It sounds like anonny learned a valuable lesson that day
science doesnt allow chocolate to be grown on trees
Not with that attitude it doesnt. Give us a few hundred years and we’ll have them growing it fully formed, with caramel inside.
A belief system made me do it. Yea, sure it did bud
Yeah that period of time, where you believe nothing matters, so consequences don’t matter, until you realize that just because it doesn’t matter in the long run, it still sucks and you still have to deal with it, is one of the more challenging aspects of childhood atheism.
That’s not atheism, that’s nihilism which is different.
Atheists don’t believe in God, largely because religion doesn’t really answer any of the big questions. No particular mode of behaviour is required of an atheist. You certainly don’t need to go around being destructive of quasi religious icons (Christmas trees aren’t even related to Christianity it’s a corporate thing).
Nihilism is just the people who are having a midlife crisis, or are just play acting at depression in order to get attention. It’s not a philosophical position. It’s just been whiny.
Christmas trees are actually an older pagan thing that happens in several cultures, but the practice is pretty close to an old Saturnalia tradition.
Atheists are just the other side of the coin from religion, they KNOW there is no god and nothing you say matters. They can’t prove it, but they have absolute faith and will fight you every step of the way because their dogma demands it.
Agnostics are more the chill ones. They know they can’t prove if there is or isn’t, they just know religion isn’t for them.
That’s a mental hang up on your part. How do you prove the lack of something?
chocolate doesnt grow on trees
bruh
I was gonna say, it literally does lmao
This had me thinking of why the english language uses cocoa. Obviously it is cacao, most other languages use the real name as well. One of those “too hard to pronounce” situations? Habit from referring to the beans? Though that second option doesnt really answer the question, why cocoa and not cacao 🫠
That dad? Albert Einstein.
Great thing about atheism Anon, no one made ha do that shit but you, and you get to take full responsibility for your actions without the cop-out of “demonic possession”. Take that beating with pride knowing that you posses radical freedom.
That may be the one time when a (gay and fake) parent beating the shit out of their (fake and gay) kid is justified
“Child abuse is cool if my kid doesn’t like me forcing my religion upon them”.
Anon learns the hard way that for most families, Christmas has nothing to do with Christianity especially when kids are involved.
Anon blames Atheism for being a pos
Very anon of him, tbf
That’s very true, we never believed in Christmas/religion but never spoiled/ruined it for others, it was their enjoyment.
Granted when we have a kid, we don’t think we’ll be telling them that “Santa is just a famous character of Christmas, and some people have fun believing he’s real, so don’t ruin their fun either” or something like that. Still have plenty of years to think of how to word it better lol :P
Honestly, I think i will “lie” about Santa. Simply because it doesn’t really matter and it is fun for them.
Something to consider: do you want to normalize lying to your kid? I realize that’s an antagonistic way to phrase it, but that’s pretty much what’s happening
This is such a boring thing that people say all the time.
Lying is normal. You should be lying. Lying isn’t morally wrong if it is not done for morally wrong reasons. My child should be lying to me. I should be lying to my child.
And my children will understand the difference between lying to e.g. prevent a surprise to be ruined and lying to avoid facing consequences.
It is such a black and white thinking. It is so boring too. I will teach my children violence because 1 day, they might need it too.
And sidenote: e.g. telling your child that they can “trust” the security or the police if they get lost in a large crowd, is a lie. But one that is true enough that the child is safer with them than alone in a crowd. Telling your child that e.g. a electrical signal is travelling from the tv station through a wire to your tv, would be a lie if there is some fiber cables somewhere between them, or a satellite connection. Yes, simplifications are lying. We will lie anyway to enable them to navigate the far too complex world and slowly learn about the real underlying complexities.
And obviously, there is a difference between making them write letters to Santa and telling them Santa brings gifts for Christmas.
Sounds like Atheism, like all belief systems, empowered an asshole with self-righteous validation. Even if you bet on the right horse, it doesn’t mean everything you do is automatically justified; empathy is a higher order law.
Atheism isn’t really a belief system by itself. It can refer to a lot of things, including positive atheism (the claim that there is not/cannot be a god/supernatural entity), negative atheism (the lack of belief in a deity due to lack of evidence), the absence of religion and many other things. Militant atheism, on the other hand, definitely counts and is susceptible to all the failings you mentioned.
It’s not called militant atheism, you’re describing anti-theism. I’ve never heard of atheism claiming definitively that there are no deities or higher powers either, just that since there’s no evidence the claims aren’t worth consideration and can be dismissed as nonsense.
I believe what you are describing is Agnosticism, which questions the existence of God but doesn’t claim there isn’t one either.
Atheism afaik does claim that something like a God can’t/doesn’t exist (or Anti-theism).
I’ve never heard of atheism claiming definitively that there are no deities or higher powers either
Maybe this will help?
This definition is also found in multiple encyclopedias and dictionaries of philosophy. For example, in the Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, William L. Rowe (also an atheist) writes, “Atheism is the position that affirms the nonexistence of God. It proposes positive disbelief rather than mere suspension of belief” (2000: 62). The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy recognizes multiple senses of the word “atheism”, but is clear about which is standard in philosophy:
[Atheism is] the view that there are no gods. A widely used sense denotes merely not believing in god and is consistent with agnosticism [in the psychological sense]. A stricter sense denotes a belief that there is no god; this use has become standard. (Pojman 2015, emphasis added)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/
Maybe you will understand the picture I posted in the other comment as well now?
It’s not surprising that academic theological philosophy uses atheism as a strict position that there are no gods, inferring the claim, but even your source states the widely accepted definition is simply the lack of belief in a god or gods before choosing the previous definition for the purposes of the paper. Academic usage that acknowledges they’re not using the widely accepted usage isn’t super relevant unless you’re having academic discussions with academics in academic contexts. I understood the picture fine, it’s just wrong.
what’s wrong about the picture?
Did you not see the gnostic and agnostic in front of atheist and theist?
eg. you are aware of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_atheism
Sounds like Atheism, like all belief systems
That’s not Atheism at all 🤣
Atheism is a lack of belief in a god or gods, that’s it, nothing more, nothing less.
There’s no instruction manual or bible or quran instructing him to behave this way, he has picked up what some sort of Americanism and ran with it
There is no evidence one way or the other for the existence of god/s, thus Atheism and Religion both make conclusions without evidence, also known as belief, or faith. Lack of belief, or waiting for evidence, is Agnosticism.
While I support freedom of religion, given the harms religion has done over history, I prefer atheism.
Well, there’s strong and weak atheism. Strong atheism being the position akin to “I know there is no god”. Agnosticism would be the belief that you cannot draw a conclusion, that the evidence is inconclusive, or that knowledge is impossible. Weak atheism would be the position akin to “there’s no reason to believe, so I don’t”.
To flog a well beaten analogy: the teapot in orbit around the sun directly opposite the earth.
The theist says there’s definitely a teapot. The strong atheist says there definitely isn’t. The agnostic withholds judgement because we cannot know. The weak atheist says there’s no reason to believe there’s a teapot.“Lack of belief” is specifically an atheist trait. Agnosticism is lack of knowing on the matter.
Atheism and agnosticism are compatible, which is why there’s often conflation between the two. I personally don’t think we can know, but I see no reason to believe.
There are also agnostics who believe in a deity, even though they don’t think we can really know.Finally, for the last bit of pedantry: empirical evidence isn’t the only type of knowledge. Math, for example, is not evidence based, nor is it empirical. We don’t typically count algebra as a matter of faith however.
There are schools of atheism that would claim that you can know that God does not exist because said existence is logically contradictory in a way that can be deductively demonstrated, similar to how things can be disproven in mathematics.Thanks, always have time for well organized pedantry. So ‘weak’ atheism is basically agnosticism with Occam’s razor.
‘Agnosticism is lack of knowing on the matter.’ is a nice point, it’s right there in the word. I’m not sold on ‘“Lack of belief” is specifically an atheist trait.’ though, can easily apply to agnosticism as well (or not for those that do believe).
Personally, I’m happy to eclectically pick and choose wisdom from many religions (shame they so often ignore the source material in practice), but that doesn’t make me believe in god/s, merely the psychological usefulness of some ideas. I’m happy to believe in said usefulness even without evidence beyond anecdotal, people are such a mess of contradiction.
I mean, much like agnosticism is derived from “not knowledge”, “atheism” is derived from “not god”. “Lack of belief (in a diety)” is the definition of atheism.
The distinction between strong and weak, sometimes called “positive” and “negative”, is “belief that there is not” vs “no belief that there is”. Similar to how different strengths of agnosticism express “do not know” vs “cannot know”. They both lack a belief in a god. An agnostic who does not believe is a type of atheist. Since they’re compatible philosophies there’s no contradiction or need to choose. Like liking chocolate ice cream and liking root beer.Agnosticism is the belief that it is impossible to know if there is a god
Atheism is the lack of belief that there is a god
Some atheists might assert that they know there is no god, but that is not the meaning of atheism, though some people call that “strong atheism”
On the flip side, one can be agnostic and think there is a god.
Being both atheist and agnostic (what some people call weak atheism) is the rational position given that there is no evidence for any god (or other supernatural phenomenon) existing, but that you also can’t design an experiment that the result of would let you conclude a god (or other supernatural phenomenon) does not exist.
Occam’s razor doesn’t have anything to do with it. It is simply irrational to leap to believing things for which there is no evidence.
I prefer to call strong atheism as anti-theism in order to not conflate it with what you call weak atheism.
I think the difference betweem an absence of belief in a god and the belief in the absence of a god is large enough to warrant separate terms.
Edit: ok apparently the vocabulary of weak and strong atheism is the established one. Still, it leaves an ambiguity into the central word of ‘atheism’ that I don’t like.
Antitheism is not about knowledge or belief. Its literally in the name, to be against theism. One can be a believer and still be against a religion for all the harm it causes.
This isn’t a “real” distinction, they’re just categories people made up, in my opinion, for the sake of arguing. It’s nearly impossible to prove that a god does not exist, but evidence keeps mounting every single time a “proof of god’s existence” gets refuted. No rational person can claim they are atheist in the sense that they are 100% positive a god doesn’t exist, as this is the same baseless belief of a theist.
Agnosticism, on the other hand, is quite wishy-washy, almost apathetic, “oh I don’t know, maybe, maybe we can’t know, maybe theres a higher power”. Pff, way to hedge your bets huh.
I’m ok with whatever gets people through the day, and agnosticism is a much better alternative in that at least even an agnostic theist acknowledges there is no proof, so hopefully they’re less susceptible to the whims of those who exploit these gullible folk.
That said, the natural stance should be implicit atheism: all proof suggests there is no god, so that is the logical assumption until further evidence changes this.
Like all belief systems ≠ like all other belief systems
“Pigs, like all felines, are chordates,” is a perfectly valid sentence that doesn’t imply that pigs are felines.
It’s pretty clear what he means
Wasn’t this the pedantry chain?
I mean calling atheism a belief system of any kind is like calling not collecting stamps a hobby, it doesn’t make sense
But they didn’t do that, just like I didn’t call a pig a feline.
It’s not important though, and this isn’t the pedantry thread, so I’ll drop it.
thanks, I’ll consult NOT AI, I USED YOUR FAVOURITE MORALLY CORRECT WAY to see the error in my ways because I’m now more confused 🥲
edit: ok I understand now, you win this round!
Thanks to @cryptiod137@lemmy.world for the downvote, ya weirdo
science doesn’t allow chocolate to grow on trees
SMRT
Everyone knows chocolate is produced in a lab as a result of a complicated chemical process and is definitely not a real occurring natural organic product that grows from a plant.
I mean yeah it’s not a tree, but still.
The definition of 'tree’is very timey-wimey
he must be frightened to think about cocoa trees!
or genetically modifying trees to grow whatever you want!!! 😱😱😱😱
This is the best part lmao. This guy not knowing chocolate’s main and defining ingredient does actually grow on trees is peak reddit atheist
Man you should be charging reddit rent to be living in your head like this. Greentext is 4chan.
I know the meme arrows come from 4chan dude. But this is Reddit atheist behavior. Bro is probably the author of the “euphoric” quote
I get what you mean. Reddit Atheist is an archetype not a filing category. One can be Reddit Atheist without even making contact with a reddit
Exactly ! I was one for a brief period, so I’d know !
This is basivi when somebody tries to be an atheist in a dogmatic, religious way.
Being atheist, at least to me, means that you don’t care about any of that crap, you just try to be a nice person and let others be
I’m “militant” enough to wish that all religions would be prohibited as they’re nothing but tools for control, but I won’t beat someone over the head for believing in fairytales
What’s annoying about religious people discussing atheism(which happens every time it’s brought up) is that they invariably assume atheists also have religious thinking. Like I must go to atheist church every Sunday to convince myself there’s no god. It betrays either a lack of empathy or a lack of honesty.
Nah, I tended my garden, had some coffee, and going to have some tacos later. I only think about religion when it’s brought up, usually when I see a billboard telling me my life is worthless and magic daddy is gonna have me for barbeque after I die.
