I'm definitely not an atheist tho.
I find/believe:
- theistic religions and their people are gullible and dangerously irrational (Christians, Jews, Muslims, ...);
- religions openly more philosophical are objectively great (Taoism, Buddhism, ...)
- atheism is mostly being willingly ignorant and closed-minded and feeling superior for it
- scepticism and accepting to not know things is the actually reasonable answer
Simple illustration: the origin of the universe.
The irrationally religious will directly talk about their God.
The irrationally atheist will talk about the Big Bang until you ask "what about before that" and they'll either explode or murder you.
The sceptic or agnostic will accept there was the Big Bang, and that there's possibly something before or more meta that we don't know about (yet).
sceptic or agnostic: I prefer sceptic, as it leaves a place for the (yet). But whatever, both are okay.
My only actual belief here is that the possibility of a God of any kind relative to us is not excluded and we could come up with an unlimited number of theories about it that work with current physics.
I mean just try to understand modern physics for a year or two.
If after that you're still convinced there can't be anything more, I'll be very sorry for you.
@CobaltVelvet I didn't understand most modern physics when I was a physics major 30 years ago!
@nethope @CobaltVelvet You were clearly a better physics major than I was. I mean, I got classical stuff just fine, even thermogoddamics, but when they started getting into the quantum level I knew I was never going on to grad school.
@filkerdave Now that you mention it, I think my love of reading did it. As an undergrad, I befriended a grad student (protip: don't tell me "no one would ever speak to" because I will go do that) who set me to read all Feynman as well as JJ Sakurai's text on Quantum Mechanics. That clicked! My QM profs were abominable, but I gained enough intuition to get him started on his Masters project.
OTOH, I had a fantastic Thermo prof, loved the class, and barely remember it now.
@filkerdave @CobaltVelvet I thought I understood modern physics back when I was a physics major 28 years ago when I was more confident.
Quantum mechanics leaves a LOT of room for wonder, as long as you're willing to leave your intuition at the door.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/tensor-networks-and-entanglement-20150428
Quote: John Wheeler first described [space-time geometry at the smallest scales] as a bubbly, frothy foam six decades ago.
My intuition never would have said "small is foam"