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  • Halasham@dormi.zonetoAtheism@lemmy.worldHow to kill God?
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    30 days ago

    The God of the Christians?

    Time’s killing it just as it does everyone. Not only is the vile religion diminishing currently but the claimed miracles of the fabled monster are also diminishing with time.

    • In true Last Thursdayism fashion they claim the universe was created by the beast six millennia ago.
    • 2 millennia later he demonstrably lost, if he ever had to begin with, the traits of omniscience and omnipotence. As demonstrated by taking a rash action, regretting it, and not undoing it.
    • At some point he’s developed a weakness to iron as stated by spaceghoti.
    • Nowadays his grand “miracles” are causing light breezes, or small amounts of rain, or stopping either… things Humans are entirely capable of doing.

    As for how to accelerate the death of this monster? Take a page from the countries that have done the best at wounding it so far: Raise general quality of life, not just education, for all the people of your society. It feeds on suffering, so we should starve it out.


  • I see faith and religion confused a lot.

    Fair enough, I have been using them interchangeably. I suppose given your position that’s inaccurate. Our positions differ quite a bit, I’m an antitheist and materialist/physicalist.

    which - fair, you can make inferences and guesses, but we’re still not able to know for certain what someone else is thinking.

    My point here is just the opposite. It isn’t inferences or guesses, we can tell from brain activity that what’s going on falls within a certain range. We have yet to refine this ability to tell detailed specifics but we’re not guessing A * B = G, we can use our modern tools and understanding to determine that G is within the range of D through J. Prior to the development of the current tools and methods we had a wider range and prior to the development of any such tools we were guessing and making inferences.

    Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle would be an example I’d agree to of something unknownable: the set of both the precise location and momentum of a particle. However as of yet I am unaware of any reason or mechanism by which this unknowable is impactful to any sapient entity… except those specifically studying it.

    As-is I find the unknowables that I am aware of, the Uncertainty Principle, whether or not we’re in a simulation, and so on so be inconsequential on the scale we operate on. We have a perceived reality that behaves according to rules that are determinable and practical utility can be derived from determining them.

    my view is that we all act on some degree of faith

    I don’t think I can contest this. At least not at the moment after having had a long day. In any case I think this point is where we likely differ quite a lot; I strive to take nothing on faith. To whichever extent that I do I want it to be less or at least driven past the point of functional irrelevance to the operation of my life.

    Nothing to do with the faith/spirituality of the individual, a LOT to do with the biases of whatever leadership your in group has.

    I suppose the authors of their scripture would count even though they have limited relation to living leaders of their religion.


  • I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. We can determine to some degree what’s going on in the mind of other people without having faith in their self-report, it’s just impractical to do to everyone or frequently; FMRI can show us their brain activity and we already have a reasonable sense of what the different bits of brain do. Would we be able to get fine specifics of their thoughts from it? No, not yet but given that out ability to detect and measure has a general tendency to improve with time I believe that it is a ‘yet’ and not an ‘if’ barring Extinction Level Events.

    Could you elaborate on the second point? I don’t see cause to have faith regarding that subject. We don’t have all the knowledge about the subject but neither would we know, for example, the exact ordering of a deck of cards immediately after a thorough shuffle. We know enough that we’re not going to see an Ace of Fives if we shuffled a standard deck and we’ll be able to determine the order they are in if we pay attention.

    Most of the faithful that I know personally aren’t involved with a governing body of their faith. They still use it to be bigots. When pressing them on the issue I’ve yet to get a response as to why they’re bigots other than their faith. They have, or at least are aware of, secular reasons to be good and kind but not when being bigoted in some ways (they have secular reasons for the kinds of bigotry their faith opposes).