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[GlyphGryph]

Squirrels keep dragging bones and shit into my yard, and I think they're digging up my plants too. Why squirrels why.

[MaximumZero]

Getting atheists to stay on topic is kind of like herding cats. You try to get them to chase the laser pointer, but in the end, we're just going to go off on our own tangent anyway. Unless there's a very defined, very controlled structure to the meeting. Then, that structure may last ten minutes.

[Sirus]

I think it's more my lack of understanding of organizations that's causing me confusion. And I don't really understand how people behave most of the time, so I don't understand what would occur at any meeting, other than discussing the topic of the meeting.

Well, think of what other groups do. Look at, say, Boy Scouts. They plan trips, discuss how to properly tie knots, tell spooky stories, and all sorts of unrelated stuff. They don't spend every meeting going over the Code of Honor or whatever.

[Leafsnail]

If you want an example of people sharing an interest talking to each other about a variety of often completely irrelevant-to-that-interest things then how about this forum?

[Lectorog]

I think it's more my lack of understanding of organizations that's causing me confusion. And I don't really understand how people behave most of the time, so I don't understand what would occur at any meeting, other than discussing the topic of the meeting.

Well, think of what other groups do. Look at, say, Boy Scouts. They plan trips, discuss how to properly tie knots, tell spooky stories, and all sorts of unrelated stuff. They don't spend every meeting going over the Code of Honor or whatever.

That's what the Boy Scouts are about, though - learning to Scout and socialize in a masculine way. Atheists have no such goal.

Getting atheists to stay on topic is kind of like herding cats. You try to get them to chase the laser pointer, but in the end, we're just going to go off on our own tangent anyway. Unless there's a very defined, very controlled structure to the meeting. Then, that structure may last ten minutes.

Are atheists different from most other people, then? I fail to see how beliefs are related to attention span.

If you want an example of people sharing an interest talking to each other about a variety of often completely irrelevant-to-that-interest things then how about this forum?

Yes, but each conversation starts with a particular topic, with derails ocurring when someone says something else that interests someone. I've never gotten that to work in real-life conversation.

[Leafsnail]

Maybe you need to work on your real life conversation skills then?  This seems to be you just not understanding how people talk in groups rather than anything to do with atheists.

The Boy Scouts are definitely not about learning to "socialize in a masculine way", too.

[kaijyuu]

I imagine it's more of a support group and humanist ideology, though that obviously depends on the group.

So if you want to know what ideas and activities they're partaking in, it's probably just keeping people's spirits up and reinforcing beliefs. Much like a religion does, only with secular ideas.



And the boy scouts are about gaining simple skills and brainwashing.

[Lectorog]

Maybe you need to work on your real life conversation skills then?  This seems to be you just not understanding how people talk in groups rather than anything to do with atheists.

The Boy Scouts are definitely not about learning to "socialize in a masculine way", too.

That's what I said previously. My group conversational skills are horrible, and I usually don't understand people. I guess I have a skewed view of the Boy Scouts too, even though I was a Cub Scout for a year. I agree with kaijyuu, though I suspect that was at least partly sarcastic.

[Flying Dice]

Scouts is also about taking tons of shit from the group leader's kid because they can get away with anything they want to. That, and fending off conversion attempts. At least it was in my experience.


Re: Atheists not having much to talk about: Uh, yeah? In the same way that if you got (purely for the sake of examples) a group of people who don't play WoW, or a group of people who don't drink alcohol, or a group of people who don't like police procedurals together in a room, they probably wouldn't have much to talk about. Not being interested in something really isn't a common interest, unless it manifests as actual hatred for the thing, in which case there is something all those people have in common that is significant enough to generate discussion.

What are a bunch of mild atheists going to say on that topic?

"Hey, I don't believe in any deities."

"Whadda ya know, neither do I!"

"So..."

"Uh. You catch the game last night?"

"Not really a sports person."

"Mhm."

"So how 'bout the weather. Crazy, eh?"

...

[GlyphGryph]

I'm certain we could find some nice fences to sit on.

Laughing so hard at this whole line of conversation, but this just made it.

Also my phone is full of beans.

[Sirus]

I'm certain we could find some nice fences to sit on.

Laughing so hard at this whole line of conversation, but this just made it.

Also my phone is full of beans.

Dunno why it's called fence-sitting. In my mind, agnosticism means that I cannot know if any gods exist or not, so why worry about it?

[kaijyuu]

I think it works great.




Yeah these two sides are duking it out, but who cares I'm gonna take a nap.

[MaximumZero]

I'm certain we could find some nice fences to sit on.

Laughing so hard at this whole line of conversation, but this just made it.

Also my phone is full of beans.

Dunno why it's called fence-sitting. In my mind, agnosticism means that I cannot know if any gods exist or not, so why worry about it?

There are agnostics who worry extensively about it. I'd imagine that sitting on the fence that hard is very uncomfortable.

[RedWarrior0]

I know that most of the overtly non-religious kids I went to school with were less atheist/agnostic and more "sure, some higher power exists but she/he/it/they really don't give two shits"

[kaijyuu]

So a friend of mine reads manga. A LOT of manga. He's constantly linking us misogynist stuff, horribly drawn stuff, absurd translations, etc. If it's amusing, he'll show it to us. But he never links us anything actually good.  So I asked him if he ever comes across any good manga.

He didn't understand the question.

I had to point out the difference between narm, cheese, and "so bad it's good" stuff and the stuff that's good on its own intended merits. I could almost hear his brain ticking away as he processed it. He never answered the original question, by the way.


I know some people really like looking into terrible media for a laugh, but I didn't know someone could get so entrenched in it they forget actually good stuff exists. That you can enjoy a movie, book, manga, etc for the reasons the author(s) intended and not just to laugh at their mistakes.