Crossquoting the Happy thread from a couple days ago, since I agree with Arx that this is the better location:
(This part compiled into a pyramid for convenience)If you're going atheist then aura of conviction is a necessity to defend against other people's reasoning. Necro Mastery in an Atheist build is fairly meek, it only gives you the ability to post in old threads on the internet.
What do I take for maximum /r/iamverysmart?
Anything where you have all the answers, and cannot be proven wrong.
...So not religion.
On the contrary! The use of tortured logic to create a-priori arguments that revolve around an unassailable axiom (which is a core component of the faith), are a prominent feature in many religions!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proslogion
This was my point, of course. I was pithily describing religion as claiming to explain everything, yet being unfalsifiable.
I was being snappy, but I stand by it.
I still dabble in "the occult" occasionally, though not as much recently. I find meaning in warm, fierce rainstorms with thunder. Less so winter's lazy drizzle/sleet. Snow is something else, but it's very limited here.
My belief seems equally unfalsifiable: I posit natural spirits, with agency, who are responsible for certain things. But they cannot be tested. In my belief system, they are literally "gods of the gap": They live exactly outside of scientific understanding.
They cannot be disproved, though an attempt to do so may reduce them. Rigorous study of reality shrinks their realm. And that's okay - they're jerks. And patient.
Initially this was an experiment of mine to understand faith (and religion to an extent, though I think religion as a social construct is easier to criticize). I took something which I'd always felt was true, growing up near a fearsome wilderness, and... opened my mind to the idea that the things I imagined as a child had were in some way real. Untestable, outside, comforting and frightening. It was an experiment, several years ago, but it quickly felt real. The feelings are real, I did not stand in rain for an hour for a meme or joke. I felt a meditative zen.
It almost bothers me that I'm losing connection with this feeling. In past years I would truly dread winter ice storms and the power outtages, now I have a mobile computer in my pocket with plenty of power. I no longer fear the night.
And that feels like a loss of something I had.
...I meant to reply to Eschar, but I got distracted by a crisis of faith I suppose.
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