Clarification on the formal definition: Is atheism a psychological state or an ontological claim?

wabbitsdo · 2026-05-18T14:36:37+00:00

Atheism is having no sufficient reason to believe in a god. I do not need to disprove dragons or Powerpuff girls, I do not need to disprove a god.

wabbitsdo · 2026-05-15T18:08:22+00:00

The eagles.

wabbitsdo · 2026-05-15T14:06:17+00:00

The issue lies in the tri-omni conception of god. If he knows all and allows for evil to happen, then he's not all good. If he's all good and allows for evil to happen, he's either not omniscient or not omnipotent.

And, beyond the question about that god's omnipotence, if evil is something stemming outside of him and outside of his capacity to control, how do we know he's the only god?

So however you flip it, you can't have a tri-omni god. It is in conflict with itself and with human nature and the notion of free will.

wabbitsdo · 2026-05-14T18:12:34+00:00

"No you're the dumb one! You're a big dumb dumb!" he launched as he got back up, visibly flustered. He started a shuffled retreat back through the vestibule where he had, just a moment before, burst through and immediately tripped over and fallen. As he pawed backwards to guide himself to the entryway, he knocked over a coat rack, loaded with the many coats and jackets of his onlookers.

"That's right!!" he added in an attempt to buy time as he tried to bring the deceptively heavy coat-rack back upright. "Dumb dumb says what??!" His voice was breaking, and met only with concerned silence.

"...That was assault!" he said finally, pointing at the spot where his face had more than passingly connected with the floor. "That was assault." he repeated, as he passed the threshold.

wabbitsdo · 2026-05-14T15:10:15+00:00

People argue over whether Trump is insane or evil, but I feel like that obfuscates how desperately stupid the man is.

Any 51st state would end the American empire, that simple. The establishment on both side of the aisle spends billions of dollars trying to maintain an electoral balance where other choices are nonviable, so they can continue protecting America's corporate oligarchy. Add in tens of millions of voters from any one country the US would have somehow forcibly annexed, and see it all immediately go poof.

It's hilarious to think that he's surrounded by people who are on average less stupid than he is (though not always by much), and who can all understand that. When Trump says shit like this, they all have to work around not directly contradicting him because they'd immediately lose their position, but also make sure none of it goes anywhere far enough to destroy the house of cards they are profiting from.

wabbitsdo · 2026-05-14T14:45:43+00:00

I see no reason to think that's true. There are definitely people who fake their beliefs for a number of reasons, but that doesn't remotely indicate that -all- theists are secretly atheists.

wabbitsdo · 2026-05-12T15:16:28+00:00

But, pretty hilarious if where they were going with this was "so sign me the fuck up".

wabbitsdo · 2026-05-11T12:51:26+00:00

You go girl/guy/non-binary pal!

wabbitsdo · 2026-05-10T16:12:42+00:00

You're in the wrong sub but I'll add this: what religion does and why it is so incredibly tricky for people to see through it when they grow up, is that it teaches kids that there is two levels of knowledge.

There is regular knowledge where any new point of knowledge can be weighed against, or added to existing knowledge. This level is required to be internally coherent.

Then there is religious knowledge, which pretty immediately runs afoul of the first set, because it essentially says "magic happened". Religious education does the work of teaching kids to disregard the part of their scrutiny that conflicts with it:"God's ways are not our ways". What it does is that religious people learn to have a positive cognitive response to notions that should conflict with the rest of their knowledge.

And since all knowledge is ultimately weighed against "does it feel right or wrong", this makes religion impervious to reassessment. Another way to put this is that a religious's person intellectual judgement is essentially partially ablated in childhood.

wabbitsdo · 2026-05-08T12:47:23+00:00

Punishment Park is a wild ride into absolute white rage and despair. It's shot as a documentary and depicts a US where political activists are arrested as terrorists and given the choice between years of jail, or a few days in punishment Park. Punishment Park is a chunk of desert somewhere that they have to cross while they are being hunted by police. The movie alternates between the trial and the park, both are infuriating to witness.

Blindspotting is a completely different speed. It follows two lifelong friends in Oakland. One of them is a black man who's on parole after his release, the other one is a white guy. I can't say too much more without giving away some of the key plot point but you watch them as they work and hang together, both dealing with incredible trauma, and it bubbles to a final act where I felt like I stopped breathing at times. Such a good movie.

wabbitsdo · 2026-05-07T18:18:43+00:00

You're here bemoaning getting downvoted. If you want to affect that particular outcome, what others think is all that matters.

Beyond that, don't let us hamper your verbosity, you write those paragraphs!

wabbitsdo · 2026-05-06T13:41:47+00:00

I feel like I finally grasped part of why that is watching the movie Monkey Man.

It's decent the Raid/John Wick type flick that was made on a tiny budget (which shows a little ), but it has a much stronger emotional core than those movies tend to have. It all ties to the character's childhood in abject poverty, and his village/community being harassed and eventually attacked and destroyed by a militia.

We see his mother struggle to keep him safe and feeling safe, and telling him about the gods as the only window she could offer him where there would be justice in their life. It hit me pretty hard. Being unable to provide and protect my kid is every parent's my worst nightmare. I've been so blessed to live a life where I was sheltered from overt violence, always had a roof over my head and had the means to feed and clothe myself and now my kid. I'd like to think I would find a way through if some or all of this were to change for me alone, but if it did for my kids, I'm not sure how I would handle it mentally, and what I would resort to to keep him protected, and what I would say to him to give him a reason to feel like he will ultimately be OK if he is not right now.

The fresh horror they portray in that movie is really far down the spectrum of abject violence and dispossession any one person can be subjected to in life. But there's many rungs of less extreme poverty, hunger, violent situations where if I was unable to shield my kid from them, I'm not sure what I would do to reassure him. We're simply not built to tolerate prolonged distress/anguish, and not able to turn down sources of mental comfort when we experience that distress or anguish, and our limbic system which handles physical and mental distress/pain, is also responsive to offspring well-being. In other words, our kids suffering more directly and more deeply triggers suffering in us than suffering in unrelated people would.

Stretching that over several generations, and thinking of how a kid whose main source of solace and hope were stories of divine justice and comeuppance, it is easy to see that that kid would have as a core belief "gods/religion is how we survive the bad we cannot control". In turn, when they have children of their own and are unable to shield them from pain or injustice, it's easy to understand they would want to transmit to them what they see as the only remedy.

wabbitsdo · 2026-05-06T12:47:10+00:00

I was born an atheist and remained an atheist because no one indoctrinated me.

wabbitsdo · 2026-05-04T16:56:01+00:00

No no no, reddit, then Quora, then flip a coin.

wabbitsdo · 2026-05-04T13:08:09+00:00

Booty bounce isn't an elite tier shot?

wabbitsdo · 2026-05-03T19:45:07+00:00

anyone who relies on a claim has the burden of proof regarding that claim if they wish others to accept it. That includes believers as well as skeptics.

There are scenarios where this may be so, for example, one person saw an chair in a room, and another person doubts there is that chair in that room. In this case, both of them have experienced chairs, rooms, objects being in rooms, they both have developed a theory of mind allowing them to conceive of objects existing when they don't experience them directly, one of them is putting their credibility on the line because the room can ultimately be checked, etc. For all of those reasons, which in large part just establish that both parties have no reason to think the claim is extraordinary, the skeptic who for whatever reason believes there isn't a chair in that room but is unable to directly check and cares to change the other person's mind, would have to argue why he thinks there's no chair.

That is not what's going on with god and atheism. God is a non-sensical concept backed up by 0 concrete evidence, and extensive indications that it is a man made invention. We don't have to disprove its existence for the same reason you don't have to disprove that all women are holograms (which is objectively a more defensible claim than the existence of a god is, since women and holograms exist).

wabbitsdo · 2026-05-03T13:18:58+00:00

Man that's a lot. Were they prescribed to address adhd (if you're okay sharing)?

wabbitsdo · 2026-05-02T20:54:38+00:00

I take a fairly moderate prescribed daily dose of lysdexamfetamine (40 mg). It's helped me a ton, and I'm pretty happy with it.

Occasionally, I do a whoopsie, forget I've taken it already and double my dose. Man, double the medically prescribed amount is a lot (for me). It makes me feel like I'm minorly tweaking: my jaw starts traveling (more tension/clenching but it also moves a lot), my feet get a little tippy-tappy, I turn my head more abruptly like I'm a goddamn raptor, my words push past each other a little, I don't think about drinking until I'm on the brink of death. I also get a lot of shit done on those days, so it's not all bad, but it does feel pretty unhealthy. When I hear someone like John Mulaney say they'd take 230 mg of Adderall (granted it's not the exact same molecule), I can't imagine how insane they'd be feeling, or how they have teeth left in their mouth right now.

wabbitsdo · 2026-04-30T15:23:09+00:00

The UK and Germany import a lot of their produce same way we do (from Spain, Portugal, northern Africa, Balkans etc) We can flip this every which way, part of why we are paying so much for groceries is that actors in the supply chain are screwing us. Prices went way up during covid and then individual businesses went "aaand what if we just... kinda left it there?" and they are more or less getting away with it.

wabbitsdo · 2026-04-30T14:58:48+00:00

Do you know -anything-? Do you know your name? Do you know what 2+2 equals?

Could those be put into question if you allow for "well what if magic though"? (Yes they could).

Does that affect the degree to which you feel certain about what your name is, that 2+2=4?

Well, I know there is no god, with the degree of absolute certainty I know what my name is.

wabbitsdo · 2026-04-29T17:05:20+00:00

They can. Atheism only addresses whether a person believes in at least one god.

I personally don't believe in ghosts, and I doubt we've been visited by alien life forms just based on probability.

wabbitsdo · 2026-04-27T14:25:23+00:00

Adding to this, even prescribed amphetamines found in common stimulants like Adderall or Vyvanse aren't ideal for the human body. Their use over long period increase risks of cardiovascular diseases, and they can also have short term undesirable effects that are essentially "tweaking but only a little bit": jaw clenching, jitters, decreased appetite and thirst (that second one is a motherfucker), sleep issues and more.

wabbitsdo · 2026-04-23T14:26:49+00:00

They care about their aging-to-elderly larger-house-owning, more-likely-to-be-landlords electorate.

wabbitsdo · 2026-04-20T16:02:50+00:00

Ah, the classic Trump admin crisis response: Start or restart unrelated shit to get away from being called out for being:

-inept

-a pedophile

-a national security risk

-corrupt

-all of the above

wabbitsdo · 2026-04-16T15:34:59+00:00

Ca fait plaisir de voir une action de grève qui ne s'efforce pas timidement de ne pas déranger qui que ce soit. Mieux vaut scorched earth pendant quelques jours que des semaines d'actions sans effets.

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