this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2024
116 points (84.9% liked)

Atheism

4119 readers
2 users here now

Community Guide


Archive Today will help you look at paywalled content the way search engines see it.


Statement of Purpose

Acceptable

Unacceptable

Depending on severity, you might be warned before adverse action is taken.

Inadvisable


Application of warnings or bans will be subject to moderator discretion. Feel free to appeal. If changes to the guidelines are necessary, they will be adjusted.


If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathizer or a resemblant of a group that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of any other group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you you will be banned on sight.

Provable means able to provide proof to the moderation, and, if necessary, to the community.

 ~ /c/nostupidquestions

If you want your space listed in this sidebar and it is especially relevant to the atheist or skeptic communities, PM DancingPickle and we'll have a look!


Connect with Atheists

Help and Support Links

Streaming Media

This is mostly YouTube at the moment. Podcasts and similar media - especially on federated platforms - may also feature here.

Orgs, Blogs, Zines

Mainstream

Bibliography

Start here...

...proceed here.

Proselytize Religion

From Reddit

As a community with an interest in providing the best resources to its members, the following wiki links are provided as historical reference until we can establish our own.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Lets take a little break from politics and have us a real atheist conversation.

Personally, I'm open to the idea of the existence of supernatural phenomena, and I believe mainstream religions are actually complicated incomplete stories full of misinterpretations, misunderstandings, and half-truths.

Basically, I think that these stories are not as simple and straightforward as they seem to be to religious people. I feel like there is a lot more to them. Concluding that all these stories are just made up or came out of nowhere is kind of hard for me.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] TheFonz@lemmy.world 1 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Yes, history and theology are indeed quite fascinating.

How would we go about differentiating fact from imagination?

[–] aLaStOr_MoOdY47@lemmy.world 0 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

It's very hard considering that the knowledge is decentralized unlike mainstream religion. What I've been advised to do, is consider the origins and context of what you're looking at first, compare it with other documents, analyze your observations, use critical thinking, talk to people who are researching the same things, and overall, just keep an open mind. That doesn't mean that you accept everything. It means that you should just consider the possibility.

[–] TheFonz@lemmy.world 1 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

It's not hard and it doesn't have anything to do with being decentralized. In science we have a very robust mechanism for separating imagination from reality. I'd be happy to explain what it is to you if you'd like. It's the reason we have satellites and are able to have this conversation. :)

Your method on the other hand does not convince me. You said "analyze your observations, use critical thinking, talk to people who are researching the same things" etc. Let's say two persons meet to determine the truth about a matter. They each use:

  • critical thinking
  • research
  • analyze observations
  • keep an open mind
  • compare with other documents

but they come to opposite conclusions on a topic. So qualifiers alone are clearly not enough. It's missing a fundamental piece that's essential to differentiating if a hypothesis is true or false. Do you know what I'm referring to?

[–] aLaStOr_MoOdY47@lemmy.world 0 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Yes, I know. It's also really hard because we're mostly dealing with just really old texts, and word of mouth. Take for example the emerald tablets of Hermes Trismegistus. A popular alchemical text from thousands of years ago. They have been translated into a wide range of languages from Ancient Greek, to Arabic. The original tablets are lost. With every translation, it got misinterpreted, and misunderstood. In some cultures, some things in the tablet were not accepted, so they got omitted. For example, the transmutation of metals into gold or silver. Adding on how most alchemists like to use coded language when writing instructions, your left with a mess of translations that say different things from each other, with no way of telling which is the most correct translation.

[–] TheFonz@lemmy.world 1 points 4 weeks ago

You're not tracking the conversation. I understand historiography is hard. That's not what we're discussing. I'm not talking about historical research.

I'm talking about a way to differentiate between imagination and reality. We have a robust methodology in science to accomplish this. It's very clear and works. Can you guess what I'm talking about?