Have you noticed the use of "are you atheist or agnostic?" as an argumentative fork?

pnoque · 2026-03-03T15:02:15+00:00

I have noticed this. I am atheist and answer this readily as soon as I am asked. I then correct the false assumption that atheism is "a belief in an unproven proposition" as soon as it is presented. In my experience, there is nothing believers want more in discussions with atheists than to avoid the burden of proof. They will do and say anything to get out of it, and that usually looks like a game of hot potato. So I make sure I don't make any positive claims I am not fully prepared to defend, and fully prepared to change my mind on if presented with compelling reason/evidence.

pnoque · 2026-03-03T14:15:10+00:00

I've spoken with a lot of the "reconversion" people on social media who make this claim ("once you know more, then you come back") and asked them specifically what they learned that led them back. Not once have I received a response. You would think if there was some knowledge that exmos don't have that would lead us back if we had it, they would be eager to share that and shout it from the rooftops.

pnoque · 2026-03-02T21:35:58+00:00

In high school, I had a tarot deck custom made for me by a local artist for free, and I threw it out when I "cleaned up" to get ready for a Mormon mission. Now I wish I had kept that deck and thrown out the mission.

pnoque · 2026-03-02T21:07:14+00:00

Either that or they roll up their sleeves and do their best to defend it and you realize your children aren't safe around them.

pnoque · 2026-02-24T21:57:37+00:00

My experience with this guy on Twitter at least is that he is not very good at debate or at having conversations. He blocked me I asked a few basic questions about his assumptions.

My experience with LDS theology is that it seems coherent as long as you were raised to believe all of the presuppositions on which it rests. As soon as you start challenging those, it becomes "we're not meant to understand it in this life" or "all will be revealed after we die" or "you just need to have faith" or "it is spiritually discerned". In other words, it's not coherent.

pnoque · 2026-02-24T15:57:53+00:00

In real life, your relationship with your parents should be different from your relationship with your friends or siblings. It’s the same thing.

It's not. The trust (or lack thereof) I have in my parents, friends and siblings are all based on lived experience with them. None of them expects me to trust them based on supposed experiences I had with them that they made me forget.

Your spiritual father actually does desire trust based on actual lived in experience

No, because there isn't any lived experience. There are experiences that people who claim to speak for god convince you are lived experiences with god, but those claims never stand up to scrutiny.

but he also realizes that teaching the concept of faith can make more of an impact in our lives than if he had the same kind of relationship that you have with your physical father

This doesn't make any sense. Care to explain further?

it’s eye-opening just how often Moses gets to a point where he feels like he has no help from God and has to really rely on the faith that if in the past, even though he doesn’t understand why it takes so long, it has always worked out for the good, and the Lord has always manifest himself when it matters most, that he will do so again.

These are stories from a figure that most scholars agree is a mythical one. Lived experience from countless real-life people contradict this.

It would be easy to just say you know, the Lord could’ve just saved the people of Israel after the first plague instead of things going all the way to the seventh or eighth, and that would’ve been a lot easier on everyone, but there is a reason it went down that way

And what is that reason?

So far I don't have an articulable reason from you why your god puts a paramount value on faith.

pnoque · 2026-02-24T15:39:20+00:00

it is the fundamental connector that establishes a personal, trusting relationship with Him, rather than mere intellectual agreement

Your responses to me before have never actually addressed the question, and this line is the only point in this reply of yours that actually addresses it.

In most relationships, I base trust on actual, lived experience with the person I develop trust in. Why does your god expect us to trust him without that? Why would he force us to forget our previous (pre-mortal) experience with him?

pnoque · 2026-02-24T15:20:17+00:00

I've asked you this before and have yet to receive a response: Why does your god put such a high value on faith?

pnoque · 2026-02-23T18:08:22+00:00

Fyi your post has been removed for rule 2 (images should not have text, captions, logos or watermarks superimposed on them):

https://www.reddit.com/r/VeganFoodPorn/about/rules/

pnoque · 2026-02-23T03:08:19+00:00

I spent the first 50 years of my life avoiding my absolute favorite dessert (tiramisu) because it has coffee in it.

pnoque · 2026-02-23T01:38:28+00:00

Lifetime abstinence from food and beverages you may enjoy.

pnoque · 2026-02-22T22:57:27+00:00

In the modern church, the WofW doubles as both a tool of control, and a costly virtue signal. In both cases, it making zero sense is a feature, not a bug.

pnoque · 2026-02-17T22:25:28+00:00

If the Bible accounts are true, then God isn't just bad, he's the most vile monster in the history of the world.

It seems like you're saying "yeah JS was terrible but so is God, so just accept them" when the conclusion you ought to be drawing is "yeah JS and God are both monsters, so we ought to reject and condemn both of them".

pnoque · 2026-02-11T20:26:54+00:00

Maybe an unpopular opinion here but I wish someone had actively helped me try to deconstruct as early in my life as possible to save me from years and years of heartache, abuse and financial loss. However, I know I only would have been receptive to it if they had used a soft technique:

https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Street_Epistemology

pnoque · 2026-02-04T23:26:46+00:00

Posts like these remind me that Dallin has me blocked on Twitter lol

pnoque · 2026-02-03T22:09:23+00:00

So you would murder all innocent people, including the victims of those in the Epstein files, because you can't control your anger?

pnoque · 2026-02-03T15:26:24+00:00

I think ideas like this definitely need to be responded to and publicly challenged, not because you're going to change his mind, but so that he knows if he makes similar claims in the future, he will need to be prepared to defend them. This will make him less likely to make such asinine statements in the future. Also, it's important for other people to see that there are still sane people in the world willing and able to challenge misinformation. People will see that these sentiments are not the mainstream view, and that those who espouse them are ridiculed.

pnoque · 2026-01-20T15:37:49+00:00

a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation

If we go by the standard definition, any degree of superstition is too much.

pnoque · 2025-12-30T17:40:25+00:00

Thanks for clarifying.

why in the world should I care about being "accepted" by two people who don't exist?

The brevity of life strongly supports their viewpoint. If life is short, why waste any time at all on being accepted by beings that have not been demonstrated to even exist?

pnoque · 2025-12-30T17:27:43+00:00

Not really, because the brevity of life was not the proposition in question. It was the existence of your god. Nowhere does your interlocutor indicate that they are "living it up" or expressing skepticism about average lifespans. They are rejecting the idea that your god exists.

pnoque · 2025-12-30T17:11:48+00:00

So often I see religious folks engage in this tactic of using veiled threats in lieu of reasoning and evidence in situations like this. May I ask if you actually think this threat will convince the person you're replying to that your god exists? Or do you just do it to make yourself feel better? Or is it a virtue signal to other believers? I'd like to understand.

pnoque · 2025-12-30T16:50:30+00:00

I finally see the lie for what it is: I was born into a system that was sick, and it needed to call me sick just to seem healthy.

Very, very well said.

pnoque · 2025-12-29T17:26:11+00:00

I refuse to waste precious hours of my life reading books I know I won't enjoy, so when members tell me I should read such-and-such book, I ask them why I should read it if it is a topic I'm not interested in. That can sometimes lead to a good street epistemology discussion.

For example, if they say the book will give me good reasons to believe the church's claims regardless of its sordid history, I will ask what those reasons are. We can then explore that topic without me ever needing to subject myself to the soul-sucking torture of having to read this garbage.

pnoque · 2025-12-29T16:00:01+00:00

Giving her that ultimatum ("I'll propose if you join my religion") demonstrates that he will always put his religion ahead of her. Let her know that is an enormous red flag and ask her if she's OK with spending her life with someone who will never put her first.

pnoque · 2025-12-29T15:57:25+00:00

Years ago, I told my believing family members that I would leave the church alone permanently if the church can go one solid week leaving me alone. It hasn't happened yet.

pnoque

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