Inspired by some of the discussion in this thread. I don’t think it’s appropriate place for that discussion there, but hey why not have a separate thread for it
If I think religion is not good in general, am I Reddit and cringe and basically Richard Dawkins?
“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.
There are few horror stories that could match how horrifying it would be if the vengeful bloodthirsty storm god of ancient times really was the creator of the universe.
I just can’t see anything that does. A possibility of eternal torture is pants shittingly horrifying even if the criteria to avoid it is clear cut.
Some of the rules, while mostly clear, are very petty and arbitrary, like mixing fabrics.
Hell some say based on which rules you break you get your own unique flavor of torture.
Yeah if you mix your fibres, you have to wear nylon+polyester blend underwear for eternity. And yeah hell is warm, so that lack of breathability and bacterial growth is gonna suck.
Hell jigoku hell has like 64,000 or so hells with unique tortures to them.
The time dilation parts of jogoku hell sound especially horrid.
Shit torture already feels like time dilation itself. For instance when one ventures into the drej tank it feels waaaaay longer than it has to
The hell that gets me the most is the second worst one. Daijōnetsu Jigoku. Its so bad that you start to feel the pain and burning you’re about to feel days before you go. Just think about how nasty that is. You don’t believe any of this and you suddenly feel intense pain not knowing whats ahead. Or you do believe in it and you feel intense pain knowing what is about to happen and your fate is sealed.
My atheism is just “I don’t care”
That is how far it goes.
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.
I think it’s just that Reddit atheists are annoying and thinking too hard about the philosophy and whatnot just doesn’t make sense to me.
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
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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.