Now remember: These people are still allowed to vote...

“God put those fossils there to test our faith!”

Always gets me.

They’d sooner believe that their god would lie to them rather than that they’re wrong.

Religion is indeed a plague on humanity.

The problem is they turn the ridicule around to "confirm" their beliefs and push themselves further in.

Cult behavior

The sad thing is that even mockery probably won’t help much, because this type of person, unfortunately, defends their ignorance with the very same, utterly idiotic strategy that allows those who control them to shield their outrageous nonsense from rational arguments: They convince their deluded followers that they belong to "the select few" who know the truth—"the enlightened", or whatever they call themselfs. Thus, they proudly flaunt their absurd ignorance, paying no heed to arguments or ridicule, since they are genuinely convinced that they are the only ones who cannot be deceived.

However, these people cannot—and, above all, do not want to—realize that the deception lies precisely in their leaders’ strategy, for that would mean, of course, that they have wasted half their lives on some charlatan who has not only shamelessly exploited them but has also made them the laughingstock of society. Their idiocy is an integral part of their self-image and their personality, which is why turning away from it often means turning away from everything by which they define themselves - and that surely is a hard thing to do.

These are the typical tactics used by cult leaders. Unfortunately, there is an frighteningly high number of people who are susceptible to them—and not just in matters of religion, as the MAGA cult makes abundantly clear: It operates according to the same logic—an in-group is formed and sworn to the cult leaders’ goals, with the immediate understanding that rationality must be replaced by slavish faith in the leader or some kind of promise of salvation, because otherwise the cult members would, of course, immediately see through all the crude lies.

It's truly amazing that even in an age when almost everyone carries the entirety of human knowledge in their pocket, it still works, but unfortunately, the internet also has the effect of bringing like-minded people together in their absurd worldview, as is the case with Truth Social, for example—though the name of this deranged platform already makes it very obvious that it is a tool designed precisely and exclusively to fulfill the aforementioned cult tactics.

Edit: Of course, you’re still absolutely right: scorn and contempt are the only things one can show toward people like this—they themselves are probably beyond redemption anyway, but openly rejecting them makes it harder for them to recruit new members for their cult. These people should be treated for what they are: a danger to society, even if they themselves are often nothing more than foot soldiers who may even be unwittingly advancing the interests of their evil masters.

It's probably corny to reference Star Wars here but Andor really nailed it with the Mon Mothma speech when she said the distance between what's said in the senate and known to be true has become an abyss and that the loss of an objective reality was perhaps the most dangerous thing to risk in a democracy. There is no common ground to have with these nutjobs because every time you offer them an inch, they'll ask for a mile more.