CanadianAtheist

[canadianatheist]

Longer than expected post; tl;dr with half-context/nuance: "I disagree, but want to know more" doesn't seem to work well with radblr, and I'm trying to think of any other ways to get more details so I make fewer assumptions when talking to them.

Posting on a different alt because I want to at least somewhat stay polite and open-mind on the relevant one, but good lord I think the reading comprehension for the vocal folks of radblr is really bad.

I stress the vocal ones, because I assume it could be a survivorship bias-type thing where the ones who don't fit that description are broadly the ones not responding. But wow, its wild to ask clarifying questions about their worldview and be met with hostile responses that only make sense if they've half-read the question or refuse to engage on principle.

In fairness, I suppose there's a sizeable portion (at least in the vocal ones I've seen) that are, like, IN or fresh OUT of high-school, so it might be more of a righteous teenage anger at injustice sentiment (even if I don't agree with their assessment).

I wonder if making a new alt that uses less declarative positions and sticks to only asking clarifying questions might be better at getting responses to the root questions about the worldview rather than the "I disagree but want to know more" approach.

This is, for the record, genuinely about trying to sus out what I currently view as inconsistencies or internally contradicting values/views within the broader radfem movement. There are some things that I see said that don't fit with other things I see said, and I want to know if that's a thing where its just different people/groups saying it; miscommunication/misunderstanding about what's being said on one or either side; a lack of context from one of us; an uncritically/uninspected/not-unpacked view; or some combination of those. Partially from a curiosity/"anthropological" standpoint, since I like dissecting why people believe certain things, but also because I DO disagree with radfems about some things –namely trans rights– and I think actually having conversations that don't boil down to "you're wrong and therefore ontologically evil" are more fruitful for making ideological progress. For sure there are going to be folks that will never budge, but for the same reason I think "hey, can you talk more about your religious beliefs, because I dont think that fully tracks" is more useful that "lol, you're wrong and stupid" for getting to the bottom of differences and resolving conflicts and real-world effects that can influence us all, I think trying to meet radfems where're theyre at can be more useful than hostility, at least in some instances.

Idk, venting/rambling I guess.

[canadianatheist]

Idk if people do this anymore, but I'm bored, so AMA I guess

[canadianatheist]

It's my 10 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

Jesus Christ

[creature-wizard]

I dunno if anybody's ever pointed this out before, but transphobic rhetoric and the flat earth conspiracy theory work exactly the same.

They both propose that scientific truth is best determined by what you can immediately observe with your own two very eyes, and anyone who tries to tell you that it's more complicated than that and that your eyes aren't giving you the whole picture, is either a brainwashed sheep or a malicious actor.

Flat Earthers will tell you that a round Earth is provably scientific nonsense because if you go look at the ocean you'll only see a level plane, if you look up in the sky the sun and moon are obviously the same size, and scientists have never observed gravity on actual spherical objects, like tennis balls. (Oh, why do objects fall? Why, it's just relative density, silly! Anyone can observe that!) Anything that threatens to complicate this tidy little picture is dismissed as irrelevant - pseudoscience, misinterpretation of data, whatever.

Transphobes claim transgender is anti-scientific because it doesn't align with simplistic concepts they received in grade school - you can see there's two kinds of genitalia and that's that. You can't see this "gender identity" thing with your very own eyes, so it clearly doesn't exist, and you're stupid for even considering it. Anything that threatens to complicate this tidy little picture is dismissed as irrelevant - mental illness, birth defect, creep behavior, whatever.

Again, Flat Earthers don't consider themselves anti-science. They consider themselves pro-science. They just think that science is best determined by what you can observe with your own two eyeballs, and anybody who tells you it's more complicated than that is malicious or a dupe. Just like transphobes who claim that only sex is real.

[canadianatheist]

Flat Earthers and Transphobes both display a huge amount of the tactics that the Alt-Right Playbook talks about. I'm shocked (not that shocked) that "The Card Says Moops" shows up as frequently as it does

[feedingtheflockministry]

[canadianatheist]

Tell me you've only heard of atheism in an echo chamber without telling me 😂

[im-bias-towards-iruma-suzuki-de]

Dear atheists, I wanna ask you guys something.

I was in my religion class and a student asked our lecturer what do the atheists think of life after death. For us Muslims, we believe that all humans will be resurrected in the alam barzakh and our deeds will judged by God. After that we will be put to heaven or hell according to our deeds.

So my question is, what do atheists think will happen after your death? Do you guys believe there's something else after death or do you guys believe that there is nothing more after death?

[canadianatheist]

I mean, I’ve never died before, so I wouldn’t say I’m completely certain, but I haven’t had anything convince me that there is any kind of life after death. I haven’t really been given a coherent argument for the self being non-physical, or not a product of a physical brain, so I don’t really know what it would mean for a self to continue existing without a brain to produce it.

Like, to be clear, I think the idea is neat, I wouldn’t be opposed to it necessarily, but I haven’t had any reason to believe it’s true

[yhwh-seeker-deactivated20200214]

What makes a person an atheist?

This sounds like it should be a philosophical question about the nature of belief, but I’m only referring to the definition of the word here. When I think of the word “atheist”, I think of someone who has decided that there is no god or gods. On paper, that’s a good, workable definition. However, it doesn’t seem to work as well when it’s used to describe people in real life.

Recently, I’ve been paying some extra attention to what atheists are saying about their religious beliefs. If you ignore the angry posts made by edgelords who clearly have no idea what they are talking about, you might notice that there’s an unexpected trend among people who self-identify as atheists.

Simply put, a surprisingly large amount of atheists out there are willing to consider or accept that a god exists; that is, while they don’t believe in any god, they still accept that it might be possible for one to exist. By definition, these people should be labeled as agnostic, not atheist. Yet, the latter term has proven to be more useful for them, as they are more likely to find other open-minded skeptics in atheist communities.

If anything, this discovery should highlight just how important it is that we don’t let labels get in the way of talking with each other. People are probably more willing to discuss some topics than you’d expect.

[canadianatheist]

Both words are accurate to those sorts of people. Atheism does, indeed, include anyone who does not have a belief in a deity. If someone is not a theistic person, they are by definition an atheist, even if they don’t have a conviction in the contrary

[lisa-and-her-dark-paradise]

The atheism paradox

Unless you have created the universe (or at least believe that you did), you will always believe in a higher power.

[canadianatheist]

not really

not unless your idea of “higher power” is so broad that it becomes meaningless

[lisa-and-her-dark-paradise]

Religion answers the question of “who” created the universe.

Whether you call it God, science, or luck, the point remains the same.

[canadianatheist]

Again, if you define “higher power” as vague enough to describe deities, nature, or “luck” in your example, then the term is basically meaningless

this argument just a false equivalence to dismiss people who don’t believe in the supernatural

[lisa-and-her-dark-paradise]

If you think that the driving power behind the creation of the universe is meaningless, then your statement is a paradox in its own right.

This argument doesn’t dismiss anybody or their beliefs, it emphasizes that we all deify someone or something, we all have a higher power that we look upon. 

Some people believe in a bearded dude pulling the threads, some believe in a thunder god fucking everything that moves, some worship the thunder itself, or make deities out of planets, others believe in quantum particles and how they interract, and some might say that the universe was in fact playing dice.

They all have a story to say. And stories like the Big Bang are perhaps the most badass gospel you may ever study.

It is up to you who you choose to make a god of. The only way not to, is to believe that you are the higher power behind it all.

[canadianatheist]

And that’s my point, not everybody “deifies” things. Not only in the literal sense that a deity is specifically a god rather than a vague force, but also in the sense that you seem to mean

If your idea of what deification is applies so broadly to include anything that anyone anywhere believes, then it’s a useless statement. It’s a tautology. It’s like saying everyone is an athlete because you define exercise loosely enough to include your body doing work to digest things. At that point, the word athlete becomes a meaningless concept. If your definition of “higher power” can include literally anything, then saying “everyone believes in a higher power” is a completely meaningless statement, and it completely misses the point that anyone is trying to make about this subject. There are qualitative differences, and pretending that they’re all really the same is a false equivalence.

I, and many others, do not deify things, and you can’t claim you’re not dismissing anybody while looking at people and saying “well you really believe something, because I’m stretching what I mean by those terms to include you no matter what”.

[lisa-and-her-dark-paradise]

Did you really compare exercise to forces like the Big Bang? This is the creation of the universe that we are talking about, the birth and evolution of all things. Their life and death. Do you believe that cardiovascular exercise has created the universe? That squats are a power above humans and animals alike? Maybe stationary bike is the answer on how to instill life into an empty vessel. This is the only way that exercise could be brought into a discussion about higher powers.

And I am not stretching anything. From the very first letter written, this post has been a philosophical debate, a cogitation based on anthropological observation.

From the dawn of time, humans have created myths and religions trying to answer the not-so-simple question how we came to be.

The first religions to appear among humans were animistic, meaning that they made deities out of natural elements. The first gods were the natural elements themselves. Not Zeus, the God of thunder, or Ra, the sun God. It was the thunder itself, the sun itself. With the progression of science, we came to the conclusion that the natural phenomena occurred due to the behaviour of subatomic particles. And then it was the time to worship these particles. You can easily see the similar pattern between myth and scientifical hypothesis, temples and the CERN collider, ceremonies and symposia.

It is in the human nature to seek these answers. In fact, the greek word άνθρωπος (=human) is said to come from the words άνω + θρώσκω, which means to look above.

You don’t have to sacrifice 5 virgins in order to deify a power. All you have to do is believe that it is powerful enough to rule over life and death.

[canadianatheist]

If you think what happens at CERN is worship, or that myth and hypothesis are equivalent, or that deification is just any kind of ~belief~, then I really don’t know what to tell you. If you don’t already see how the usage of those words is stretched beyond usefulness by the comparison, then I don’t know how to show you more clearly. If you’re not willing to consider that people don’t see the world through the same spiritualist ~woo~ lense that you do, then I don’t know where to go from here.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[lisa-and-her-dark-paradise]

The atheism paradox

Unless you have created the universe (or at least believe that you did), you will always believe in a higher power.

[canadianatheist]

not really

not unless your idea of “higher power” is so broad that it becomes meaningless

[lisa-and-her-dark-paradise]

Religion answers the question of “who” created the universe.

Whether you call it God, science, or luck, the point remains the same.

[canadianatheist]

Again, if you define “higher power” as vague enough to describe deities, nature, or “luck” in your example, then the term is basically meaningless

this argument just a false equivalence to dismiss people who don’t believe in the supernatural

[lisa-and-her-dark-paradise]

If you think that the driving power behind the creation of the universe is meaningless, then your statement is a paradox in its own right.

This argument doesn’t dismiss anybody or their beliefs, it emphasizes that we all deify someone or something, we all have a higher power that we look upon. 

Some people believe in a bearded dude pulling the threads, some believe in a thunder god fucking everything that moves, some worship the thunder itself, or make deities out of planets, others believe in quantum particles and how they interract, and some might say that the universe was in fact playing dice.

They all have a story to say. And stories like the Big Bang are perhaps the most badass gospel you may ever study.

It is up to you who you choose to make a god of. The only way not to, is to believe that you are the higher power behind it all.

[canadianatheist]

And that’s my point, not everybody “deifies” things. Not only in the literal sense that a deity is specifically a god rather than a vague force, but also in the sense that you seem to mean

If your idea of what deification is applies so broadly to include anything that anyone anywhere believes, then it’s a useless statement. It’s a tautology. It’s like saying everyone is an athlete because you define exercise loosely enough to include your body doing work to digest things. At that point, the word athlete becomes a meaningless concept. If your definition of “higher power” can include literally anything, then saying “everyone believes in a higher power” is a completely meaningless statement, and it completely misses the point that anyone is trying to make about this subject. There are qualitative differences, and pretending that they’re all really the same is a false equivalence.

I, and many others, do not deify things, and you can’t claim you’re not dismissing anybody while looking at people and saying “well you really believe something, because I’m stretching what I mean by those terms to include you no matter what”.

[lisa-and-her-dark-paradise]

The atheism paradox

Unless you have created the universe (or at least believe that you did), you will always believe in a higher power.

[canadianatheist]

not really

not unless your idea of “higher power” is so broad that it becomes meaningless

[lisa-and-her-dark-paradise]

Religion answers the question of “who” created the universe.

Whether you call it God, science, or luck, the point remains the same.

[canadianatheist]

Again, if you define “higher power” as vague enough to describe deities, nature, or “luck” in your example, then the term is basically meaningless

this argument just a false equivalence to dismiss people who don’t believe in the supernatural

[lisa-and-her-dark-paradise]

The atheism paradox

Unless you have created the universe (or at least believe that you did), you will always believe in a higher power.

[canadianatheist]

not really

not unless your idea of “higher power” is so broad that it becomes meaningless

[metalcatholic-deactivated202202]

Are you implying a person’s life doesn’t have any purpose if they don’t believe in a higher power?

No…honestly they do that themselves. At it’s core religion gives a person some sense of meaning in their life, most atheists I’ve talked to openly admit that they believe life inherently lacks and deep meaning.

[canadianatheist]

I mean, you do realize there’s a difference between cosmic importance and personal meaning, right?

[christianandnerdy]

I have personal friends and co-workers who are atheists and none of them became atheist because of science but because they were deeply hurt emotionally and felt that God has failed them in one way or another, so they had said to themselves “there’s no God, there never was” and would post anti-God memes and comments, I don’t engage into a scientific debate with them but try to be a good friend and answer whatever biblical question they have. Sometimes you don’t have the answer and that’s okay, just tell him that you don’t know and that you will look into it. When you’re honest and transparent with someone, they will respect you more.

#Repost @atheism_is_dead_official ・・・ Atheists hide their despair. #Atheist #Atheists #Atheism #Antitheist#Antitheists #Antitheism #AtheismIsDead #christianity #bible #jesus #love#instagood #me #smile https://www.instagram.com/p/BuSczIEFl7u/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1iaki193igv9a

[canadianatheist]

There are certainly people that this can apply to, but don’t assume it does for everyone

[risiah11-blog-deactivated202211]

Evolution doesn’t make sense 😪 . . . . . . . #evolution #atheism #creationism #philosophy #cosmology #origin #bigbangtheory #charlesdarwin #kenthovind #johnlennox #ravizacharias #wisdom #science #religion (at United Arab Emirates) https://www.instagram.com/p/BuMOHAcHEmw/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=m79kl1u78jan

[canadianatheist]

Buddy, if your best argument for why evolution can’t be true is that you don’t understand it, or that you’d feel pessimistic if it were true, then I really don’t know what to tell you ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[atheismfuckyeah]

I was sent a youtube video by a Christian preacher who does his witnessing on youtube. I’m guessing it was a mass message, sent to as many tumblr atheists as he could find? 

I’m not naming or linking, but he wanted a response, so:

Mate, I have no interest in giving you free advertising. I watched your video and found it really annoying listening. Stop smacking your lips against the mic. Maybe also stop cracking thunder every time you quote God. Some people, myself for example, have hearing issues and such things make it really hard to process what the hell is going on. 

Other than that? Same ol, same ol. Nothing new or interesting. 

~M

[canadianatheist]

Is it weird that I’m disappointed I didn’t get included in a mass-proselytization?

[atheismfuckyeah]

Lol there are a lot of us! I haven’t even been all that active if late so I’m a tad confused how he found me in the first place though

I can absolutely send you the link if you wanna see it ;)

~M

[canadianatheist]

I mean, why not?

[whatisitnowforfuckssake]

Why do non-Christians celebrate Christmas?

Christmas isn’t a Christian festival.

Most religions have some sort of light-in-the-dark ritual (Diwali, Hanukkah, etc.) and the 25th December celebration predates Christianity by some time.

If anything, the pagans should be getting onto you about hijacking their junk.

No one - literally no one who’s ever looked at the question in any sort of detail - thinks that Jesus was actually born on the 25th December.

[canadianatheist]

In a lot of places, Christmas is also a statutory holiday, so doing something with friends/loved ones on a mandatory day off where everyone else is doing the same is just a convenience.

Not to mention that many non-Christians do have Christian friends and relatives who want to include them in their celebrations (sometimes good, sometimes bad).

And, like mentioned above, very little of Christmas tradition is Christian in origin. The only significant part, besides the name, that I could say is inherently Christian would be Christmas Mass, and I can’t imagine there are many non-Christians going to that unless they’re going for someone else’s sake.

[atheismfuckyeah]

I was sent a youtube video by a Christian preacher who does his witnessing on youtube. I’m guessing it was a mass message, sent to as many tumblr atheists as he could find? 

I’m not naming or linking, but he wanted a response, so:

Mate, I have no interest in giving you free advertising. I watched your video and found it really annoying listening. Stop smacking your lips against the mic. Maybe also stop cracking thunder every time you quote God. Some people, myself for example, have hearing issues and such things make it really hard to process what the hell is going on. 

Other than that? Same ol, same ol. Nothing new or interesting. 

~M

[canadianatheist]

Is it weird that I’m disappointed I didn’t get included in a mass-proselytization?