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

Atheism

4116 readers
44 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a community with an interest in providing the best resources to its members, the following wiki links are provided as historical reference until we can establish our own.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.

(page 3) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (10 children)

what's the difference between higher power and supernatural phenomena?

sounds more like agnosticism to me...

load more comments (10 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Supernatural phenomena is possible but not probable.

The only "supernatural" thing I believe in is reincarnation, and that's just a game of numbers. I believe we're on the verge of discovering that black holes birth new universes. Then your existence and rebirth just becomes a statistical eventuality. From your POV you would die and then immediately be aware of your next life; since death is a state of non-being, an infinite amount of time could pass between those two moments but you wouldn't experience any of it. So, it isn't really even supernatural since I don't believe anything like karma or whatever mediates the process.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Personally I take them with a grain of salt, some supernatural phenomena are probably not yet understood by current science. Now I sound like an ancient aliens person meme.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I don't have anything to add to this conversation as I'm in agreement that the "supernatural" is simply how humans have historically described natural phenomena that is not yet understood.

Now... what I do find interesting is the shared art. I've seen similar styles, but not this piece. I looked it up and thought I would share because I find it to be pretty rad.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flammarion_engraving

The Flammarion engraving is a wood engraving by an unknown artist. Its first documented appearance is in the book L'atmosphère : météorologie populaire ("The Atmosphere: Popular Meteorology"), published in 1888 by the French astronomer and writer Camille Flammarion.

The illustration depicts a man, dressed as a pilgrim in a long robe and carrying a walking stick, who has reached a point where the flat Earth meets the firmament. The pilgrim kneels down and passes his head, shoulders, right arm, and the top of the walking stick through an opening in the firmament, which is depicted as covered on the inside by the stars, Sun, and Moon. Behind the sky, the pilgrim finds a marvelous realm of circling clouds, fires and suns. One of the elements of the cosmic machinery resembles traditional pictorial representations of the "wheel in the middle of a wheel" described in the visions of the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Idk about "supernatural" but there definitely seems like there's a lot of undiscovered psychological phenomenon we haven't figured out. It's hard to research and quantify subjective experiences.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

I'm basically at a point where I don't think any actual magic or phenomena exists, but the disciplines of metaphysical practice themselves are worthwhile for introspection and working on your mindset. Also I don't like to give voice to my own skepticism that much - I don't defend it or argue because I can't be talked out of it and it's not very fun to be that guy. It's more fun to entertain the fanciful things and hold ideas lightly among people who are inclined to talk about phenomena.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I first want to call out all of the responses with "philosophical insurance".

By that I mean things like "If it IS real, it's not supernatural, so even if I rolled my eyes at it, and you prove me wrong, I'm still right"

We're just hanging out and casually talking about stuff here. No enforcers are going to come back and read these and hunt you down if someone ends up proving that ghosts or something is real. Also, you can still keep your Atheist card, if you think there might still be some weird stuff out there that science cannot yet explain.

As for me, I've had a few "Supernatural experiences" myself, and they've convinced me that there is another "force" out there that we don't understand.

load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›