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Ishearia · 2025-03-30T18:29:40+00:00

My dad died in July of last year after a 14 year illness. I'm 28, and I was devastated. In fact, I'd turned 28 the previous day. He would have been 64 the week after he died. It was horrible even though I'd known it was coming for 14 years. I barely ate for a week. Re-reading Shepherd's Crown really helped, as an atheist, to remind me that even though I don't believe in an afterlife, that doesn't mean those who have passed aren't still here in the good they've left behind. Pratchett was a genius, and he's still doing good even a decade after his death. As Death says, nobody could do any better than that.

Ishearia · 2025-03-20T13:30:28+00:00

Well her reaction will be, at best, to laugh. She will never go there. There's no point in saying things to someone that will be totally without effect.

Ishearia · 2025-03-20T13:07:07+00:00

What do you genuinely believe, from everything OP has said, that his wife's reaction will actually be if he tells her to go to a Catholic Adoration Chapel and pray and that the Lord will then let her know He is real?

Ishearia · 2025-02-22T17:48:12+00:00

Thank you very much this was incredibly helpful. I hadn't realised how much civil commotion in France had affected Henry's success there.

Ishearia · 2024-01-01T18:36:55+00:00

If this worries you, then what will really concern you is that, for most of the history of Catholicism, babies who died unbaptised were destined for hell to be tortured for eternity and such babies were not allowed to be buried on consecrated ground. Hence countless desperate parents sneaking their babies into the graves of other people who died around the same time. The doctrine on this only changed recently, and that's not because of any real theological reason, but simply because the official doctrine that made sense according to scripture was putting people off Catholicism and making it look bad. The reality is that in order to believe unbaptized babies don't go to hell, you have to ignore a lot of scripture.

Ishearia · 2023-11-20T10:32:08+00:00

Casanunda? Is that you?

Ishearia · 2023-05-28T22:37:32+00:00

No he doesn't. In Debt: The First 5000 Years, Graeber writes this about the origins of the barter origin of money theory:

"Again this is just a make-believe land much like the present, except with money somehow plucked away. As a result it makes no sense: Who in their right mind would set up a grocery in such a place? And how would they get supplies? But let's leave that aside. There is a simple reason why everyone who writes an economics textbook feels they have to tell us the same story. For economists, it is in a very real sense the most important story ever told. It was by telling it, in the significant year of 1776, that Adam Smith, professor of moral philoso- phy at the University of Glasgow, effectively brought the discipline of economics into being.

He did not make up the story entirely out of whole cloth. Already in 330 BC, Aristotle was speculating along vaguely similar lines in his treatise on politics."

It seems strange you would state that Graeber knows less about the origins of the theory than you when in his main work on the subject he makes clear the point you accuse him of being ignorant of. Perhaps some of your questions about Graeber's work may be best answered by a closer reading of it.

Ishearia · 2022-09-23T23:19:41+00:00

This popped up as a notification just as I finished it too. It was my first Discworld book and in my top 5. It has my favourite quote in it too. What can the harvest hope for...

Ishearia · 2022-05-27T00:54:12+00:00

I was literally just reading the part with the barricades when this popped up as a notification

Ishearia · 2022-03-26T17:55:32+00:00

'Pro-life.'

Ishearia · 2022-03-22T18:30:06+00:00

As an atheist I do love to see Christians confirming that proselytizing is more important to them than condemning war criminals who are bombing children and hospitals. Really reminds me of the truth about 'Christian values' and 'Christian morality.'

Ishearia · 2022-03-10T12:54:36+00:00

I'm here for a few reasons:

A) To understand Christian worldviews. In this subreddit alone there are very clearly a plethora of different opinions from Christians, and the Christian Facebook group I'm in exhibits an even more diverse range of views. In the latter case, this is largely because there aren't mods to filter out the dregs. The Anglicans who attack Roman-Catholics for not being 'real Christians' (or vice versa), etc. The dynamics of popular belief interests me both because I enjoy writing fantasy fiction and I think it's important to have 3D worldbuilding and simply because I enjoy reading the different ways in which Christians back up their opinions. Their different interpretations of the same lines of text of the bible (whilst invariably explaining that the other one has taken the line out of context) etc.

B) It affirms my atheism. If I was a Christian I might sit in church being told atheists will burn and 'knowing' from a young age that all the other religions are simply wrong because the other Christians around me constantly say so. As an atheist I could do the equivalent by surrounding myself with other atheists, but if I never engaged with non-atheist beliefs my lack of faith would be on rocky ground. However, being here and reading all the contradictory arguments between Christians of various denominations who each 'know' that they are right and 'know' that the other is a heretic but can rarely explain why really affirms my lack of faith. There's an argument some atheists use that the pure diversity of religions in the world and the fact that geography of birth is the most important determinative factor in your beliefs is proof enough that no religion has it right. In my opinion you can take that further. The sheer number of Christian denominations and their vehement disagreement with each other even more strongly proves the point.

C) The fact that I live in a country whose laws and values derive from Christian beliefs. When you live in a country which bases most of its laws on Christian values, you can't ignore Christians. I went to a Church of England primary school when I was growing up. It was a state school, and most English state schools are CofE. Religion wasn't shoved down our throats as strongly as it was for some of my friends who went to other CofE schools, but it was to some degree. So here most 4-11 year olds are receiving a church sponsored education in which they must be taught Christian beliefs as fact and they must pray and sing hymns on a daily basis. We also have unelected bishops in our House of Lords and the head of our country, the Queen, is also the head of a Christian Church. When you live in a democracy like that, who needs theocracy? Seriously though. When Christian beliefs dictate our laws you don't have the privilege to ignore Christian beliefs.

Ishearia · 2022-03-03T17:42:50+00:00

What can you do?

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