475 posts shown.
briskgull27 said:It’s just standard protocol when medical teams show up—the police usually follow close behind.
My dad was the one who called 911.
briskgull27 said:I actually went!!!!
1. One reason I wouldn't go? I'm still brushing up on two other languages, even though my English is solid.
Plus, I spend all my time on the computer.
2. Aside from knowing how to use an old fax machine, I actually have real expertise in my field.
3. Once I've saved up enough, I can pay for my own trip—it has to be by plane, and since I'm currently in remission, that's totally doable.
4. I'm out and about at parties, grabbing coffee, hitting the movies... I was just at a restaurant grand opening earlier. I've known those people for nine years now.
Call Me Maybe, this feels way too formal for me.
My version of a group would be, say, meeting once a month just to grab coffee for two or three hours.
Nothing else. That’s really it.
If I ever had to give a professional lecture or volunteer, it would be titled:
reasons why you should embrace someone else's worldview instead of clinging to your own
mistyfox812 said:...let me try to clear this up (assuming I've followed correctly)... 😁
If someone views atheism merely as a sort of "confessional non-affiliation" rather than just being reactive, they fall into the exact same trap that plagues every other "anti-" ideology. See, an anti-stance is fundamentally defined by what it’s pushing back against. Take anti-fascism, for example. It exists in direct opposition to fascism—where one says yes, the other says no, like black versus white. But the actual boundary, the shape of that movement, isn't dictated by the "anti-" part itself; it's carved out by the original ideology it's fighting. Essentially, every "anti-" movement is shaped by its enemy. This leaves all "anti-" thinkers in a permanent state of reacting, rather than truly acting on their own terms. They aren't driving the car; they're just slamming on the brakes.
(There's actually a brilliant Borges short story about this in Aleph, titled The Theologians.)
In this way, an anti-theist simply adopts the ready-made concept of God held by their opponents and then denies it. They don't possess a definition of God that belongs to them.
But, I suppose they feel like they don't even need one.
...as well as the fact that these "-isms" emerged as responses to specific confessions (along with all that religious machinery that comes with them...)
briskgull27 said:Ugh, I don't know how many more times I’m going to be forced to just swallow these standards.
The first time they hauled me into the hospital, two cops practically tackled me.
And I was screaming my head off: Grandma, don't let them take me!
My friend told me—well, I probably would have bolted if I had the chance.
It's all just a mess. I really wish I could see you right now.😍
briskgull27 said:But honestly, there’s one massive reason why being labeled "crazy" is such a trap.
First off, once you’ve been branded, that’s pretty much it—it sticks.
Second, people stop actually looking at what you're doing. If you act out, they don't see the cause; they just say, "Oh, he's lost it," or "He's just an eccentric artist." It's like... if you know what I mean, right?
It's all a setup.
At the end of the day, society basically acts as the yardstick for what counts as "normal."😲 🤣
No123 said:Here’s what happened with me back in the day, copied from an old thread on a health forum 😁
Back in 1996, I started receiving psychiatric treatment for PTSD. I was plagued by restless dreams and couldn't sleep to save my life. My doctor diagnosed me with PTSD, which led to a two-month hospital stay where I was taking 1 mg of Xanax three times a day. After being discharged, I felt fantastic—better than ever, actually—so I stopped taking the pills altogether. I honestly thought I was cured. I went to the local pool every single day to swim; I’d pull an hour and a half straight without stopping. I could have gone longer, really, but I just didn't know what else to think about while swimming. Everything felt perfect. Then, one day at the pool, I ran into my godmother's close friend. We started swimming together every day, chatting, hanging out in the jacuzzi... it was great. Then, I stumbled upon this ancient internet forum and started posting there. Back then, there were no moderators, and people were posting all sorts of intense stuff about the war. Some guy would post these jarring combat photos that really messed with my head. The vibe on the forum started feeling way too much like how things felt when the war first broke out in '91. I felt like I was reliving that entire era all over again. It got to the point where I felt like someone could see me right through the computer monitor. Reality, TV, the internet—it all blurred together. I couldn't tell what was real anymore. I had this constant sensation that I was being watched and bugged. Suddenly, even my friend at the pool became suspicious; I felt like she had been sent specifically to track my every move. One day, I was watching a football game on TV and something felt off. I noticed a player with a large letter "G" on his chest, which signaled to me that I needed to check the goalie. When I looked at the goalie, he was wearing a black jersey with the General Motors logo on it. Since my friend drove a General Motors car, it clicked in my mind: someone had killed her to protect me because the goalie was in black. I felt terrible for her, but I figured it was just one of those things you have to accept—sometimes you just have to die. She stopped showing up to the pool, but since I didn't know she had actually moved to Germany to visit her mom, I genuinely believed she was dead. While driving, I started interpreting every license plate in my own weird way. For example, "BJ" meant *Bježi* (Run), "CJ" meant *Čekaj još* (Wait more), and "BO" meant *Bez oboljenja* (No illness)—which was fine, considering my username was Al Bundy. I spent my days driving aimlessly around the outskirts of cities like Chicago or similar areas. I’d tail cars that seemed suspicious to me. I was having hallucinations, too; once, in a small town near a suburb, I saw a billboard for a massive sturgeon I’d seen online, even though that advertisement didn't actually exist. At night, I’d drive everywhere—small towns, rural routes, even making trips into major cities like New York or LA. When I headed into the big city, I felt like the police were waiting for me. As I reached the city limits, the road looked like it had been defaced with strange black hieroglyphs. In some spots, I saw dead chickens on the road and swerved to avoid them because I was terrified that hitting them would bring bad luck upon me. I drove through hilly residential areas before descending into the city center. I ended up at a perimeter wall, got out of the car, walked the whole length of it reading names inscribed there, and then a lightbulb went off in my head telling me I had to go home. I hopped back in the car, but suddenly, I couldn't find my way out of the city. I tried pulling up to three different hospitals, wondering why I was even there, before turning around and leaving. Then the police pulled me over. They were checking something over their radio, but eventually, they let me go. I asked for directions back toward my home area, they helped me out, and I headed off. I was following this one car, and as it sped up, I sped up. Suddenly, a foul smell filled my car. The faster I hit the gas, the worse it smelled; when I slowed down, it lessened. To me, that was a sign that following that car was wrong. Once the car disappeared from the road, the smell vanished too. I made it back home around 6:00 AM, slept a little, and then went back to the pool. While swimming, I started singing: *"Let the golden-winged bird fly... my homeland calls me and for it I will die..."* Suddenly, the pool felt like a spy nest. I felt like my life was in danger. I rushed home, grabbed my handgun, loaded it up—one in the chamber and fifteen in the magazine—and went back to the pool in the middle of the night looking for spies. The pool was so crowded that I realized if I started shooting, I’d definitely kill someone. But since nobody looked suspicious, I just went home. For a few days, I walked around town carrying the gun. I felt like someone was watching me through a sniper scope, ready to take the shot at any moment, but I didn't care. My phone and my washing machine were being repaired at home, so I assumed someone had installed bugs in them. I tossed the phone in the trash and hauled the washing machine off to a local landfill on a trailer. There was an empty tractor trailer parked there, and I thought it was specifically placed there for dumping trash. I tossed the washer in and headed home. On the way, I saw a tractor missing a front wheel. I thought, *Why do I need a spare tire in my car?* (My car was brand new, not even a year old), so I turned around and threw my spare tire into that trailer. I figured if I ever got a flat, I could just grab someone else's tire off the road. Suddenly, it hit me: I was invincible. I couldn't die, so what did I even need a gun for? I left it at home and stopped carrying it. I even felt like I could control the weather; in the middle of November, it felt like spring to me. I’d drive around in short sleeves. I felt like Jesus—that I could raise people from the dead and that I had to die to save humanity, knowing I’d just come back to life anyway. One morning, while driving through the city, things got weird. The parking lots were completely empty. I hit a red light, eased off the gas for a second, and then floored it, slamming straight into two cars. After the crash, I climbed out of my car and started shouting at the intersection. I felt like I had died, yet here I was, alive. I tried to get into someone else's car, but the driver locked the doors. A police officer walked up and asked me what my problem was. Right then, I snatched the hat off his head and told him, "You don't work for the department anymore. You're fired." The cop actually started shaking, so I just gave him his hat back. Then, a bystander stepped up and clocked me right in the head (I later found out he worked in SWAT). Things turned violent, and the police beat me up. I ended up back in the psych ward, strapped to a bed for a month. From the moment I checked in, I was suspicious of another patient because he looked like a cop; I thought they had planted him in my ward to watch me. Once I finally got out, everything bothered me—the sound of the streetcars, the fear of logging onto a forum, everything. I was on a cocktail of medications: Lexapro, then later Moditen, Akineton, and Amyzol. I couldn't sleep, my heart was racing like crazy, and I felt like my brain was vibrating. Eventually, things stabilized.
It’s been seven years since then, and honestly, I’m doing great now 😁
briskgull27 said:I love surfing; there’s something about the learning process that just makes me feel alive.
I love traveling—honestly, I think I enjoy the journey way more than actually arriving at the destination.
I love cooking; it’s such a joy because I find a new way to do things every single time.
I love grabbing coffee with my closest friends because that's when I can truly be myself.
I love how much my husband understands me, though sometimes I wonder if he’s secretly an alien.🙂 ☕
I love photography—thank God for modern digital cameras.
I love working, but for now, we've decided that my health is much more important than the paycheck.
moje zdravlje od para.
I love chatting with strangers because they have no idea I'm dealing with an illness.
I can't quite wrap my head around what LNP20 is supposed to mean here. It feels like we're missing a huge piece of the puzzle. Is this some kind of internal code, a specific product model, or maybe just a typo? Without a bit more context, I'm basically staring at a blank wall. If anyone knows the backstory or what we're actually discussing, please chime in! kaže:
It’s like this: first, you have the theists stepping up to the plate, making their case, and then the atheists just step in with that classic, "Give me a break" attitude. It’s an endless back-and-forth, really. But honestly? That's not even the core of the issue.
The real question you have to ask yourself is what actually pushed them toward that infamous "whatever" attitude. What was the tipping point?
There are two ways this could play out:
I was thinking about this earlier—that whole idea regarding the dualistic possibility of both conflict and peace existing within theism.
I honestly find myself stuck in this weird limbo, completely unable to make a rational call between those two concepts. It’s like trying to choose between two equally compelling paths while standing at a crossroads in the middle of Chicago—you know the feeling, where you just spin your wheels because neither option feels like the "correct" one. One side pulls, the other side tugs, and I'm just left here hovering in the middle, totally paralyzed by the choice.
Ultimately, it all boils down to this: it forces a choice between being decisive and staying completely neutral.
I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that. It looks like you might have sent an incomplete message or just a single word. Could you please expand on what you were thinking? I'm all ears!
It’s like trying to grasp smoke with your bare hands. When we hit that wall where our own minds just can't wrap themselves around these massive metaphysical concepts, it tends to push them toward... well, somewhere else entirely. It’s an inherent limitation, really. Like trying to explain the color blue to someone who's only ever known grayscale—the gap in understanding forces us to reinvent how we define reality itself.
It’s about pivoting toward a more rational way of looking at things—moving toward a worldview grounded in something like science.
So, what you’re getting at is that atheism isn't really an "answer" to theism in any meaningful sense—it's just a void. It’s like saying the absence of noise is a response to a symphony. One is a presence, a complex arrangement of notes and intention, while the other is simply... nothing. It's just silence. You can't really build a philosophy out of a vacuum, can you?
Think about it this way: most of the major movements that defined the 20th century were essentially just massive pushbacks against positivism. It was a reaction, really—a collective "enough is enough" to the idea that everything could be solved through pure logic and data. But even so...
The reasoning behind those answers matters—and more importantly, it’s the fallout from them that really counts.
Look, you're overcomplicating things. You’re making the definitions of atheism and theism way more mysterious than they actually need to be. It's like trying to solve a Rubik's Cube when it's really just a simple coin flip.
One dictionary defines theism with just a single word.
It’s that core sense of faith—the deep-seated conviction that there’s a higher power out there. We aren't just talking about some abstract force or a distant cosmic energy, either. I mean the belief in a personal God. It’s that feeling that there is an actual presence watching over us, someone you can actually talk to, much like how you might reach out to a mentor or a close friend for guidance when life gets messy. It’s a very intimate kind of belief.
It’s almost like someone thinks they can just step up and claim the title of "creator and ruler of the entire world." It’s a massive ego to carry.
It’s almost a given, isn't it? At its core, atheism is essentially defined by what it rejects—it’s the direct opposition to whatever is written in the sacred texts.
So, let’s stick to the core idea: we define theism simply as the belief in God and...
If we look at it from the perspective of a divine creation—the sheer artistry behind how everything was put together—then really, it’s just...
Believing in something doesn't automatically make you a theist. It’s like saying I believe in the magic of a perfect cup of coffee—that doesn't mean I'm suddenly starting a religion centered around espresso. Belief is one thing; identity is another entirely.
I like to think of my toothbrush as a little cornerstone of my daily happiness—and, obviously, my oral hygiene. It’s that small, reliable ritual that keeps everything in check. But honestly? I don't let it become some sort of obsession. There's a fine line between good habits and making a mountain out of a molehill, and I prefer to keep things balanced.
It’s like being granted divine status and the power to create worlds all at once. It’s really just two sides of the same coin.
Think of it like this: when you look at an atheist scientist, you aren't looking at someone who has abandoned faith entirely. It’s more like they’ve simply traded one set of mysteries for another. They believe in science—not just as a hobby, but as the fundamental framework of reality. For them, everything boils down to the observable, the measurable, and the laws of nature. It's a commitment to the tangible world around us.
Think of laws as a creative force—but without assigning them any mystical or metaphysical properties. It’s more about how they shape our reality through action rather than some abstract magic.
He’s really making an effort to keep things grounded and logical. He stays right in that sweet spot where everything actually makes sense—and honestly, that’s exactly what makes him so effective.
It really drives a wedge between the believers.
It’s funny how you look at it that way—everyone who claims to be a believer is essentially an atheist when compared to whatever other god might actually be running the show. It’s all relative, isn't it?
On first listen, this sounds pretty catchy—almost too good to be true. But if you really start digging into the details, there are some glaring holes that just don't add up.
Let me start with an analogy here. To be considered a carnivore, you don't actually have to be eating meat at this very moment.
Look, you don't have to be a connoisseur of every single cut under the sun. You really don't. But when it comes to options? I say go for it. Explore everything. Try every kind of meat out there—from a classic ribeye to something more adventurous. It’s not about being obsessed with every morsel, it’s just about having the full spectrum available to you. Why limit your palate?
Look, there isn't just one way to play this. You could decide, for instance, that you're only eating chicken from now on and absolutely loathing everything else on the menu—but that's hardly a sustainable lifestyle.
Look, that doesn't change the fact that you're just as much of a carnivore as someone sitting down to a plate of wild boar. It’s all the same.
White-bellied, crocodile-style... just a straight-up carnivore, I guess. =)
I’m not talking about some kind of reckless, predatory behavior here. It's much simpler than that—it's just about pure fulfillment.
The bare minimum requirement for being a carnivore? It’s pretty straightforward—you actually have to eat meat.
If we swap that out for the terminology we’ve been using in this discussion, what we’re really saying is that theism doesn't...
It isn’t really about having some deep, unwavering faith in every single deity out there. It’s more about the ritual itself—just going through the motions to feel complete.
What’s the bare minimum requirement to call yourself a theist? Honestly, it boils down to one thing: you believe. That’s it. Even if that belief feels shaky or incomplete, the act of believing is what defines the label. It’s like saying you’re a fan of the Yankees—you don't need to know every single player's batting average or their entire history to claim the title; you just have to believe in the team. Belief is the foundation, regardless of how much doubt might be hovering around the edges.
It’s an interesting question to ponder—whether one would lean toward believing in a single deity or embrace the entire pantheon of ancient Egypt, for instance.
Theism? It’s like an internal compass for faith. It starts deep within the human spirit and then branches out into everything else.
It’s that metaphysical territory—the kind of stuff that can never be fully pinned down by logic or proven by a spreadsheet. How much of it will actually...
May God tie that thing down tight, because at the end of the day, it’s a matter of personal responsibility. But what it actually does...
A believer arguing against another believes they’ve found the smoking gun—that undeniable link that proves the whole thing. So, really...It’s just not working. Honestly, nothing is clicking right now.
How do you actually frame being an atheist when you’re standing in a room full of people who believe in different gods? It’s an interesting way to position yourself, isn't it? I've always thought about it like this: it isn't just about rejecting one specific deity, but rather how you navigate that entire landscape of belief. It’s less about being "against" something and more about where you choose to stand in relation to all those different paths.
Cut it out with those circular definitions! =)
LNP20 said:Atheists, skeptics, and basically anyone who pushes back against any established form of knowledge—they all
share this massive, glaring contradiction that essentially ends up debunking
themselves. Here’s the deal:
The claim that one believes in nothing actually hides a latent belief, and that belief
is precisely the idea that one BELIEVES in NON-BELIEF.
To put it in perspective, ATHEISTS believe that no religion is worthy
of their faith.
And SKEPTICS believe that absolutely nothing in this world deserves their trust.
That is the core issue that effectively discredits everyone who identifies
as a skeptic or an atheist. It is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to fully
avoid non-belief.
Austin Hayes66 said:Come on, you little lying coward, Brenda Cook4! Send something my way already since you're clearly too busy to grab a coffee or anything else. 👍
Taylor Campbell4 said:
What even constitutes a philosophical approach here? I mean, what kind of criteria does a topic actually need to meet to be considered philosophically significant?