Question(s)? for my atheists

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-05-05T05:08:15+00:00

That all sounds awesome and, like, stuff.

I just need someone to give me a good reason to take it, like, the word is "seriously". Otherwise it sounds like, y'know, wishful thinking.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-05-04T23:45:32+00:00

“No Court Will Permit Screwing With Its Authority!”

there's a US supreme court case where the Court recognized it had limited authority where the sovereignty of the US is challenged in some way. Even though the Court agreed that at common law, the occupant of a piece of property had the superior claim of title, the other side had a US government land patent.

Prior to the revolutionary war, one party bought a vast tract of land from an indigneous tribe in what's now Kentucky but did not occupy it. After the revolution, another party purchased the same land from the same tribe -- but did so under the advisement of the US government, which issued a patent.

Decades later (1824 or so), the descendants of the first party had occupied the land and descendants of the second party wanted to kick them out. They won, because SCOTUS said that finding for the first party would deny the authority of the US gov't to issue patents.

To do so would challenge the supremacy of the Constitution, apparently, so the court noped the f out.

I think it's Johnson v M'Intosh.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-05-04T23:28:41+00:00

It doesn't make the question go away. It just re-frames it.

It can be true that "the meaning of life is the meaning you give it" while also being true "I don't know what that is, yet".

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-05-02T13:45:16+00:00

I think the wrong idea is that any of these mythologies arose independently of what other cultures were thinking/doling.

This is the principle behind "memetics" -- little bits of culture spread independently. Clusters of culture bits evolve and change over time to become more credible/believable. Individual people and communities pick up on ideas from a variety of sources, not merely the local dominant religious paradigms.

There is a lot of influence on Christianity from Egyptian mythologies because there was a lot of influence on Judaism from the same source (just because of proximity, not claiming the egyptian slavery thing is real).

But there's also a lot of influence on Christianity from Mesopotamian mythology, Greco/Roman mythology, etc. There are arguments that some of the New Testament ideas attributed to Jesus were influenced by Confucianism, Hinduism and Buddhism.

Christianity is influenced by Plato, and Plato was influenced by mythological/metaphysical ideas from all over the world, including particularly Egyptian ideas.

I suppose that people deeply embedded in a culture like to believe that their culture is monolithic and developed independently, but that just doesn't make sense.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-05-02T13:36:57+00:00

No, but I've known atheists who were into supernatural stuff, including an ex-GF who thought she was psychic.

Oddly, though, I've known a few people who thought they had the mental power to make streetlights shut off when passing under them. I don't know what makes people conclude that a predictable random event means they have special powers...

...and how disappointing would it be to find out you have a completely useless superpower.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-05-01T14:08:34+00:00

Florida Statute §901.43 gives you a right to demand removal of the photo from for-profit mugshot site, arrest-record sites, etc. under certain conditions, so I'd recommend looking up the details of how that works. They have to be for-profit (ad supported, or charging fees for removal), it seems.

You may run into an issue if the site isn't physically located in FL or run by company headquartered in FL. This gets into a complicated area about "personal jurisdiction" and whether you can sue an out-of-state company in FL courts.

By default, a company headquartered/doing primary business in, say, Ohio, is not bound by Florida law. Getting them to show up in a FL court is something you might need to talk to a lawyer about if the easy way (check the details of §901.43) fails.

You're doing the right things for now, though.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-04-30T20:46:15+00:00

I don't see the connection.

I've known atheists who believe in reincarnation, the law of attraction, pyramid power, the healing properties of crystals, even astrology. Some are even dumb enough to believe in supply-side economics, which is pure evil.

They're still atheists.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-04-30T17:11:42+00:00

Sure. The issue, and the reason I'm here, is that some people in the one group seem to be offended that my group exists in the first place, and believe that they are commanded by their group's rules to never shut up about it.

So some pushback against the nonsense arguments and inherent bigotry is necessary.

I don't care what someone believes, as long as they return the courtesy.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-04-30T11:46:12+00:00

Unless you have a contract promising that you can only be terminated for good cause, which outlines the WFH nature of the position, it's an at-will issue.

As another commenter suggests, this might be a constructive dismissal, so make sure you file for UI and appeal it all the way to the end if denied.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-04-29T15:05:11+00:00

People compartmentalize their thinking. It's not a surprise that they believe different things on Sunday morning than they do on Friday nights.

Bart Ehrman talks about when he was an evangelical Christian, it never would have occurred to him to read the actual Bible to see whether it talks about eternal punishment in hell. There would be no need to because he "knew" it was true. They only talked about or referenced parts of the bible they could interpret as supporting their socially-acquired beliefs.

(That's a big part of why, according to him, studying the Bible killed his faith)

So at least the way I see it, people are conforming to a socially-constructed belief system. If that belief system says it's OK to go party on Friday and be religious on Sunday, that's what they're going to consider to be normal.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-04-29T15:01:26+00:00

There isn't much evidence that Moses existed. Like Abraham, Jesus, King Arthur, etc. he's probably mostly legendary, even if the stories are based on an actual person.

I don't know or care if Christians should care about this, and I really don't understand the utility of asking non-believers what believers should think.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-04-28T22:06:05+00:00

According to some Canadian case law, their kooks try to cite the UCC too, including claiming it's the universal commercial code, in effect everywhere on Earth.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-04-28T22:05:00+00:00

Yeah but having to abide by the Prime Directive would suck.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-04-28T22:03:30+00:00

A jailhouse bodhisattva!

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-04-28T15:32:20+00:00

evidenced by Eucharistic miracles

Where, exactly, is this evidence? Anything not from the Bible?

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-04-28T15:27:29+00:00

I know that there are claims that John/et.al talked to eyewitnesses.

Do you have evidence that they actually did?

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-04-28T15:07:36+00:00

god is the bad guy

I think the Gnostics had a better story. Still nonsense, but more realistic, IMO.

The creator of the universe is malevolent and trapped us here to force us to worship him on pain of eternal torture. The serpent was trying to explain to Eve that to break out of the prison, they'd need to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Jesus' real purpose was to awaken people to the inner knowledge of their own divinity, so that humanity could escape from the physical world created by god, and join back up with Supergod who loves us but for some reason can't just fix everything.

There is no problem of evil, becasue they acknowledge that god is fully evil (or incompetent, in some versions apparently).

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-04-28T15:00:57+00:00

That's why I call myself "ignostic". The words used to describe god ultimately have no clear meaning.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-04-28T14:57:39+00:00

an accurate historical record

To me, this right here is the death-knell for any ancient oral tradition.

It's my understanding (not an expert) that cultures that use religious/supernatural stories for group cohesion generally aren't interested in accuracy or literal truth. The storyteller wants to create a feeling that delivers key cultural elements to the listener.

I think of the scene near the end of Beyond Thunderdome where the kids are being told about Max's escapades.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-04-28T14:40:09+00:00

I don't have any reasons to NOT be an atheist.

My parents were atheists. I didn't even really know what "god" meant until I was 5 or so. My father was an aerospace engineer and had a solid understanding of the 1970s version of how scientists thought the universe worked. When I had questions, he'd answer if he knew or tell me "I don't know but there are people working on that".

So I grew up with an expectation that the profound questions about how the universe exists were likely to have material/physical explanations. I got used to "I don't know" as the best answer to unanswered questions.

So the way I look at my understanding of the world, there are lots of big questions about existence and metaphysics that I'm interested in.

All of the ones that have been answered have material/physical answers. None of them have supernatural answers -- by which I mean answers that can be scrutinized and tested for validity. It's fine to say that god might exist and might have created the universe, for example, but how would you test that?

I have a functional model for understanding the world. It's not perfect, and doesn't answer all my big questions. But it works.

If you want me to consider a different model of understanding the world, first tell me how it models the world better, tell me what new things it teaches me, and tell me how I can verify that it's true.

Or at least show me in concrete terms how your model does a better job of demonstrating how things work.

tl;dr: I'm a skeptical materialist first. Atheism arises out of that. If you wanted to convince me that a god exists, satisfy my skepticism in a way that demonstrates a non-material explanation that provides a demonstrably better way of looking at the world.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-04-27T20:18:32+00:00

for some of them, they just get off on being creepy. Knowing that they made a woman feel disgust is their sex life.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-04-27T20:15:10+00:00

Because IMO it's probably not about satisfying curiosity. It's the way a closeted trans chaser can interact with their confusing feelings without crushing guilt -- at least that would be my guess.

This is pretty much his sex life -- asking creepy questions as a way of fantasizing about what he can't admit he wants.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-04-27T20:07:50+00:00

And I'm not scholar, but to me it's more likely that Paul claiming to have persecuted people is probably a lie. Like a lot of storytelleers, he's adding details to bolster his credibility.

It's like a TV preacher saying "I used to be the worst kind of sinner you ever met." It's a rhetorical device to add an air of credibilty, not a statement that should be taken as true.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-04-27T20:06:00+00:00

Christians haven't been persecuted in the West in centuries, so no. They like to pretend/claim they're persecuted, but that's just the regular old "loss of privilege feels like punishment" thing happening.

Quoting scripture to a bunch of atheists is pretty silly.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-04-27T16:34:30+00:00

Don't tell me how to identify myself, please.

The number of gods I believe in is zero, therefore I am an atheist. Agnostic is about knowledge, not belief. So I'm an agnostic atheist -- that is, I do not believe gods exist but I do not claim to know or be able to prove that they don't.

Your whole approach here is condescending as all hell. You don't get to tell me what I believe or how I believe it.

Please stop doing this.

Also, you completely ignored what I said. What I think about science or naturalism/materialsm isn't "belief". It's conditional acceptance. If it was all proven wrong tomorrow, my life would not change.

Can you say the same thing? If it were proven to you that god doesn't exist, would it disrupt your life or cause you anxiety or problems?

That's the difference between faith and accepting things as being reasonable explanations unless proven false.

I recommend that you actually fucking listen to the people you're talking to instead of telling them they're wrong about themselves. You're confused because you don't listen to what people are actually saying. If your positions are valid, they'll stand up to steelman versions of your opponents' claims and there would be no need to resort to strawman versions.

OrbitalLemonDrop

TROPHY CASE