anyway @naney i'm not sure there is anything logically wrong with that claim within those specific premises but it still strikes me as a pretty crass remark
within Christianity i think most people (not being theologians) would not be sufficiently confident that babies would go to heaven to justify killing them, if a baby died unbaptized you'd say they're at the mercy of God now and you'd hope for the best
all of these things are so important and so fascinating and if I could convince myself to believe a lick of it I would definitely devote my whole life to learning and theorising and studying and worshiping and all that jazz
but then you got all these people who are basically like "I think god exists" and they dont do anything with that knowledge and im like ??????????????????????????????????????
but then you got all these people who are basically like "I think god exists" and they dont do anything with that knowledge and im like ??????????????????????????????????????
140. How does it happen that this man, so distressed at the death of his wife and his only son, or who has some great lawsuit which annoys him, is not at this moment sad, and that he seems so free from all painful and disquieting thoughts? We need not wonder; for a ball has been served him, and he must return it to his companion. He is occupied in catching it in its fall from the roof, to win a game. How can he think of his own affairs, pray, when he has this other matter in hand? Here is a care worthy of occupying this great soul and taking away from him every other thought of the mind. This man, born to know the universe, to judge all causes, to govern a whole state, is altogether occupied and taken up with the business of catching a hare. And if he does not lower himself to this and wants always to be on the strain, he will be more foolish still, because he would raise himself above humanity; and after all, he is only a man, that is to say capable of little and of much, of all and of nothing; he is neither angel nor brute, but man.
the reasons i ended up not altogether rejecting religion had more to do with my own state of mind and emotional state than belief about the world . . . i felt that atheism was turning me into a person i didn't much like
in some ways i'm kind of agnostic about the whole business but i feel that there are reasons to at least consider and think seriously about religion . . . i can elaborate if you want, or not
but idk i suppose i never felt sufficiently motivated to devote all my time and energy to theology, i'm genuinely curious about it but it's a big subject and i want to approach it with context and at my own pace . . . maybe that's because i'm somewhat agnostic, maybe if i were more fervent about it i'd be more eager to read up on the theology, i don't know
also i guess i was raised in a particular religious denomination (Methodism) and it feels like a big part of who i am
i've never done the 'dabbling in other religions' thing because that feels somehow dishonest and appropriative, like yeah that might be the rational thing to do but so much of the way i think about the world was informed by the upbringing i had, i can't just drop the whole thing
tbh i feel just as uncomfortable around born-again evangelicals as i do around militant atheists
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and also slightly concerned about condemning people who are not present based on things they said years in the past
within Christianity i think most people (not being theologians) would not be sufficiently confident that babies would go to heaven to justify killing them, if a baby died unbaptized you'd say they're at the mercy of God now and you'd hope for the best
like, if you know that such an awesome thing is real how would you not devote all your time and energy to learning more?!?!?
140. How does it happen that this man, so distressed at the death of his wife and his only son, or who has some great lawsuit which annoys him, is not at this moment sad, and that he seems so free from all painful and disquieting thoughts? We need not wonder; for a ball has been served him, and he must return it to his companion. He is occupied in catching it in its fall from the roof, to win a game. How can he think of his own affairs, pray, when he has this other matter in hand? Here is a care worthy of occupying this great soul and taking away from him every other thought of the mind. This man, born to know the universe, to judge all causes, to govern a whole state, is altogether occupied and taken up with the business of catching a hare. And if he does not lower himself to this and wants always to be on the strain, he will be more foolish still, because he would raise himself above humanity; and after all, he is only a man, that is to say capable of little and of much, of all and of nothing; he is neither angel nor brute, but man.
the reasons i ended up not altogether rejecting religion had more to do with my own state of mind and emotional state than belief about the world . . . i felt that atheism was turning me into a person i didn't much like
in some ways i'm kind of agnostic about the whole business but i feel that there are reasons to at least consider and think seriously about religion . . . i can elaborate if you want, or not
but idk i suppose i never felt sufficiently motivated to devote all my time and energy to theology, i'm genuinely curious about it but it's a big subject and i want to approach it with context and at my own pace . . . maybe that's because i'm somewhat agnostic, maybe if i were more fervent about it i'd be more eager to read up on the theology, i don't know
i've never done the 'dabbling in other religions' thing because that feels somehow dishonest and appropriative, like yeah that might be the rational thing to do but so much of the way i think about the world was informed by the upbringing i had, i can't just drop the whole thing
tbh i feel just as uncomfortable around born-again evangelicals as i do around militant atheists