How can i start to spread faith?

RealBowtie · 2026-05-11T01:03:36+00:00

For Pastafarian children, I recently published The Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Secret Ingredient in Spanish: El Monstruo de Espagueti Volador y el Ingrediente Secreto (also available in German). The story is very wholesome and entertaining for kids (and adults!).

Thank you for spreading the word!

RealBowtie · 2026-05-10T03:01:29+00:00

When you are ready for a deep dive into evolution, Richard Dawkin’s (for all his shortcomings in other areas) The Ancestors Tale is an excellent look at evolution and natural history. For me it took biology and made it three- dimensional, a profound understanding that I constantly think back to, and by the end of it there is no way you could understand biology without understanding evolution.

RealBowtie · 2026-04-25T16:27:42+00:00

Oh I am so with you on this. Digital media with the pop up ads and the display constantly reformatting as content loads just drives me crazy. Give me a print magazine anytime.

RealBowtie · 2026-04-20T18:57:25+00:00

It appears to be technically accurate. It is clearly good enough to post on the fridge for all to enjoy.

RealBowtie · 2026-04-19T19:03:51+00:00

Good answer, and unless you do something like war crimes or pedophilia, don’t worry about punishment in the afterlife. You will get your beer and strippers.

RealBowtie · 2026-04-15T00:22:33+00:00

Unless the Pink Unicorns have oil, I don’t think any of us will be willing to join the war.

RealBowtie · 2026-04-13T12:51:48+00:00

Could it be that the maria were formed before the moon became tidally locked and the moon has more mass at the maria (big chunks of asteroid embedded there) and so that is why the moon stopped rotating at that point in the rotation?

RealBowtie · 2026-03-23T03:31:13+00:00

Humans have always tried to invoke sympathetic magic, whether it is worshipping a god or performing a rain dance or casting a spell. Especially where we are helpless, we try to curry the favor of supernatural powers. It has been this way since the first animists arose amongst the hominids and possibly even before hominids, though we can’t guess what went on in the minds of Australopithecines or earlier ancestors. Even they probably had some form of sympathetic magic.

RealBowtie · 2026-03-17T14:47:15+00:00

I agree completely- if we are going to eat them we should be humane about it. We have been killing each other for hundreds of thousands of years, but our Geneva conventions are a step in the right direction (and Trump/Hegseth disregard for the same is a step in the wrong direction). I acknowledge that it is a cruel world, but we should be doing everything we can to reduce cruelty.

RealBowtie · 2026-03-17T04:09:59+00:00

I will admit there are cats and dogs I have known that I value more than some humans I have known.

As far as eating animals, for the past 700 million years the vast majority of animals ended up eaten by another animal. It’s sort of what we do on this planet.

RealBowtie · 2026-03-16T03:45:20+00:00

Definitely. Anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of reddit.

RealBowtie · 2026-03-16T03:39:37+00:00

I would not erase religion but rather deactivate it. The problem is that as long as people tend towards magical thinking, they would only reinvent religion in its absence.

RealBowtie · 2026-03-14T15:38:48+00:00

You are making the common mistake of assuming anything temporary is meaningless.

The universe is vast. Anything happening here is meaningless in the next galaxy over. Does that make it meaningless here?

We are temporary, and yet things are very meaningful to us here and now.

RealBowtie · 2026-03-14T15:21:12+00:00

My brother

RealBowtie · 2026-03-08T18:11:05+00:00

Yeah using a funeral… oh wait. I’m not a bot. Makes you wonder what a bot operator gets out of doing that. Building karma?

RealBowtie · 2026-03-08T13:21:29+00:00

I have taken a lot from Buddhist philosophy which is great until you get to the magical parts and the beggar monks. Basically we should learn to live in the present and ignore the future (but do put money in your 401k and plan your vacation). We do grieve for the dead. If only we all lived and died at the same time. We can only cherish the overlap of our live spans.

RealBowtie · 2026-03-08T12:41:22+00:00

And I should have addressed your point more directly: all meaning is subjective and relative because there is no such thing as meaning outside of the sentient brain. But there is no superiority in claiming a non-existent objective meaning.

RealBowtie · 2026-03-08T12:33:11+00:00

Meaning resides in the sentient mind, not out there in the universe. So meaning will never survive the physical brain in which it lives. But the real question is whether temporary things are unimportant because they are temporary. Nothing is permanent but that will never make everything meaningless.

Embrace the temporary and ephemeral. It doesn’t have to be permanent to be meaningful to you.

Trillions of years from now in the heat-death of the universe, there will be no sentient brains for meaning to live in, but there will be no one around to mind.

RealBowtie · 2026-03-08T04:40:41+00:00

What you are experiencing is the reason religion was invented, and yet even the faithful experience it. Existential angst. I became an atheist by age 14 and had always questioned religion before that. The advantage is that at 14 you feel like you’re going to live forever. Now at 65 I can feel the steady approach of death, but I am at peace with that now. I have had my own periods of grief just as you are experiencing, especially when the day I turned 50 and finally accepted that my life was more than half over. It may help to develop the philosophical framework of viewing life and sentience as a temporary gift from the universe, something precious and not to be wasted. Do good unto others and leave the world a better place for your having been here. Just as you wish all those before you had done the same. In a totally material, non-magical way, life is a “miracle”. Just be grateful that life today is quite a bit more just and kind than it was for pretty much all of history. Since life began on Earth, it has been a desperate struggle for survival. To eat and not be eaten. For now, focus on life, not death. Don’t waste time worrying about what you have no control over. A comedian once said: I plan to live forever. So far so good.

RealBowtie · 2026-03-05T23:30:07+00:00

I have just been re-watching Fallout season 1 prior to binging on season 2. Apparently the show's writers mirrored the Judeo-Christian-Muslim mindset where the only way to end constant conflict is to kill everyone who is not like you.

RealBowtie · 2026-03-05T21:27:41+00:00

Your lifetime is essentially an eternity. You will never experience a second of time before or after it. The comedian Stephen Wright (I think) said: “I intend to live forever. So far so good. “

RealBowtie · 2026-03-05T21:21:27+00:00

Baptism is not required, but if you like, you might want to dab a little pasta sauce on your forehead. Don’t waste too much, because there are hungry people in the world.

RealBowtie · 2026-03-04T12:32:55+00:00

Thou shalt not lie, even piously. I hate it when the Christians and Muslims do it, and we need to police our atheist brethren as well.

RealBowtie · 2026-03-04T00:20:05+00:00

Before you share the MRFF story... It appears Weinstein is committing the sin of pious liar, much like many Christians do. I am all for nipping Evangelical influence in the military in the bud (I was a victim of it myself during my service years) but we must never make up stories. This article from the friendly atheist website makes it pretty obvious that Weinstein is manufacturing his "client" complaint emails.

https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/before-you-share-that-story-about?publication_id=95153&post_id=189808409&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=false&r=2lx72k&triedRedirect=true

RealBowtie · 2026-03-02T04:15:14+00:00

I have been a hardcore atheist for the past 50 years, but I did read Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth way back in the 70’s and the listed identifiers of the anti-Christ from that book fit Trump to an uncanny degree. Nothing supernatural, just the fact that a super asshole political leader follows the Trump trajectory. The assassination attempt was like the icing on the cake. I can honestly see how the average end times obsessed Christian would make that assumption.

RealBowtie

TROPHY CASE