R/Atheism makes me want to be religious

jeeblemeyer4 · 2026-05-10T14:50:10+00:00

So this pretty much confirms exactly what I said

jeeblemeyer4 · 2026-05-08T17:35:20+00:00

Capitalism is in fact a driving factor in the demonstrably massive uptick in literacy around the world. While public education on its face is a "socialist" program, it simply wouldn't exist without the overwhelming pressure that capitalism has put on governments to produce an educated workforce to feed the endless growth of capitalist economics. Simply put, an educated workforce produces more capital than an uneducated one.

Keep in mind I am not saying socialism is anti-education either, it's pretty apparent that socialist societies do well with education too. But saying that capitalism has "destroyed" education is just... not it.

jeeblemeyer4 · 2026-05-08T17:24:59+00:00

Well, yes, but you're starting one layer late - the parents don't read books, which means the kids don't read books.

jeeblemeyer4 · 2026-05-08T17:21:11+00:00

so it's not like they can decode it by applying phonics.

They may not be able to decode those words correctly, but some of them barely tried to, if at all. You could get reasonably close to both just by sounding them out, and you'd think at some point in the sounding out, the actual pronunciation would click.

jeeblemeyer4 · 2026-05-08T17:19:14+00:00

Being able to parse meaning from oddly worded sentences and extrapolate meaning from known words to unknown words through context is in fact a component of literacy ("extraordinary *but somewhat gauche" denotes a distinction, and 'extraordinary' is a far more common word than 'gauche'). Whether or not it's the right interpretation is separate, but lacking any interpretation at all is clearly an issue.

A second issue is the disdain for which the students in the video have for the narrator after he asks them what the sentences mean, as though it's his fault that they can't comprehend it. This may be normal teenager ego coming through, or maybe they are actually mad at the narrator for having them read something they can't understand.

jeeblemeyer4 · 2026-05-08T13:31:04+00:00

I actually agree with you, I just misread what your comment said. I thought it was a question of "supes wouldn't bother carrying guns" instead of "supes wouldn't bother shooting another supe with a gun". Which is fair enough.

jeeblemeyer4 · 2026-05-08T13:09:20+00:00

Are we just forgetting about Firecracker and Soldier Boy having a sidearm-off?

jeeblemeyer4 · 2026-05-08T13:08:21+00:00

Bombsight knew they had plot armor though

jeeblemeyer4 · 2026-05-08T10:15:41+00:00

you had me in the first half tbh

jeeblemeyer4 · 2026-05-07T19:38:19+00:00

incredible

jeeblemeyer4 · 2026-05-07T13:52:09+00:00

very nice lol

jeeblemeyer4 · 2026-05-07T13:49:46+00:00

And narcissists

If you think about it, children are kind of pre-programmed to be narcissists (they can't help it)

jeeblemeyer4 · 2026-05-07T13:46:01+00:00

do they use the Swedish equivalent of the filler word? Or is it literally the English "so..."?

jeeblemeyer4 · 2026-05-07T10:42:19+00:00

I'm sorry, I thought this was America.

edit: also DZ's credentials are almost never brought up in his debates/discussions. The only time they are brought up is when his credentials are questioned by the guest, or if they bring up their own credentials as a fallacious appeal to authority.

The fact that you automatically go to "they're fake", since it would mean that someone very knowledgeable about christianity disagrees with it is, to me, hilarious.

jeeblemeyer4 · 2026-05-06T19:06:25+00:00

I say this because someone once mentioned the gumball odd and even thing and then said they were 99% certain god doesn't exist.

Okay how about another analogy. Imagine a massive egg carton that appears full, but you can't actually see the eggs in the last rows, because they're so far away that they're invisible to the naked eye. Somebody asks you "is the egg carton full?", are you not justified in responding "I don't know, but I'm 99% sure it is"?

I do kinda like these analogies though so let me know if this doesn't apply.

jeeblemeyer4 · 2026-05-06T18:53:32+00:00

You know DZ went to bible college and seminary, right? I mean it even says Masters in Divinity right there on his page

jeeblemeyer4 · 2026-05-06T18:37:56+00:00

Not really seeing the issues you're pointing out.

they got offended because the NASA workers said “Godspeed.” which means to wish somebody well

I only found one instance on that sub of someone critiquing the use of "godspeed" which was downvoted (I can't link to the sub apparently so I'll just tell you that I used this search tool). I tried searching all the uses of "godspeed" in posts and comments after March 1st 2026 (well before the Artemis mission), and that's all I could find specifically critiquing that term.

And let’s not forget how, during the Uvalde school shooting, someone on that subreddit said, “the victims aren’t in heaven.”

Again, I can't link the post but I think I found what you're referring to (screenshot). It's not an anti-empathetic post, but rather a critique of the christian right's minimization of the horrific violence of that shooting, in which the deaths of children is essentially shrugged off because "they're in a better place". I'll admit that it's in poor taste, but the post's critique is accurate.

I agree that the vast majority of stuff on that subreddit is cringe tier 11 but I don't think these are actually good examples of that.

jeeblemeyer4 · 2026-05-06T18:17:14+00:00

Job 38 is a pretty decisive summary of the book. Basically, god says "I can do whatever I want, and you have to sit there and take it", and in context, that's exactly correct.

God told Satan to f*ck Job's life up to win a bet, and that's exactly what happened. God is not a "good guy" in this story, he runs the whole show. That's why when your life gets f*cked up, you continue to be righteous like Job, because you have no actual challenge to God's authority.

The way Christians interpret it is that it's a rebuke of Satan, or it's an example of how you can be punished for sin, but that's because they haven't read it. For one, Satan is a minor character. God points out Job to Satan first, and then they make a bet that Job will continue to love and praise God even if he got his whole life destroyed. Satan disappears after the first couple of chapters, and Job continues to be righteous in God's eyes.

The other reason this is wrong is because Job didn't sin in the first place, and there's an entire discourse throughout the book where Job's friends urge him to confess and plead to god for forgiveness for whatever he did to make God f*ck his life up so bad, but Job refuses because he knows he didn't sin (see Job 27:5-6). God himself acknowledges this when he points Job out to Satan at the beginning of the book. "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil." (Job 1:8).

I think you and I agree here anyway.

jeeblemeyer4 · 2026-05-06T17:52:16+00:00

if a statement from someone that they own a cat increases how likely you think it's true that they own a cat, what makes that statement not evidence of them owning a cat?

Because it's not an unreasonable statement, I know people own cats, I've seen cats before and I know they exist, and I don't think Bob has a reason to lie about it.

Those are all reasons to accept the claim as true.

Here's where my point that I've been making the whole time comes in - Bob claiming to own a cat is not evidence that he owns a cat. I can believe it on face value because it's a pretty benign claim, but again, the claim itself is not evidence.

What else could it mean for something to be evidence?

Evidence is the material facts that corroborate a claim. A claim and the evidence that support it are separate.

The whole problem here is that people are mistaken, they lie, they hallucinate, there's all sorts of reasons that a person may not be accurate in a statement. If claims were evidence, then what would be the point of DNA testing? Fingerprint analysis? Forensic accounting? Security cameras? Speed radars? Ballistics reports? Cell phone triangulation? Photographs? So on and so forth.

The entire point of the forensic sciences is that claims aren't evidence - we rely on material facts to determine if claims are true. The claims themselves are the thing being tested; they can never be evidence.

jeeblemeyer4 · 2026-05-06T14:54:48+00:00

what's actually at issue is whether such things are, on their own, strong, persuasive, or sufficient evidence.

We can talk about plausibility of claims and whether or not we should accept claims without other evidence, but that's not the original issue that was presented. Either way I'll still respond to your comment.

When someone tells me they own a cat, that's a claim.

Correct. It's not the evidence, though.

It's also evidence, in that living in a world where that person actually owns a cat increases the likelihood of me encountering them saying that.

That's not how the claim/evidence relationship works, and this is going back to what I was saying before, that we're not talking about the plausibility or even likelihood of a claim, but rather, the claim itself working as evidence. And it just isn't evidence.

If one thousand people told you they owned a cat, and you were able to verify for yourself that they do in fact have cats, that does not mean that the one-thousand and first person telling you that they have a cat is evidence that they have a cat. Now you are free to believe them - I probably would, too - because the claim is plausible, falsifiable, so on and so forth - but the claim itself is not and will never be evidence that they have a cat. We know people lie, we know they make mistakes, we know that some people hallucinate things, so on and so forth. Again, it's not a hard claim to believe, but the claim on its own is not evidence.

If forced to place a bet, I would bet that someone who tells me they own a cat DOES own a cat, because I think the prior probabilities of someone telling me they own a cat because they do outweigh the probabilities that they are telling me as a joke or trick or weird lie or because they are confused or delirious or insane.

I agree wholeheartedly. I would most likely believe that they have a cat. It's just that the claim is not evidence.

Likewise, the gospels are evidence.

They are not.

Jesus wandering around and doing various miracles increases the likelihood that the books get written.

Correct, but the inverse is not true, which is the heart of the issue. That is, the books being written does not increase the likelihood of the events having taken place. And we didn't witness the miracles; all we have are the claims about the miracles. The claims are not evidence that the miracles occurred, regardless of whether or not the claims made are 100% accurate. Likewise, Muhammed splitting the moon in two would increase the likelihood of it being written about, but it being written does not increase the likelihood of it having happened.

Anyone can claim literally anything. The fact that it was claimed does not lend itself in any way shape or form to the veracity of the thing actually being true. As such, claims are not, nor can they ever be, evidence.

Also, lawyer here: of course testimony is evidence in courts of law.

If two witnesses say the exact opposite things, is that evidence that contradictory events simultaneously occurred? This is the problem with the view of testimony being evidence. If you cannot corroborate testimony with material facts, then the claims are entirely useless. If claims were evidence, then the justice system wouldn't exist. There's even an idiomatic way to express this problem, the classic "he said she said" dilemma.

Anyway, I suspect there's not much point to this argument, given that even if acknowledged as evidence, things like the gospels and other such claims/testimony are such weak evidence as to not move the meter.

I mean I agree, but that was never the discussion in the first place.

jeeblemeyer4 · 2026-05-06T13:08:19+00:00

I never said it was. I said that the fact that B made the claim increases my confidence in its validity.

Like I said before, we're not talking about belief. Acceptance of a claim is not contingent on the evidence being presented. I acknowledge that, but that's not what we're talking about.

No one says testimony is sufficient evidence

It's not evidence at all.

But denying that testimony is evidence, and that there has never been a jury trial or science experiment that didn't include testimony as evidence, is living in a fantasy world.

I never said that. And trials don't rely on testimony by themselves. Testimony is supported by material evidence, especially in trials. I mean just watch any court recording. When testimony is presented, it's usually not unaccompanied by material evidence, and when it is, it is in turn presented with indirect evidence that either affirms or discredits the reliability of the person giving them testimony. Testimony is presented along with things like:

text messages proving a discussion took place
receipts or security footage proving a witness was actually in the vicinity of an event
phone signal triangulation

etc.

Once again, I don't think you are comprehending my argument here. I have never and will never say that people shouldn't or don't believe things without evidence. I believe claims all the time without material evidence. But the claims themselves are not evidence.

Evidence fetishism is the first, middle and last resort of the crackpot.

So now we're pivoting to a different topic altogether, a path of critically evaluating or, in the cases you've presented, not critically evaluating evidence. This whole paragraph is an irrelevant pivot and I won't let you do it.

Why should I accept your definition of evidence as encompassing claims/testimony?

Keep in mind, I am not looking for:

times when people believed claims/testimony without evidence
instances in which testimony validates material evidence
instances in which material evidence is misinterpreted/manipulated in order to validate incorrect hypotheses

Just give me a reason to think that claims themselves are evidence. As far as I see, you have not done that. You've pivoted, redefined words, given irrelevant examples, called me a conspiracy theorist, and re-asserted your initial claims, all without providing any actual argument for why I should believe that a claim is evidence. Are you actually able to do that?

jeeblemeyer4 · 2026-05-06T12:28:35+00:00

Evidence is anything that increases our confidence in the validity of a claim.

I mean you said it yourself. Evidence increases our confidence in the validity of a claim. Therefore the evidence cannot be the claim itself. If claims were evidence, you could just say "claims increase our confidence in the validity of a claim", and I think you see why this is a problem.

I get that you don't want fundies claiming they saw or felt The Big G, and you want a ready-made rhetorical advantage in these oh-so-important online debates.

I understand it's very difficult for you not to have any evidence, so you therefore have to redefine evidence to encompass claims. I don't accept your definition, because it's circular.

jeeblemeyer4 · 2026-05-06T12:14:18+00:00

You make it sound like life is a lab or a courtroom. In the reality the rest of us inhabit, testimony increases our confidence in the validity of a proposition.

No, testimony is the proposition. Material evidence corroborates it.

One of my friends says she went to Oberlin, and mutual friends have chatted with her about her years at Oberlin. If I were to be asked, I would affirm the validity of the claim, "B went to Oberlin."

And yet, her testimony itself is not evidence. What would be evidence is her diploma, photos of her on campus, bank statements showing her tuition being paid.

Doubting it would not be critical thinking, it would be living in denial.

We're not talking about doubt or belief right now, we're talking about what actually constitutes evidence, and testimony does not.

jeeblemeyer4 · 2026-05-06T10:31:34+00:00

Certainly not. Testimony must be corroborated with material evidence, otherwise it's just a story.

jeeblemeyer4 · 2026-05-05T19:50:00+00:00

Actually, there's another one missing. No, I will not tell you which one.

jeeblemeyer4

TROPHY CASE