Post AVwDX2dHbaCHxmtOYy by atompunkray@kolektiva.social
(DIR) More posts by atompunkray@kolektiva.social
(DIR) Post #AVwDX0cr4CfNjsg1cO by julieofthespirits@kolektiva.social
2023-05-22T02:34:55Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
One of the reasons that I'm unable to see atheism as a precondition for radical politics is that I don't see any field of action where being an atheist will give people a better batting average than religious people when it comes to concrete forms of oppression. Does being an atheist make you more likely to be antiracist, in favor of queer liberation? Not really. So many atheists are as deeply committed to the power structures as their religious counterparts. What atheism usually *is* a good marker for, though, is an unbearable smugness and moral superiority, because they find that the very act of not believing in God magically makes them superior to those who do, but I'd take 10 Ernesto Cardenals for every Christopher Hitchens. And in fact, it's the same moral superiority I find in evangelicals, that same adolescent insistence on judging people on believing the exact same thing they do, rather than on the fruits of whatever they believe
(DIR) Post #AVwDX1Xve0JuatNbZw by atompunkray@kolektiva.social
2023-05-23T02:00:12Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@julieofthespirits I read a really good thread on Twitter and it talked about how things can *feel* religiously significant, they were leaving a Passover dinner in a conservative part of the US when a cop started to follow them; they reached out to Elijah for help and the cop moved around them and pulled off. the person talked about how whether or not god actually came down and made the cop car not pull them over is kinda irrelevant, because the fact that it FEELS significant is what matters.I think alot of people are afraid to confront the fact that we’re humans and by definition we will never know *everything* so they dive into atheism as an attempt “fully understand the universe.” But that’s never going to happen, we might as well embrace that fact and live the most interesting life we can; if that means practicing Judaism or astrology or a million other “unscientific” then so be it.
(DIR) Post #AVwDX1dxHb8mtaCPyK by julieofthespirits@kolektiva.social
2023-05-22T02:37:35Z
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And before anyone tries to distance themselves from the Christopher Hitchens of the world, just the other week a bunch of people on kolektiva were harassing Danya Ruttenberg, so no, I don't really see y'all as any different than Hitchens
(DIR) Post #AVwDX2dHbaCHxmtOYy by atompunkray@kolektiva.social
2023-05-23T02:01:00Z
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@julieofthespirits i can’t find it rn but the thread was by @Crowpotkin
(DIR) Post #AVwDXVFBEH9GhQq3WK by ceruleanarc@eldritch.cafe
2023-05-23T02:35:59Z
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@atompunkray @julieofthespirits As an atheist, I value honesty and truth.And if one values honesty and truth, I don't see how one can also believe that we can, at any point in history, know enough about the universe to confirm or deny the existence of one or more gods.I'm certain that there are no gods (I'm a strong/gnostic atheist), but I see no reason to be a dick to people who are just as certain that there are.As humans, we have literal modules in our brains that predispose us to anthropomorphize the inhuman, such as the natural world, and it's remarkably easy to extend that behavior to a supernatural world that we cannot interact with empirically. This is why, historically, it's been far easier to find people who do believe in one or more gods than it's been not to.
(DIR) Post #AVwDXXq7Ztt0ka8aNU by atompunkray@kolektiva.social
2023-05-23T02:50:27Z
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@ceruleanarc @julieofthespirits I think something to remember is, is that not all non-atheists claim to 100% know that god (or whatever) exists. (Not saying that’s what you were saying, just to be clear)I think there are a lot of people who have spiritual beliefs who have them on purpose, if that makes any sense. Like, they aren’t so much making a claim about “a thing they believe to be true” as they are “this is a set of practices that make living in the world bearable”
(DIR) Post #AVwDXYQzMpNQavO1qK by julieofthespirits@kolektiva.social
2023-05-23T03:07:51Z
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@atompunkray @ceruleanarc yeah, I think there's a certain set of religious beliefs we can definitely say are categorically Not True (the North American Protestant Biblical Literalism about a man with a beard in the sky who refused to let the dinosaurs onto the Ark), but there's other religious beliefs that don't openly contradict modern science - like, is someone who believes in an Abrahamic religion but has a more Spinozan interpretation of the nature of God contradicting modern science the way the Pentecostals do? No
(DIR) Post #AVwDXZ7snLgijxSHhY by atompunkray@kolektiva.social
2023-05-23T04:08:37Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@julieofthespirits @ceruleanarc North American Protestants, especially evangelicals are soooo fucking weird. I genuinely don’t get what would compel someone to join a religion where the place of worship is in a strip mall. Obv I don’t think religion is *inherently* bad, but I struggle to find anything positive about evangelical Christianity