Our pastor did a whole six-week long study of Acts, talking about how we needed to give more so we could fund mission trips and whatnot. I got caught up in it all (he was quite the orator, I’ll give him that) and donated a decent chunk of the money I’d been saving up to get a new iPod.
My sister went on one of the mission trips and had to pay for literally everything out of her own pocket. Despite the plentiful donations for, allegedly, that express purpose.
Cherry on the cake was that they soon broke ground on a new youth group building (which we didn’t need), complete with a coffee house (with prices and menu comparable to Starbucks). All I could think of was Jesus getting pissed at the vendors and money changers in the temple and flipping tables over. “‘My house will be called a house of prayer’, but you are making it ‘a den of robbers’.”
It was kind of a slow burn. Every time I heard a new argument against the existence of God, I’d repeat to myself, “Just because I can’t think of the answer doesn’t mean there isn’t one.” You can only say that so many times before it starts to feel like you’re being stubborn.
Probably the most compelling argument was, to me, the contradictory nature of an all-knowing God existing in the same reality as free will.
I decided I was an atheist (logically) a long time before I started to feel like an atheist (emotionally). What pushed me over the line there was when it was pointed out to me the sheer arrogance of looking out at the massive, incomprehensible scale of the universe and saying, “the creator of that really cares about me in particular.”
So now I say I’m an atheist, somewhere between gnostic and agnostic. I can’t rule out the existence of something that could be called God by someone’s definition, but I’m confident the abrahamic god, the one I grew up with, can’t exist.
There were just too many contradictions and the more I learned about science, especially physics, astronomy, and psychology, and the way the world works, I discovered that there is always a rational explanation for things, even if sometimes the knowledge necessary to comprehend something is not something I possess personally at the moment. People who would preach in my church would confidently claim things I knew to be fallacies, misleading, or straight up incorrect, not out of malice but their own ignorance as well, and I stopped trusting the words of religious leaders as I discovered they were as human as myself- their faith didn’t protect them from error or make them better people, and eventually I just couldn’t fall back on faith or ideology to be the bedrock of my moral or philosophical compass because it just wasn’t trustworthy.
I hope you don’t, it’s one of those questions that I couldn’t feel more relevant to.
To answer OP, Zootopia said it best.
“If the world is only going to see a fox as shifty and untrustworthy, there’s no point in trying to be anything else.”
~ Nick Wilde
Catch-22’s form when people become stuck in their ways towards each other and are self-fulfilling. This is why standing up for oneself is inferior to sitting down for oneself. I’ve discussed how a previous question of mine can be said to touch upon this, though nobody seems to have understood it. Absolute thinking is the most socially destructive mindset.
"Is there a reason why Lemmy is so fixated on Israel/Palestine?"
I figure that people who take the time to swap to federated social media are generally going to be people that are a little more political...
and Israel is currently actively committing genocide. So political people are posting anti-israel posts. It's really not more complicated than that.
It’s possible that the brain matter itself doesn’t have innervations but you do have blood vessels and other structures that do have them and those are the ones you feel.
I do when researching buying a product, having different tabs open comparing different models, with each their different stores and a bunch of reviews. You can easily get more than 20.
Same with researching a science topic.
But after being done, those tabs get closed. I rather start with a fresh browser each time.
Wargaming. It’s given me a social life. I’ve developed new skills like painting. It has side hobbies like 3d printing. Hopefully I can make it a career too. I’ve always dabbled with 3d software like Blender. Three months ago I took the leap to learning 3d sculpting with the plan to release my own designs for miniatures. I really wanna make my own Dark Elves for The Old World.
That’s sick! There are many fantasy ranges in 3d that imho are even better than GWs, and they are gonna explore im popularity with old world. Last Sword are my favorite, so much character.
Making stuff! Fibre crafts, gamedev, general tinkering. Occasional drawing despite being lifelong terrible at it. Making stuff for no real reason other than enjoyment of it is what life’s all about!
Love this! What kind of toys do you suggest? I have lots of sticks with feathers and small mice or balls to chase, but at some point they get bored of everything.
I dunno, cats are so individual. One of mine loves this ball-in-circle toy so much, she’ll play with it for hours on and off. My other one wants ME to play, no matter what toy it is.
I think you have to just try different things and see what they like most. Maybe try a catnip stuffed toy?
I also find that they are just like humans and the things they like most are whatever is new. So I buy them like one new toy a couple times a year. It’s almost Christmas; I’ll get them a new toy as a gift haha
asklemmy
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