That if a racoon saw you swimming, it would swim out to you and sit on your head and drown you.
My fully adult mother actually feared this was something that could happen to her children, and she warned us of this “danger” every summer when we were young.
This is awfully specific, haha.
" you can be whatever you want to be"
The real truth of it is: Through persistent action and discipline, you can dramatically increase the probability that you can be what you want to be.
I always use the lottery analogy with my kids: “How many lottery tickets did you get today?”.
The second part of the truth is: Some people come with a lot more lottery tickets that you, through genetics, income background, family support and, yes, luck. Don’t let that stop you; most don’t and you don’t need to be first to win this race.
That truth is absolute. It’s very much subjective. Much in the way right and wrong are subjective.
Life is complicated and things don’t fit into perfect little boxes.
Except when it comes to Math. Math is absolute, as long as you ignore statistics.
Gotta ignore infinities too. The axioms they’re based on are highly controversial.
And
irrationalimaginary numbers. I mean the numbers make sense, but it’s not like we can intuitively understand sqrt(-1).
God exists and watches everything you do and loves you while threatening you with eternal damnation.
And he’s terrible with money! He needs more money!
George Carlin, how we miss thee.
You’re allowed to be atheist of course, but do you have any more proof that there are no gods than they have that gods exist?
EDIT: Y’all can have your opinion, no one’s questioning that. You’re allowed to believe there are no higher powers, but I’m not allowed my personal belief that there is?? Not one person has provided proof that there is no Higher Power. Grow up…
I’m not against religion, but that’s not how evidence and proof works. Do you have any proof that tiny invisible pink elephants aren’t hiding in your fridge?
that’s not how evidence and proof works.
Proof of a negative is common in science and mathematics.
No, you can’t prove that something never happens or that something doesn’t exist.
Edit: For those who are downvoting here are some sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)#Proving_a_negative
That’s not really how it works though. If I tell you there’s an invisible dragon living under your bed who will burn your house down at some time in the future if you don’t give me $10. You can’t disprove it, but because I’m the one making the claim that the dragon exists the burden of proof is on me.
The burden of proof tennis is quite tricky here because it’s not about whether you claim something exists, it’s whether you claim something that goes against what’s generally accepted. If I claim quantum mechanics don’t exist, it’s not on you to prove they do.
And that’s before we get into the fact that there isn’t a general consensus on whether God (or any gods) exist.
Your premise is incorrect. The burden of proof for quantum mechanics is on the people claiming they exist. They provided those proofs, which is why people believe in them. I haven’t studied quantum mechanics, but if you asked somebody who does, they could offer proof or evidence. And if they couldn’t, then your claim it doesn’t exist (until proof was proffered) would be correct.
It was on them until society generally accepted it. Now if I claim it doesn’t exist, the burden is on me.
Or how about this: if I claim dinosaurs never existed and thus the fossils didn’t come from them, it’s not on you to prove they did.
You should familiarize yourself with the concept called Burden of Proof. They (those who believe in God, and claim he exists and created all things, etc) are the ones where the burden lies. It is not for the rest of us to prove their beliefs for them, or you.
The default position is that we don’t know if a specified thing exists. To prove or disprove it, you need evidence. I can prove that the Christian God doesn’t exist, as it is logically impossible, but it’s possible that some other version of a god might exist, I don’t know. I don’t have evidence either way.
How can you prove the Christian God doesn’t exist?
It’s logically impossible, it has contradictory aspects.
Yes, you said that, but what exactly?
For example, omnipotence is a self-contradictory term, as you have a dilemma - if a being is all powerful enough to give itself limits, it is not omnipotent as it wouldn’t be able to do the things it limited itself to do. Whereas if it can’t self-impose limits, it’s also not omnipotent as it isn’t able to self-impose limits. Another example is that suffering exists in the world, which would be a contradiction if an all-powerful being that wanted to end suffering existed, since it should, but it isn’t.
And these are just contradictions within God’s character. If you want to look at the things he actually claims to have done, you’ll find numerous more in the Bible. Just as one example, Jesus’s last words are different in almost every gospel.
None of this is new or hasn’t been thought about, written about and deflated for centuries. I doubt you have any theologians shaking in their boots.
The meaning of omnipotence as it translates to Good has always been nuanced. There have always been things God can’t do - sin being the obvious example. You could debate whether he can, but just never would because of his character, but it amounts to the same thing and has been orthodoxy for centuries.
The apparent contradictions on the Gospels (especially synoptic) have been done to death. Debated and answered more times than you’ve had hot dinners. There is no serious theologian or biblical scholar who would hear that argument and be at all concerned by it.
Honestly the same applies to the idea of a good god and suffering.
It’s impossible to prove the non-existence of something. It’s on those who believe in god to prove its existence.
And the Bible doesn’t count as sufficient evidence because that would be like believing Harry Potter exists because JK Rowling says so.
Unless you claim, as OP did, that you can actually disprove it.
I agree that the Bible is not sufficient in the sense that it proves anything or sews up their arguments, but to suggest its historical value as evidence is the same as modern day fiction is absurd.
Careful, many online atheists don’t understand that they have to prove a negative. That they have to prove the assertion: “There is no god.”
The default position is that there is yet insufficient evidence to draw a conclusion.
Edit: Thank you for the downvotes, you have provided me with further evidence that online atheists don’t understand that they have to prove a negative. Your butthurt fuels me.
Are you implying that a negative categorically cannot be proven?
Edit: I have since disavowed this instance
No. A negative can be proven. It’s done all the time in science and mathematics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)#Proving_a_negative
This guy eats babies
prove me wrong
You have made the assertion, thus you have the burden of proof.
“what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence” QED
…Do you not realize that the same goes for god?
I wasn’t arguing for the existence of god.
Let me break this down:
- “There is a god.” --> Burden of proof
- “There is no god.” --> Burden of proof
- “Hey, man. I don’t know.” —> No burden of proof
The second one is wrong, there is no god is not a claim that requires evidence in the same way there are no fairies in my fridge doesn’t require evidence
If you work hard you’ll have a successful life
See also: “get good grades in university and you’ll be flooded with job offers!”
It’s just an overly positive way of saying, “If you don’t get good grades in uni, many HRs will de-list you before looking at your resume”.
I literally have never come across a job posting that asked for GPA. Unless it’s like an academic internship or something. Get the degree, and nobody cares about your grades.
That wasn’t a lie, exactly, it was just Baby Boomers not realizing how much the world changed since they were in school. It used to happen that way. My mother got her first job out of school when the employer came to campus to recruit through a job fair.
“maybe” was how my mother said “no.”
“Ignore them and they’ll go away” in the context of bullying. Hint; it took a mental breakdown and violence to make it stop, back in the mid-90s.
Anything having to do with Christianity.
My father pulled that “just ignore it” shit, too. Somehow it wasn’t the bully’s fault for attacking me, it was my fault for being such an entertaining target.
Christopher Columbus set out to prove that the Earth was round after eating an orange or something and that’s how jesus discovered America
Wait, what‽
You probably had the same damn book I did, with an illustration of him eating an orange and seeing the wings of a butterfly coming up over it and supposedly realizing they look just like the sails of a ship and so, gasp, the world must be round like this orange!
That talking to strangers was bad.
That strangers are bad and cops are good.
When I was a little kid, I asked my grandfather what the bumps in the middle of the road (the reflectors) were for. He told me that it was so blind people could drive. It made perfect sense to me, and I believed that for longer than I should have!
Your grandfather sounds rad
“Girls desire a knight in shining armor to come sweep them off their feet!” — my pastor
For the longest time, I struggled because I was told all my life what a “woman’s purpose” was, and my desires never lined up with that. Felt like a freak because I never desired romance, sex, or partnership with a man (or anyone else, for that matter). If that was my purpose, was I supposed to will myself to want that for myself? Was I doomed to be alone forever? Was I wrong to want to pursue adventure and things that I wanted?
If my desire ≠ God’s desire (which was apparently union with a man at some point in the future), then my desires were… wrong. Maybe/probably even evil.
So I fucked up my life trying to follow that and fit into that mold. I did things I never wanted to do because it was the “right thing” to do in the eyes of God.
After I escaped, I never really recovered. But… I discovered a lot about myself.
I did bearded dragon rescues & fostering, I got into cosplay, learned how to sew stuffed animals, got some mental health care, rekindled my love for nature… all by myself. I learned to love me and not base my worth on what other folks believe I should do or how I should behave. I don’t have a partner who gets to dictate my personality. I got to grow on my own.
I’m still coming to terms with… a lot of things about myself, but now I’m able to grow freely instead of being confined to such a small pot.
Don’t let people define who or what you are, or what your purpose is in life. Only you get to do that. It’s both terrifying and freeing, but you can do this.
Even for those us who fit into the straight/white/cis mould, learning how to create purpose and meaning for yourself is a really hard battle against expectations imposed growing up. Thanks for sharing a really wholesome story :)
Men are logical. Women are emotional.
Such an enormous generalization and oversimplification. Very false.
The garbagemen did not come back looking for me every week. They just came to pickup the garbage and not to take me away.
Younger Cousin Syndrome…
We’re all equal.
To borrow from Animal Farm, “We’re all equal, but some are more equal than others”.
Basically everything my mother ever said. I repeat a lot of it back to her now, and she always asks, “where did you hear such absurdities?”
Ohhhhhhh how good that must feel.
“I never said that!”
The axe forgets, the stump remembers
Grandma adopted a puppy when I was probably 8 or 9. It got parvo. I remember going to her house and asking where the puppy was. She told me that he was sick, so he had to stay outside and I couldn’t go outside for the same reason. When I would ask where the puppy is, she would tell me that he’s on the side of the house where I couldn’t see him. This went on for a long time, I never saw the puppy again and eventually forgot about it entirely.
A decade or two later I found out that my grandma had spent thousands of dollars trying to keep that puppy alive, but parvo took it anyways. She was very upset about it’s passing and instead of having me go through it too, she lied to me about it until I completely forgot about it.
