what's something you're into that you don't want anyone you know irl to know about?

"Atheism is a religion in the same way that not collecting stamps is a hobby"

Evidence based existence is what I believe in personally. Speculation and fantasy can be useful in some parts of life, but for me, imaginary friends are a mental health disorder in anyone claiming they are real.

How about you define your own belief system and let others choose their own words?

Atheism is a lack of belief, not a belief in a lack

Atheism runs a long gamut of epistemic positions. Rare are those who hold a fast believe that God doesn't exist (by any definition). The default atheist position is that we don't know and the standards we use to test or hold positions of belief regarding other things we don't know about (from the nature of ball lightning to the possibility of cyptids or -- to cite some common thought experiments -- invisible pink unicorns or fairies at the bottom of the garden) can also be applied to spiritual and supernatural elements like human souls, Hell and God.

This may sound agnostic, and as per other identities, we are each free to choose the identity name we prefer. But what we have established from centuries and centuries of observation stacks pretty heavily against the supernatural assertions of popular religious faiths. We can expect that Jesus didn't likely actually rise from the dead, just as much as we can expect neither Zeus nor Thor nor Adonai command the thunderbolts (rather they seem to hold fast to electrostatic mechanics, and replaceable grounded lightning rods do a lot of heavy lifting redirecting lighting away from the big iron bells in steeples and bell towers... or doing too much damage to Christ the Redeemer in Rio De Janero.

Classical agnosticism comes from a Christian tradition, asserting we don't know which interpretation of scripture is right, or if there's another explanation, but that is part of the test of faith. In the modern day as Dawkins noted in his 2002 Call to Arms TED lecture, agnostic is atheism lite, not willing to admit that God as He is (They are) understood to be by most folk, is not just improbable, but infinitesimally probable based on our knowledge of the mechanics of the physical world...and on the conspicuous silence of the supernatural (We checked! A lot!).

So a safe differentiation might look like this:

Agnostic: I believe there's a 10% chance Jesus was resurrected by divine miracle.

Atheist: I believe there's a non-zero but insignificant chance Jesus was resurrected by divine miracle

I'm a naturalist, which is to say, I haven't been able to find any evidence for supernatural events, and regard them much the way I would the notion there are invisible pink unicorns that live in Angeles Crest Forest. This is not to say science has figured out everything (we still struggle to make sense of ball lightning, though it's definitely a thing in Missouri) but much of what we figured out points away from all the other common models.

I can speculate there is a God (or a pantheon of gods) but this gets classified with a range of other possibilities, such as the simulation hypothesis, or Azathoth's dream. (We may all be figments of Azathoth's imagination, but if so, Azathoth has provided for a robust dream-scape that is extremely consistent with its physical mechanics, even when we try to break reality.) Any of these could be true, but for sake of day-to-day living, our world appears consistently to behave as material, and nothing else.

No they don't and agnosticism isn't an upgrade, it's just sitting on the fence.

Most athiests are agnostic to some degree and vice versa.

The burden of proof lies with the person making the extraordinary claim.

Here's another way to look at it, then. By popular definition, an agnostic person believes that there is no ontological proof for the existence or non-existence of God, or the divine. The agnostic person is thereby operating within the conceptual framework of religion. (A lot of agnostics in the Western world are agnostic specifically about the existence of the particular God of Abrahamic religions.)

On the other hand, atheists are simply not concerned with or do not recognize divinity, as a concept. In a way, it's like how nobody holds an affirmative belief that Spiderman does not exist as a real human, because superheroes are categorically fictional, and it's not even ontologically possible.

With things heating up in Israel, and AI showing, my boss thinks it a definite sign of the end times. He was convinced that the riots were a sign, now he's all in on the rapture coming.

"Reddit but run by non profits" is the simplest I find, even though that's not completely accurate

I am halfway through. I deleted my old account and tried to use Lemmy, but formula1 is dead here and only on Reddit I find my dose of heroin news

I don't think one ever goes back to that, but you can learn to be comfortable with who you are now, and that's more than most people ever achieve.

It's gotta be THIN, around 5mm or less. Frankly the thinner the better, it gives it a sort of luxurious melt in your mouth consistency (room temp too). For soy sauce I use Tsuru Bishio 4 year aged soy sauce. It's like 40$ a bottle but it's so strong and rich that I tend to use very little at a time (one bottle lasts me like 6 months).

I was about to recommend bigstackd to you just to click the link and see it was one of his videos. I could watch that guy melt stuff all day

Historical Jesus is really interesting to me and stuff like how John The Baptist...baptized historical Jesus into something. So probably, Jesus was an acolyte of John The Baptist who went off and founded his own, similar movement. But then early Christians didn't like the implications of their main guy being a spinoff so these weird interpretations like John himself saying at the time 'I don't deserve to do this baptism, but I'm going to anyway for some reason and this other guy is the main guy and also in one gospel I'm Jesus' cousin.'

And also then Jesus' brother James the Just running the church after Jesus and there's a non-canonocal gospel (Thomas I think) that says 'James, for whom the Earth and Sky came into being' or something like that. And Jude calls himself Jude, brother of James. But James is the brother of Jesus so probably he is also the brother of Jesus, but that isn't the most relevant thing about Jude. So what an interesting alt-history you could write where Paul doesn't exist and James' church wins out and he's...also co-God? Or Jesus gets demoted and they're both just Mohammad-style brother prophets?

Oh boy. Here I go theorizin' again.

I got into it blind and only learned about the fandom and the surrounding history after finishing it. It felt like reading a parallel story and it was actually pretty fun, but it only cemented my feeling of not wanting to be associated with them. I mean, the bucket. Just wow.

My wife tolerates it on occasion, but it's not her thing. She's a lovely wife for doing it for me.

Fun for him only or for you as well?