. Either you admit you're wrong or you're going to thank me for punching you in the face, those are the options, there is no other choice here". The thought being, if it's true I was predetermined to punch you in the mouth. And to continue to punch you in the mouth until you agree you're wrong or are knocked out, while thanking me for doing that because that's what you were predetermined to do in my mind.  And the reason isn't to knock them out, or cause violence, but as a thought experiment to show that if they insist on having that world view, it will have consequences, and those consequences have real, physical, tangible effects that are not in their best interest. Effects that they can't handwave away as "silly", because it will be hitting them in the face (so to speak...).  When you can have a theory, divorce it from any real world consequences, and then claim its the truth and anyone who disagrees is just "too dumb to get it", excluding them from the table, you really can live in a bizzare bubble of lies and deceptions. Keeping touch with reality is vital when constructing your worldview, otherwise you can end up very lost. Your comment seems to indicate there's an underlying cause to both of these things that as a society we should address.