Sincerely, unironically, I love that for you.
religion had a big impact on my life without my consent so I have strong feelings about it. fortunately it doesn't come up much so I can also just vibe and not care most of the time.
thank you. I don't feel attacked.
it's not based on faith it's based on history. Worship of the Abrahamic god was also associated with polytheistic religion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canaanite_religion. many times in the old testament a prophet chastises isrealites for worshipping other gods of the pantheon, like Ba'al or Asherah. First of the 10 commandments is "thou shalt have no other god before me" and there are a few times in the early stories that god refers to itself in the plural, or is clearly stated to not be all powerful. this is quite different from how we understand God today, how can we determine which view is correct?
There's also the character of God which is nationalist, racist, abusive, murderous, extremely controlling, qualities that are far more consistent with being invented by a culture which had those same qualities than being the omnipotent creator of the entire cosmos.
Are all the gods of the Canaanite pantheon real or just this one? What about other pantheons? Can we assume he's more likely to be real simply because a large number of people believe it? That's not a good way of determining what is true. if an idea cannot be tested directly the next best thing is to trace its provenance.
my point here is that there's nothing special about "God" any moreso than the deities of other cultures, yet Yahweh gets special treatment but has no more evidence for basis in material reality than Athena, Ganesha, or Nap Anya. I also feel confident saying Loki doesn't exist and I doubt many would call that out as a belief based on faith.
This subject broadly is also sort of a major trigger point for Reddit style atheists
yeah no kidding, I feel like I'm relapsing. Years ago I had a looong conversation with a friend who had a philosophy background and insisted that "atheist" meant "someone who knows that no god exists" I kept being like "no it just means I don't believe cause I'm not convinced they do!" & brought up leprechauns in a fashion similar to that earlier in the thread.
would finding a space alien that resembled a sasquatch mean that sasquatch the cryptid exists? the answer is no, right? sasquatch lives in the woods of North America, so the vastness of the universe has no bearing on the matter. I guess I see them as different categories, but you're treating them as the same.
because space aliens could exist, fantasy creatures invented in the human mind and purported to be present on earth can't be said to not exist.
there were just a few good ones, like AronRa.
"Reddit" Atheism is when you're stuck dunking on young earth creationists (who deserve it but are extremely low hanging fruit) while also being islamophobic.
I was raised YEC so reddit atheism was good for me to an extent, but then I had to shed the islamophobia. fortunately I also came down on the right side of "Atheism+" schism, which deserves its own writeup but I'm not doing that.
I feel confident saying I know, as a fact, that the Abrahamic god does not exist. That said, I don't know how or why the universe exists. Life & consciousness seem to be phenomena which arise naturally out of laws of physics so I have no reason to believe in survival of the self beyond the physical body. It is literally true that we are "the universe experiencing itself" and not something separate from it. That idea is a form of monism which has a rich tradition in eastern religion, and even Marxism!
There are even forms of the idea of reincarnation which I find somewhat compatible with a materialist, monist view of the world. This is a powerful essay on the subject.
but you'd still get at least a few seconds of cold water a fair amount of the time. a bidet with built in on-demand heater might be the only way to always get warm water on ya bum :(
second hand stores can be great places to find things like lamps cheaply. lighting a room with a lamp instead of overhead lights can feel really nice!
same coworker who occasionally says we need a union or that we need to strike (without a union?) over petty grievances refuses to discuss his pay with me after complaining that it's not high enough. he considers it rude to even ask.
I'm finally going to say it: deeply unserious.
where would you pipe that from, the sink?
that's totally reasonable. thinking about philosophy helped me grow a lot as a person as I unlearned YEC and learned the true history of the world so it's stuck with me