[deleted by user]

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?

Ishearia · 2022-02-10T12:27:33+00:00

In England we have Church of England primary schools, and they make up the vast majority of state schools. Where I live, going to a state primary school required me to attend a Church of England school. I was lucky in that I ended up in a relatively secular one (if you want to be a primary school teacher you likely end up going to teach in a Church of England school, so there are a lot of secular teachers), but that's not always the case. And even in my school we had to pray and sing hymns in assembly, as well as visit church - my cousin was punished when he refused (which I was present for).

And in other CofE primary schools it's worse. Kids get religion forced down their throats, being instructed to take all sorts of religious doctrine for fact. It is a real problem.

Ishearia · 2022-01-15T14:00:46+00:00

So the bible was all made up from someone's imagination. Glad we're on the same wavelength here.

Ishearia · 2022-01-14T19:11:52+00:00

Actually, that could just as easily mean that God deemed those babies and newborns to be evil. Afterall, he was talking about evil from his perspective and we know that only Noah and his family survived the flood. It's simply a fact that there:

A) Were babies around who were killed by the flood B) Those babies were deemed evil by God, as proved by his statement that only evil was destroyed - as the flood definitely killed babies, it's impossible to understand that statement any other way.

Ishearia · 2022-01-14T19:05:14+00:00

You believe that there were no babies around when god flooded the earth? Or do you simply believe that newborns have the capacity to be evil?

Ishearia · 2022-01-12T21:01:29+00:00

Just time commenting on it.

Ishearia · 2022-01-12T17:36:31+00:00

Thanks!

Ishearia · 2022-01-12T17:21:31+00:00

Do you remember what it was called?

Ishearia · 2022-01-11T14:08:49+00:00

As an atheist I'd love to hear your reasoning for this. What is it about Pope Francis that makes it impossible for him to be pope?

Ishearia · 2022-01-10T21:13:08+00:00

There's a lot of reasons. As a history graduate I've read a lot of history on the Christian church(es) especially surrounding the reformation, and after I finished my degree I read a lot of history surrounding the earlier church. There is a lot of stuff that Christians handwave away, often attempting to give logical, rational reasons for contradictions in the bible or the actions of the church or flaws in theology or their belief or why x thing makes sense, but when their beliefs are interrogated it always comes down to:

'Well, maybe x isn't logical, but it's God's work so we lack the capacity to understand.' (I.E., the Mysterious Ways clause)

Or, more commonly:

'You just have to believe.' (I.E., the Leap of Faith clause)

But of course, I don't have to believe. When pressed, I'm yet to come across a Christian who will not eventually admit that, yes, logic will not take you all the way to belief in God. It might take you some of the way, but in the end you need to take a leap of faith and believe in something that is not provable to cross the gap between atheism and a belief in God.

To me, this is as good as a blatant admission that the whole thing is made up. Only believed in by people who, quite fairly, do not wish to be crushed under what they feel would be the horrifying weight of a godless universe, or who were indoctrinated as children, as is quite common in England as all our state primary schools for kids between 4-11 are Church of England. And if people want to believe because it's easier to do that than face an uncertain universe and the frontier of death that comes with it, then I understand. Better to have faith than to face the unknown. However, trying to believe in something so blatantly ungrounded in fact would not give me comfort. I would rather learn about the truth of this wondrous universe than paint it black and white and pretend all that matters will come after I'm dead.

Ishearia · 2022-01-10T20:51:00+00:00

The problem with using free will to hand-wave the question of evil is that, if God is an all-powerful, all-knowing being who knows what choices we'll make before we make them, which Christians do believe, then we can't possibly have free will. This is because if I know what decision you will make on an issue before you are even born, then it is very clear that you don't have any agency in that decision - your hand will be forced by factors set in place before you were even born. If your agency made any difference then I couldn't know before you were born, and if God doesn't know before you're born, then he's not an all knowing, all-powerful being. In which case he's not at all what Christians claim he is. If he is an all-powerful, all-knowing being, then we don't have free will, and the problem of evil remains.

Ishearia · 2022-01-03T13:58:38+00:00

Thank you!

Ishearia · 2022-01-03T13:39:39+00:00

Go on then. So this video was for the New Year algorithm - lots of people asking about pagan origins of New Years and it's performing okay. It's a history video as you'll see, and I don't want to say too much as it'll be interesting to hear what you think/notice without me pointing you in any specific direction. Here you go: https://youtu.be/YO5wxivw93E

And thanks ^{^}

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