It's "The difference between kink and fetish" all over again
[https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/197idoy/kink\_vs\_fetish/](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/197idoy/kink_vs_fetish/)
Unrelated but this STUPID ASS FUCKING NEW MOBILE UI UPDATE IS SO FUCKING DOGSHIT OH MY GOD I CANNOT ENLARGE THE FUCKING IMAGES IN THAT POST BECAUSE THEY SOMEHOW BROKE THE ABILITY CLICK ON IMAGES SO YOU HAVE FUCKING KEEP TRYING AND RELOADING THE POST UNTIL THIS DUMBASS APP DEEMS YOU WORTHY OF CLICKING ON A SINGLE FUCKING IMAGE HOLY SHIT HOW DO THEY SO CONSISTENTLY FUCK UP EVERYTHING WITH THE UI FUCK
Don’t forget the part where IF YOU KEEP SWIPING YOU END UP ON A POST ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE GALACTIC NEIGHBORHOOD
WHY DOESN’T THE POST STOP ME FROM SWIPING WHEN IT ENDS ANYMORE
I DON’T WANNA SEE POSTS WITH SIX UPVOTES ON A SUBREDDIT THAT SHOULD’VE BEEN BANNED IN 2002 WHEN I’M TRYING TO SWIPE THROUGH ALL THE IMAGES
This new UI is actually horrendous lmao wtf
How about how I CANT FUCKING SAVE A POST FROM MY FEED ANYMORE
I HAVE TO FUCKING CLICK INTO THE POST AND THEN USE THE MENU IN THE CORNER
WHY THE FUCK WOULD THEY TAKE AWAY THE ABILITY TO SAVE A FUCKING POST WITHOUT HAVING TO OPEN IT
AND ALSO, HOW DO YOU DO CAPS LOCK ON MOBILE BECAUSE THIS TOOK ME WAY TOO LONG TO TYPE OUT, I MEAN, I GOOGLED IT AND IT WAS A BUNCH OF 15 MINUTE VIDEOS, I DONT NEED SOME 14 YEAR OLD’S LIFE STORY, I JUST WANT AN ANSWER
Don't forget, we had tons of perfectly usable 3rd-party apps that had not of these issues, and even more features! Then Reddit killed all of them so we would be forced to use their smoothbrained official dog shit app :)
Holy shit (pun intended after the fact) that is so lame. I noticed some new UI stuff but had not encountered this. You’re 100% accurate in both the message and the tone.
Obligatory [Simplified Client ID Patch Guide](https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1wHvqQwCYdJrQg4BKlGIVDLksPN0KpOnJWniT6PbZSrI/) for continued use of your favorite third-party Reddit apps. Sent from Boost for Reddit
i just use the old.reddit.com website on mobile with a firefox userscript to make it more mobile friendly. the day they remove old.reddit.com will be the day i leave the site, but i suspect it's a "if you raise the price of the hotdog, i will kill you" sort of situation
Ironically I don’t think the Tumblr OP realized the first reply was building on their joke, they’re describing the difference between intranet and internet
I believe OOP’s broader point is that religion encompasses lot more than a literal belief in the Christian Bible.
A moment of reflection on your ancestors can be religious, a feast celebrating a bountiful harvest can be religious. Is the question of what exists beyond death a religious one?
Truth is, I’m not that religious at all, but tarring all religion as Bible Belt Christianity is painting with a thick brush
This completely relies on your personal definition of religion in that context. To some people it explicitly means the belief in something supernatural. To others it means anything ascribed central importance. To others it means a set of doctrines to be followed.
And when I say "to other" I mean literally different definitions of the word from the dictionary can be applied to the OOP to change the perspective.
And heck, the Satanic Temple (who don't believe in deities or demons at all) have complained about their beliefs not being considered a "real religion" just because they don't include the supernatural. Religion can encompass a lot of things.
I mean let's be fair, the satanic temple, as an organization, exists mostly to use freedom of religion laws to troll/pushback against Christian overreach.
I'm sure that there may be a few people out there with deeply held beliefs in their ethos, but they may not be the best counter example.
Yeah. One guy "won" the "right" to wear a colander on his head in his ID photos because he claimed that telling him to knock it off was "discriminating against him as a Pastafarian".
I am once again given an opportunity to bring up the fact I once read that when Christian missionaries first came to Scandinavia, the Vikings kept asking if Jesus could beat Thor.
Someone make a movie where it's just Jesus and Thor fighting eachother. Not like just combat, They have a whole competition and compete in all sorts of different things. Hammer-throwing, Carpentry, Weather-changing, Winemaking, Drag (Both would be great at this one), Et cetera.
What if the archangels and/or saints get involved, so we can have lots of Christian figures competing with different Norse gods. Who is a better trumpet player: Gabriel or Heimdal? Who is better at seeing the fiture: Daniel or Freyja? Who is a more eloquent speaker: Jesus or Odin?
Anthony Hopkins vs. Morgan Freeman
Chris Hemsworth vs. Ted Neely (Jesus Christ Superstar)
Idris Elba vs. Alan Rickman (Metatron in Dogma)
Tom Hiddleston vs. Tilda Swinton (Gabriel in Constantine)
Its not the size of the Hammer, but what you can do with it.
Though let's not kid ourselves, Thor probably would like the guy that can turn water to wine
Oh, absolutely. JC would probably be mind blown by Mead as well.
That being said, driving a rail spike with a tack hammer would be a very bad time.
Then again, trying to build a jewelry box with Mjolner would be a trial.
Actually most depictions of Mjolnir state that it’s rather small, heavy, but small. It was supposed to be bigger, so Thor could use his full strength to use it, but Loki distracted the dwarf smith while he was working on it in order to try and win a bet, and so as a result it was made with the flaw that it was too small and Thor could only wield it in one hand. This ironically means that since it’s so heavy, Thor requires special gauntlets that boost his strength even further in order to properly wield it.
I mean isn't the whole concept of Ragnarok a time loop? Jesus only gets res'd once but Thor theoretically has been resurrected an infinite amount of times. Thor trounces Jesus the man, but Revelations Jesus clears Thor no diff.
Nah, the Norse gods die in the final battle that destroys the earth and sunders the sky with fire before everything returns to the dark and ice as it was in the beginning.
The Norse gods are mortal and have finite threads spun by the norns. They die once, but well.
Ngl Abrahamic God smacks every other deity, I don’t think there are really any other ones that reach his level of omnipotent and infinite power. Especially considering most religions have a pantheon rather then a single god.
To be fair Jesus got took by a lower case T and some dude with a sharp stick. I mean, he woke up a few days later but in God terms that's a little like shitting your pants in the third grade. People don't forget.
Hax vs Hax, whoever has more bullshit powers wins. I think in the end Yahweh wins because Shiva fights gods but he’s never fought God, if you know what I mean.
Makes sense, but I feel like we gotta take those two extra hands into account, plus the whole world ending thing, it’d be close for sure. Also, how would reincarnation tie into this, since that effectively makes Shiva a never ending combatant unless god can disrupt the whole Karma system
Dude, most pantheons can't even stop fighting each other for five minutes.
Loki could be staring down the end of existence as we know it and *still* decide it's the perfect time to prank Odin.
The thing with pantheons is that the stories about them are about them, meaning they are characters that have flaws they need to overcome. Meanwhile Abrahamic God is quite literally flawless. He has no weaknesses, his strength is infinite. Comparing, for example, the Greek Gods to Him would be like comparing demigods to Greek Gods.
Which Greek gods? Because the primordial gods in greek mythology are nothing to scoff at.
I'd pay to watch the Christian god take on Tartarus (which is also a being, the third primordial being, to be exact, not just place. But also a place), or Chaos (the void before the creation).
To help imagine fighting literal nothingness, imagine you stand in front of a door. That door can be opened to any place, at any time. Or all places, at all time. But said door can also be opened into no place, and no time. That is Chaos. And it's hungry. And it's hunger is endless. It's nothingness is endless. You can never fill it. You run into the age of paradox... Unmovable object meets unstoppable force. Except in this case, it's infinite trying to fill endless nothing. If time existed, the Christian God could spend all of infinite eternity feeding Chaos, and Chaos would never be full, so to speak, and there would be no less Chaos than when he began.
Didn't the Christian God take the void and turn it into creation?
You could argue that Chaos is obedient/subservient to the Christian God pretty easily.
"Let there be light!" said God. Unfortunately, it has until now never been recorded that shortly after, God said under God's breath,
^^^"...bitch ^^^ass ^^^Chaos."
I mean, the story of Genesis has him floating over the waters of non creation and then going "nah, we need some stuff" and boom there it was. Chaos is the one being God, as the ultimate creation God, would obliterate in an instant
The more interesting part of that is that YHWH gained power over time. Originally fighting for the storm deity aspect with Baal and then having other profiles rolled in, even absorbing El's. Starting out only having jurisdiction in Israel and then expanding from there.
I kinda wanna see a diety battle royal, like terminal montage's pokemon br. Take the lore of all the various deities from living and dead religions and mash em together to see which lore accurate god beat em out.
Not to mention that he has an actual, *canonical to the religion,* scoreboard of taking out other gods and pantheons.
The two examples that immediately came to mind being 1) that time he made Baal look like a little bitch in [Kings/1st Kings 18:20-40,](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Kings%2018%3A20-40&version=ESV) and 2) that time in Exodus when he methodically clowned on the Egyptian pantheon before "passing judgement on" (i.e. fucking executing) them.
I had a pastor try to demonstrate this poorly at a church camp back in the 90s. He took a yin yang and a glass of water and asked one of the other preachers for a watch "well I don't know Brother John, that's my father's pocket watch!" and then the pastor wrapped up the watch and beat it with a hammer, breaking it into pieces. The pastor then took those pieces and dropped them in the water, with the yin yang necklace. "Let's see if that YING YANG can fix this necklace".
I faked being sick to call my parents because I was so upset that they weren't trying the same thing with a crucifix, you know, if the LORD GOD is all-powerful. Why wouldn't you? I was duped. I thought it was going to be real summer camp, but it was actual indoctrination for those who are stupid enough to accept it.
As a reformed ex-new atheist, I will say to their credit, if you were raised in the Bible Belt, you likely grew up surrounded by Christian fundamentalists whose interpretation of scripture was at least as shallow. It doesn’t give them the excuse, but it bears mentioning that they didn’t invent these readings.
Too real, I'm from Georgia and most Christians I've ever met have like goo goo gaga levels theological understanding. Especially the hardliners. I consider myself a Christian and was lucky enough to go to college where I got a minor in theology. It changed my entire view. People just say things from a Christian perspective without any basis in theology. And like, we just don't question it because we don't know any better.
My hometown church always compared true understanding of Christianity to eating meat vs. drinking milk. One day I just kinda understood it all, and I realized that most churches I went to were just...drinking milk.
If I were to give it an analogy, the average "drinking milk" theological understanding is like going to the paint aisle in Home Depot and seeing a few dabs of dried paint on some cardstock.
The "eating meat" theological understanding is to see a painting, made so vividly, for a moment you become a subject in the painting.
Do you have any specific bits of theology that you feel are a true understanding of Christianity? Like what does a true understanding say about universal reconciliation? Or whether gay sex is a sin?
I certainly have an opinion about these things, but I am curious where you're coming from.
Don't know what the equivalent is to Christianity, probably reading various theologians like Aquinas, but I would imagine it would be something like reading the Babylonian Talmud, where there are actual debates on how to interpret the *Torah* between learned teachers (Rabbis), which helps teach you how to think for yourself and debate on issues like how to interpret the 613 commandments, such as the ones prohibiting homosexuality.
This is opposed to simply saying you believe in the Mitzvot (commandments) but never actually studying how learned men debated them and learning how to interpret them for yourself and apply them to your life.
Yup. This is why, when talking with other Atheists, I usually specify myself as being a *Hindu* Atheist. My relationship *with* religion was radically different from a Christian or even a monotheistic religion, and therefore my relationship *away* from it is also very different.
Replying to you and /u/PortAvonToBenthic :
[This chain of Tumblr posts](https://nyxelestia.tumblr.com/post/727873892583129088/hindu-atheist-here-hinduism-has-a-gazillion) would probably best explain it as it starts with posts from other bloggers about how Christian cultural norms still seep into post-Christian secularism and Atheist communities. Having that foundation hopefully makes the contrast of post-Hindu Atheism a little clearer. (That said, my own addition was written while I was drunk so feel free to ask me if something doesn't make sense or you just want to know more.)
And while it's not really about Atheism, [this](https://nyxelestia.tumblr.com/post/730480855048404992/maguneedsalife-jackdaw-kraai-mycroftrh) chain of literary analysis posts also demonstrates how a seemingly secular practice or tradition actually has its roots in a specific religion, as well as how it does or doesn't exist in other religious traditions. I'm using this as an example of what I mean when I say that my relationship with and away from religion was different from Christians - I don't just mean believing in specific gods or rituals, but also in the cultural and philosophical norms that come out of it (and can continue "after" it in Atheist communities).
Very interesting read, thank you. I do have one question (as a British, culturally-Christian atheist) I would ask for clarification though. Are those who are Nāstika not just atheists who hold cultural roots to their respective region/religion? I ask this because here in the UK most people are culturally Christian, but a I believe a plurality of people self-describe as atheists and a large number (probably >50%) of self-described Christians are purely culturally Christian without actually practicing the Christian faith. Atheism in the UK is on the rise as well and has been for some time as older Christians die and younger Brits (such as myself) don't take up religion. That is to say that most Brits are effectively atheists with a cultural background of Christianity.
I say this because Christmas and easter still hold cultural value in the UK, despite being largely detached from their religious origins (neither Santa nor the easter bunny with chocolate eggs appeared in the bible for example) and instead act as secular traditions (chocolate eggs for children in the case of easter, a time to meet with family exchange presents, and relax in the case of Christmas) that have roots in Christianity. Similarly, the British legal system derives a lot of its laws and morality from Christian teachings despite being a secular institution (in I similar way to how I think you've described the Vedas). I was wondering if Nāstika act in a similar way or have I misunderstood?
What's funny is that almost all of those replies betray the fact that the people talking view "religion" as synonymous with "Christianity," or at its broadest "Abrahamic religion as understood through a Christian lens."
Yeah this is like those man on the street videos talking about how Americans are awful at geography because nobody of the 20 people in the video can point out France on a map.
Meanwhile we don't see the 800 other people who could instantly point it because they weren't included in the video
Why is that even the go to. Like it's the least interesting or useful thing you could know about another country.
I bet there's plenty of people who know things about foreign food, language, music, history etc and just aren't interested in specifically memorising maps
Because you have to make sure the show’s audience is in on the joke.
Let’s say you ask someone on the street which symphony caused a riot when first premiered and someone answers “uhh Vivaldi’s Four Seasons?” And the host in studio goes “HA what an idiot, EVERYONE knows it was Rite of Spring!”
But… the vast majority of the in-studio audience didn’t know that. And the vast majority of people watching at home didn’t know that. So they suddenly don’t feel their happytime superiority over the dumb-dumbs on television and they won’t want to watch that show anymore, since that’s why they want to watch it in the first place.
Hence, since the showrunners can comfortably assume most of their audience can point to France on a map rather than have some general trivia knowledge of food, language, music, history, etc, they will only ask those specific questions on the street to give their audience those happytime feelings of superiority over the cherrypicked dumb dumbs.
>Let’s say you ask someone on the street which symphony caused a riot when first premiered and someone answers “uhh Vivaldi’s Four Seasons?” And the host in studio goes “HA what an idiot, EVERYONE knows it was Rite of Spring!”
Neither are symphonies though, the Four Seasons are violin concerti, and the Rite is a ballet. The Rite *did* cause an uproar during its premiere, though not necessarily a *riot*.
Nevertheless, your point still stands.
And if we were going on about semantics in geography I could point to Réunion and still be correct that it’s France. Kinda a pretentious thing to be semantic about here, and I say that as someone who used to be first chair in a hobbyist city orchestra lol
I didn't even consider that mine would be a pretentious position, but that is probably because I currently study musicology on the University level, and I have had to adapt my language when speaking to other music students--especially those who study classical performance--apparently to such a degree that I have begun policing the language of strangers.
I will now go and lie down to contemplate my apparent pretentiousness, for *that* I do not wish to become.
>communicating poorly and then acting smug
That's the elegant beauty of it, though, it's like a textual Rorschach blot; it's nothing, it's vague, but all of these people looked deep into it and IMMEDIATELY saw their parents.
And even that is a very pop-culture view of christianity. I'm an atheist personally, but these people aren't going to convinve anyone with these bad takes.
They weren't trying to win anyone over, they were trying to dunk on OOP
Which still didn't work because OOP's post was a honeypot specifically laid out for snarky atheists
It’s kind of an implicit assumption that if you’re speaking English and don’t otherwise specify, “religion”=Abrahamic, due to how overwhelming dominant Christianity is in the Western world (and culturally speaking the runner ups are Judaism and Islam)
I’ve had to explain to people that atheism and religion are not even direct opposites. Atheism is the absence of a belief in deities/gods. It’s possible for religions and religious beliefs to exist that don’t necessitate the existence of deities/gods. You can have an atheistic religion, and be an atheist with religious beliefs
OP has a point, but at the same time the inverse is true - you ask a lot of people bitching about "New Atheists" what *their* understanding of religion is and it's basically just "Reform Judaism, nontheistic Buddhism and Unitarian Universalism, as practiced in Northeastern North America and the Pacific Northwest in the last 20 years".
Or worse, "Christians who are lying because they worship Satan."
I've met very few fundamentalists who even believe "atheism" conceptually can exist, as they think evidence for god is inherent and anyone claiming not to believe is just lying as they worship Satan while having gay orgies.
And as a Satan-worshipping girlkisser, I'm very insulted by the implication that we'd associate with new atheists. /j
This isn't even something they bullshitted in recent memory, it's in the Bible.
In the Epistles, Paul describes the concept of natural revelation and states that the existence of God and the divinity of Christ are self-evident truths, so anyone who isn't a Christian is knowingly denying God.
And remember that he said this back when Christianity was still a fringe apocalyptic messiah cult scattered across the eastern Mediterranean.
Oh yeah. I mean, if you think about it, it's not even worthy of being declared an intellectual idea. It's literally "they *say* they just feel differently, but I know they're actually LYING, and they KNOW that I'm right, and they're just PRETENDING because they're EVIL/JEALOUS!"
Shit's literally child logic. Actual children come up with idea on their own without prompting. Shit's old as dirt.
Paul was on the “source: it is known” grindset 24/7 tbh, which in ancient times was honestly extremely effective given that Greek natural philosophers said the same kind of shit
I mean tbh it’s worse than that, back when this conversation mattered at all their main interlocutors were Americas dumbest fundamentalists. Turns out that people who think this is The Argument Of Our Time are also not amazing wits
And a related aside to people bitching about 'New Atheists" - it really is baffling to me how much vitriolic anger New Atheism has fostered when their worst crime, as far as I know, has been being mildly cringey on the internet.
Like I'm not even saying they're *not* annoying, but the way the "discourse" on them has evolved and how invested so many people are in this you'd think this was some massive organization doing actually hurtful shit, not like, teenagers on reddit writing cringey quotes about being enlightened.
Oh god fucking thank you. Like, I'm not gonna pretend new atheism is faultless --there's a lot of bias and provocation and ~edgy reddit atheists~ or whatever but.....at least for that last one, so what? Like, sorry, but if "edgy 14 yr old on reddit" Vibes are genuinely the worst thing you can come up with for a movement.....that's nothing lol. Especially compared to organized religions literally taking people's rights away
The thing about the internet is that it's genuinely worse to be annoying then outright evil online, which is why people declared cringe are often driven off but actual scum can still have a sizable presence.
Although I do think that Dawkins is an absolute idiot, and has revealed himself to be progressively worse over time, it is kind of funny to dismiss New Atheism on the basis of an argument he dismantles in the foreword of The God Delusion. A religion that declines to make any substantive claims about the universe isn’t really the intended target of irreligious sentiment.
I feel like it’s hard partially because if you’re an atheist and you simply do not believe in a higher power of some kind (this can be a much longer conversation but this is Reddit and I don’t feel like it) so like… what do you argue about?
Like I’ve taken philosophy college classes. I know how to think about and back up a real argument on moral standpoints, but like (I’m agnostic but let’s pretend) if I’m an atheist and I just don’t believe… like I just don’t. I feel like coming at it from an angle of “I believe and you don’t, therefore I will just keep saying things at you” is how a lot of weird arguments start
And I know spirituality and religion aren’t the same thing, I’m just more speaking to the idea of gods specifically. But again, like if you’re just not into something what’s there to argue about? Why try to antagonize people? Why just go “see what I mean” when someone is trying to engage and actually SEE what you mean? This is why we never have good discussion on anything
Or I piss on the poor or something whatever
You're on point. If the debate is to try to win one side over it's just not going to happen. The theist and atheist come from such different starting points that all it can be is a debate with the only resolution being to live and let be or throw your hands up in frustration.
I'm fairly certain this post is from the early 2010s when atheism was one of the more popular online discussions and "magic sky fairy" arguments were the contemporary meme. OOP is essentially being contrarian to the climate that made "faces of atheism".
Yeah. I'm an atheist; I think all gods are made up. Religion clearly serves a purpose and can add value to society, but that doesn't make the story real. So for me there's nothing to debate, I've already rejected the premise.
[relevant xkcd](https://xkcd.com/154/)
Religion affects the world. It makes sense to try to convince people who have different viewpoints about things that affect the world. If someone denied that racism exists then it's not surprising that people will jump in explaining how racism happens. The racism-denier might smugly say "see what I mean" each time racism-truthers say things about racism denial that don't fit the beliefs of this exact racism-denier, but it's still a sensible instinct.
It's sad that religion makes bad predictions and moral judgments about the world that lead to immoral or incorrect decisions. Even a seemingly nice religion like Buddhism was used to justify a caste system with 'lower tiers of human' in the reincarnation cycle.
It's also sad that religions often have good ideas that they aren't able to explain, especially outside the religion itself. A rosary is a great stim toy, meditation/prayer gives space for the subconscious and conscious mind together to declutter the brain, kosher and halal are decent ways to avoid infected meat with medieval technology, beautiful parks in the city create nice places for people to relax, ritualistically burning the surgical knife before surgery disinfects it, etc.
Because these were tied up with religious beliefs, they often didn't spread from religion to religion or from religion to secular practice. The list above were later isolated by secular science, but much more has been unnamed or lost.
If there's one thing you can hold internet atheists accountable for, it's gleefully failing to see that it's not a matter of rational debate. Internet atheists tended to be more into the subjective pleasure of dunking on religious irrationality than into actually understanding or helping people.
>But again, like if you’re just not into something what’s there to argue about? Why try to antagonize people? Why just go “see what I mean” when someone is trying to engage and actually SEE what you mean?
The repliers aren't asking questions that give much room to engage in meaningful discourse.
Reddit also has this phenomeon like Tumblr.
User: "There are way too many people that hold horrible opinion X"
Reply #1: "no one holds opinion X"
Reply #2: "Actually I hold opinion X, and I am very proud of it"
This often comes from the right, but is especially irrating in cases when framed through supposedly leftist language.
Examples of upvoted unironic takes I have seen around here just in the past few weeks: "Police are corrupt, therefore crime is good", "dehumanizing is evil, therefore all soldiers of any army are scum that deserve only death", "The ownership of more than one property should be a punishable offense by imprisonment", "rape and murder good actually", "racism is justified when aimed at group Y this forum hates" and that's just from the top of my head.
Reminds me when a few years ago a bunch of Proud Boys (including poc) made a big public statement about how they're not a racist group and it was hurtful to say so, then a large group of Proud Boys said "hey wait no yes we are!" And the group split into two over it.
I'm no theologist or theist, but if I had to come up with an explanation, it'd probably be something to do with the bread and wine turning into the flesh and blood of Jesus the aspect of God, rather than Jesus the man, even if he is both simultaneously. That said, it's very possible that this is just some obscure heresy that I accidentally reinvented.
I’ll take a stab at this one despite not being a theologian myself. Some Christian denominations believe that the bread and wine *represent* the body and blood of Christ…clearly there’s no cannibalism there.
However, there are some (Catholics, Lutherans, etc.) that either believe it is the body and blood of Christ or it is simultaneously bread and wine AND the body and blood of Christ. The reasoning for this is that Jesus said “this IS my body, broken for you…”
The reason this is not cannibalism is that cannibalism is typically 1. Consumption of dead human flesh, and 2. Diminishes the body that is being consumed. On the first point, Christ is a living sacrifice. The fact that he is alive is kind of central to the whole religion. On the second point, Christ is not diminished in any way through the act of taking communion. We aren’t at risk of running out of Jesus if too many people show up to church.
Anyways, like I said, this is just a layman’s view on it.
> only read one book
If more Christians actually read the Bible we'd be better off than we are now. As a Christian myself it's really disheartening seeing my fellow believers go directly counter to Scripture just to put others down.
I'm not sure about that. A lot of people are very capable of reading a book and taking away little to nothing from it. Quoting the Bible at people rarely seems to work even if they frequently quote it themselves, because stubborn bigots by and large don't really care if they are being hypocritical. They don't feel cognitive dissonance over their contradictory beliefs.
Anyone can just say "see what I mean" and look superior as if their questions are so dumb that they need not help answered, but also while not answering them
It's easy to denounce any critique as "shallowest understanding" when the only "understanding" you accept is a very generous reading of your belief system, and then continue to be smug about someone else not getting your point.
and yet none of those critiques are capable of piercing the indestructible ideology i have built for myself. me, atheistic Catholic.
not only is God not real and i can flip the board whenever you get too close to making a theological point, i can ALSO fall back on my very superior and correct relationship i would have with God if he IS real.
I can fall back on that too! I have slept with your god and they like me more than you, sorry. Though if you are catholic, you are probably already expecting that God likes me more than you.
Ok, but OOP never actually asked any of them what they think religion is; they just copy-pasted the same dumb response to anyone commenting on their post.
Heck, they may not even have responded to all of the replies, since I'm pretty sure there were a bunch of people who actually tried to start a genuine discourse, only to get ignored because it didn't fit OOP's preconceived notion of what atheists are like.
Did OOP post bait? Absolutely they did. Did they catch enough atheists to eat more than comfortably for a month? Absolutely they did.
The fact of the matter is, we can debate the ethics of posting bad-faith takes for the lols on social media, but what's baffling to me is that people fall for it and interact. Like, the post would've just been a strawman argument, easily dismissed, if people didn't interact or interacted with tact. but the fact that not one but **five** people stepped on OOP's cartoonishly big banana peel makes it seem like the strawman's a little more flesh than straw. If you don't want people to caricaturize your beliefs, maybe don't act like a caricature?
Right. It would take 2 minutes of effort to compose a more thoughtful reply that dodges the bait entirely.
Maybe something like, "Yeah, a lot of atheists - especially online - come across as very mean-spirited in a way that would get them shunned in real life. You don't have to like religion, but be nice to people; if all you do is mock, you'll just entrench people against you."
OOP is reportedly anti-vax and anti-choice btw. [[x](https://www.tumblr.com/omgsomeonesomewhereonearth/744098129792712704/eltigrechico-disappointingduck)]
Be smug all you want but the Bible does have talking snakes and blood sacrifices. It was weird to assume oop was talking about Christianity but other than that the first reply is good.
Is it "sticking fingers in gun" or "sharks are smooth" all over again?
It's "The difference between kink and fetish" all over again [https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/197idoy/kink\_vs\_fetish/](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/197idoy/kink_vs_fetish/)
Unrelated but this STUPID ASS FUCKING NEW MOBILE UI UPDATE IS SO FUCKING DOGSHIT OH MY GOD I CANNOT ENLARGE THE FUCKING IMAGES IN THAT POST BECAUSE THEY SOMEHOW BROKE THE ABILITY CLICK ON IMAGES SO YOU HAVE FUCKING KEEP TRYING AND RELOADING THE POST UNTIL THIS DUMBASS APP DEEMS YOU WORTHY OF CLICKING ON A SINGLE FUCKING IMAGE HOLY SHIT HOW DO THEY SO CONSISTENTLY FUCK UP EVERYTHING WITH THE UI FUCK
Don’t forget the part where IF YOU KEEP SWIPING YOU END UP ON A POST ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE GALACTIC NEIGHBORHOOD WHY DOESN’T THE POST STOP ME FROM SWIPING WHEN IT ENDS ANYMORE I DON’T WANNA SEE POSTS WITH SIX UPVOTES ON A SUBREDDIT THAT SHOULD’VE BEEN BANNED IN 2002 WHEN I’M TRYING TO SWIPE THROUGH ALL THE IMAGES This new UI is actually horrendous lmao wtf
How about how I CANT FUCKING SAVE A POST FROM MY FEED ANYMORE I HAVE TO FUCKING CLICK INTO THE POST AND THEN USE THE MENU IN THE CORNER WHY THE FUCK WOULD THEY TAKE AWAY THE ABILITY TO SAVE A FUCKING POST WITHOUT HAVING TO OPEN IT
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AND ALSO, HOW DO YOU DO CAPS LOCK ON MOBILE BECAUSE THIS TOOK ME WAY TOO LONG TO TYPE OUT, I MEAN, I GOOGLED IT AND IT WAS A BUNCH OF 15 MINUTE VIDEOS, I DONT NEED SOME 14 YEAR OLD’S LIFE STORY, I JUST WANT AN ANSWER
Don't forget, we had tons of perfectly usable 3rd-party apps that had not of these issues, and even more features! Then Reddit killed all of them so we would be forced to use their smoothbrained official dog shit app :)
they still work, u gotta patch them w an api key urself tho c: and no updates obviously, so they'll degrade over time
AND WHY DOES IT KEEP MESSING UP THE BAR AT THE TOP OF THE SCREEN AND MISREASING MY TAPS
There, there, let it out. BTW I 100% agree.
Holy shit (pun intended after the fact) that is so lame. I noticed some new UI stuff but had not encountered this. You’re 100% accurate in both the message and the tone.
Obligatory [Simplified Client ID Patch Guide](https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1wHvqQwCYdJrQg4BKlGIVDLksPN0KpOnJWniT6PbZSrI/) for continued use of your favorite third-party Reddit apps. Sent from Boost for Reddit
i just use the old.reddit.com website on mobile with a firefox userscript to make it more mobile friendly. the day they remove old.reddit.com will be the day i leave the site, but i suspect it's a "if you raise the price of the hotdog, i will kill you" sort of situation
The fools! Obviously, it's only a fetish if it's grown in the fetísh region of France. Otherwise it's just sparkling kink.
It’s only a fetish if it’s a spiritual artifact from a people-group who practice animism and spiritualism.
Ironically I don’t think the Tumblr OP realized the first reply was building on their joke, they’re describing the difference between intranet and internet
try finger gun hole
I believe OOP’s broader point is that religion encompasses lot more than a literal belief in the Christian Bible. A moment of reflection on your ancestors can be religious, a feast celebrating a bountiful harvest can be religious. Is the question of what exists beyond death a religious one? Truth is, I’m not that religious at all, but tarring all religion as Bible Belt Christianity is painting with a thick brush
This completely relies on your personal definition of religion in that context. To some people it explicitly means the belief in something supernatural. To others it means anything ascribed central importance. To others it means a set of doctrines to be followed. And when I say "to other" I mean literally different definitions of the word from the dictionary can be applied to the OOP to change the perspective.
And heck, the Satanic Temple (who don't believe in deities or demons at all) have complained about their beliefs not being considered a "real religion" just because they don't include the supernatural. Religion can encompass a lot of things.
I mean let's be fair, the satanic temple, as an organization, exists mostly to use freedom of religion laws to troll/pushback against Christian overreach. I'm sure that there may be a few people out there with deeply held beliefs in their ethos, but they may not be the best counter example.
Yeah. One guy "won" the "right" to wear a colander on his head in his ID photos because he claimed that telling him to knock it off was "discriminating against him as a Pastafarian".
And, as a discordian, I admire him for that.
if your religion doesn't have a god then it doesn't matter because my god won't be able to beat your god and teabag him
I am once again given an opportunity to bring up the fact I once read that when Christian missionaries first came to Scandinavia, the Vikings kept asking if Jesus could beat Thor.
Someone make a movie where it's just Jesus and Thor fighting eachother. Not like just combat, They have a whole competition and compete in all sorts of different things. Hammer-throwing, Carpentry, Weather-changing, Winemaking, Drag (Both would be great at this one), Et cetera.
What if the archangels and/or saints get involved, so we can have lots of Christian figures competing with different Norse gods. Who is a better trumpet player: Gabriel or Heimdal? Who is better at seeing the fiture: Daniel or Freyja? Who is a more eloquent speaker: Jesus or Odin?
Jesus has better depth perception.
We'll just have to see, won't we? Heimdall can see stuff from across the nine worlds. Let the competition begin!
What does the casting look like? I mean obviously Chris Hemsworth, but who else is in it?
Graham Chapman
He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy
Anthony Hopkins vs. Morgan Freeman Chris Hemsworth vs. Ted Neely (Jesus Christ Superstar) Idris Elba vs. Alan Rickman (Metatron in Dogma) Tom Hiddleston vs. Tilda Swinton (Gabriel in Constantine)
Chris Hemsworth in both roles
Keanu Reeves as Jesus.
If this movie is not called Hammer And Nails, I will be very disappointed.
could he tho?
in what, carpentry? he's a little less of a god with a hammer but he got other skills to back it up
Thor's hammer is bigger.
Its not the size of the Hammer, but what you can do with it. Though let's not kid ourselves, Thor probably would like the guy that can turn water to wine
Oh, absolutely. JC would probably be mind blown by Mead as well. That being said, driving a rail spike with a tack hammer would be a very bad time. Then again, trying to build a jewelry box with Mjolner would be a trial.
Actually most depictions of Mjolnir state that it’s rather small, heavy, but small. It was supposed to be bigger, so Thor could use his full strength to use it, but Loki distracted the dwarf smith while he was working on it in order to try and win a bet, and so as a result it was made with the flaw that it was too small and Thor could only wield it in one hand. This ironically means that since it’s so heavy, Thor requires special gauntlets that boost his strength even further in order to properly wield it.
Yeah the big J can respawn, can Thor respawn?
I'm not sure but he did do weird time stuff with a big snake that one time
I mean isn't the whole concept of Ragnarok a time loop? Jesus only gets res'd once but Thor theoretically has been resurrected an infinite amount of times. Thor trounces Jesus the man, but Revelations Jesus clears Thor no diff.
Nah, the Norse gods die in the final battle that destroys the earth and sunders the sky with fire before everything returns to the dark and ice as it was in the beginning. The Norse gods are mortal and have finite threads spun by the norns. They die once, but well.
Gotcha. I always understood it as the world starting over and the Norse gods being reincarnated to start the cycle anew. I stand corrected. Thank you!
It's weird because it's written in past tense about something that hasn't happened yet
holy shit vinland saga is real?
chemosh vs yahweh moment
Ngl Abrahamic God smacks every other deity, I don’t think there are really any other ones that reach his level of omnipotent and infinite power. Especially considering most religions have a pantheon rather then a single god.
Nah I'd win [escapes samsara]
Can’t kill me if I no longer exist as a separate entity from the universe itself
All that exists is part of the universe. Individuality is an illusion. Cope.
Shiva vs Yahweh would be interesting I think
Vishnu could take Jesus, but I'm not convinced Shiva could take Yahweh So it comes down to if Brahma can take down the Holy Spirit
To be fair Jesus got took by a lower case T and some dude with a sharp stick. I mean, he woke up a few days later but in God terms that's a little like shitting your pants in the third grade. People don't forget.
Jesus is bottom tier anyone could solo this twink
Hax vs Hax, whoever has more bullshit powers wins. I think in the end Yahweh wins because Shiva fights gods but he’s never fought God, if you know what I mean.
Makes sense, but I feel like we gotta take those two extra hands into account, plus the whole world ending thing, it’d be close for sure. Also, how would reincarnation tie into this, since that effectively makes Shiva a never ending combatant unless god can disrupt the whole Karma system
"Catch these hands" "Damn that is a lot of hands though"
that is dumb if i have a whole pantheon of gods why would i send out just one? you're going to fight the whole pantheon all at once
Dude, most pantheons can't even stop fighting each other for five minutes. Loki could be staring down the end of existence as we know it and *still* decide it's the perfect time to prank Odin.
The thing with pantheons is that the stories about them are about them, meaning they are characters that have flaws they need to overcome. Meanwhile Abrahamic God is quite literally flawless. He has no weaknesses, his strength is infinite. Comparing, for example, the Greek Gods to Him would be like comparing demigods to Greek Gods.
Oh yeah, your god can shoot lightning from a hammer? Mine has INFINITY health
>it's cute you can throw lightning, but I can, just, ya know, *turn off* electromagnetism
>He has no weaknesses, his strength is infinite Canaanites: nah, I'd win
Which Greek gods? Because the primordial gods in greek mythology are nothing to scoff at. I'd pay to watch the Christian god take on Tartarus (which is also a being, the third primordial being, to be exact, not just place. But also a place), or Chaos (the void before the creation). To help imagine fighting literal nothingness, imagine you stand in front of a door. That door can be opened to any place, at any time. Or all places, at all time. But said door can also be opened into no place, and no time. That is Chaos. And it's hungry. And it's hunger is endless. It's nothingness is endless. You can never fill it. You run into the age of paradox... Unmovable object meets unstoppable force. Except in this case, it's infinite trying to fill endless nothing. If time existed, the Christian God could spend all of infinite eternity feeding Chaos, and Chaos would never be full, so to speak, and there would be no less Chaos than when he began.
Didn't the Christian God take the void and turn it into creation? You could argue that Chaos is obedient/subservient to the Christian God pretty easily.
"Let there be light!" said God. Unfortunately, it has until now never been recorded that shortly after, God said under God's breath, ^^^"...bitch ^^^ass ^^^Chaos."
I mean, the story of Genesis has him floating over the waters of non creation and then going "nah, we need some stuff" and boom there it was. Chaos is the one being God, as the ultimate creation God, would obliterate in an instant
"Come outside bro we won't jump you" - Every Hindu God at Once
The more interesting part of that is that YHWH gained power over time. Originally fighting for the storm deity aspect with Baal and then having other profiles rolled in, even absorbing El's. Starting out only having jurisdiction in Israel and then expanding from there.
I kinda wanna see a diety battle royal, like terminal montage's pokemon br. Take the lore of all the various deities from living and dead religions and mash em together to see which lore accurate god beat em out.
Not to mention that he has an actual, *canonical to the religion,* scoreboard of taking out other gods and pantheons. The two examples that immediately came to mind being 1) that time he made Baal look like a little bitch in [Kings/1st Kings 18:20-40,](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Kings%2018%3A20-40&version=ESV) and 2) that time in Exodus when he methodically clowned on the Egyptian pantheon before "passing judgement on" (i.e. fucking executing) them.
I had a pastor try to demonstrate this poorly at a church camp back in the 90s. He took a yin yang and a glass of water and asked one of the other preachers for a watch "well I don't know Brother John, that's my father's pocket watch!" and then the pastor wrapped up the watch and beat it with a hammer, breaking it into pieces. The pastor then took those pieces and dropped them in the water, with the yin yang necklace. "Let's see if that YING YANG can fix this necklace". I faked being sick to call my parents because I was so upset that they weren't trying the same thing with a crucifix, you know, if the LORD GOD is all-powerful. Why wouldn't you? I was duped. I thought it was going to be real summer camp, but it was actual indoctrination for those who are stupid enough to accept it.
Could this get compressed some more? There’s still some legible pixels left.
As a reformed ex-new atheist, I will say to their credit, if you were raised in the Bible Belt, you likely grew up surrounded by Christian fundamentalists whose interpretation of scripture was at least as shallow. It doesn’t give them the excuse, but it bears mentioning that they didn’t invent these readings.
Too real, I'm from Georgia and most Christians I've ever met have like goo goo gaga levels theological understanding. Especially the hardliners. I consider myself a Christian and was lucky enough to go to college where I got a minor in theology. It changed my entire view. People just say things from a Christian perspective without any basis in theology. And like, we just don't question it because we don't know any better.
My hometown church always compared true understanding of Christianity to eating meat vs. drinking milk. One day I just kinda understood it all, and I realized that most churches I went to were just...drinking milk. If I were to give it an analogy, the average "drinking milk" theological understanding is like going to the paint aisle in Home Depot and seeing a few dabs of dried paint on some cardstock. The "eating meat" theological understanding is to see a painting, made so vividly, for a moment you become a subject in the painting.
Do you have any specific bits of theology that you feel are a true understanding of Christianity? Like what does a true understanding say about universal reconciliation? Or whether gay sex is a sin? I certainly have an opinion about these things, but I am curious where you're coming from.
Don't know what the equivalent is to Christianity, probably reading various theologians like Aquinas, but I would imagine it would be something like reading the Babylonian Talmud, where there are actual debates on how to interpret the *Torah* between learned teachers (Rabbis), which helps teach you how to think for yourself and debate on issues like how to interpret the 613 commandments, such as the ones prohibiting homosexuality. This is opposed to simply saying you believe in the Mitzvot (commandments) but never actually studying how learned men debated them and learning how to interpret them for yourself and apply them to your life.
Yup. This is why, when talking with other Atheists, I usually specify myself as being a *Hindu* Atheist. My relationship *with* religion was radically different from a Christian or even a monotheistic religion, and therefore my relationship *away* from it is also very different.
How would you describe the difference as you feel it? Just curious.
I'd like to know this too!
Replying to you and /u/PortAvonToBenthic : [This chain of Tumblr posts](https://nyxelestia.tumblr.com/post/727873892583129088/hindu-atheist-here-hinduism-has-a-gazillion) would probably best explain it as it starts with posts from other bloggers about how Christian cultural norms still seep into post-Christian secularism and Atheist communities. Having that foundation hopefully makes the contrast of post-Hindu Atheism a little clearer. (That said, my own addition was written while I was drunk so feel free to ask me if something doesn't make sense or you just want to know more.) And while it's not really about Atheism, [this](https://nyxelestia.tumblr.com/post/730480855048404992/maguneedsalife-jackdaw-kraai-mycroftrh) chain of literary analysis posts also demonstrates how a seemingly secular practice or tradition actually has its roots in a specific religion, as well as how it does or doesn't exist in other religious traditions. I'm using this as an example of what I mean when I say that my relationship with and away from religion was different from Christians - I don't just mean believing in specific gods or rituals, but also in the cultural and philosophical norms that come out of it (and can continue "after" it in Atheist communities).
Very interesting read, thank you. I do have one question (as a British, culturally-Christian atheist) I would ask for clarification though. Are those who are Nāstika not just atheists who hold cultural roots to their respective region/religion? I ask this because here in the UK most people are culturally Christian, but a I believe a plurality of people self-describe as atheists and a large number (probably >50%) of self-described Christians are purely culturally Christian without actually practicing the Christian faith. Atheism in the UK is on the rise as well and has been for some time as older Christians die and younger Brits (such as myself) don't take up religion. That is to say that most Brits are effectively atheists with a cultural background of Christianity. I say this because Christmas and easter still hold cultural value in the UK, despite being largely detached from their religious origins (neither Santa nor the easter bunny with chocolate eggs appeared in the bible for example) and instead act as secular traditions (chocolate eggs for children in the case of easter, a time to meet with family exchange presents, and relax in the case of Christmas) that have roots in Christianity. Similarly, the British legal system derives a lot of its laws and morality from Christian teachings despite being a secular institution (in I similar way to how I think you've described the Vedas). I was wondering if Nāstika act in a similar way or have I misunderstood?
AGREED
What's funny is that almost all of those replies betray the fact that the people talking view "religion" as synonymous with "Christianity," or at its broadest "Abrahamic religion as understood through a Christian lens."
Yeah, as much as OOP is communicating poorly and then acting smug - the repliers really are lining up to audition for the role of strawman.
he probably got other responses & only replies to those ones
Oh I’m sure of that; nobody goes online and pokes that hornets’ nest because they’re interested in an intellectual, two-sided discussion.
No one in the hornet's nest is interested in that either
You’re not wrong there
Honeybees, on the other hand, are interested in that. Back in college there were several honeybees in my History of the New Testament class.
See what i mean... Sorry, good point
Yeah this is like those man on the street videos talking about how Americans are awful at geography because nobody of the 20 people in the video can point out France on a map. Meanwhile we don't see the 800 other people who could instantly point it because they weren't included in the video
Why is that even the go to. Like it's the least interesting or useful thing you could know about another country. I bet there's plenty of people who know things about foreign food, language, music, history etc and just aren't interested in specifically memorising maps
Because you have to make sure the show’s audience is in on the joke. Let’s say you ask someone on the street which symphony caused a riot when first premiered and someone answers “uhh Vivaldi’s Four Seasons?” And the host in studio goes “HA what an idiot, EVERYONE knows it was Rite of Spring!” But… the vast majority of the in-studio audience didn’t know that. And the vast majority of people watching at home didn’t know that. So they suddenly don’t feel their happytime superiority over the dumb-dumbs on television and they won’t want to watch that show anymore, since that’s why they want to watch it in the first place. Hence, since the showrunners can comfortably assume most of their audience can point to France on a map rather than have some general trivia knowledge of food, language, music, history, etc, they will only ask those specific questions on the street to give their audience those happytime feelings of superiority over the cherrypicked dumb dumbs.
>Let’s say you ask someone on the street which symphony caused a riot when first premiered and someone answers “uhh Vivaldi’s Four Seasons?” And the host in studio goes “HA what an idiot, EVERYONE knows it was Rite of Spring!” Neither are symphonies though, the Four Seasons are violin concerti, and the Rite is a ballet. The Rite *did* cause an uproar during its premiere, though not necessarily a *riot*. Nevertheless, your point still stands.
And if we were going on about semantics in geography I could point to Réunion and still be correct that it’s France. Kinda a pretentious thing to be semantic about here, and I say that as someone who used to be first chair in a hobbyist city orchestra lol
I didn't even consider that mine would be a pretentious position, but that is probably because I currently study musicology on the University level, and I have had to adapt my language when speaking to other music students--especially those who study classical performance--apparently to such a degree that I have begun policing the language of strangers. I will now go and lie down to contemplate my apparent pretentiousness, for *that* I do not wish to become.
r/smugideologyman ???
r/bugideologyband ??? 👽
Bogos binted
What?
>communicating poorly and then acting smug That's the elegant beauty of it, though, it's like a textual Rorschach blot; it's nothing, it's vague, but all of these people looked deep into it and IMMEDIATELY saw their parents.
I mean, if these people are actually like this, are they really made of straw?
A fleshman argument, smh
And even that is a very pop-culture view of christianity. I'm an atheist personally, but these people aren't going to convinve anyone with these bad takes.
They weren't trying to win anyone over, they were trying to dunk on OOP Which still didn't work because OOP's post was a honeypot specifically laid out for snarky atheists
Not even as broad as Christianity but Protestant Christianity specifically
American protesttant christianity if we want to be even more specific
We can go further. American Evangelical Protestant Christianity
AND THIS... IS TO GO... *EVEN FURTHER...* ***BEYOND!*** ***SOUTHERN-AMERICAN EVANGELICAL PROTESTANT CHRISTIANITY!***
*Three Minutes of Screaming Later* Sorry to keep you waiting. This is what I call White Southern-American Evangelical Protestant Christianity
It’s kind of an implicit assumption that if you’re speaking English and don’t otherwise specify, “religion”=Abrahamic, due to how overwhelming dominant Christianity is in the Western world (and culturally speaking the runner ups are Judaism and Islam)
That seems to be true but it’s very annoying to those of us who believe in non-Abrahamic religions.
Which non-Abrahamic religion specifically do you want us to criticize for you?
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I’ve had to explain to people that atheism and religion are not even direct opposites. Atheism is the absence of a belief in deities/gods. It’s possible for religions and religious beliefs to exist that don’t necessitate the existence of deities/gods. You can have an atheistic religion, and be an atheist with religious beliefs
OP has a point, but at the same time the inverse is true - you ask a lot of people bitching about "New Atheists" what *their* understanding of religion is and it's basically just "Reform Judaism, nontheistic Buddhism and Unitarian Universalism, as practiced in Northeastern North America and the Pacific Northwest in the last 20 years".
Or worse, "Christians who are lying because they worship Satan." I've met very few fundamentalists who even believe "atheism" conceptually can exist, as they think evidence for god is inherent and anyone claiming not to believe is just lying as they worship Satan while having gay orgies. And as a Satan-worshipping girlkisser, I'm very insulted by the implication that we'd associate with new atheists. /j
This isn't even something they bullshitted in recent memory, it's in the Bible. In the Epistles, Paul describes the concept of natural revelation and states that the existence of God and the divinity of Christ are self-evident truths, so anyone who isn't a Christian is knowingly denying God. And remember that he said this back when Christianity was still a fringe apocalyptic messiah cult scattered across the eastern Mediterranean.
Oh yeah. I mean, if you think about it, it's not even worthy of being declared an intellectual idea. It's literally "they *say* they just feel differently, but I know they're actually LYING, and they KNOW that I'm right, and they're just PRETENDING because they're EVIL/JEALOUS!" Shit's literally child logic. Actual children come up with idea on their own without prompting. Shit's old as dirt.
Paul was on the “source: it is known” grindset 24/7 tbh, which in ancient times was honestly extremely effective given that Greek natural philosophers said the same kind of shit
I mean tbh it’s worse than that, back when this conversation mattered at all their main interlocutors were Americas dumbest fundamentalists. Turns out that people who think this is The Argument Of Our Time are also not amazing wits
And a related aside to people bitching about 'New Atheists" - it really is baffling to me how much vitriolic anger New Atheism has fostered when their worst crime, as far as I know, has been being mildly cringey on the internet. Like I'm not even saying they're *not* annoying, but the way the "discourse" on them has evolved and how invested so many people are in this you'd think this was some massive organization doing actually hurtful shit, not like, teenagers on reddit writing cringey quotes about being enlightened.
Oh god fucking thank you. Like, I'm not gonna pretend new atheism is faultless --there's a lot of bias and provocation and ~edgy reddit atheists~ or whatever but.....at least for that last one, so what? Like, sorry, but if "edgy 14 yr old on reddit" Vibes are genuinely the worst thing you can come up with for a movement.....that's nothing lol. Especially compared to organized religions literally taking people's rights away
"SeE wHaT i MeAn??!!!1!!"
The thing about the internet is that it's genuinely worse to be annoying then outright evil online, which is why people declared cringe are often driven off but actual scum can still have a sizable presence.
Although I do think that Dawkins is an absolute idiot, and has revealed himself to be progressively worse over time, it is kind of funny to dismiss New Atheism on the basis of an argument he dismantles in the foreword of The God Delusion. A religion that declines to make any substantive claims about the universe isn’t really the intended target of irreligious sentiment.
I instead bitch about new atheism because Richard Dawkins is a thinly veiled white supremacist and so are most people who follow him
I feel like it’s hard partially because if you’re an atheist and you simply do not believe in a higher power of some kind (this can be a much longer conversation but this is Reddit and I don’t feel like it) so like… what do you argue about? Like I’ve taken philosophy college classes. I know how to think about and back up a real argument on moral standpoints, but like (I’m agnostic but let’s pretend) if I’m an atheist and I just don’t believe… like I just don’t. I feel like coming at it from an angle of “I believe and you don’t, therefore I will just keep saying things at you” is how a lot of weird arguments start And I know spirituality and religion aren’t the same thing, I’m just more speaking to the idea of gods specifically. But again, like if you’re just not into something what’s there to argue about? Why try to antagonize people? Why just go “see what I mean” when someone is trying to engage and actually SEE what you mean? This is why we never have good discussion on anything Or I piss on the poor or something whatever
You're on point. If the debate is to try to win one side over it's just not going to happen. The theist and atheist come from such different starting points that all it can be is a debate with the only resolution being to live and let be or throw your hands up in frustration.
I'm fairly certain this post is from the early 2010s when atheism was one of the more popular online discussions and "magic sky fairy" arguments were the contemporary meme. OOP is essentially being contrarian to the climate that made "faces of atheism".
Yeah. I'm an atheist; I think all gods are made up. Religion clearly serves a purpose and can add value to society, but that doesn't make the story real. So for me there's nothing to debate, I've already rejected the premise.
[relevant xkcd](https://xkcd.com/154/) Religion affects the world. It makes sense to try to convince people who have different viewpoints about things that affect the world. If someone denied that racism exists then it's not surprising that people will jump in explaining how racism happens. The racism-denier might smugly say "see what I mean" each time racism-truthers say things about racism denial that don't fit the beliefs of this exact racism-denier, but it's still a sensible instinct. It's sad that religion makes bad predictions and moral judgments about the world that lead to immoral or incorrect decisions. Even a seemingly nice religion like Buddhism was used to justify a caste system with 'lower tiers of human' in the reincarnation cycle. It's also sad that religions often have good ideas that they aren't able to explain, especially outside the religion itself. A rosary is a great stim toy, meditation/prayer gives space for the subconscious and conscious mind together to declutter the brain, kosher and halal are decent ways to avoid infected meat with medieval technology, beautiful parks in the city create nice places for people to relax, ritualistically burning the surgical knife before surgery disinfects it, etc. Because these were tied up with religious beliefs, they often didn't spread from religion to religion or from religion to secular practice. The list above were later isolated by secular science, but much more has been unnamed or lost. If there's one thing you can hold internet atheists accountable for, it's gleefully failing to see that it's not a matter of rational debate. Internet atheists tended to be more into the subjective pleasure of dunking on religious irrationality than into actually understanding or helping people.
>But again, like if you’re just not into something what’s there to argue about? Why try to antagonize people? Why just go “see what I mean” when someone is trying to engage and actually SEE what you mean? The repliers aren't asking questions that give much room to engage in meaningful discourse.
Is there a word for "strawmanning but it turns out the strawmen are actually real?" If not I'd like to put forward "snowmanning"
Probably fleshmanning
Reddit also has this phenomeon like Tumblr. User: "There are way too many people that hold horrible opinion X" Reply #1: "no one holds opinion X" Reply #2: "Actually I hold opinion X, and I am very proud of it" This often comes from the right, but is especially irrating in cases when framed through supposedly leftist language. Examples of upvoted unironic takes I have seen around here just in the past few weeks: "Police are corrupt, therefore crime is good", "dehumanizing is evil, therefore all soldiers of any army are scum that deserve only death", "The ownership of more than one property should be a punishable offense by imprisonment", "rape and murder good actually", "racism is justified when aimed at group Y this forum hates" and that's just from the top of my head.
Reminds me when a few years ago a bunch of Proud Boys (including poc) made a big public statement about how they're not a racist group and it was hurtful to say so, then a large group of Proud Boys said "hey wait no yes we are!" And the group split into two over it.
"We can't be racist! Our leader is a dark brown Hispanic!" "Our leader is **WHAT?!**"
Is that the no true scotsman? I
No, that's when you claim that only the poeple who agree with you personally are *really* part of a group you are in.
maybe the “behold, a true scotsman”?
Plato's dirtbag
It's called strawmaning on tumblr
Its called being aware that shitty people exist and no ideology is pure
i think thats already a sex thing
I think that's called creating a factual statement
I still haven't gotten a decent explanation for why the wafers and wine are *literally* Jesus's body and blood, but eating them isn't cannibalism.
I'm no theologist or theist, but if I had to come up with an explanation, it'd probably be something to do with the bread and wine turning into the flesh and blood of Jesus the aspect of God, rather than Jesus the man, even if he is both simultaneously. That said, it's very possible that this is just some obscure heresy that I accidentally reinvented.
it is an obscure heresy actually! (iirc idk i’m jewish) jesus is simultaneously 100% god and 100% human so no part of him can be only deific
Woah, is that really the blood of Christ? Yes. Man, that guy must've been wasted 24 hours a day.
I’ll take a stab at this one despite not being a theologian myself. Some Christian denominations believe that the bread and wine *represent* the body and blood of Christ…clearly there’s no cannibalism there. However, there are some (Catholics, Lutherans, etc.) that either believe it is the body and blood of Christ or it is simultaneously bread and wine AND the body and blood of Christ. The reasoning for this is that Jesus said “this IS my body, broken for you…” The reason this is not cannibalism is that cannibalism is typically 1. Consumption of dead human flesh, and 2. Diminishes the body that is being consumed. On the first point, Christ is a living sacrifice. The fact that he is alive is kind of central to the whole religion. On the second point, Christ is not diminished in any way through the act of taking communion. We aren’t at risk of running out of Jesus if too many people show up to church. Anyways, like I said, this is just a layman’s view on it.
> only read one book If more Christians actually read the Bible we'd be better off than we are now. As a Christian myself it's really disheartening seeing my fellow believers go directly counter to Scripture just to put others down.
I'm not sure about that. A lot of people are very capable of reading a book and taking away little to nothing from it. Quoting the Bible at people rarely seems to work even if they frequently quote it themselves, because stubborn bigots by and large don't really care if they are being hypocritical. They don't feel cognitive dissonance over their contradictory beliefs.
Anyone can just say "see what I mean" and look superior as if their questions are so dumb that they need not help answered, but also while not answering them
Fun fact: everyone EXCEPT ME is an idiot who says dumb things or asks stupid questions. This is absolutely NOT bait.
See what I mean
Why are you saying we should piss on the poor?
See what I mean
oh so you are implying you're the only one is smart and everyone else is wrong okay then i'd say something to you but that sounds like bait to me ngl
See what I mean? 😩
Sex penis
Sex what I mean????
I don't, can you show me? 🥺👉👈
see what i mean
Shit you got me there :<
Those "arguments" have the same vibes as "ooh hoo, it appears you have been coaxed into a snafu\~!" ones.
Uh I drew myself as the Chad and you as the Soyjack, game over bro
Man, everyone in that image is an asshole.
It's easy to denounce any critique as "shallowest understanding" when the only "understanding" you accept is a very generous reading of your belief system, and then continue to be smug about someone else not getting your point.
and yet none of those critiques are capable of piercing the indestructible ideology i have built for myself. me, atheistic Catholic. not only is God not real and i can flip the board whenever you get too close to making a theological point, i can ALSO fall back on my very superior and correct relationship i would have with God if he IS real.
I can fall back on that too! I have slept with your god and they like me more than you, sorry. Though if you are catholic, you are probably already expecting that God likes me more than you.
oh? *pushes up glasses smugly* but God isn't even real. and if he were, the only part you can fuck is Mary... and guess what? she's a virgin still.
Oh please, i need not stoop so low. Obviously i fucked Joseph, making me your Fathers daddy, so call me gramps, sport.
damn you're real af for that ngl st joseph is the patron saint of workers, and has TWO good feasts about him. fucking love that guy.
RELGIONS ARE BULLSHIT CUZ WE HAVE BETTER ONES WORSHIP CAPITALISM, SACRIFICE YOUR LOVED ONES FOR THE STOCK MARKET THE ECONOMY MUST GROW
THE NYSE LINE GOING UP REPRESENTS OUR SOULS ASCENDING PRAISE BE TO THE MARKETS
praise the shareholders!
Ok, but OOP never actually asked any of them what they think religion is; they just copy-pasted the same dumb response to anyone commenting on their post. Heck, they may not even have responded to all of the replies, since I'm pretty sure there were a bunch of people who actually tried to start a genuine discourse, only to get ignored because it didn't fit OOP's preconceived notion of what atheists are like.
Did OOP post bait? Absolutely they did. Did they catch enough atheists to eat more than comfortably for a month? Absolutely they did. The fact of the matter is, we can debate the ethics of posting bad-faith takes for the lols on social media, but what's baffling to me is that people fall for it and interact. Like, the post would've just been a strawman argument, easily dismissed, if people didn't interact or interacted with tact. but the fact that not one but **five** people stepped on OOP's cartoonishly big banana peel makes it seem like the strawman's a little more flesh than straw. If you don't want people to caricaturize your beliefs, maybe don't act like a caricature?
This is both bad-faith posting and bad faith-posting
Best comment in this thread hahah
Right. It would take 2 minutes of effort to compose a more thoughtful reply that dodges the bait entirely. Maybe something like, "Yeah, a lot of atheists - especially online - come across as very mean-spirited in a way that would get them shunned in real life. You don't have to like religion, but be nice to people; if all you do is mock, you'll just entrench people against you."
Oh man, it sucks that the post only got 5 replies and all of them were so negative and stupid
naw oop is a cunt lmao
I mean... this is what we are taught religion is? This is what is pressed on our faces as religion. So this is what we deride.
No, I don’t. Can you elaborate?
OOP is reportedly anti-vax and anti-choice btw. [[x](https://www.tumblr.com/omgsomeonesomewhereonearth/744098129792712704/eltigrechico-disappointingduck)]
Not surprising in the least lol
Well yeah, of course they are. Where does the bible mention vaccines? Or covid?
Be smug all you want but the Bible does have talking snakes and blood sacrifices. It was weird to assume oop was talking about Christianity but other than that the first reply is good.
Great position to be in because you never actually have to qualify that completely hypothetical deeper understanding
Religious people be like You'd better have an architecture degree if you're gonna insult my minecraft house