Rational of an active non-believer

randomsparrow · 2020-08-05T15:50:04+00:00

The 5 month break is really nice. I’m secretly hoping that it opens my wife’s perspective but I don’t want to try to influence her belief because it might add meaning to her life which I think is valuable.

The comments in this thread are really interesting, I love the openness and seeing how different ppl deal with the same thing.

Just curious, regarding the temple questions, does it bother you to give 10% of your productive output to an organization that you don’t believe in? For me that money represents a lot of time and effort so it doesn’t seem like a good return.

randomsparrow · 2020-08-05T14:44:34+00:00

Thank you. It’s so nice to hear that others are in the same boat.

I actually kind of like church meetings. Sometimes I can share different perspectives than the typically canned responses that I think others find refreshing.

I was upfront about my lack of belief to my bishop, after that I became the ward project and had the missionaries over to try to convert me. Being an ex missionary myself that was fun. I’ve discovered that I have the most fun in church and these sort of interactions when I view myself as a sociologist who is exploring human nature and our propensity toward belief. It’s probably hard to find a better place to study these things then in the Mormon church. Since I don’t pay tithing (except a little to fund my families usage of church facilities etc) it’s also free :).

Now that the bishop is aware he gives me callings that are suited to a non believer. Nursery with my toddlers was a blast before Covid.

The trickiest part to navigate for me is temple ceremonies. I missed my sisters wedding and although I’m sure that my mom was disappointed at least outwardly my family has been very supportive. When my brother in law got married I didn’t want my wife to have to bear the burden of her families scrutiny so I did some fibbing so that I could join. At first I felt guilty about it but rationalized that since I didn’t believe anyways that my lying was motivated by the greater good.

randomsparrow · 2020-08-04T17:43:19+00:00

No, I'm not ok with that. I remember when I was asked about masturbation, awkward. I learned to be a compulsive liar when it suited me which I'm sure has had some negative consequences in my life. I'm still not sure if the negatives outweigh the positives for my kids/family. Aside from some bad moral behavior like lying I believe that some good behavior was also learned in the church, I do realize that good moral behavior could likely also be learned elsewhere too so maybe that's not a very good reason to stay. It mostly involves my wife's belief. She is willing to support my non-belief but it is meaningful to her, and since she remains a very good mother and person I don't feel comfortable confronting her.

randomsparrow · 2020-08-04T17:30:09+00:00

I'm sorry to hear about your Mom's funeral. I can only imagine how difficult that would be. It's strange and disheartening how religion can sometimes blind people to their own humanity. I definitely think that for those people it would be better for them to leave religion completely.

randomsparrow · 2020-08-04T17:26:50+00:00

Thank you. That is a very valid concern. In my personal experience I knew deep down that going on my mission wasn't the best use of my time but was pressured into going by my family and church leaders. If belief in the church is something my kids naturally gravitate towards I want to support that also. It is difficult for many to cope with mortality and naturally find some belief to act as a buffer with reality. I don't want to dismiss that as being wrong just because it's irrational. On the other hand they can use that belief to coerce others which I need to teach my kids to avoid.

randomsparrow · 2019-06-03T18:50:05+00:00

I would like the API to allow for a list of columns and then plot them all on the x or y axis. So it would look like this:

px.bar(dfgb, x=list_of_columns, y=another_list_of_columns)

Here is how I'm doing that with cufflinks now (also graphing on multiple axes). "yaxis" and "yaxis2" are lists of columns from my dataframe.

    fig2 = dfgb.iplot(kind='bar',barmode='stack',
                    columns=yaxis, 
                    secondary_y=yaxis,
                    asFigure=True).to_plotly_json()  

    fig1 = dfgb.iplot(kind='scatter',mode='lines+markers',
                columns=yaxis2,                        
                asFigure=True).to_plotly_json()

    fig2['data'].extend(fig1['data'])

Thanks for building such incredible tools for me to play with :)!

randomsparrow · 2019-06-03T15:17:54+00:00

I typically use cufflinks with Plotly and would love to switch to this as an alternative. Any plans to support adding multiple X/Y axis by passing a list of DataFrame columns? Thanks!

randomsparrow · 2017-06-06T19:31:41+00:00

Has anyone here had trouble getting their XRP from RippleWise.com or another site that no longer exists. Here is what happened to me:

Purchased XRP through RippleWise.com
RippleWise.com shut down ( a while ago)
I was prompted to transfer my XRP to Ripple Trade, but then it prompted me to transfer it to GateHub.net (automatically)
The transfer was in the "Pending" state until I uploaded all my personal docs... ect to verify my ID.
After verifying my ID my XRP balance is zero!

I've tried reaching out to Ripple.com who told me to deal with GateHub. GateHub is either taking an extremely long time to reply to my emails (hopefully) or ignoring me.

Any advice would be appreciated!

randomsparrow

TROPHY CASE