If you work hard you’ll have a successful life
See also: “get good grades in university and you’ll be flooded with job offers!”
That wasn’t a lie, exactly, it was just Baby Boomers not realizing how much the world changed since they were in school. It used to happen that way. My mother got her first job out of school when the employer came to campus to recruit through a job fair.
It’s just an overly positive way of saying, “If you don’t get good grades in uni, many HRs will de-list you before looking at your resume”.
I literally have never come across a job posting that asked for GPA. Unless it’s like an academic internship or something. Get the degree, and nobody cares about your grades.
I don’t know if they still do, but Epic Systems (the medical records company) asked for GPA when I looked at their job applications. I’m not sure if they care about the GPA, per se, so much as using it as a way to practice their notorious (but hard to prove) age discrimination.
Grandma adopted a puppy when I was probably 8 or 9. It got parvo. I remember going to her house and asking where the puppy was. She told me that he was sick, so he had to stay outside and I couldn’t go outside for the same reason. When I would ask where the puppy is, she would tell me that he’s on the side of the house where I couldn’t see him. This went on for a long time, I never saw the puppy again and eventually forgot about it entirely.
A decade or two later I found out that my grandma had spent thousands of dollars trying to keep that puppy alive, but parvo took it anyways. She was very upset about it’s passing and instead of having me go through it too, she lied to me about it until I completely forgot about it.
In Catholic school in the nineties and early 2000’s, we were all told that the sex abuse scandal was serious but that it was also “a small number of incidents.” That we needed to pray for the victims and the souls of the perpetrators.
Then I went to college. Come to find out not only was the child rape widespread, not only did the church actively hide monsters from legal scrutiny, not only was this all directly effecting the local arch diocese (not my school specifically, but church leaders were forced to quickly rename another high school when allegations against a dead bishop proved too numerous to ignore)… not only all that but that it’s still going on, just not in first world countries with robust networks of journalists and legal systems. That an alleged pedophile was (while I was in college) living in the Vatican, being directly sheltered from extradition by South American authorities.
I guess the lie was that it was all over. That it was a small problem. That the church was a safe place people could turn to. I left the church at 18 over it, became an atheist by 19, and that’s where I’m at now at 35.
Men are logical. Women are emotional.
Such an enormous generalization and oversimplification. Very false.
Almost everything I was taught about nutrition later turned out to be BS
Yeah this is a great point!
Fat is bad! Sugar is fine (but brush your teeth)! Yes, this thing that’s been vacuum packed for 24 months is still edible food.
Yes, this thing that’s been vacuum packed for 24 months is still edible food.
it isn’t?
I was raised christian so basically everything I was ever told was an absolute lie.
Same here friend. But they were lies Their parents told them and so on and so on so it’s understandable how they thought they were doing the right thing.
True dat but its fairly easy to see through that nonsense and realise your parents are idiots (at best), one of the trials of growing up. Assuming there are no repercussions for it, like death, banishmanet etc
⚠️ controversial
⚠️ controversial
Spoiler alert: it probably wasn’t
spoiler alert: it factually was. Go thump your bible elsewhere, Ive been deprogrammed already
What did they tell you that is factually false?
That gay and trans people are all disgusting perverts who hate me and want to destroy everything good. My queer friends provide more emotional support in a day than I ever got from my family, the church, or anyone else inside the Evangelical bubble I was raised in.
That people in “The World” (those outside the church) are all evil or unknowingly controlled by Satan and will always try to hurt me. Textbook cult programming from the people who were emotionally abusing me.
That God is speaking directly to me through a voice in my head, except when that voice says I’m a girl, then it’s actually a demon or something. (It was likely undiagnosed DID as a result of childhood emotional neglect and repressed gender dysphoria.)
That scientists are all part of a massive satanic conspiracy to trick people into leaving the church.
Dungeons & Dragons being a satanic conspiracy. Satanic Panic stuff in general.
Lots of anti-evolution propaganda that turned out to be misrepresentations of science or complete fabrications.
That they actually believed in all that stuff Jesus said about loving thy neighbor, helping the poor and the sick, and being kind to immigrants, instead of spending their whole lives voting to hurt all of those people as much as possible.
That the world is 6000 years old.
Evolution
A talking snake
Cancer didn’t exist until the very modern age. Evolution is fake, a conspiracy. Jews are basically Christians who don’t know if Jesus is the savior or not. I could keep going.
A christian asking for facts. Lol.
Me parent convinced a few of friends that the ice cream truck only played music when it was OUT of ice cream
Haha thats awesome
“you’re not going to carry a calculator with you everywhere”
The thing is I believe that statement is a bit misunderstood.
Calculators were already becoming pocket sized back in the day, but using it to calculate things if you don’t know how to use it is where the actual problem is.
Hence the reasoning to learn how to math vs only having the device.
I’m not saying I disagree, but I had a different experience.
I don’t think people realised how quickly tech would advance.
I was being fed that line in 2008 when everyone in the class did, in fact, have a calculator in their pockets
You may carry one now, but can you calculate percentages on it without your maths lessons? Can you convert fractions? I blame the technology, if it’s going to math it needs to math all maths
Frankly, these days? Yeah you totally can. “Hey Siri, what’s 3% of 235,889?” or “Hey Siri, what’s 8/37ths converted to 300ths?” will most likely just feed you a correct answer.
“maybe” was how my mother said “no.”
“Ignore them and they’ll go away” in the context of bullying. Hint; it took a mental breakdown and violence to make it stop, back in the mid-90s.
Anything having to do with Christianity.
Yep, I had a bully in elementary school and my mom tried to work with the system of teachers, principal, admin, etc. for months, and nothing at all was ever done about it.
Finally when the bullying escalated to physical levels and started to impact my personality outside of school, my parents basically told me that while I might still get in trouble at school, they wouldn’t be upset with me at home if I did decide to stand up to the kid. They stressed to me the fine line between standing up for yourself and becoming a bully yourself, and sent me on my way.
A few days later, my bully found me at lunch and started messing with me. Pushing over my stack of booking, taking some food off my tray…I didn’t do anything until he tried to push me out of my seat then it was kind of blurry, but basically I just took a swing at him and knocked him back out of his seat and he hit his head against the wall and started crying.
I did get in some trouble at school but nothing too bad (especially once Mom was called in and she explained how if they tried to suspend me, she’d put them on blast for how they’d ignored the situation for so long), and that kid was nice as pie to me for the rest of our schooling.
In middle school, I had an incident where a kid a grade above me (he was held back, so he should’ve been a high schooler by this point and was HUGE) began to mess with me, unprompted, at the end of the day.
He stepped on my shoes as we walked, poked me, called me names, etc. When I turned around and called him a bitch and kept walking, he sucker punched me and ran. It was so bad I ended up in the emergency room with stitches.
Anyways, my parents were called and they threatened legal action. The school begged them not to, because they were “going to take care of it, we promise.” Once we found out he was only suspended for a week, my parents got all the info they needed to press charges for assault. He ended up in juvie.
Looking back, it’s a shame he ended up “in the system,” but that’s what he gets for being a bitch. Lol
They should have gone after the school too; that’s horrible!
“Ignore them and they’ll go away” really is rubbish advice. But that’s of course not to say that the only other step is violence.
My oldest daughter didn’t have a great time in secondary school (UK, age 11-16) but through persistent discussions and alarm raising to the school, the bullies eventually got the message and left her alone. I’m happy to say she’s having a wonderful time in college now (UK, age 16-18).
Unfortunately that’s a minority of cases. Most bullies in my experience, and especially those bullies that are themselves using physical violence, only respond to violence.
Don’t meet violence with violence as your first option. But keep it on the table. It’s a viable solution if nothing else works. Some people just don’t respond to anything short of getting punched in the mouth, especially kids/teens with their brain chemistry fucked six ways to Sunday by puberty.
Don’t meet violence with violence as your first option. But keep it on the table.
Something something “speak softly but carry a big stick.”
Basically, pacifism without the capacity for violence is simply inviting abuse. If you don’t have the capacity for violence, pacifism isn’t a choice; It’s being forced upon you as a tool of oppression. In order to be used effectively, it must be a choice, which requires the threat of violence if pacifism fails.
My father pulled that “just ignore it” shit, too. Somehow it wasn’t the bully’s fault for attacking me, it was my fault for being such an entertaining target.
That republicans are better on the economy. Nah it turns out they consistently screw it up by every measure.
It’s like saying tapeworms are good for your nutrition
Yeah that was a persistent “it’s just generally known” type of thing in the area where I grew up.
God exists and watches everything you do and loves you while threatening you with eternal damnation.
And he’s terrible with money! He needs more money!
George Carlin, how we miss thee.
You’re allowed to be atheist of course, but do you have any more proof that there are no gods than they have that gods exist?
EDIT: Y’all can have your opinion, no one’s questioning that. You’re allowed to believe there are no higher powers, but I’m not allowed my personal belief that there is?? Not one person has provided proof that there is no Higher Power. Grow up…
I’m not against religion, but that’s not how evidence and proof works. Do you have any proof that tiny invisible pink elephants aren’t hiding in your fridge?
that’s not how evidence and proof works.
Proof of a negative is common in science and mathematics.
No, you can’t prove that something never happens or that something doesn’t exist.
Edit: For those who are downvoting here are some sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)#Proving_a_negative
That’s not really how it works though. If I tell you there’s an invisible dragon living under your bed who will burn your house down at some time in the future if you don’t give me $10. You can’t disprove it, but because I’m the one making the claim that the dragon exists the burden of proof is on me.
The burden of proof tennis is quite tricky here because it’s not about whether you claim something exists, it’s whether you claim something that goes against what’s generally accepted. If I claim quantum mechanics don’t exist, it’s not on you to prove they do.
And that’s before we get into the fact that there isn’t a general consensus on whether God (or any gods) exist.
So if everyone believed in the invisible dragon under your bed, would that shift the burden of proof to you? I don’t see what the general consensus has to do with anything.
The people who say quantum mechanics exists don’t just claim it, they can demonstrate it through peer reviewed evidence. Quantum mechanics is also a theory based on observable facts intended to propose testable mechanisms by which those facts can be explained. My claim of a dragon under your bed has no such backing.
As smarter people than me have said, that which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Yeah, if everyone believes there’s an invisible dragon under my bed, then that means the burden of proof is on me to claim there isn’t. And I’d probably address that with a stick.
As for assertion without evidence, how do you feel about eyewitness accounts of miracles? Or sociological reasoning on the odds of the disciples keeping a conspiracy for their whole lives? Or how about the origin of the universe - we had all the matter in the universe condensed into a single point, complete with laws that would lead to such interesting things as nuclear fusion, complex planetary orbits, and even pockets of life. Do you take it as a given that it’s far more likely for that to have come out of nowhere than for a higher power to exist and have arranged it as such?
You’re free to discount the evidence (though I’d be happy to debate it with you,) and dismiss the claims because it doesn’t align with your experiences. But note that the idea that all this happened without God is as absurd to me as the existence of God is to you, and equally unsubstantiated.
No no a stick won’t work, the invisible dragon is very small and agile and would easily dodge your stick. It only makes itself known when it wants to.
I feel the same about eyewitness accounts of miracles. Eyewitness testimony is not evidence. It could be a good place to start to investigate miraculous claims but that’s all.
I’m not dismissing claims because it doesn’t align with my experiences, but because there is no reliable evidence. In fact depending on the type of diety you propose I think many claims can be shown to be false because they a contradictory with reality.
I’d be interested to hear the evidence you have for sure. I’m open to changing my views. I’m not scholar but my understanding is that the best we have is a collection of anonymously written books which isn’t enough for me to accept such a huge claim.
I don’t know about the origin of the universe but I don’t think anyone claims things came from nothing, we simply don’t know what was before the big bang. Not knowing the answer to me isn’t a good enough reason to assume a divine entity is responsible.
Eyewitness testimony isn’t evidence, eh? Before I get too invested in this, I want to know what you do consider to be evidence. Suppose that, hypothetically, I run a study where I recruit 1000 people off the street. I tell them that at some point over the next 10 days, I’m going to pray for them to experience peace. For each person, I roll a 10 sided die to choose which day to pray on, do so, and record the result. Then at the end of the 10 days, I bring them all back and ask them to indicate on which day they felt the most peace. ~600 of them say the same day that I rolled for them, ~150 of them are one day off, and ~100 can’t give an answer. If this were to happen (solely hypothetical, ignoring any arguments about whether God would play along for a study,) would that count as evidence?
so, you can get around the burden of proof by getting enough people to perpetrate the lie?
Much like every good con or pyramid scheme.
Your premise is incorrect. The burden of proof for quantum mechanics is on the people claiming they exist. They provided those proofs, which is why people believe in them. I haven’t studied quantum mechanics, but if you asked somebody who does, they could offer proof or evidence. And if they couldn’t, then your claim it doesn’t exist (until proof was proffered) would be correct.
It was on them until society generally accepted it. Now if I claim it doesn’t exist, the burden is on me.
Or how about this: if I claim dinosaurs never existed and thus the fossils didn’t come from them, it’s not on you to prove they did.
You should familiarize yourself with the concept called Burden of Proof. They (those who believe in God, and claim he exists and created all things, etc) are the ones where the burden lies. It is not for the rest of us to prove their beliefs for them, or you.
Not one person has provided proof that there is no Higher Power. Grow up…
Because that’s not the atheist position. You’re wrestling with a claim nobody is making.
Atheism doesn’t claim there is no “Higher Power”, it’s just a disbelief in theistic claims.
Careful, many online atheists don’t understand that they have to prove a negative. That they have to prove the assertion: “There is no god.”
The default position is that there is yet insufficient evidence to draw a conclusion.
Edit: Thank you for the downvotes, you have provided me with further evidence that online atheists don’t understand that they have to prove a negative. Your butthurt fuels me.
This guy eats babies
prove me wrong
You have made the assertion, thus you have the burden of proof.
“what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence” QED
…Do you not realize that the same goes for god?
I wasn’t arguing for the existence of god.
Let me break this down:
- “There is a god.” --> Burden of proof
- “There is no god.” --> Burden of proof
- “Hey, man. I don’t know.” —> No burden of proof
The second one is wrong, there is no god is not a claim that requires evidence in the same way there are no fairies in my fridge doesn’t require evidence
The default position is that we don’t know if a specified thing exists. To prove or disprove it, you need evidence. I can prove that the Christian God doesn’t exist, as it is logically impossible, but it’s possible that some other version of a god might exist, I don’t know. I don’t have evidence either way.
How can you prove the Christian God doesn’t exist?
It’s logically impossible, it has contradictory aspects.
Yes, you said that, but what exactly?
For example, omnipotence is a self-contradictory term, as you have a dilemma - if a being is all powerful enough to give itself limits, it is not omnipotent as it wouldn’t be able to do the things it limited itself to do. Whereas if it can’t self-impose limits, it’s also not omnipotent as it isn’t able to self-impose limits. Another example is that suffering exists in the world, which would be a contradiction if an all-powerful being that wanted to end suffering existed, since it should, but it isn’t.
And these are just contradictions within God’s character. If you want to look at the things he actually claims to have done, you’ll find numerous more in the Bible. Just as one example, Jesus’s last words are different in almost every gospel.
None of this is new or hasn’t been thought about, written about and deflated for centuries. I doubt you have any theologians shaking in their boots.
The meaning of omnipotence as it translates to Good has always been nuanced. There have always been things God can’t do - sin being the obvious example. You could debate whether he can, but just never would because of his character, but it amounts to the same thing and has been orthodoxy for centuries.
The apparent contradictions on the Gospels (especially synoptic) have been done to death. Debated and answered more times than you’ve had hot dinners. There is no serious theologian or biblical scholar who would hear that argument and be at all concerned by it.
Honestly the same applies to the idea of a good god and suffering.
It’s impossible to prove the non-existence of something. It’s on those who believe in god to prove its existence.
And the Bible doesn’t count as sufficient evidence because that would be like believing Harry Potter exists because JK Rowling says so.
Unless you claim, as OP did, that you can actually disprove it.
I agree that the Bible is not sufficient in the sense that it proves anything or sews up their arguments, but to suggest its historical value as evidence is the same as modern day fiction is absurd.
When I was a little kid, I asked my grandfather what the bumps in the middle of the road (the reflectors) were for. He told me that it was so blind people could drive. It made perfect sense to me, and I believed that for longer than I should have!
Your grandfather sounds rad
They’re called Bott’s dots! Most places where it snows don’t have them because they don’t survive ploughing.
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interesting, never thought of that before. Las Vegas Nevada (never snows there!) has excellent road infrastructure and these dots are everywhere. You can tell casino dollars and tax dollars are well used in Las Vegas. The roads are very nice.
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Bott’s dots – first thing that came to mind was like Dippin’ Dots
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“Girls desire a knight in shining armor to come sweep them off their feet!” — my pastor
For the longest time, I struggled because I was told all my life what a “woman’s purpose” was, and my desires never lined up with that. Felt like a freak because I never desired romance, sex, or partnership with a man (or anyone else, for that matter). If that was my purpose, was I supposed to will myself to want that for myself? Was I doomed to be alone forever? Was I wrong to want to pursue adventure and things that I wanted?
If my desire ≠ God’s desire (which was apparently union with a man at some point in the future), then my desires were… wrong. Maybe/probably even evil.
So I fucked up my life trying to follow that and fit into that mold. I did things I never wanted to do because it was the “right thing” to do in the eyes of God.
After I escaped, I never really recovered. But… I discovered a lot about myself.
I did bearded dragon rescues & fostering, I got into cosplay, learned how to sew stuffed animals, got some mental health care, rekindled my love for nature… all by myself. I learned to love me and not base my worth on what other folks believe I should do or how I should behave. I don’t have a partner who gets to dictate my personality. I got to grow on my own.
I’m still coming to terms with… a lot of things about myself, but now I’m able to grow freely instead of being confined to such a small pot.
Don’t let people define who or what you are, or what your purpose is in life. Only you get to do that. It’s both terrifying and freeing, but you can do this.
Even for those us who fit into the straight/white/cis mould, learning how to create purpose and meaning for yourself is a really hard battle against expectations imposed growing up. Thanks for sharing a really wholesome story :)
That if a racoon saw you swimming, it would swim out to you and sit on your head and drown you.
My fully adult mother actually feared this was something that could happen to her children, and she warned us of this “danger” every summer when we were young.
This is awfully specific, haha.
Aside from the; obvious bullahit of relegion that you can figure out for yourself quite early … not to be a bully to get what you want. It’s near ubiquitous, from police to government, to wealthy people, business owners etc anyone with an asymmetric relationship gets what they want that way. As a boss, do what I want or I fire you and you starve etc etc.
I still see them pedaling the same lies to children today, bullying and cowexison are linked to inextricably liked to what we call success we are fine with it, the weird part is the denial and lieing to kids about not being a bully .
