I remember how on the second to last strip that featured Becky someone named Airyu left a comment that made a lot of sense.
That Becky’s declaration that God isn’t real is less about Joyce being gay for Dorothy instead of her and more about how it didn’t cost Joyce anything unlike Becky.
Unlike Becky Joyce didn’t get booted out of school despite her coming out moment being a literal front page scandal, unlike Becky Joyce’s father and remaining family casually excepted her, unlike Becky nobody died over it.
But the biggest contrast of all, unlike Joyce up until now Becky faith didn’t wavered she’s stayed true throughout and despite all of everything she’s been through only to see Joyce get cosmically rewarded for the same dilemma.
At that point you think either God isn’t real or he is real and your life is nothing more than a fucking joke of his.
could be a mix of that and Becky still holding a flame for Joyce as well.
But hey, Joyce hasn’t lost anything YET. Knowing Willis, I’m sure there’s gonna be some sort of cosmic balance that will get her attacked by a parent at some point. Probably her mother and her new far right friends.
Does Joyce have any real far right friends at this point? I feel she’s distanced from her old church to the point where her friendships with any of the other younger members her age wasn’t going to survive and can’t think of anyone else she’s friends with.
Pocky
her mom does, or at least seemed to heavily side with Toedad after the whole kidnapping arc. Plus I figured Willis was setting up Joyce’s mom to be slowly becoming more radicalized, in contrast to Joyce.
Archieve
So far her mom has been the type to go into denial every time Joyce does or says something she doesn’t agree with but could happen
Pocky
I imagine her two daughters here are gonna really make that difficult lol
Dorothy and Joyce aren’t going to lose anything because they’re the author’s favorite. Their universe will tie itself into a pretzel if it means keeping them together with no lasting consequences for hurting the people they allegedly care about.
Adept
I’m sadly thinking Needfuldoer’s salty comment will ultimately be accurate. It feels like Willis is so enamoured by his OTP that he just wants to make cutesy comics of them cooing at each other (+ some smut).
Li
Thinking being the author’s favorite means nothing bad will ever happen to them tells me you’ve never been an author.
not someone else
I feel like it means they’ve definitely read some books, though lol.
In all seriousness, it depends on the author and plenty of us are tempted (and frankly I’ve read at least one book series that was made 1000x worse by the obvious and badly-thought-out “kill off your favorite character and instead make Everyman Lumpfuck the protagonist”. It’s all about what’s right for the story you’re actually telling- which I’m sure you know.)
Li
I mean I don’t think it’s super common for actual published books to protect their favorite characters from all consequences, either! But many of us love to specifically torment our favorite characters. The more they suffer, the more beloved they are.
not someone else
It’s not super common for it to make it to print, no! It’s just… I dunno, “kill your darlings” is one of those 201-class memes and I have Opinions.
None of which really have to do with feeling like I know whether Willis would fall on either side of that dichotomy or elsewhere, in case for some reason that’s not clear.
Li
Are people actually taking that advice literally, because “kill your darlings” does not mean “kill off your favorite characters”…….
It means “delete things from your story that don’t serve the story”. Whether that’s a line that you really love but which breaks the flow of the scene or a character you love that doesn’t make sense in the world, it’s……. it’s about making changes in the rough draft state. It’s about deleting words, not about adding in fictional murder.
Adept
You’d be wrong thinking I’ve ”never been an author”. I suggest not trying to pigeon hole people like that.
Corey C.
Ehhh, Sarah’s reaction to Joyce’s “Do Not Disturb” sign being the newspaper front page of her and Dotty kissing kind of insinuates that Joyce lost Sarah as a friend and the only reason why they’d be sharing the same room is because they HAVE to be. But if Dotty does decide to “move in” like Joyce wants, that’s gonna have a lot of negative consequences.
WAIT HEAR ME OUT NOT SAYINGS BECKYS FAULT, but alot of Joyce’s loss of faith and distance from her old church, was because of how they treated becky, and how she was ostracised for being gay and getting her dad arrested, even tho he went to the campus with a gun.
Pretty much every bit of joyce losing her faith and her relationship with her mother was over becky.
But the thing is, joyce doesn’t really have that to lose now. Her dad is begrudgingly accepting of it, but if her mom was still in the picture somehow she absolutely would not have tolerated it.
Joyce lost things she would have lost jad she come out before becky, by defending becky.
If that were the main focus of what Becky was upset about, there’d be no reason she’d be afraid to talk to Dina about it. “I should’ve just kept my stupid mouth shut” was clearly about the other thing. But yeah, hopefully we’ll see more about her feelings on the above at some point as well.
Never denied that her still having clear feelings for Joyce didn’t play a part in this, it’s just that her her declaration of “There is no God” came right after seeing Joyce dad hand wave away any drama of Joyce having a girlfriend and not repeating the same actions of her dad despite coming from the same fundie community.
Good on Hank but how’s Becky not suppose to look at that ontop of her current feelings and not be dejected when she just keeps losing everything.
Dwampre Scorrigank
In the same conversation she also got yet another instance of Jorothy and Doyce pushed in her face by circumstances. She saw them once again devolve into romance-driven distracted babbling at each other, calling each other “girlfriend” and accidentally “wife”, using specifically the word “love” which she hadn’t seen before. This was right after the first one, which she didn’t even get the chance to process because she immediately had to step in for Jocelyn (which means she knows they weren’t wrong to do that, which means she can’t even let herself be angry at them for it and it’s more like “fate” that made her see it again).
So I don’t reject the possibility that Becky has feelings along those lines (I believe she’s probably envious of anyone with a non-terrible alive parent) I disagree that that scene or its timing are evidence of them.
I like that on a super meta level, God is real for Becky. And her life is nothing more than not a joke per se, but entertainment to them. In that sense, that interpretation of her statement would prove her right
I feel like there are quite a few mangas that have this as a plotline (normally isekai and reincarnation ones). Some are done more humorously, while others take it more seriously.
Whenever the comments start talking about how God is real for Becky, all I can think of is the classic Merrie Melodies short Duck Amuck where Daffy is tormented by a cartoonist. Becky is Daffy, and Willis is Bugs.
Not only that, but there’s an argument to be made that Joyce’s coming out has been so easy specifically because of Becky’s trauma. All of the crap she went through paved the way for Joyce and her dad to reach their respective degrees of acceptance of queerness. Becky was like the proxy through which they processed their emotions and now she seems to have outlived her usefulness.
I love this attitude because neither side has proof. Yet, people on both sides behave as if they know FOR SURE what’s going on with things no one on Earth can possibly know for sure. People on both sides think the other side is misguided at best and dangerous at worst.
Sides being: belief in a higher power vs belief there is no higher power.
I tend to fall into the “we can’t possibly know for sure” category, which isn’t really either side (in case people thought I wasn’t allowing for nuance when specifically talking about two groups of people). There might be a sky daddy, mommy, or any gender parental sky unit at all. We can’t say with any certainty one way or another lol.
thejeff
We can’t say with certainly, but that’s true of an awful lot of things. God is one of the very few where there’s strong social pressure to at least be neutral.
There’s no reason other than tradition and it’s social ubiquity to believe in or even suspend judgement on God.
It’s a claim presented without evidence and we don’t treat other such claims that way.
Nymph
You have completely missed my point <3
The point isn't "remain neutral, suspend judgement, or believe in" anything. My point is that stating either claim with certainty (that there Is or Is Not a higher power) is a claim presented without evidence. And I find it funny (in the same way I find people who are DEAD certain aliens do or don't exist funny) that both sides have people dead certain the other side is the only one guilty of presenting claims without evidence.
I would appreciate not continuing to have to debate some pressure to be neutral that I neither said nor implied <3
clif
Oh, there’s evidence both ways. It’s just not very conclusive evidence.
Except that there’s vast amounts of evidence. Literally an entire universe of it. And the more of that we gather, the more evident it becomes that there is no room for a deity that’s meaningfully distinct from the implacable execution of impersonal physical laws to exist.
This doesn’t rule out everything that could reasonably be described as a god, but we’re down to things like a creator deity that set the machine in motion and doesn’t interfere with its running, or one that’s so perfectly good at retconning that any changes it makes cannot be observed, and these aren’t what Becky or Joyce mean when they say “God”. They’re talking about one that specifically did a bunch of blatantly ahistorical stuff in the Middle East a couple thousand years ago.
Nymph
lmao this is so silly.
Clif
Well assuming that you believe in the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (I don’t. I think it’s rather silly) there is plenty of non-deterministic wave collapse available for a randomly generated deity to pull the strings to control what happens.
And as I’m sure Sirksome would have said at one point, don’t trust the people who record history.
aelfwine
The whole universe is evidence to the judeochristian God’s absence. You can abstract words away to talk about a “higher power” but by “God” people don’t mean a higher power like “Gravity” or “Mathematics” they mean an intelligent omnipotent being that interacts with the world and with humanity specifically.
If someone claimed that we have no good evidence against the existence of Zeus or Thor or Princess Celestia would you agree with them? Or are you in fact as absolutely certain as a person can be about every aspect of reality that Zeus and Thor and Princess Celestia don’t exist, but somehow you claim it’s silly for atheists to have the same certainty about the mythological fantasy characters of Christians?
This isn’t you finding unfaith silly, this is you being biased in favour of one particular religious belief of one particular religious group, for which we must supposedly must pretend that we aren’t certain is false.
Li
Based on listening to the things they’ve said, Nymph isn’t Christian, so.
thejeff
Nonetheless.
Even many non-believers raised in a Christian society will respond in this kind of “Well atheists don’t have any proof either” way about the Christian God, but not about other mythological figures.
Li
No, not nonetheless. aelfwine has repeatedly responded to Nymph in a way that only makes sense if they think Nymph is only pretending to be agnostic and is secretly actually trying to advance Christian arguments.
“Are you just as agnostic about Zeus existing?!” …Yes. Why wouldn’t an agnostic be just as agnostic about Zeus existing. I get that aelfwine thinks there’s something somehow more silly about believing in Zeus or Thor Odin, especially given that their other comment compared both to believing in specifically the Easter Bunny (a commercial entity not worshiped by anyone), but like. Arguments from incredulity do tend to fall flat when your incredulity is not shared by your audience.
And if it’s actually coming from a place of believing that Nymph is truly agnostic, it’s even more nonsensical as a line of attack.
Is this because obnoxious Nu Atheists often get accused of only actually knowing anything about Christianity? Because “only knowing anything about Christianity” wouldn’t be a problem if that specific type of atheist stuck to saying “all religions are equally made up”
instead of so frequently saying “all religions are equally oppressive”, “all religions are equally homophobic”, “all religious people are equally brainwashed”, etc.
Nymph
Thank you, Li.
Lmfao, jeff.
Li
fff I was about to apologize for replying on your behalf because I saw your other comment and was like, oh, they did not want this to become a conversation, I’m not helping
but also: c’mon, baby atheists, “some atheists are silly” is not a personal attack
Nymph
Nah honestly it’s a relief to not be fighting this weird tidal wave of people kinda proving my original point tbh.
I think I monkey-pawed this into being by saying anything at all about religion in this particular comment section (no matter how many times I tried to clarify) so I take some of the blame for thinking people could be chill lmao.
Clif
Speaking strictly for myself, I’m interested in what evidence that aelfwine (or anyone really) has that Thor doesn’t exist.
Nymph
I wasn’t finding a lack of faith silly. I was finding the repeated insistence on arguing with me about faith/nonfaith when I’ve made several comments to the effect of “I was discussing a very specific instance, have underlined that, and was not inviting theological debate so I won’t be participating in that”.
I’m being biased in favor of “I have an opinion that this particular thing is funny” and have offered ZERO opinions in the direction of faith or lack thereof being silly or wrong or otherwise.
You personally are arguing with shadows and the fucking wind <3 And that's silly <3
Adept
Nymph, I’d bring up Russell’s teapot, but I assume you know about it already.
Nymph
I didn’t know the name of it, but having looked it up I do know a version of it. As I said to Jeff (and will continue saying absolutely zero times after this because at that point people are just willfully misinterpreting me) ~both~ the claim that there is definitely No God and the claim that there definitely is a God have the same amount of proof. Are the same amount of unproven and unfalsifiable claims. And people say them with the same amount of certainty and that tickles me.
I literally don’t care what side of “does god exist” or which version of god someone believes in if they do. I wasn’t saying anything about that lmao.
aelfwine
Do you feel the same about the existence vs absence of Zeus, or the existence vs absence of Thor, or the existence vs absence of Santa Claus, or the existence vs absence of the Easter Bunny, or is it somehow only the One God of the Abrahamic religions where evidence for and against are somehow so coincidentally completely balanced?
Nymph
Point to me where I brought up Abrahamic religions?
Yes I do feel the same about all religions, religious figures, and lack thereof.
Moreover, it’s actually super weird you expect me to owe you any kind of answer at all about something I found funny. You’re literally so pressed about such a minor opinion and that’s a waste of both your time and mine. But keep on wasting if it’s super important to argue with someone who wasn’t arguing in the first place lmao.
thejeff
But that’s the point. If you want to be strict about it, we can’t be absolutely certain about anything. Last Thursdayism is unfalsifiable. I could be a brain in a vat somewhere being fed false sense data.
In that sense, I’m agnostic about everything, but none of us hedge everything we say with the giant pile of conditions and uncertainty that really should be there.
But when it comes to God, so many people apply different standards. Want us to have absolute proof before we dismiss the idea, like we dismiss so many other things that we can’t actually disprove. I don’t think we should apply different standards to the concept of God.
And I don’t think most atheists intend to say anything more. “There’s no sky daddy” is an offensive way to put it, but it’s not an explicit claim that “I have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no god”, it’s just a claim, like “there is no Bigfoot”.
Nymph
“But that’s the point. If you want to be strict about it, we can’t be absolutely certain about anything.”
Yep. That’s the point I was making. It made me laugh on exactly this level. Everyone else wants it to be more serious, but it just wasn’t.
334 thoughts on “Loopy”
NGPZ
Dina… :pleading_face: :t_rex:
This was the best she could do.
But is still very painful for her.
She don’t deserve to be hurting like this! Not at all!
:confounded: :confounded: :confounded: :sob: :sob: :sob:
*plays “A Grim Fate” from Dragon Ball Z Soundtrack on hacked muzak*
NGPZ
gaaaaaaaaah forget this post exists, my kingdom for a delete button :/
Decidedly Orthogonal
Want a bunch of us to report it for you?
NGPZ
that works, yes thx
ZombieKyrik
I’m sure Willis can delete it if necessary.
Newlland(Henryvolt)
I remember how on the second to last strip that featured Becky someone named Airyu left a comment that made a lot of sense.
That Becky’s declaration that God isn’t real is less about Joyce being gay for Dorothy instead of her and more about how it didn’t cost Joyce anything unlike Becky.
Unlike Becky Joyce didn’t get booted out of school despite her coming out moment being a literal front page scandal, unlike Becky Joyce’s father and remaining family casually excepted her, unlike Becky nobody died over it.
But the biggest contrast of all, unlike Joyce up until now Becky faith didn’t wavered she’s stayed true throughout and despite all of everything she’s been through only to see Joyce get cosmically rewarded for the same dilemma.
At that point you think either God isn’t real or he is real and your life is nothing more than a fucking joke of his.
Bryy
I think it’s actually both, but as of right now, she’s def letting the former do all the work in her head.
Lilith Rose
I mean, he’s real, he’s talking to Amber in her dreams right now. Long term Willis-verse fans know what’s up.
Clif
Hey, we need a two-year detour into Amber’s dream.
Well, I need it anyway.
Nymph
How do you know we aren’t already in the middle of a two-year detour into Amber’s dreams?
AndysDrawings
* fifteen
Xaeon
No, it began here: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/04-vote-for-robin/sighting/
Staszu13
(Spooky Head Alien voice): Amber, listen to me….you are needed in another dimensional plane. Follow the light, Amber…. ooooooooo
Aquila
… and bewaa~aare the Chee~eese…
Steamweed
Always good advice.
(which i always ignore)
Mr D
All hail the Cheese
Bryy
I meant Becky but ‘ll take it.
Lysbeth
Well that was cheesy. BADUM PSHHH.
RassilonTDavros
Didn’t see that one, will have to find it later.
Pocky
could be a mix of that and Becky still holding a flame for Joyce as well.
But hey, Joyce hasn’t lost anything YET. Knowing Willis, I’m sure there’s gonna be some sort of cosmic balance that will get her attacked by a parent at some point. Probably her mother and her new far right friends.
Archieve
Does Joyce have any real far right friends at this point? I feel she’s distanced from her old church to the point where her friendships with any of the other younger members her age wasn’t going to survive and can’t think of anyone else she’s friends with.
Pocky
her mom does, or at least seemed to heavily side with Toedad after the whole kidnapping arc. Plus I figured Willis was setting up Joyce’s mom to be slowly becoming more radicalized, in contrast to Joyce.
Archieve
So far her mom has been the type to go into denial every time Joyce does or says something she doesn’t agree with but could happen
Pocky
I imagine her two daughters here are gonna really make that difficult lol
Freezer
Joyce hasn’t lost anything. As long as you don’t count Sarah. Or Becky. Or Joe (although she didn’t lose him so much as set him aside).
Newlland(Henryvolt)
I see them being distant for this moment in time but I still see them coming to her aid when it matters.
ESM
She hasn’t lost Joe yet, Joe is convinced he’s cool with this.
Zerblergen
Sarah being disappointed in Joyce and Dorothy doesn’t mean they’ve lost her. That’s basically business as usual with her, they’re fine.
Needfuldoer
Dorothy and Joyce aren’t going to lose anything because they’re the author’s favorite. Their universe will tie itself into a pretzel if it means keeping them together with no lasting consequences for hurting the people they allegedly care about.
Adept
I’m sadly thinking Needfuldoer’s salty comment will ultimately be accurate. It feels like Willis is so enamoured by his OTP that he just wants to make cutesy comics of them cooing at each other (+ some smut).
Li
Thinking being the author’s favorite means nothing bad will ever happen to them tells me you’ve never been an author.
not someone else
I feel like it means they’ve definitely read some books, though lol.
In all seriousness, it depends on the author and plenty of us are tempted (and frankly I’ve read at least one book series that was made 1000x worse by the obvious and badly-thought-out “kill off your favorite character and instead make Everyman Lumpfuck the protagonist”. It’s all about what’s right for the story you’re actually telling- which I’m sure you know.)
Li
I mean I don’t think it’s super common for actual published books to protect their favorite characters from all consequences, either! But many of us love to specifically torment our favorite characters. The more they suffer, the more beloved they are.
not someone else
It’s not super common for it to make it to print, no! It’s just… I dunno, “kill your darlings” is one of those 201-class memes and I have Opinions.
None of which really have to do with feeling like I know whether Willis would fall on either side of that dichotomy or elsewhere, in case for some reason that’s not clear.
Li
Are people actually taking that advice literally, because “kill your darlings” does not mean “kill off your favorite characters”…….
It means “delete things from your story that don’t serve the story”. Whether that’s a line that you really love but which breaks the flow of the scene or a character you love that doesn’t make sense in the world, it’s……. it’s about making changes in the rough draft state. It’s about deleting words, not about adding in fictional murder.
Adept
You’d be wrong thinking I’ve ”never been an author”. I suggest not trying to pigeon hole people like that.
Corey C.
Ehhh, Sarah’s reaction to Joyce’s “Do Not Disturb” sign being the newspaper front page of her and Dotty kissing kind of insinuates that Joyce lost Sarah as a friend and the only reason why they’d be sharing the same room is because they HAVE to be. But if Dotty does decide to “move in” like Joyce wants, that’s gonna have a lot of negative consequences.
Mr.Morningstar
I mean she’s lost plenty because Becky was gay
WAIT HEAR ME OUT NOT SAYINGS BECKYS FAULT, but alot of Joyce’s loss of faith and distance from her old church, was because of how they treated becky, and how she was ostracised for being gay and getting her dad arrested, even tho he went to the campus with a gun.
Pretty much every bit of joyce losing her faith and her relationship with her mother was over becky.
But the thing is, joyce doesn’t really have that to lose now. Her dad is begrudgingly accepting of it, but if her mom was still in the picture somehow she absolutely would not have tolerated it.
Joyce lost things she would have lost jad she come out before becky, by defending becky.
Meagan
Excellent points.
Lee
If that were the main focus of what Becky was upset about, there’d be no reason she’d be afraid to talk to Dina about it. “I should’ve just kept my stupid mouth shut” was clearly about the other thing. But yeah, hopefully we’ll see more about her feelings on the above at some point as well.
Newlland(Henryvolt)
Never denied that her still having clear feelings for Joyce didn’t play a part in this, it’s just that her her declaration of “There is no God” came right after seeing Joyce dad hand wave away any drama of Joyce having a girlfriend and not repeating the same actions of her dad despite coming from the same fundie community.
Good on Hank but how’s Becky not suppose to look at that ontop of her current feelings and not be dejected when she just keeps losing everything.
Dwampre Scorrigank
In the same conversation she also got yet another instance of Jorothy and Doyce pushed in her face by circumstances. She saw them once again devolve into romance-driven distracted babbling at each other, calling each other “girlfriend” and accidentally “wife”, using specifically the word “love” which she hadn’t seen before. This was right after the first one, which she didn’t even get the chance to process because she immediately had to step in for Jocelyn (which means she knows they weren’t wrong to do that, which means she can’t even let herself be angry at them for it and it’s more like “fate” that made her see it again).
So I don’t reject the possibility that Becky has feelings along those lines (I believe she’s probably envious of anyone with a non-terrible alive parent) I disagree that that scene or its timing are evidence of them.
Dwampre Scorrigank
*So while I don’t reject
Steamweed
Excellent gravatar, btw. Very clear. Says it all.
Dwampre Scorrigank
Thank you, I worked on that!
Liara
I like that on a super meta level, God is real for Becky. And her life is nothing more than not a joke per se, but entertainment to them. In that sense, that interpretation of her statement would prove her right
Kimi
I feel like there are quite a few mangas that have this as a plotline (normally isekai and reincarnation ones). Some are done more humorously, while others take it more seriously.
Queen Anthai
Which ones?
Needfuldoer
Whenever the comments start talking about how God is real for Becky, all I can think of is the classic Merrie Melodies short Duck Amuck where Daffy is tormented by a cartoonist. Becky is Daffy, and Willis is Bugs.
https://youtu.be/tJBeih6JZrs?t=31
Azhrei Vep
Well, it’s nothing more than entertainment for us. For her god, it’s (part of) his livelihood.
Airyu
Oh hi it’s me :3
Cyrus
Not only that, but there’s an argument to be made that Joyce’s coming out has been so easy specifically because of Becky’s trauma. All of the crap she went through paved the way for Joyce and her dad to reach their respective degrees of acceptance of queerness. Becky was like the proxy through which they processed their emotions and now she seems to have outlived her usefulness.
GreyICE
Well whatever breaks the delusion.
No life isn’t fair and there’s no sky daddy. Of any flavor. No sky mommy either.
Nymph
I love this attitude because neither side has proof. Yet, people on both sides behave as if they know FOR SURE what’s going on with things no one on Earth can possibly know for sure. People on both sides think the other side is misguided at best and dangerous at worst.
Sides being: belief in a higher power vs belief there is no higher power.
I tend to fall into the “we can’t possibly know for sure” category, which isn’t really either side (in case people thought I wasn’t allowing for nuance when specifically talking about two groups of people). There might be a sky daddy, mommy, or any gender parental sky unit at all. We can’t say with any certainty one way or another lol.
thejeff
We can’t say with certainly, but that’s true of an awful lot of things. God is one of the very few where there’s strong social pressure to at least be neutral.
There’s no reason other than tradition and it’s social ubiquity to believe in or even suspend judgement on God.
It’s a claim presented without evidence and we don’t treat other such claims that way.
Nymph
You have completely missed my point <3
The point isn't "remain neutral, suspend judgement, or believe in" anything. My point is that stating either claim with certainty (that there Is or Is Not a higher power) is a claim presented without evidence. And I find it funny (in the same way I find people who are DEAD certain aliens do or don't exist funny) that both sides have people dead certain the other side is the only one guilty of presenting claims without evidence.
I would appreciate not continuing to have to debate some pressure to be neutral that I neither said nor implied <3
clif
Oh, there’s evidence both ways. It’s just not very conclusive evidence.
John Campbell
Except that there’s vast amounts of evidence. Literally an entire universe of it. And the more of that we gather, the more evident it becomes that there is no room for a deity that’s meaningfully distinct from the implacable execution of impersonal physical laws to exist.
This doesn’t rule out everything that could reasonably be described as a god, but we’re down to things like a creator deity that set the machine in motion and doesn’t interfere with its running, or one that’s so perfectly good at retconning that any changes it makes cannot be observed, and these aren’t what Becky or Joyce mean when they say “God”. They’re talking about one that specifically did a bunch of blatantly ahistorical stuff in the Middle East a couple thousand years ago.
Nymph
lmao this is so silly.
Clif
Well assuming that you believe in the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (I don’t. I think it’s rather silly) there is plenty of non-deterministic wave collapse available for a randomly generated deity to pull the strings to control what happens.
And as I’m sure Sirksome would have said at one point, don’t trust the people who record history.
aelfwine
The whole universe is evidence to the judeochristian God’s absence. You can abstract words away to talk about a “higher power” but by “God” people don’t mean a higher power like “Gravity” or “Mathematics” they mean an intelligent omnipotent being that interacts with the world and with humanity specifically.
If someone claimed that we have no good evidence against the existence of Zeus or Thor or Princess Celestia would you agree with them? Or are you in fact as absolutely certain as a person can be about every aspect of reality that Zeus and Thor and Princess Celestia don’t exist, but somehow you claim it’s silly for atheists to have the same certainty about the mythological fantasy characters of Christians?
This isn’t you finding unfaith silly, this is you being biased in favour of one particular religious belief of one particular religious group, for which we must supposedly must pretend that we aren’t certain is false.
Li
Based on listening to the things they’ve said, Nymph isn’t Christian, so.
thejeff
Nonetheless.
Even many non-believers raised in a Christian society will respond in this kind of “Well atheists don’t have any proof either” way about the Christian God, but not about other mythological figures.
Li
No, not nonetheless. aelfwine has repeatedly responded to Nymph in a way that only makes sense if they think Nymph is only pretending to be agnostic and is secretly actually trying to advance Christian arguments.
“Are you just as agnostic about Zeus existing?!” …Yes. Why wouldn’t an agnostic be just as agnostic about Zeus existing. I get that aelfwine thinks there’s something somehow more silly about believing in Zeus or
ThorOdin, especially given that their other comment compared both to believing in specifically the Easter Bunny (a commercial entity not worshiped by anyone), but like. Arguments from incredulity do tend to fall flat when your incredulity is not shared by your audience.And if it’s actually coming from a place of believing that Nymph is truly agnostic, it’s even more nonsensical as a line of attack.
Is this because obnoxious Nu Atheists often get accused of only actually knowing anything about Christianity? Because “only knowing anything about Christianity” wouldn’t be a problem if that specific type of atheist stuck to saying “all religions are equally made up”
instead of so frequently saying “all religions are equally oppressive”, “all religions are equally homophobic”, “all religious people are equally brainwashed”, etc.
Nymph
Thank you, Li.
Lmfao, jeff.
Li
fff I was about to apologize for replying on your behalf because I saw your other comment and was like, oh, they did not want this to become a conversation, I’m not helping
but also: c’mon, baby atheists, “some atheists are silly” is not a personal attack
Nymph
Nah honestly it’s a relief to not be fighting this weird tidal wave of people kinda proving my original point tbh.
I think I monkey-pawed this into being by saying anything at all about religion in this particular comment section (no matter how many times I tried to clarify) so I take some of the blame for thinking people could be chill lmao.
Clif
Speaking strictly for myself, I’m interested in what evidence that aelfwine (or anyone really) has that Thor doesn’t exist.
Nymph
I wasn’t finding a lack of faith silly. I was finding the repeated insistence on arguing with me about faith/nonfaith when I’ve made several comments to the effect of “I was discussing a very specific instance, have underlined that, and was not inviting theological debate so I won’t be participating in that”.
I’m being biased in favor of “I have an opinion that this particular thing is funny” and have offered ZERO opinions in the direction of faith or lack thereof being silly or wrong or otherwise.
You personally are arguing with shadows and the fucking wind <3 And that's silly <3
Adept
Nymph, I’d bring up Russell’s teapot, but I assume you know about it already.
Nymph
I didn’t know the name of it, but having looked it up I do know a version of it. As I said to Jeff (and will continue saying absolutely zero times after this because at that point people are just willfully misinterpreting me) ~both~ the claim that there is definitely No God and the claim that there definitely is a God have the same amount of proof. Are the same amount of unproven and unfalsifiable claims. And people say them with the same amount of certainty and that tickles me.
I literally don’t care what side of “does god exist” or which version of god someone believes in if they do. I wasn’t saying anything about that lmao.
aelfwine
Do you feel the same about the existence vs absence of Zeus, or the existence vs absence of Thor, or the existence vs absence of Santa Claus, or the existence vs absence of the Easter Bunny, or is it somehow only the One God of the Abrahamic religions where evidence for and against are somehow so coincidentally completely balanced?
Nymph
Point to me where I brought up Abrahamic religions?
Yes I do feel the same about all religions, religious figures, and lack thereof.
Moreover, it’s actually super weird you expect me to owe you any kind of answer at all about something I found funny. You’re literally so pressed about such a minor opinion and that’s a waste of both your time and mine. But keep on wasting if it’s super important to argue with someone who wasn’t arguing in the first place lmao.
thejeff
But that’s the point. If you want to be strict about it, we can’t be absolutely certain about anything. Last Thursdayism is unfalsifiable. I could be a brain in a vat somewhere being fed false sense data.
In that sense, I’m agnostic about everything, but none of us hedge everything we say with the giant pile of conditions and uncertainty that really should be there.
But when it comes to God, so many people apply different standards. Want us to have absolute proof before we dismiss the idea, like we dismiss so many other things that we can’t actually disprove. I don’t think we should apply different standards to the concept of God.
And I don’t think most atheists intend to say anything more. “There’s no sky daddy” is an offensive way to put it, but it’s not an explicit claim that “I have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no god”, it’s just a claim, like “there is no Bigfoot”.
Nymph
“But that’s the point. If you want to be strict about it, we can’t be absolutely certain about anything.”
Yep. That’s the point I was making. It made me laugh on exactly this level. Everyone else wants it to be more serious, but it just wasn’t.