Lets take a little break from politics and have us a real atheist conversation.

Personally, I’m open to the idea of the existence of supernatural phenomena, and I believe mainstream religions are actually complicated incomplete stories full of misinterpretations, misunderstandings, and half-truths.

Basically, I think that these stories are not as simple and straightforward as they seem to be to religious people. I feel like there is a lot more to them. Concluding that all these stories are just made up or came out of nowhere is kind of hard for me.

  • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    “Supernatural” is just unexplained, or misunderstood, natural phenomena.

    I’ve spent years working in supposedly haunted buildings (as security.)

    the guy who loves sharing his ghost story really didn’t appreciate being told that the “fleeting man” he saw apparitions of, were his own reflection (specifically in a corner window of a conference room, or in certain circumstances, in double-paned windows.)

    Nor did he appreciate being told the ghost “walking” down the stairwell was really just the fire sprinkler standpipe clunking against the stairs as the building cooled off. (And the reason it happened around the same time every night was the building’s hvac being set to a lower temp to save energy.)

    He most certainly didn’t enjoy being told that the doors closing in his face were caused by shorts in the magnetic door holders and that he really should have put that in his report (he was written up for not reporting a maintenance issue.)

    He also got written up when we found out that he was leaving windows cracked in the space above him, but he wrote them off as ghosts screaming instead of the wind whistling through a slightly cracked window.

    Our understanding of the universe is imperfect- and it probably always will be. The point of science is to improve that understanding using evidence and experimentation.

    I’ll take science any day of the week.

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      I used to believe in all sorts of supernatural horseshit back in the 80s, we all did. But I had one friend that thought he had some sort of power because thermostats would kick in when he walked by.

      “Uh, dude, there’s a bimetallic strip in there that’s on the very edge of tripping. A slight breeze will indeed kick it off.”

      Nope. He apparently had some sort of “cold” aura.