Random Thought Thread: The Sequel

[LilCerberus]

Hello all!

Howdy, there!

[RCMerchant]

Hello all!

Howdy, there!

How you been doing, man?

[ER]

Ever notice on sit-coms nobody ever walks into an occupied room til exactly the second the conversation going on there wraps up?

[LilCerberus]

Ever notice on sit-coms nobody ever walks into an occupied room til exactly the second the conversation going on there wraps up?

Always wondered why I've never been able to have a well balanced & thoughtfully structured conversation with other people....

Y' ever notice whoever lives on the left side of the set lives in a brightly painted, well lit shoebox, while the people on the right side of the set live live in a rustic luxury suite, even though it's always the same building, on the same floor?

[claws]

So at this other forum I hang out a long time member passed away recently. Apparently he had been hospitalized since February, and from my understanding had covid and pneumonia. He posted a few updates on the forum about his condition up until two weeks before his passing in mid-March. He was only 33 years old.
I never had a conversation with him on the forum but he was well liked by those who did.
I don't know why but this is the kind of thing that shocks me more than any celebrity death. R.I.P.

[ER]

I just saw a junk email that read: A man can last 2.5 hours in bed doing this!

And I thought...um, sleep?

[lester1/2jr]

Girl on id channel is stringing an old guy along, manipulates some other guy to kill him so she can get his money. All to feed her addiction to...bingo?

[RCMerchant]

Today is National Atheist Day.
It really is.
Every other day is people preaching to you it's something else.

[ER]

Is it really? Well Happy Atheist Day! I have met a few real atheists, but mostly "atheists" seem to be people who hate God, not disbelieve in God.

[ER]

If the '80s were the '50s reinvented, when do we get to re-do the '90s?

[Rev. Powell]

...mostly "atheists" seem to be people who hate God, not disbelieve in God.

I've never encountered anyone who meets that description and I don't think it makes any sense. Now, a lot of atheists hate Christians, and maybe that even has something to do with them becoming atheists, but believing in God and hating him? I can't wrap my head around that.

[pacman000]

If the '80s were the '50s reinvented, when do we get to re-do the '90s?

Today.

[RCMerchant]

Is it really? Well Happy Atheist Day! I have met a few real atheists, but mostly "atheists" seem to be people who hate God, not disbelieve in God.

No- I disbelieve in God.
I don't hate someone who doesn't exist.

[ER]

Is it really? Well Happy Atheist Day! I have met a few real atheists, but mostly "atheists" seem to be people who hate God, not disbelieve in God.

No- I disbelieve in God.
I don't hate someone who doesn't exist.

Then that makes you an atheist, RC. But I know a lot of people who say they are, who don't come off as atheists. In fact, let me say more in a second....

[ER]

...mostly "atheists" seem to be people who hate God, not disbelieve in God.

I've never encountered anyone who meets that description and I don't think it makes any sense. Now, a lot of atheists hate Christians, and maybe that even has something to do with them becoming atheists, but believing in God and hating him? I can't wrap my head around that.

I know RC thinks I never let ten words do when a few hundred might work as well,    but what the heck, like eye color and addiction, it's in my DNA...

I agree with you that atheism precludes a dislike of something a person is convinced isn't there, Rev, but you really have never encountered the phenomenon of people who say they're atheists but seem absolutely obsessed with hating God? That surprises me, because I have seen that a lot.

Oh, I get hating some Christians, I spent a lot of my younger days unfairly lumping a couple billion people in with the book burning Moral Majority sorts. I also understand anger toward God, and think it takes strong intellectual muscles to even subscribe to the idea an unseen God could possibly exist in a world so full of pain.

The concept of so many atheists hating God clicked with me long ago when I heard a George Orwell quote:

"He was an embittered atheist, the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him...."

And when I heard that, I thought....Orwell was right, there are those sorts of atheists. And when I realized that, I noticed most people I knew who said they were atheists seemed to spend a lot of time hating this God they claimed wasn't even there.

Like Penn Jillette (whom I like very much in general, by the way) he will take almost any chance to tell you there is no God, yet he also gleefully calls this being he doesn't believe in a "prick" and some other things I probably shouldn't type here. That's anger.

Or the insightful XTC song Dear God, it concludes by saying "I don't believe in you" only after addressing this supposedly non-existent personage and indicting it with a multitude of crimes. How can you indict "nothing" with "something"?

You can't call yourself an atheist and have it both ways, maintaining God doesn't exist, yet making God a legitimate target of anger. That's like me blaming Santa for not bringing me that hair crimper when I was nine.

I do believe atheists exist and know some, usually get along fine with them, but I know a lot more angry sorts who do seem to hate God and then manifest that hatred in saying they don't believe in God. (I also notice those types seem to be under a certain age, to be honest, and evolve away from that when they're older. Go figure, eh?)

Slightly off topic but I married a man who is so apathetic about the question of God's existence he genuinely does not care about the topic enough to try to define the word that best describes how he feels about God. He'll go to church with his mom if she asks him for a special reason, and then walk out and not be able to tell you what the church service was about. But that's another sort of person altogether, neither believer, nor agnostic, nor atheist. (I sometimes envy him....)

Lot of shades of color in white light.