What’s strange is that I own this book and have never once opened it. I’m a non-practicing atheist.
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The word agnostic pisses me off. I feel like it’s just a self-serving assertion of how open-minded you are.
“a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God.”
Sure looks to me like the one requirement for being an atheist is right in there.
Our universe is effectively a simulation regardless of if any being has any control over it.
“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
reality is incomprehensible, accordingly so is spirituality
This is a nice articulation of what I mean by “go fuck yourself.” I’m not above being offensive to people who I find to be pushy and offensive. I’m also not above trolling them by claiming to be very religious and producing this copy of my bible:
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Let me walk that back, just a wee bit, as I’m not claiming to understand all the events in the process.
My comment stems from this episode of hidden brain:
I get that the universe can be mysterious and knowledge uncertain and such. However, this is not a basis for an argument that maybe the universe is ordered according to the tenants of competing religion x, y, or z.
I mean I feel like I could riff for many pages on the stupidity of religion, but the zaniness of Christianity is just wild. Here we are in this world where everything must basically eat everything else to survive–ie the most evil conceivable possible world–and the key to true happiness and justice is stroking the ego of a deity with a massive inferiority complex. Any form of Christianity with heaven and hell or any doctrinal content whatsoever is just insane.
Basically, as was often the case, Russell was correct.
My background: atheist since like 12 yo, more of an atheist now than ever. Family didn’t go to church, mom probably believed in god but religion wasn’t discussed in the family.
Leibniz called and wants his bad argument back.
Hell, I’m such an atheist that I dislike spiritual people, including cute girls.
Sam Harris is into meditation, and I’m like sorry Sam I find your efforts to achieve oneness with a world that is actively trying to destroy you as a form of collaboration with the enemy.
I do find the idea of the universe coming to understand itself as an interesting an amusing goal for humanity, but I’m on team understanding not necessarily team humanity, particularly as currently constituted. Sure, it’s the home team and I’ll root for it until something better comes along.
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I don’t think this really works. How could this be the best possible world that an all-loving, all powerful, all knowing being could produce? What harm would come from literally one less infant dying from dysentery?
I don’t think PC’s argument is this is the best possible world.
This has to be the best possible world if God is all powerful, all knowing, all loving, right? And if he isn’t one of those things, the Abrahamic religions are false.
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Thats pretty cool. Ill queue it up.
Im not an expert either. But in general, the tribalism/racism aspect gets over played. A lot of it was about a dictatorship under threat trying to hold onto power combined with land poverty and overpopulation.
That all said. Narrative and story telling is obviously incredibly powerful in every society.
I wasn’t arguing that xy or z is literally true. My point was pretty simple that the most advanced science on earth (which I tend to believe is generally fact) has an attached unrelated viewpoint of atheism that is totally unrelated to science. Perhaps I am misstating your view, but what I heard is that because xyz can’t be literally true on the otherside of the blackbox is what I believe is there. Keyword that most atheists are just filling in the otherside of the blackbox with their imagination as well.
If you just wanted to say that you don’t know or that this or that religion is not literally true, that would be a respectable scientific viewpoint but stating that you can say for sure that there is no God is pure imagination.
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I don’t think that is what atheism means. In my view it means believing the evidence against there being a god outweighs the evidence to the contrary enough that you are willing to live your life accordingly.
Not buying that God pulled off photosynthesis for plants but simply couldn’t get anything better than chasing down living things and ripping them to shreds and eating them when it comes to lots of animals.
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Ever since I was very young I’ve believed that most people that identify as religious are actually non-believers that just go along with it for social reasons. My guess is that 70%+ are in it just to avoid being ostracized. It’s an impossible hypothesis to prove, but to my mind it’s just inconceivable that any great number could truly “believe”.
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