Скачать или смотреть Why I don't call myself an atheist Part 2

Originally posted: 02/12/2021
I'm always down to overcomplicate.

Transcription:

All right, here's the main reason I don't call myself an atheist. Personal opinion, not trying to change anyone's mind. Atheist as a blanket term presupposes a shared understanding of what God is, but that doesn't exist.

Some people's god is really concrete, making it easy to disavow. Other people's gods are metaphor by their own account, making it much less necessary or even possible to disagree with. So tell me about your god, and I'll tell you if I'm an atheist about that god. The evangelical god, unequivocal thumbs down, easy.

But if I buy a bottle of bourbon from a Walgreens and share it with a washboard player on a curb in the French quarter, and then they rhapsodize about how we're all momentary instances of a vast unified self, and they call that self-god, well, that's a totally different conversation whether I agree with them or not.

It doesn't make my life any richer or more interesting to be an atheist in that hour. Even if both ideas are worth rejecting, that self god is such a different proposition from the Christian god that it feels odd to discount them both at once with a single word.

Now am I splitting hairs, overcomplicating things, and basically just playing with words? Yeah. That's fun for me. It's basically the whole reason I'm here. Thanks for coming along.

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