What’s a mob to a king? What’s a king to a god? What’s a god to an atheist?

Nobody asked about religion.

The spaghetti monster

Exactly! I haven’t seen any proof of a god(s) but I’m willing to keep an open mind. At the end of the day if I live life trying to do well, I should be good.

That quote resonates a lot with me as well.

Wow, I had no idea that there was a quote out there that aligns so well with my beliefs. I grew up in a semi religious household but was never forced to go to church. My parents encouraged me to go, not only to theirs but even go with friends that were different religions.

After going to various churches through some really vulnerable times I still don’t subscribe to any religion, but I also can’t bring myself to go full atheist.

Too bad that quote is way too long for a tattoo 🤣

It’s a bit wordier (well, most people are wordier than the stoics lol) but Socrates had the right idea too I think:

Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good, for one of two things: - either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another.

Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the sight of dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king, will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now if death is like this, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this?

If indeed when the pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from the professors of justice in this world, and finds the true judges who are said to give judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous in their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again. I, too, shall have a wonderful interest in a place where I can converse with Palamedes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and other heroes of old, who have suffered death through an unjust judgment; and there will be no small pleasure, as I think, in comparing my own sufferings with theirs. Above all, I shall be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in that; I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is not.

What would not a man give, O judges, to be able to examine the leader of the great Trojan expedition; or Odysseus or Sisyphus, or numberless others, men and women too! What infinite delight would there be in conversing with them and asking them questions! For in that world they do not put a man to death for this; certainly not. For besides being happier in that world than in this, they will be immortal, if what is said is true.

Religion did have good morals in theory. Not in practice.

Also, unrelated to your points, religion didn’t evolve. It stayed about the same for thousands of years, despite new science.

If you need to rely on an external force and fear of hell to have morals, you’re not a good person.

Seconded.

You must’ve been thinking of Reddit…

Welcome to Lemmy :)

But for real, if you go to the comment section on instagram or something comparable, its really toxic compared to Lemmy. But I’m also a bit worried as mastodon seems to become more toxic over the time, hopefully Lemmy stays the same

Cool, and also terrifying.

deleted by creator

When I was religious (I’m not any more) that was something that never actually troubled me. I believed that god was benevolent but that suffering must be necessary in ways that we humans can’t conceive of. Who were we to question the grander plan?

basically believing in god is akin to believing that this is all just a game of sims some twisted being is playing

Only when If I get expensive gifts.

I remember I actually stopped believing in God at the same time I realised Santa wasn’t real.

I read satan and got so confused by the replies

Yes, becuse in my family, all the older family members make him real for the younger kids. We actively work together to make Christmas a magical time by telling stories and staying up late to put out presents. I know that Santa is not a real person but I believe I can keep his “spirit alive” by giving heartfelt presents and spending quality time with my family.

I personally am atheist but I will admit that many religions have good teachings. I don’t believe in the gods from those religions but I can follow the guidelines to living a good life.

Yes, and yes to the OP. It’s very similar.

An older family member once asked my siblings and me, as older teenagers, whether we believed in Santa. We scoffed, laughed, and incredulously said of course not.

She responded that she believed in Santa, and she gave this explanation: Santa is a cultural shorthand for generosity. Do you believe in the spirit of giving? Do you want to see smiles on children’s faces on Christmas morning? Do you want to make the people you love light up because you had special, almost supernatural, insight into their heart’s desire and made it real?

I don’t believe a magical man in a red suit gives presents and coal to kids. I similarly don’t believe in a white bearded cloudy Jewish giant in the sky.

But I believe that there’s something sublime and immaterial in the love we can have for one another, something only partially explained by ecologic survival pressures and biochemistry. I think there is something out there beyond what we can perceive on a daily basis, and for lack of a better lexicon, “spiritual” is as good a term as anyone for the realm of the imperceptible.

So I think there’s a God, and I think there’s a Santa. I don’t understand either, and I think they’re neither anything quite like we expect. And God the Creator is certainly an asshole sometimes. But I think there’s Someone out there.

Since science is deductive it’s probably impossible to prove the negative there, but I think there’s enough evidence beyond reasonable doubt that you can confidently deny it (unless your god is non-falsifiable, in which case it’s not worth discussion).

Same logic applies to unicorn and dragons, to be honest

Last year my youngest was in kindergarten around the time of St. Patrick’s Day here in the U.S. At some point they went out to recess and came back in to find little chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil on their desks. I picked him up after school and as we were driving away I asked how school was. He told me that he thinks leprechauns might be real. I asked what made him think they might be and he gave me the “we left class and when we came back there was chocolate on our desks” answer. I asked him if something else could have happened, like a teacher leaving them, and he said no, because the door is locked when they leave. I told him “maybe it was a rainbow unicorn who left the chocolate.” His response was very dismissive. He said “no Dad, that’s impossible because rainbow unicorns don’t exist.” He’s a sharp kid but he’s not quite at the logic stage. :)

I mean, who else is bringing me presents on Christmas?