AnonymousI have not, but I certainly will! Thanks for letting me know, it truly is relevant to my interests. Not enough comics about intersex people out there. Or any form of art really. YOU DISAPPOINT ME WORLD
And there’s so much stuff on my dash I’m thinking I’ll just give up and move on with my life.
It feels so weird to be in Finland.
| — | Tristan Skye (via genderbendingriotqueer) |
Matt Smith holding the Olympic Torch in Cardiff (May 26th)
I’m very excited about the run. It’s a huge privilege. A once in a lifetime thing. Let’s hope I don’t trip over!
I’ve actually tried to have this conversation with a theist once, but she just couldn’t understand someone could live in a world without a deity or a higher power of any kind. I think this whole conflict between theists and atheists comes down to that - our views of the world are so different that it’s difficult (sometimes impossible) to understand each other. Logically thinking the situation should be better with atheists who used to be theists and vice versa, but the atheism tag on tumblr implies it’s probably worse.
I don’t really blame theists for not understanding, because I can’t even imagine what it feels like to believe in something supernatural either. What I do blame them for is their unwillingness to try. And the fact that they have to make atheism into something scary and demonic, with the great Darwin as the supreme leader with his prophets Dawkins and Hitchens writing the holy texts, just because that’s the only way they appear to be able to reject it (which some seem to be very desperate to do).
gatoraid replied to your post: Iltaa! Mitäs kuuluu tähän iltaan? Anteeks kun häiritsen, mutta on perjantai ilta ja olen hyvin yksinäinen joten juttelen ihmisille.
POMPPULINNA? PICS OR IT DIDN’T HAPPEN
Mut en ottanu kuvia! ;____; En kehannu, ku siel oli ihmisiä.
The atheist who challenges Christianity by asking how God can exist in a world with evil faces a bigger problem than the theist.
The theist must rise to the challenge, to be sure. But the atheist must also take his turn offering his own explanation, and his task faces a complication the theist does not encounter. He must explain how evil itself could exist in the first place to make room for his complaint. He must account for the objective, transcendent moral standard that has to be in position before moral judgments of any kind can be made.
This difficulty signals an additional problem: The atheist must also solve the problem of good. How can anything ultimately be evil or good in a universe bereft of any standard to make sense of the terms?
Darwin will not rescue the atheist here, because evolution is a materialistic process that can only produce material merchandise. No stirring and recombining of molecules over time will ever cause a moral fact to pop into existence in the immaterial realm. At best, Darwinism might account for behaviors or beliefs that human beings falsely label “moral” because the deception accomplishes some evolutionary purpose. But it is deception, pure and simple. The kind of robust morality necessary to ground the atheist’s complaint about evil is impossible on a materialist take on reality.
No, the atheist has not gotten rid of the problem of evil by rejecting God. He has compounded the problem. The only thing he has gotten rid of is hope.
I think it’s funny how people act like being an atheist (everyone’s default state. we’re not born believing in any god) is some big moral conundrum.
Sorry, I don’t need a 2,000 year old book to solve my moral and philosophical inquiries.
And I don’t need any of you brand of “hope”
Now here’s something that might be difficult for a theist to grasp: There isn’t anything “ultimately evil” or “ultimately good”. Good and evil both require someone to dictate it, and as such they cannot be part of the objective reality. As humans we of course can define ourselves what we perceive as good or bad (I hate using the word “evil”, it’s horribly dramatic and inaccurate), but that’s as far as it goes.
Then how do we define good and bad ourselves and how can we know we’re right? It’s called empathy. Empathy is the driving force of morality (as morality is - or at least should be - empathy in action), and unsurprisingly it’s also essential to the evolution of any social species. Social groups cannot function without it, and thus we, who live in enormous communities, could not have come this far without it. We have to relate to other living things in order to live in harmony with them. This evolutionary process is the source of morality. Call it deception if you want - I for one think it’s all kinds of brilliant.
Because my morality is only guided by empathy, I don’t have to waste my time condemning people for being who they are when they aren’t harming anyone else. Because in my world if something doesn’t harm anyone - human or animal - it simply cannot be immoral. How could it be? The whole point of morality is to prevent others from getting hurt, so of course something that doesn’t hurt or harm anyone or anything cannot be made into a question of morality. It’s always dangerous when you mistake your personal preference for your moral stand. It doesn’t work like that.
You know what the best part is? As someone with endless empathic capacity, I see no evil. I see only stupidity, ignorance and illness where you see something profoundly bad and incurable. That gives me hope of a better tomorrow, because I know that even the worst people - the folks who do horrible things to others - can be educated and treated, that I can make a difference by educating myself and spreading knowledge.
When an atheist asks how can there be a god in a world with so much evil, they are referring to the religious concept of evil that usually goes hand in hand with theism. If you believe there’s an ultimately good god, and you believe there’s something ultimately evil, then it’s your job to explain how these two contradicting elements can coexist.
