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System Metternich posted:
Portugal. They're kinda sensitive about that and hate it when you call them the Canada of Spain or the England of Brazil. cis autodrag posted:It's me, I'm the good atheist we're called agnostics
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Mar 28, 2017 23:08
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Brainiac Five posted:Huh, the church I teach Sunday School at will be running out of money in July at this rate. Not surprising since there's maybe 30 regular attendees, but... aw jeeze. i go to a tiny church, and what's the building situation like? i say this because if there are 30 of you it's really not worth it to have a seperate church and have you considered a storefront?
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Mar 28, 2017 23:14
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cis autodrag posted:It's me, I'm the good atheist I'm the worst atheist, I'm basically just a mistheist who's afraid to commit. not as afraid as anyone who says this, though: Hoover Dam posted:we're called agnostics
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Mar 28, 2017 23:15
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I like hard agnosticism, it's what I try for on my better days.
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Mar 28, 2017 23:20
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I'm the worst atheist, I'm basically just a mistheist who's afraid to commit.
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Mar 28, 2017 23:21
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There was also that time Jastiger implied I was a menace to society which was funny as hell.
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Mar 28, 2017 23:27
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Thirteen Orphans posted:There was also that time Jastiger implied I was a menace to society which was funny as hell. That's a very charitable reaction.
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Mar 28, 2017 23:29
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HEY GAIL posted:aw jeeze. i go to a tiny church, and what's the building situation like? i say this because if there are 30 of you it's really not worth it to have a seperate church and have you considered a storefront? Our church building is actually historically significant (we also have probably closer to 70 people on the rolls), as at the core of it is one of the six chapels Henry Ford built. So it'd be a bit hard to abandon  .
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Mar 28, 2017 23:32
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Brainiac Five posted:Our church building is actually historically significant (we also have probably closer to 70 people on the rolls), as at the core of it is one of the six chapels Henry Ford built. So it'd be a bit hard to abandon 
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Mar 28, 2017 23:42
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HEY GAIL posted:our church building is a store next to a hydroponics shop Nice.
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Mar 28, 2017 23:49
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HEY GAIL posted:what's wrong with that You're talking about Protestants. We schism over whether to get the church's new carpets in blue or salmon.
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Mar 29, 2017 00:38
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Can anyone help me find a good English translation of Hildegard of Bingen's works? I'm specifically looking for Scivias and Divine Works. Freely available would be preferable, but I can do an e-book if it's cheap enough.
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Mar 29, 2017 01:26
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OwlFancier posted:I like hard agnosticism, it's what I try for on my better days. I believe in God, it's reality I'm agnostic about
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Mar 29, 2017 05:35
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Brainiac Five posted:Our church building is actually historically significant (we also have probably closer to 70 people on the rolls), as at the core of it is one of the six chapels Henry Ford built. So it'd be a bit hard to abandon I'm sorry that's happening. Your church sounds lovely. I add my prayers to all yours that you won't have to abandon your building.
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Mar 29, 2017 06:31
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Hoover Dam posted:Portugal. They're kinda sensitive about that and hate it when you call them the Canada of Spain or the England of Brazil.  had a brain fart there, sorry. As an apology to the great Portuguese people have the interesting facts that:
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Mar 29, 2017 07:04
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OwlFancier posted:I like hard agnosticism, it's what I try for on my better days. Agnosticism is just a rhetorical device. Recognizing what you believe is crucial to any moral/religious education. A key element of Jesuit education is testing your faith to strengthen it, or (more realistically and importantly) to engage with it. People assume that ancient man is somehow different from modern man but that's simply not the case. The martyrs and ascetics we remember had the same doubts we find in moderns. From Jesus to Saint Teresa of Calcutta, you've got people saying, "I'm not 100% sure on this but I'm going to go with it!" Pick what you believe and go for it. You may be hilariously wrong but that's OK too. Agnosticism allows for neither success nor failure. Man's quest for meaning is pretty cool.
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Mar 29, 2017 07:28
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Consciousness of the arbitrariness of one's belief and the necessity of one's ignorance can be a positively affirmed position by itself. And it has the benefit of likely being true, whether or not you like it.
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Mar 29, 2017 10:36
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Bel_Canto posted:this thread, by contrast, is an ongoing discussion of silly hats among posters of diverse religious beliefs, including pagans and atheists, interrupted by the occasional intrusion of reddit atheists who seem to have lots of difficulty reading...well, anything at all, really You rang?   Most of our dudes are into hoods, unfortunately  Tuxedo Catfish posted:I'm the worst atheist, I'm basically just a mistheist who's afraid to commit. What's mistheism? Thirteen Orphans posted:There was also that time Jastiger implied I was a menace to society which was funny as hell. Christianity Thread II: Don't be a menace 2 liturgy while drinking your juice in tha hood Tias fucked around with this message at 12:37 on Mar 29, 2017 |
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Mar 29, 2017 11:27
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Shbobdb posted:Agnosticism is just a rhetorical device. Recognizing what you believe is crucial to any moral/religious education. A key element of Jesuit education is testing your faith to strengthen it, or (more realistically and importantly) to engage with it. People assume that ancient man is somehow different from modern man but that's simply not the case. The martyrs and ascetics we remember had the same doubts we find in moderns. From Jesus to Saint Teresa of Calcutta, you've got people saying, "I'm not 100% sure on this but I'm going to go with it!" OwlFancier posted:Consciousness of the arbitrariness of one's belief and the necessity of one's ignorance can be a positively affirmed position by itself. And it has the benefit of likely being true, whether or not you like it. We're all born by accident, but we all choose to live, but I also have no problem with anything you said, either. If we are going to see how much a life can positively affirm a position, though, Shbobdb is right: the quest (sometimes worded search) for meaning is pretty cool and worth making the leap of faith to believe in yourself and others. Beyond coolness, it's also potentially dangerous, but an adult life cannot be non-committal forever when it comes to believing and doing what is right and wrong. Caufman fucked around with this message at 12:24 on Mar 29, 2017 |
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Mar 29, 2017 12:22
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Blueshirt Pointyhat is just having the best old time. Also based on the wall and spotlights in the background, those guys seem to be escaping from a high security prison. What crazy adventure will these boys get into next?
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Mar 29, 2017 12:42
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Not sure how I feel about those uniforms in the new Star Trek TV show.
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Mar 29, 2017 13:21
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I've never understood viewing Agnosticism as some kind of half-measure between theism and atheism, as a lack of conscious decision-making or unwillingness to commit, or a failure or an indifference towards the attempt to infuse life with meaning, but I am also not familiar with exactly what the term may encompass. A weird way to put it, perhaps, but agnosticism strikes me as a sympathetic position; as a position of doubt or uncertainty rather than one of dismissal, disbelief, or mistrust. Agnosticism strikes me as simply acknowledging uncertainty and doubt, and as very much embracing the need to infuse life with meaning. Doubt or uncertainty doesn't go counter to believing in something strongly, but is born of having belief and attempting to seek meaning, I think. You can't meaningfully doubt, if you don't believe. If you simply do not believe something, then there is no element of doubt or uncertainty. Doubt or uncertainty is so intertwined with having faith and holding belief, whether religious or not, that acknowledging uncertainness or doubt strikes me as an integral act of faith, and immediately sympathetic. I think someone self-identifying as agnostic is possibly the last person I would worry about failing to make an attempt of seeking out meaning.
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Mar 29, 2017 14:02
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Tias posted:What's mistheism? The wrong word. I was looking for dystheist, a believer in a hostile god.
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Mar 29, 2017 14:43
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Caufman posted:We're all born by accident, but we all choose to live, but I also have no problem with anything you said, either. If we are going to see how much a life can positively affirm a position, though, Shbobdb is right: the quest (sometimes worded search) for meaning is pretty cool and worth making the leap of faith to believe in yourself and others. Beyond coolness, it's also potentially dangerous, but an adult life cannot be non-committal forever when it comes to believing and doing what is right and wrong. You can pick stuff you like while remaining completely conscious that you really are just picking things you like, I find the perspective to be productive. Mr Enderby posted:Blueshirt Pointyhat is just having the best old time. I think that's Odin/Wodan. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Mar 29, 2017 |
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Mar 29, 2017 15:58
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OwlFancier posted:You can pick stuff you like while remaining completely conscious that you really are just picking things you like, I find the perspective to be productive. There is no real quest for meaning in "I just agree with the things I agree with." That's just a congratulatory pat on the back and tends to enable to worst elements of mankind. It's fine if you want to do it for the lulz but let's not pretend that this is some super smart move. We should recognize it for the cowardice it is. How is this approach productive for you?
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Mar 29, 2017 16:12
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OwlFancier posted:You can pick stuff you like while remaining completely conscious that you really are just picking things you like, I find the perspective to be productive. The right two are clearly the Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow. I haven't figured out the other two.
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Mar 29, 2017 16:14
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Shbobdb posted:There is no real quest for meaning in "I just agree with the things I agree with." That's just a congratulatory pat on the back and tends to enable to worst elements of mankind. I'm atheist because I simply cannot see any evidence whatsoever to suggest to me that there is a god. I wouldn't describe this perspective as elective, because I'm not really sure I could perform the required intellectual surgery to change it. It's just what I see. Other people obviously see differently, presumably because their viewing apparatus is different to mine, but that's what I see. To the same end, I'm agnostic because I also cannot see any evidence whatsoever that suggests I am not completely blinded by the limitations of my own perception and thus I really have no way of knowing whether anything I think is true or not, and what with being atheist I certainly don't affirm belief in any inherent or objective meaning in the world, so I am left with a complete absence of presented meaning as well as being conscious that any meaning I could perceive is probably more likely to be an echo of my own mind than anything actually real, as well as the general sense that there is no reason to hope for an inherent meaning to the world. So, with that in mind, what other sane response is there other than just picking something you like, and remaining conscious that that's what you're doing? If I tried to convince myself that the reason I do things is for any other reason than personal aesthetic preference, I'd probably spend a lot of time full of doubt as to the validity of my decision. Embracing the absurdity of the concept from the start makes it much easier to just get on with it rather than worrying about why I picked what I picked.
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Mar 29, 2017 16:42
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My objection to espoused agnosticism as follows: 1) It describes everyone, so why is it presented as an alternative? Outside of very young children, everyone experiences degrees of doubt. Agnostics present themselves as special because they aren't a deluded zealot but in so doing they are pretty much always denying the co-humanity of everyone else. 2) It's not as open minded as it would like to believe. We all come with cultural baggage. For self-described agnostics, especially in English, that baggage is explicitly Christian. They aren't "agnostic" about Yggdrasill -- they are agnostic about deities clearly descended from the Christian tradition (usually some flavor of Deism). You can see mirrors of this in other cultures that help demonstrate the absurdity of it. For example, in China most people would describe themselves as not religious/superstitious but that same group also pretty much entirely believes in ghosts. Because ghosts are real, so it's not superstitious to believe in them. Thinking themselves above the ideological fray, agnostics are extremely unwilling to actually engage with the cultural biases they've inherited. 3) It is philosophically inert. What does agnosticism rub against? Taken not as an adjunct to any system but as a system itself, what does it do? If your philosophy is so open minded that it allows for all possibilities, including mutually contradictory positions, what good is it? This creates a situation where, believing in nothing, the agnostic will fall for anything. You'll see this in a collapse into self-congratulatory new age woo or disengagement from any quest for meaning since they are also agnostic about meaning in general.
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Mar 29, 2017 17:07
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If you want to keep ranting about how agnostics are actually cowards, make a thread about it instead of making GBS threads up this one.
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Mar 29, 2017 17:13
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who says i'm not agnostic about yggdrasil the only thing i'm against is using agnostic as a substitute term for atheism rather than a way of clarifying the type of stance you hold as an atheist (or as a theist, for that matter, in the sense that a person can trust that god exists without believing they know or even that it's knowable) Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Mar 29, 2017 |
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Mar 29, 2017 17:14
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OwlFancier posted:I'm atheist because I simply cannot see any evidence whatsoever to suggest to me that there is a god. I wouldn't describe this perspective as elective, because I'm not really sure I could perform the required intellectual surgery to change it. It's just what I see. Other people obviously see differently, presumably because their viewing apparatus is different to mine, but that's what I see. OK, so you are an atheist. You have doubts about that like everybody because you are also a human being. So what? Why the need to clarify? Wouldn't it be more effective to talk about what you do believe as opposed to politely presenting what you don't believe as one of many possible options? How do you order food when dining with a friend?  : "I don't like tofu.":bigtran:: "OK, what do you want to eat then? Chicken, steak, veggies?" : "It's OK if you like tofu. I just don't. You do you.":bigtran:: "Sure, but what are we going to order?" : "It's all a matter of individual taste, there is no difference between those options because we can't ever really know what food tastes like to another person.":bigtran:: "You said you didn't like tofu though, so which is it? What are we going to order?"
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Mar 29, 2017 17:14
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my dad posted:If you want to keep ranting about how agnostics are actually cowards, make a thread about it instead of making GBS threads up this one.
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Mar 29, 2017 17:41
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I suppose atheism doesn't make a lot of sense to me as a positive identification, nor is it especially interesting as one. I'm atheist in the same way I am colourblind and probably as inflexibly so, but I don't really see how you could build a positive identity around it or that there's very much to really say about it philosophically. I can't see anything divine in the world, I'm inclined to guess it's probably because there isn't any. That's it. Agnosticism is far more applicable than atheism, philosophically. And I think, much more interesting.
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Mar 29, 2017 17:42
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Neither are a positive identification. That's the point. What are you?
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Mar 29, 2017 17:46
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He is him.
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Mar 29, 2017 17:47
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Senju Kannon posted:agnostics are cowards because they won't fight me in a hell in a cell match at wrestlemania Tag team, no disqualifications, tapout only. Someone book this.
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Mar 29, 2017 18:01
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my dad posted:He is him. Let the man speak for himself.
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Mar 29, 2017 18:05
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Shbobdb posted:Let the man speak for himself. I was actually going to say that but figured it would annoy you so I didn't. And I also don't really want to start a slapfight in the Christianity thread. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Mar 29, 2017 |
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Mar 29, 2017 18:07
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my dad posted:He is him. He's a confusion of grammatical cases?
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Mar 29, 2017 18:31
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It might be some kind of language barrier, but I honestly don't get why that would be provocative or annoying, at all.
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Mar 29, 2017 18:31
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