Image transcription: a section of a Wikipedia article titled “Relationship with Reality”. It reads “From a scientific viewpoint, elves are not considered objectively real. [3] However,” End transcription.

  • @starman2112
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    57 months ago

    On top of that, most parents will admit that they made the tooth fairy up.

    • @[email protected]
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      47 months ago

      Yes, made up. Just like deities made up in more ignorant times.

      Are you seriously arguing in good faith that “god” exists as anything more than a mass delusion? And you think not believing that is “edgy”? If so, I really think we’re done.

      • @starman2112
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        7 months ago

        Are you seriously arguing in good faith that “god” exists as anything more than a mass delusion?

        No! I’m saying that making a truth claim without evidence is necessarily irrational! I literally said that I don’t believe it. There is a difference between not believing something and believing not something.

        I think that centering your online persona around your lack of belief while making comments about how delusional someone must be to be religious is what’s edgy.

        • @[email protected]
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          27 months ago

          I would counter that your pedantic hair splitting is what is truly edgy. “I don’t believe in god, but I don’t believe in not god” makes no semantic difference and is rather perfect fence sitting.

          • @starman2112
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            57 months ago

            Okay buddy, you’ve convinced me. Gnostic atheism is much more reasonable and true than agnostic atheism. Saying “I don’t know and don’t much care” is so much edgier than naming yourself “sin free for 0 days” and claiming to know for an absolute fact that there is no god

            • @[email protected]
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              27 months ago

              claiming to know for an absolute fact that there is no god

              When it’s never been proved otherwise, it’s a weird hill to die on.

              • @starman2112
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                57 months ago

                That’s precisely what I’m saying. If you can’t prove that something is true, it’s weird to go to such lengths justifying an affirmative belief that it’s true, instead of taking the position that you simply don’t know and therefore don’t believe any claims made about it either way.

                • @[email protected]
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                  17 months ago

                  If you can’t say god doesn’t exist, you are willing to say anything is possible. I believe 100% the sun will rise in the East tomorrow morning. I guess with your reasoning, I shouldn’t discount the chance that the sun will rise from the horizon in which it set. We don’t know anything!

                  • @starman2112
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                    7 months ago

                    I mean we’ve repeatedly demonstrated tens of millions of times throughout human history that the sun rises in the east, we can verify that the earth spins eastward with instruments and spacecraft, and we have extremely reliable models of reality that give us good reason to authoritatively state that the sun will rise in the east.

                    I need you to understand that there are no models or experiments that give us reason to authoritatively state that no deity exists, as surely as the sun will rise in the east in the morning. It is entirely possible that a deity exists. I don’t believe there is one, but until it can be proven that there isn’t one with the same veracity as any other claim, the only reasonable position is “I don’t believe it.”

                    Lemme paint you a word picture here. Don’t pull out a calculator. If I tell you that 11,441,612 divided by 17 is equal to 673,036, is it most reasonable to say that “no, it definitely isn’t” because I just pulled those numbers out of my ass, “yes, it definitely is,” because you have faith in my quick math calculating, or “I don’t know, but almost certainly not?”

                    The big difference between that and a claim about a god is that you can easily pull out a calculator and definitely state whether or not it’s true, but you can’t make that authoritative claim until after you’ve checked it.