There was a place by the beach called Helenback.
My siblings and I in the car: Where are we going?
Mum (shouting): Hell and back!
I was an adult before I realised it had another name.
When I was very young, my dad told me we were going to Miami. I thought he said “my Ami”, which I assumed was a word for some kind of relative, like Auntie, Granny, etc.
That there’s a loving God.
Now it seems clear that even if he did exist, he’s just above average asshole
I would argue that they would be fully evil depending on your definition of god.
In my case, the abrahamic one. Narcissistic asshole
Ya that one is evil.
I would argue that if God exists, they aren’t intentionally being an asshole. They are being completely hands off so as not to corrupt the experiment, or override free will. After all, the only reason any god would need a prime material plane of existence is to see if they can create a peer of themselves, and at least as far as most of the major religions seem to be concerned, if someone created this universe, they decided that we have free will, so it’s kinda hard to directly intervene. They could send avatars from time to time to attempt to intervene, but they kinda tied their hands in the act of creation.
You can absolutely intervene without affecting free will and that is assuming we even have free will. I am not convinced that we do.
Also why would you presume to know what a being (that as we imagine it) with unlimited power and knowledge would want or even need?
If you are a god and you see 25,000 people (10,000 of which are children) starving to death every single day and you have the power to stop that and you don’t then you are an immortal monster.
I was a real piece of shit for a good handful of years when I was a kid because I believed I was destined for hell. I figured if I’m going to spend eternity being tortured I may as well enjoy life to the max, even at the expense of others. Because I’m already going to hell, so why not, right?
Religion is fucking toxic, man. I hurt a lot of people and made a lot of decisions I can’t recover from.
That prayers appease god to make things better.
it still blows my mind on a daily basis, the arrogance of humans to think they not only know what their creator-god wants but can sway “Him” with some fucking magic words
I mean… If I was playing like The Sims and one of the Sims was like “yo can I get a new bike?” I might be like sure bro. From their perspective I’m a god that exists outside time and space.
That’s not really how Christianity talks about its God though, usually. But also like the story of Job does seem like a kid and his friend fucking with their game.
The more complex computers get, the greater probability that we are actually living in a simulation!
I don’t think we could classify it as “false belief” since we can’t verify that statement.
Sure you can!
Get a coin, and flip it 100 times. Record each time it lands on heads/tails.
Now get a devout believer, and have the believer continuously say devout prayers petitioning God to make the coin read heads. Then, flip the coin 100 times, and record heads/tails.
Do statistical analysis to see whether there is a statistically significant difference between the control group and the prayer group. Pretty easy to verify if true.
That line of thinking led to the “docudrama” ‘What the bleep do we know?’ and the extended version “What the bleep, further down the rabbit hole.” Both of which can appear to be rational to most laymen, but are basically religious BS forced on a quantum physics foundation.
I can’t believe we’re still talking about that shitty propaganda! I remember anticipating an interesting documentary about quantum implications, then went to see it with some other physics nerds and being disgusted by the hamfisted mix of fundamentalist religion framed as “science”. What have they done to us? WHAT DID THEY DO TO US
Even a recent book advocating the efficacy of prayer in treating disease (Larry Dossey, Healing Words) is troubled by the fact that some diseases are more easily cured or mitigated than others. If prayer works, why can’t God cure cancer or grow back a severed limb?
– Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World (1995)
I’m completely on board with that, except for the “wish fulfillment”. I don’t know how it got twisted around that you could presume to tell God what to do or that he would - it seems so entirely inconsistent with anything else about religious beliefs
So we have this all powerful and all knowing supreme being , right? And he’s got a plan for the entire universe and all of time, right? But he’ll disrupt all of that to grant you a favor if you wish hard enough? Or you can blame him if something bad happens to you specifically, out of all the universe over all time? What hubris, what ego could make us think we’re in control and can use it for personal gain?
We can verify that prair has no effect and is at best a placebo.
That America was the greatest country in the world. And truly, not trying to be political, but honestly the propaganda in Midwest America was real. I didn’t know anything about other countries - except for we were better. We figured it out, we built the best system ever and everyone else wanted to be like us.
Now those are the people I see overseas who are about to get punched in a pub.
That midwest propaganda is still around, just chewed out a coworker who said they’d be fine with everyone in Ukraine dying so that the US can ‘have more money’ and ‘be independant’
Good. Americana think they’re so much different from everyone else and we’re literally not. I hold a form belief that everyone just wants to go to work, get off work, they’d rather get a pizza for dinner but they’re going to try to eat something better, are looking forward to their next day off, and when it comes they’re going to go to their target equivalent for a boring errands run. I think about 90% of the people are in this category, just average working people, and that makes me feel a little more connected with them.
Yes, many millenials have been mentally fucked up by being constantly told that they were special or they would grow up to be special or achieve to become special. Now they’re not special, they’re average, just like everyone else, but they can’t handle it or accept it. They grow depressed, of get a bloated ego or vote for Donald Trump et al.
I personally think it’s a liberating feeling to just be average. Make the best of your life, no pressure. I’ve made some lasting (positive) impressions on a handful of individuals and that gives me loads more satisfaction than being a world changer and loads less stress.
I know I failed out of my first year of college simply because all through school I was told I was so smart. So I got to college and was bitch slapped by what actual work looked like. Luckily I turned it around. However I had someone who was sort of my counter part who was in the same advanced classes as me, same thing happened and he works at a gas station in the middle of nowhere now. You want to think your kids are special and want to encourage them, but no.
We need to teach that special is earned, not a given.
Gen X had the same messaging. We were told we were all special, and then reality set in and we couldn’t do shit about anything. That’s literally the plot of Fight Club. Late stage capitalism is a bitch and we’ve been here for at least 15 if not 20 years.
How did they react to you calling them out?
They shut up luckily enough
Definitely heard this all the time and went with it blindly. I grew up in Ohio, now live on the other side of the planet with zero intention of ever living in the US again.
That our blood was blue, but turned red when exposed to air and light. All because a teacher told us so.
Volcanos being caused by overpopulation in hell.
That my parents never had parents. Sure, I had grandparents and saw them daily, but I somehow never realized that they were my dad’s parents.
I thought that
apt-getwas a wrapper around theaptcommandWell, TIL.
I believed that peas were the pupa of something similar to a butterfly or a moth. I refused to eat peas for years because I felt so bad eating little baby critters. I think my aunt might’ve “encouraged” me to think that.
Removed by mod
This removed comment said “That I could have being a successful adult when I grow up, falling in love, making with my own family, and have a job.”
Oh yeah I had a few.
- That the moon you see during daytime is actually Mars (I then repeated that to my big sister and she believed it for an embarrassingly long amount of time)
- That the “up” arrows on traffic lights were for planes
Me in the middle of my flight when my plane pauses in midair to wait for a traffic light
Well Mars and The Moon are relatively similar in size compared to The Earth. Mars being about twice the size of The Moon, therefore making Mars roughly 1/2 the size of The Earth, and The Moon roughly 1/3 the size of The Earth.
If Mars happened to be in an orbit roughly 500,000 mi or 800,000 km away from The Earth, it would appear that we would have two “Moons” the size of The Moon to the visible eye, giving the possibility of some absolutely crazy solar eclipse events. I don’t think it would even drastically change the tides or the overall gravitational well of The Earth and its various current natural satellites all that much, thanks to the inverse squared law with gravity.
Maybe that was what was going on with several different worlds in SciFi that had multiple massive moons…
I thought that women drank tea and men drank coffee, because that was what my mum and dad did.
My mom still drinks tea
How deep does the rabbit hole go?
Double rainbow deep
I don’t drink coffee, and rarely drink tea. Caffeine and I don’t really get along, and I think coffee tastes bitter.
My mother drinks coffee, and tea. My father drinks tea.
One morning I got up before my mother did, and decided to make her a pot of coffee because of Folgers commercials, and wanting to be nice. I think I was 7 at the time. I thought that one scoop of coffee grounds = one cup of coffee, and the coffee maker clearly said that it made 12 cups of coffee.
My mother wandered into the kitchen smelling fresh coffee and prematurely thanked me for making coffee for her. She added the cream and sugar that she always did, and took a sip. Her eyes shot wide open, and she sat the cup on the counter before asking me how much coffee grounds I had added to that pot.
Apparently she only used 1.5 scoops of grounds, so I accidentally made something akin to cappuccino, except not. All I know is that because she taught me how to make coffee properly, I can still make a good pot of coffee for all the coffee zombies in my life, and my ADD wakes me up earlier than anyone that drinks the stuff.
It’s an important skill to have, even if you don’t drink it. Actually, a coffee maker was one of the first things my parents made sure I had when I left home. Even though I didn’t drink coffee at the time, it’s common enough to be an important amenity.
Of course now I’m addicted and the one thing I no longer have is a drip coffeemaker. However I have a variety of k-cups you can use at any time, some cold brew in the fridge, or a couple choices I can make in my French press
Looking at my mum, dad and sisters drinking habits I can confirm this is true. Also, I’m NB and don’t drink either
Oddly, it’s also true of me and my wife. Maybe I was on to something?
I thought that if you swallowed your gum, it would stay in your stomach forever, so you had to make sure to never do it because eventually there would be no room for food anymore.
Also, old CRT TVs had this static electricity sort of fuzzy feeling on the screen, and if you ran your hand over it, it would dissipate. I thought that by doing that, you were absorbing the TVs power and if you did it too much, it would eventually stop working.
Lastly, I believed with all my heart that all the pets you ever owned were waiting for you in heaven and it made me mad when my (very devout Catholic) grandma told me that pets and animals don’t have souls and so they didn’t go to heaven. I said if that was true then I didn’t want to go to heaven! I’m atheist now, so I don’t even believe that anyone goes to heaven, but if anyone deserves to go, it’s all the kitties, puppies, and various rodentia I’ve loved in my life.
My stomach one was watermelon seeds. My brother told me that if you swallowed them they would grow in my stomach and of course I believed him. There’s plenty of water and nutrition in there and every time I open my mouth they could be getting sunlight.
At my Catholic high school, one of the teachers who was a Dominican sister told us that animals can’t go to heaven but it’s possible for them to be recreated in heaven.
I feel fine as long as my rabbit didn’t go to purgatory or hell, but non-eternal souls are hard to relate to
Pope John Paul II told her to kick rocks in 1990.
https://missdarcy.org/from-rainbow-bridge-to-pearly-gates/
Then in 1990, Pope John Paul II reversed that thinking and proclaimed that animals do have souls and are “as near to God as men are.”
If you could instantiate soulless virtual beings in heaven for your amusement at will, it would be way less boring. You could recreate Mortal Kombat
instantiate
materialise?
The Rainbow Bridge, is part of Catholic Dogma according to Pope John Paul II
Then in 1990, Pope John Paul II reversed that thinking and proclaimed that animals do have souls and are “as near to God as men are.”
Side note: At that time in my life, one of the schools I regularly attended as a non-Christian was a Catholic school that was called Pope John XXII, and I was legitimately confused as to how there were only 2 Pope John Pauls, while there were at least 23 Pope Johns. I think I thought that since a pope doesn’t have term limits, that there must not have been too many more popes than British Prime Ministers. Having grown up, I can safely say that while I wasn’t exactly incorrect, I was still criminally underestimating the sheer number of people that held both titles.
That people with a beard where poor people. I always felt sorry for them not able to afford a shaving kit.
The preferred term is hobo-chic actually.
I mean, it’s a reasonable correlation if not a connection. Inaction is often cheaper than action, in time, effort, and money, and beard basically grows itself.
I swear a social studies teacher told us that most rivers tend to flow north to south. Young impressionable child I was, I of course filed it away as a long-term core memory – right there next to PEMDAS, FOIL, and so on.
Then I mentioned it in college and got fucking embarrassed.
I was taught the same. I got extra credit for memorizing that the Nile River was a “notable exception”.
While I didn’t go to school in Texas, our school district used material developed there. It figures.
Similar, I had one declare rivers flow towards the equator. Which is slightly better than claiming they all flow N to S, but still inaccurate.
Rivers flow downhill. That’s it. In case anyone else needs to check their mental model of the world.
