Question challenge: Ask me a question, any kind of question, and I will answer your question in the comments. (please only ask one question at a time and don't have high expectations, hahaha)
I labeled this ??1?? because this is the first time I will be doing this here on Steemit, but I plan on doing this again in the future.
I make no promises as to a scheduled time frame or how often I will do this, but I will at least consistently do my best to label these sequentially like ??1?? and then ??2?? and so on. Also, I'm only human so I will answer these questions as promptly as I can and with (better or worse) answers that you may or may not like. If your questions become abusive toward me or others, I will mute you and flag/downvote any kinds of bullshit you send to intentionally hurt other humans.
My expectation is that this first time and the first few times I do this, that not many people will respond, but maybe at some point in the future, this series will become something people enjoy and maybe even look forward to interacting with me and others who join in on these posts.
As per usual, the only way to find out if something works or not, is to experiment and use our curiosity to find out what we can about everything around us and even maybe even understand ourselves a bit better in the process. There are no guarantees (but I will work hard to be honest and concise with my answers) that I will give correct or accurate answers and when I get things wrong, I'm fine with anyone correcting me because that is how we can all learn things together in actually helpful ways.
Thanks for reading this post and please start asking your questions NOW? (because NOW is all that any of us actually have some tiny amount of control over, in my curious opinion)
Original graphic created by: @lundgreenman (aka Nate, or Curious Nate, or whatever you want to call me to get my attention, hahaha)
Can you explain how being a secular humanist brings hope into your life in the long term, as in 1000 or 10,000 years from now? :)
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I know my answer probably won't be very satisfactory to you or anyone else, but can anyone on earth truly explain how their personal philosophy brings hope where no evidence for that hope exists? In other words, I'm intellectually honest enough to admit that I don't know the answer to that question but I take comfort in the fact that no one else on earth does either. (despite what religions or charlatans or "spiritualists" claim to know based solely on their subjective opinions and feelings with literally no observable or measurable ways to prove their claims true or false or actually hopeful in any ways, except maybe as a placebo, aka self-deception, that tricks our brains into comforting them in spite of all indications that we are not as healthy as we believe we are and that death is most likely the complete end of each of our conscience existences) Of course, I would love to be wrong but then that just makes things even more complicated (I prefer simplicity since I'm a simple man) because then it just begs the question of which hope for the long term will actually happen, yours, mine, some other humans or some god or higher beings, etc.
Bottom line, I believe that hope is something temporal and as long as I exist in time and space, I will have hope for my future, but beyond that, I have no idea and that may not be a comforting thought to me or you, but whoever told us that the universe/nature/reality had to conform or to obey our desires, hopes or dreams, was probably selling something or wanting to control our lives and futures in one way or another. I prefer freedom, even if that means total uncertainty about my or anyone else's distant future. I believe in living in the here and now and loving the humans I can, in the here and now. The distant future and everything in the past are both things out of my control so I only focus on what I can control. (my brain and interactions with the world and people who are directly in front of me) My only actual hope for that far in the future is that humans will still be around in one form or another and that their lives will be just as good, but hopefully much better than ours have been. :)
I could go on all day about this subject, but unless you want to know more, I won't keep rambling on. hahaha Feel free to ask any specific follow up questions and I will try my best to answer them. Peace! :)
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P.S. A secular humanist is basically an atheist that does their best to not be a jerk in how they interact with and treat religious people. I see religion/religious ideas as a natural human phenomenon and not something to be hated, in and of itself. And humans should never be permanently hateful to each other, (temporary hate happens within even the best of humanity for both good or bad reasons) since none of us will perfectly meet each other's expectations, etc. In my opinion, life is too short to go around hating people just because their minds, hearts and philosophies are different than mine. As long as people's individual or collective philosophies are not promoting violence or oppression of "non-believers," then I'm fine with any belief system that causes people to feel better about their time and existence on our shared reality/planet called earth/nature. :)
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A very honest answer and a lot to unpack and think about!! I'm a Christian and believe God came to earth as a man around 2000 years ago and revealed himself to us in Jesus. Fully God and fully man and he reached out to us and was sacrificed for us all. Just the fact that his very name can slice through the heart and cause hatred or adoration is telling. You don't get that as much with other religions IMO, but sometimes I have assurance issues, other times not. Anyway, peace to you too. :)
Thanks for not being a jerk! ;) My dad's a very outspoken athiest as well. Love him to pieces!! Anyway, thanks for responding, it was kind of a loaded question. :) <3
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I like questions of any kind. (I question everything.) Loaded or not. hahaha Don't worry, I used to be VERY religious and I know the mindset. I was raised in basically a cult. (mormonism) Mormonism is especially cult-like with it's missionary program. I spent 2 years from 1995-1997 as a full-time missionary. The rules were insanely strict like no reading newspapers, watching TV, or dating or basically doing anything for yourself. It was 24/7 working for the "Lord" and basically total self-sacrifice to the cult. Luckily, it was "only" 2 years but that immersive cult experience really messed with my mind/sanity for many years afterwards. (I resigned in 2012 from mormonism when I was 35) The other parts of mormonism that are specifically cultish are the secret temple ceremonies with their silly clothes and the dictated underwear I had to wear as a member. (If you are interested to see the ceremonies, then go to YouTube and look up a guy named NewNameNoah because he is an ex-mormon that snuck a camera into some LDS temples and filmed most/all of the ceremonies, etc.)
Basically, I'm trying to say that I fully understand your impulse to share what you believe to be the "good news" of the gospel. (gospel is a contraction of the words god-spell) Every religion taps into a part of the human brain that triggers very powerful emotions and transcendent feelings/ideas. I'm fine with people getting "high" on those kinds of things but religion is not simply a set of feel-good natural internal personal occurrences/experiences. It has political and social consequences that often end up being rather anti-intellectual and harmful to both religious and nonreligious parts of humanity.
When I was religious, I also felt that people either loved or hated my beliefs and the characters (like Jesus, etc.) I worshipped at that time. But as I have experienced more of life, etc. and have traveled and lived in places like South Korea and Taiwan that are not Christian centric, I realized that most people on the planet are actually apathetic about Christianity unless they have interacted with Christians enough to form more passionate positive or negative opinions about Christianity.
Anyway.... yes, there is lot to unpack in regards to religion and any other complex sets of beliefs that humans have developed over centuries and longer. Thanks also for not being a jerk and cruelly judgemental of someone that doesn't share your same beliefs. :)
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I used to be an athiest too actually. At the risk of being too pushy: https://steemit.com/christianity/@snowpea/eternity-in-your-heart
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I agree that there has been too much dehumanization lately. The causes are a complicated thing to analyze. We had opposite experiences in the sense that my religious beliefs were making me suicidal and atheism actually saved me from desiring to end my life. This is the only life that we all know with certainty that we have. All else would be a bonus. (an afterlife, heaven, etc.) But I'm not going to govern my life based on my or anyone else's hopes for the future, but by my hopes for the here and now. Have you heard of the atheist's wager? If not, I recommend reading this wikipedia article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheist%27s_Wager
Conclusion: We all need to be kind and helpful to ourselves and each other, no matter what the future may or may not hold for any of us. :) Take it easy!
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@lundgreenman I don't consider myself religious. We don't even refer to the guy who preaches at out church as a minister or pastor or anything. There are no rituals, in fact we don't even pass the plate haha! It's super low key. I'm sorry you had to endure Mormonism. Two years is still a long time!! It's so funny because the most suicidal day of my life was when two Mormons messed with me. The first time they came around they asked if I needed any services like lawn cutting and I said, "no." I told them that I would never accept Joseph Smith as a prophet, ect. Then a couple of days later they parked right in front of my house, then went to my neighbor's house to cut her lawn. I thought, maybe if they wanted to, they could cut mine too, since they offered. I asked and one of them said, "maybe." But when they were done with my neighbor's lawn, they literally ran to the car and sped off. I was in a really low point in my life already and that was the straw that broke the camel's back at the time and really sent me over the edge lol. It doesn't sound like much but at the time it really hurt. Haven't been visited by a Mormon since. https://steemit.com/gangstalking/@snowpea/my-experience-with-organized-gangstalking-and-being-a-tartgeted-individual
You take it easy too. Nice meeting you!! :) Since we're about to eat a late dinner I'll look at the links you shared in the morning. :) Much love, @snowpea
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Hi @lundgreenman fun game.
What is your take on the "if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to here it, so does it still exist?" scenario? lol :)
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That is something most humans usually learn or are able to comprehend at some point when they are children. :P hahaha It's called the ability to understand object permanence and therefore, I fall on the philosophical side that the tree does exist both before and after it falls. Observation is only needed subjectively by people with ultra literal minds that can't determine if something exists or not unless they see it with their own eyes. Granted, since your question is hypothetical, the speculative tree, forest and all the rest of the ideas in the question don't actually exist anywhere or at anytime but in the conceptual land of human brain's imaginations. Love the question! hahaha I hope my answer clears it up or makes it more muddy, either way I'm fine with that. :P hehe
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I must say I get what the question is posing, I really do .. BUT to play another side of the fence - isn't it interesting that we only view the question from a human point of view? We don't stop to consider the multitude of other creatures in said forest? ;)
I appreciate your answer, and glad you enjoyed the question. :)
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I agree that we could question more what the perspectives that other living creatures have but the question then becomes how we go about doing that? Science and technology are getting pretty close to being able to "read" what goes on in the brains of humans including individual thoughts, etc. and it would be cool to also apply that (somewhat still future) tech to other animals and plants to better understand how they experience their subjective/individual lives and to what degrees they are sentient and thinking about life. Fun stuff to think about. :)
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I just wish I could download my memories and show my kids what their grandparents & great grandparents were like. What the 70s were like (hahaha perhaps no, I'll fast forward through those!).
Haven't scientists recently discovered that trees 'talk' to each other? Slowly but surely we'll uncover more mysteries Mother Nature has for us. :)
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Oh man, I love this idea but the challenge is coming up with a worthy question! Especially since I don't know you so I have no frame of reference...
What would your perfect day look like?
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If it helps, I'm both a very simple minded person but also perpetually curious. I deem all questions worthy to at least be asked. It's the answers to questions that matter much more than the questions themselves, in my curious opinion. :)
As for what a perfect day would look like for me, I would have to say one where at least a few things were not perfect. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but that's because I despise perfectionism in all it's forms. Why? I would say I despise "perfect" as a concept for humans and human behavior because I was raised in an environment where perfectionism was the ideal (mormonism/Christianity) and it was a torturous way to see reality and others in our shared humanity. I also think it leads to people becoming so disassociated (cult/tribal mentality) from other people because the judgemental and ultimately cruel attitude required to be a believer in some kind of "special" perfectionism. (religious or secular or any other varieties)
However, if I were to stop overthinking your question (sorry about that, hahaha) and just answer it... I would say that a perfect day would be one where I'm free to think, experience beauty, love others and simply live without any forms of pain and that everyone else would have those same joys and privileges.
Thank you for responding to this post and I hope this gives a starting point of reference in regard to my perspectives about life, the universe and everything... (42) hahaha Take it easy and bye for now. :)
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I am going to resteem your post, previously u did mine so i have to do it for you. Thank you
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Thank you, but I have never resteemed any of your past posts. (I checked) But if I like one of your more recent ones, I will upvote or resteem it. Remember that everything you or I do on here is checkable and observable (by the whole internet but especially other Steemians) so please try to avoid lying or misrepresenting things because anyone and everyone can check if you are telling the truth about posts, etc. Have a nice day! :)
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