TootGuitar

I love Arch but I’d caution you against hyperbole like this. For example, NixOS has a declarative config for the whole system along with atomic builds that can be rolled back or switched dynamically. Not aware of any way to do any of that in Arch.

Start with one site at a time, and if a site/service doesn’t allow you to change your email without contacting them, make a note of it, and don’t worry about it for now. To begin with, focus on the sites that you can change yourself. This will give you a sense of making progress, perhaps faster than you might think.

I started switching off of gmail about 4 years ago and I’m still checking it periodically. Most of the messages I get to my gmail account these days are spam or mistaken emails due to people signing up for services and thinking that my email address is theirs (I have an early “first initial/last name” gmail address that I got in 2005). But every once in a while something legit will pop up and I make it a point to change the address.

I don’t know if I’ll ever actually close my gmail account or stop checking it, but at this point I’ve got 99%+ of the services I care about switched over to my new address, so if Google boots me, I won’t care.

I’m sorry if this comes off as rude or blunt, but here goes:

I am not aware of any evidence that resurrection is possible, or indeed that anything that could be called “supernatural” is real. Don’t you need to establish that before you can claim that arguments for a flipping resurrection seem strong? What am I missing here?

Yeah, email relays are probably better. I wasn’t necessarily considering those in my comment. But there are tradeoffs there too; now all your incoming mail can be read by a 3rd party, and there’s one more server between you and your email that needs to be up and working for you to properly receive mail.

I agree with the tradeoffs stated here, but I’d argue that any email address you hand out can serve as a unique data point, tied to you.

[email protected] for obvious reasons.

[email protected] — easy to filter out the plus and everything after, and it’s very likely more people use this format than [email protected], making more likely that this filtering would actually be automatically applied.

This seems like faulty logic to me. What other things in your life do you affirmatively believe “by default” just because their counter-arguments seem implausible to you? Doesn’t it make more sense to not hold belief in something until you have evidence supporting that belief?

Which part would you like a citation for? I am happy to provide.

The part I quoted: that "the universe formed itself and all matter, presumably from a state of non-being." I take particular issue with 1) the "formed itself" language, because it sounds a bit like you're referring to the universe as an entity that can act of its own accord, which I don't believe is correct, and 2) "presumably from a state of non-being," because it sounds like you believe science has actually established that there was likely a "state of non-being," when I don't know that a "state of non-being" is even something that makes any sense to discuss in a scientific manner. So if you had citations to corroborate the entire statement, that would be ideal.

Edit: and your second paragraph strays pretty far from the original topic of reincarnation. Yes, in a many-worlds interpretation of the cosmos, there are infinitely many copies of me, and an infinite number of them have put their hands through walls as if by magic. But this is pretty different from the commonly-accepted concept of reincarnation, in that you aren't saying that we are reborn again only when we die, but rather that we exist in infinitely many universes simultaneously.

Lastly, Science tells us that the universe formed itself and all matter, presumably from a state of non-being.

[citation needed]

If “you” can form once, is it so absurd to believe that it could happen twice? If twice, why not an infinite number of times?

I don't believe it's impossible. But I'd put the odds of the exact same atoms arranging themselves in the exact same way so as to form another "you" in roughly the same ballpark as me being able to touch the palm of my hand to a 6" thick wall and have it pass right through. Both my hand and the wall are mostly empty space, so it's possible for the atoms to all align in the correct way for it to happen, but the odds are infinitesimally small.

Obviously you can’t prove it one way or another. That’s the whole point. Are you new?

Nope, I'm old.

But I prefer not to base my life choices on things that are unprovable, and one of us has claims that are backed by at least some amount of evidence (the existence of missionaries, documentation of brainwashing techniques used by the particular church that OP belongs to, documentation of the financial motivations driving said church to continue brainwashing people, the sheer utter logical ridiculousness of the specific claims of that church), and the other does not. So I'll continue taking the default, rational, skeptical position, until there is sufficient evidence to do otherwise.

You can of course believe whatever you want, but please don't tell me what I believe, because you're clearly confused.

I will make this as clear as I can: I absolutely do not make the claim that there is no god. For each of the positive claims for a particular god that I've heard, I don't believe the claims meet their burden of proof. Think of it like a jury in a courtroom: for each god claim I've heard presented, thus far I have found that deity "not guilty" of existing. This is not at all the same as asserting that no gods exist.

There are plenty of specific gods that are claimed to exist (Zeus, for example) where I do assert that particular god doesn't exist. But there are other god claims (a deistic god, for example) where I don't feel the proposition presented is falsifiable. For that reason, while I do not believe those claims meet their burden of proof, I also feel I cannot honestly assert that the deity doesn't exist.

The presence of even one deity in the "unfalsifiable" category, IMHO, prevents me from making the claim "no gods exist." But I am still an atheist, because I hold no theistic beliefs.

Hope this makes sense.

I was trying to disengage peacefully, and I honestly didn’t intend to insult you or declare myself “winner” of anything. But now you’re being dishonest, so you’re blocked. Again, have a good one.

It was an analogy.

I am an a-stamp-collector. I do not collect stamps. This does not necessarily mean I still collect something.

I am also an atheist. I do not believe any claim I have heard about a god. This does not necessarily mean I still believe something (about a deity, or indeed about anything else).