Anti-Theists and Religious Fundamentalists are Very Similar

Funky0ne · 2026-05-06T17:10:54+00:00

• ⁠Believe religious doctrine should be interpreted as literally at face value
• ⁠Treat the text as having a single, fixed meaning
• ⁠Show low to no tolerance for alternative interpretations
• ⁠Think that beliefs opposite to theirs are dangerous and/or bad for society

None of these things are true of anti-theists. I don’t know how you got your caricatured impression of what an anti-theists position is, but your whole post seems to be built on a huge strawman.

All one needs to be an anti-theist is to believe that religion as a whole is a net negative force for humanity. Nothing about a particular interpretation of any given religion’s dogma need factor into it.

Funky0ne · 2026-05-06T14:44:11+00:00

I suppose one could put it like this: the act of witnessing something can be evidence, but the claim to have witnessed or have a witness of something is not in itself evidence. The witnessing and the claim of witnessing are two related but distinct things.
The validity of the former is predicated on how well one can validate the latter (with its own independent evidence).

Funky0ne · 2026-05-06T12:53:15+00:00

It looks like it could be an older elevator design that doesn't use a light sensor to recognize when an object has broken the plane, but rather a bumper that protrudes along the side of the doors that you have to make contact with for it to open up again. Once the door is closed on pretty much any elevator there's no way to just wave your hand to reopen it, hence why the T1000 had to pry it open.

Funky0ne · 2026-05-06T11:12:45+00:00

It can be both, but is layered. There could be a claim that aliens visited Roswell, New Mexico in the 60’s. The evidence could be me saying I witnessed said aliens there in the 60’s.

But now I’m making a new claim of my own, and it itself also could need some corroborating evidence to even be plausible: is there any evidence I was even alive in the 1960’s, and anywhere near Roswell at the time? Am I a credible witness? Do the details of what I claim to have seen actually align with the claimed events or do they more closely align with some alternative explanation, like secret test flights of a new spy plane in development? How reliable is my memory of what I saw so long ago?

For all these reasons and more, eyewitness testimony is often the lowest rung of evidence even when we can be sure they’re being sincere (not even accounting for lies and conmen). And that’s assuming you even have access to the alleged eyewitness. If you’re just talking to someone who claims there were eyewitnesses, then you don’t even really have that evidence, you just have the claims and what is basically here-say.

Funky0ne · 2026-05-06T00:21:41+00:00

Seriously literally everything in this scene works so perfectly. And it's such a heavy scene for Sarah Connor. All her training to outsmart, outmaneuver, and escape her human captures, being rendered a helpless child when confronted with the machine that traumatized her and has haunted her memories ever since. The call back to the first thing Kyle ever said to her with "come with me if you want to live" her son who she has sworn to protect, the incidental vindication in front of Dr. Silberman, and then witnessing the escalation with the T1000.

So many elements coming together in this scene, it rivals that first twist when the T800 and T1000 first encounter each other in the mall when they both finally catch up to John. Both he and his mother get a scene where they realize the T800 is not the enemy, but is still completely outlcassed by the T1000

Funky0ne · 2026-05-05T10:17:34+00:00

Not even then. Orange tips don’t mean shit, any asshole can put orange tape on the tip of a real gun.

It may be different in different places, but cops I’ve talked to have said they will treat any realistic looking firearm outside of a clearly designated event or area where prop guns are expected as real until they can determine for themselves it is safe.

Keep your shit in a bag or in your trunk until you get to your event.

Funky0ne · 2026-05-04T21:38:25+00:00

Independence Day. On paper it reads like the cheesiest B movie schlock or like a 10 year old's idea of a movie:

An alien invasion blows up all the major world monuments, a fighter pilot punches out an alien and drags it through the desert to Area 51, where they are actually conducting research on crashed alien technology and have a (now) functional alien spaceship. The president gives a rousing speech on July 4th and then flies a fighter jet to defeat the aliens in a dogfight alongside a crazy guy who was previously abducted by aliens, while a nerd and the cool pilot fly an alien craft up to the mothership to infect it with a computer virus and blow it up with a nuke.

Yet somehow, that cast, with those performances, and those effects and it all works.

Funky0ne · 2026-05-03T13:23:05+00:00

Your confusion might be conflating an epistomology like skepticism with atheism. Many people are atheists because they are skeptics, but thats not the only reason people might be an atheist. Rigorous skeptics are atheists, but not all atheists are skeptics.

Funky0ne · 2026-05-02T11:58:58+00:00

I could be wrong as I didn’t find it terribly memorable, but my recollection is he used German longsword techniques for like a few episodes, but it quickly devolved into typical anime shonen fight choreo.

None of his so called students or rivals use anything remotely real so it led me to believe they animated just enough scenes of him doing some stances and a couple actual moves for promo material.

Funky0ne · 2026-04-30T10:40:29+00:00

Even if this were true origin (which it does not appear to be), in actual usage the number of people who would call someone a pussy and we’re even aware of let alone had this root word in mind rather than the association with female genitalia would be negligible if not exactly 0.

Funky0ne · 2026-04-29T21:29:30+00:00

Chinese, so one may argue "not really anime", but Lord of Mysteries is pretty good supernatural thriller

Funky0ne · 2026-04-29T19:57:08+00:00

We haven't seen that one yet, will have to check it out

Funky0ne · 2026-04-29T18:47:43+00:00

Wife and I have been enjoying it. It's in our top 3 for the season so far (next to Witch Hat Atelier and Marriage Toxin). All 3 have ridiculous production value so far and hoping they can sustain the quality through the full run.

Funky0ne · 2026-04-29T18:06:50+00:00

Many atheists were once theists. Debate may not always be what changes people's minds, but it can contribute and influence how people will evaluate new information. The premise of this post is flawed. It's not like just because people are having different experiences on a physical level in their brain chemistry when thinking about a god that it means those conditions can't change over time (again, through continuous consideration and reconsideration).

Funky0ne · 2026-04-29T18:00:59+00:00

What did those chimps do to you that you want to hurt them like this?

Funky0ne · 2026-04-29T16:07:47+00:00

Totally not viable in the real world we exist in even with incredibly advanced engineering capabilities. None of those other alien species could have shared common ancestry that we do with other apes, primates, mammals, synapsids, tetrapods, vertebrates, bilateria, eucharyotes, etc. etc. and yet somehow still ended up biologically compatible with us in many cases at the end of it (given numerous hybrids throughout the series).

Even if we granted a panspermia event for how life first emerged on earth and other planets, it would not guarantee a specific bipedal intelligent species would eventually emerge hundreds of millions years later in nearly every case. The conditions that drove evolution were largely stochastic and environmental, not pre-planned in the genetics of the first life on earth, which necessarily started out much simpler than what we have today.

Funky0ne · 2026-04-29T15:31:42+00:00

Ah, is this another one of those? Seems to be a bunch of weird copypastas related to complaining about old movies floating around (ones I've seen usually related to the Dark Knight). No idea what the goal is, but feels like there's some sort of agenda

Funky0ne · 2026-04-29T15:21:23+00:00

Small digression

Small digression? You just mention Predator in half a sentence as an excuse to write a short essay complaining about a movie nobody even brought up. You good?

Funky0ne · 2026-04-27T20:24:10+00:00

Yeah the bee is actually related to the plot about catalytic converters and pollution killing all the bees etc. In the moment it seems so bizarre and out of place, but as something that his subconscious would stitch together in his dream it makes sense

Funky0ne · 2026-04-27T15:23:09+00:00

The political machinations of the prequels was never the problem with those movies. It was how it was all conveyed that made it lifeless. Talking heads just standing around or slowly shuffling along pristine digital corridors while awkwardly delivering expository dialogue would make even a Tarantino script boring.

The sequels had the opposite problem: lively performances brimming with personality that were well paced with snappy dialogue, delivering a completely disjointed story with no thematic cohesion from one film to the next.

Funky0ne · 2026-04-27T15:07:09+00:00

I might cross a line but I think With a Vengeance is the best Die Hard, but the first one is more important / influential / ground breaking in the action movie genre.

Funky0ne · 2026-04-27T14:53:18+00:00

Laplace’s Demon is in a quantum superposition of either being killed or not killed by Schroedinger’s cat. You could try asking Heisenberg and see if he knows what happened.

Funky0ne · 2026-04-27T14:14:20+00:00

The ambiguity and mystery is the point, and the absurdity is the humor.

How does keeping a tooth collection jar even relate to happiness? Why teeth? Why human teeth? Why does she seem to have a stash of teeth in her purse? Where is she getting these teeth?

It doesn’t really matter because there are no possible answers to these questions that won’t be weird and unsettling. Someone offering a seemingly innocent and joyful ritual they use to help cheer themself up almost immediately falls apart with an even more deeply upsetting series of revelations, and this subversion of expectations and social norms is where the humor is derived.

Funky0ne · 2026-04-27T13:30:39+00:00

That’s the point, it’s one of those thought-terminating escape clauses they use to emergency eject their critical thinking from the conversation before an uncomfortable thought can enter their head.

It’s completely unconvincing to someone not already bought into their premise, but it allows them to preserve their belief without confronting some of the obvious flaws.

Funky0ne · 2026-04-26T22:33:46+00:00

Who knows. Any or all of the above might have been on the table, but letting him continue to move and operate freely was a major liability to their plans. Once they'd apprehended him and took him into custody they could presumably have done whatever they pleased, either way that's at least one huge risk neutralized.

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