Comment on Humans didn't invent agriculture
my_hat_stinks@programming.dev 5 months agoUtter nonsense. Your argument is that because you can imagine a god and spread the idea they are real. The logical conclusion there is that anything you can imagine is equally real. Bigfoot really is wandering around a forest, spaghetti absolutely does grow in trees, and the moon landing was definitely on a sound stage (but they also really landed on the moon because I can picture that too).
Your argument is that because you can imagine a god and spread the idea they are real.
You could say the same of Mickey Mouse or the Philly Fanatic. Which is, in fairness, where this is ultimately going.
A god as a timeless enlightened super-being might not be real. But a god as an ideological mascot or cultural touchstone is.
Metaphysics is a dangerous game…
Grail@aussie.zone 5 months ago
Bigfoot doesn’t live in the woods. He lives in people’s heads. That’s where all memes, including the gods, live. In people’s heads.
ssj2marx@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
So then what’s the difference between “the gods” and something purely fictional, in your view?
Grail@aussie.zone 5 months ago
The gods are mythical, whereas Frodo Baggins is fictional. People believe in myths. Though of course it’s a fuzzy boundary. You can arrange various characters on a spectrum from myth to fiction. For example, Zeus is pure myth, Lucifer is an originally fictional character that has almost entirely become mythical, Achilles is sort of directly in the middle, Sherlock Holmes is a highly mythologised fictional character, Gandalf is a fictionalised adaptation of a myth, and Jake Sully is pure fiction because nobody gives a shit about him.
ssj2marx@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
Ah, so the difference is the weight that people assign the idea.
Do the gods exist for an atheist who contends that all of the things you called “mythical” are in fact purely “fictional”? Or does a lack of belief among some individuals not matter because the gods are a social construct?