Tachyon said: Kexruct said: Calica said:you're right. how dare atheists be proud of their beliefs. if you're religious, it's a-ok to celebrate the things you believe in, but no god? that's just wrong, and you should be ashamed also how dare you celebrate someone who believed weird things. if you're an atheist, only being absolutely perfect is allowed. conservapedia said so
But atheism isn't a belief; it's a lack of belief. By default it's something uncelebrateable. Antitheism is a belief, as is particularly emphatic secularism, or, hell, veneration of a particular scientific figure. But atheism in and of itself isn't a belief and as such can't really be celebrated. Like, what holiday can you make out of simply "No god?" I mean, I guess there's "Yay, people doing things of their own accord," but that isn't inherently atheistic in nature nor is it a belief inherent to atheism, in that under an atheistic system of beliefs the viewpoint that, as a counterpoint, everything is a result of predetermined genetic destiny (being that even if nature makes a smaller portion of identity than nurture, nurture is still informed by other people's nature) can just as well be derived from the (lack of) belief.
It's an identity. You can celebrate an identity.
Also, a lot of atheists believe in secular humanism, which i can understand wanting to celebrate.
Again, I dunno if it's so much an identity in and of itself so much as a collection of traits assembled under the banner of atheism when none of those traits are inherent to atheism. Not a perfect comparison, but imagine if people celebrated the concept of theism in general. Not a particular religion, just identifying with any religion. It's kind of meaningless to celebrate because theism in and of itself implies almost nothing about an identity aside from traits more-or-less arbitrarily assigned to it.
For this reason, celebration of atheism most often takes the form of implied intellectual or moral superiority over theists; in other words, it becomes not about lack of belief, but disdain for belief. Secular humanism is another form and it's quite a bit better, but by my estimation it seems quite a degree less common. I can't think of any adequate manner to celebrate atheism without throwing other identities into the mix because atheism is either a lack of an identity or an identity that is too broad to actually pin down any traits inherent to the identity than can be celebrated.
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It took me ages to really get into Dexter's Lab, but I enjoyed Cow and Chicken, a show that seems to have rubbed most people the very, very wrong way, and when I was a kid, I preferred Looney Tunes and the MGM shorts to most of the Cartoon Cartoons
then again my mind also went "eww" at the second and third seasons of Johnny Bravo at first, whereas most people didn't seem to notice the difference
when I said "Proud Atheist" I put it in quotation marks for a reason.
It's the name of a tumblr blog (and an associated twitter account I think) a lot of these people seem to reblog from. Much of what it posts (that I see anyway) is only tangentially related to atheism, and much of that is kind of half-baked.
I don't really have any problem with atheism in of itself.
I have Linux on this machine, but then I've been using a Unix of some sort since 1995, and I was playing with DOS before that.
These days, if you want something that just works, you skip the desktop and get an Android device...even Windows can be incredibly frustrating at times (I hate you so much Windows Update).
That's not to imply that it is a less important or valid thing to identify with, just that the makeup of atheism as an identity is fundamentally different in its negativity to a positive belief.
Negative and positive are kinda loaded words but my attempt was to use them in the most neutral manner possible.
Today in "Strange Occurrences" : I was just looking through the VHS tapes, and I found a opy of Mulan that had been cued to "I'll Make a Man Out of You".
THere's not much in here at the moment. ...an old copy of the first X-Men movie, a Key Video print of Blue Hawaii, The Best of Friends, and that's about it.
Atheism is the belief that there is no god and it's just as valid as any religion.
I'm aware of what atheism means. I'm not questioning the validity of disbelief; I'm stating that disbelief isn't equivalent to a specific belief.
Specific secular sets of belief- secular humanism and its ilk- are beliefs because they describe things believed in, not beliefs excluded.
There's a reason why Proud Atheism will invoke either antitheism or secular humanism.
i'm not seeing the significance of the "belief in the existence of"/"belief in the lack of" distinction you're drawing here. Shared religious identity isn't about some single shared belief, it's about a whole set of shared beliefs and traditions, and practicing those traditions.
But i'd maintain there *is* a shared atheist identity with its own set of traditions and heroes and associated ideas, and that's probably the "community" that NdGT said he wasn't interested in being a part of.
It took me ages to really get into Dexter's Lab, but I enjoyed Cow and Chicken, a show that seems to have rubbed most people the very, very wrong way, and when I was a kid, I preferred Looney Tunes and the MGM shorts to most of the Cartoon Cartoons
then again my mind also went "eww" at the second and third seasons of Johnny Bravo at first, whereas most people didn't seem to notice the difference
i'm fairly sure i was much too young to notice the difference between the seasons of JB (i can't even remember what was what season, since they were shown out of sequence), but i did like Cow and Chicken. i disliked the art immensely, but i watched it because my brother was into it and i found much that was amusing.
i always did prefer the old Looney Tunes shorts to, like, all of the Cartoon Cartoons (that i've seen). i don't know if i'd feel the same way now, but Looney Tunes struck me as being quite witty at times, and also as having a particular kind of charm that i guess is probably to do with their age.
From what I've been seeing, yeah, there is something of a "bro-atheist" identity (or stereotype, at least); fedoras and watching people like Thunderf00t and The Amazing Atheist are said to be involved.
Man is a most complex simple creature: see what he weaves, and how base his reasons for doing so.
Actually, what does an atheist community even look like? Do people just stand around and talk about how much they don't believe in God?
Because I'm hugely religious and I've been to theist communities and that's pretty much all we do. Stand around and talk about how much we believe in God.
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
What would you guys recommend for headphones in the $20 range?
i suppose when i say i can see people doing that, i'm talking about people raised in countries where religion is the presumed default and where being an atheist means adopting a belief different from that of your parents and most of your peers
people would need a reason for doing that, and talking about that reason doesn't seem out of the question
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also how dare you celebrate someone who believed weird things. if you're an atheist, only being absolutely perfect is allowed. conservapedia said so
But atheism isn't a belief; it's a lack of belief. By default it's something uncelebrateable. Antitheism is a belief, as is particularly emphatic secularism, or, hell, veneration of a particular scientific figure. But atheism in and of itself isn't a belief and as such can't really be celebrated. Like, what holiday can you make out of simply "No god?" I mean, I guess there's "Yay, people doing things of their own accord," but that isn't inherently atheistic in nature nor is it a belief inherent to atheism, in that under an atheistic system of beliefs the viewpoint that, as a counterpoint, everything is a result of predetermined genetic destiny (being that even if nature makes a smaller portion of identity than nurture, nurture is still informed by other people's nature) can just as well be derived from the (lack of) belief.
It's an identity. You can celebrate an identity.
Also, a lot of atheists believe in secular humanism, which i can understand wanting to celebrate.
Again, I dunno if it's so much an identity in and of itself so much as a collection of traits assembled under the banner of atheism when none of those traits are inherent to atheism. Not a perfect comparison, but imagine if people celebrated the concept of theism in general. Not a particular religion, just identifying with any religion. It's kind of meaningless to celebrate because theism in and of itself implies almost nothing about an identity aside from traits more-or-less arbitrarily assigned to it.
I don't really have any problem with atheism in of itself.
But i'd maintain there *is* a shared atheist identity with its own set of traditions and heroes and associated ideas, and that's probably the "community" that NdGT said he wasn't interested in being a part of.
i always did prefer the old Looney Tunes shorts to, like, all of the Cartoon Cartoons (that i've seen). i don't know if i'd feel the same way now, but Looney Tunes struck me as being quite witty at times, and also as having a particular kind of charm that i guess is probably to do with their age.
There are atheist communities that are at least marginally less shitty and un-self-aware than that.
that's not to say that atheists are an oppressed group in somewhere like the UK
but tumblr at large doesn't seem to have a problem stereotyping the entire movement as tedious, anally-retentive, misogynistic boors
it's not as bad as the thing with white girls where tumblr itself sounds sexist at times, but it's along the same lines i guess
Christians talk about, like, how the exams are going, or what we did over the holidays, or stuff that's been in the news recently.
Sometimes religion comes up but you don't stand there talking about it continuously
but atheists gathering *specifically* to discuss their beliefs doesn't seem like it'd happen often
can't help on the headphones thing, sorry, the products and prices are different here anyway
people would need a reason for doing that, and talking about that reason doesn't seem out of the question
serves me right for doubleposting, i know