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I am always amused by these doomsday cults predicting the end of the world. As long has there been human writing, people have been saying the end is nigh. Nob
by RajT88 2y ago
I am always amused by these doomsday cults predicting the end of the world.
As long has there been human writing, people have been saying the end is nigh. Nobody has ever been right!
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago> As long has there been human writing, people have been saying the end is nigh. Nobody has ever been right! You aren't wrong. I've been a Christian of some stripe, my whole life. Even general Armageddon predictions (soon!) are really dumb and I wish we would stop them. Besides being wrong, they're either a pointless distraction or they're counterproductive. Counterproductive because fear sucks as a long term motivator. Faiths have examples and our job as adherents is to strive to embody the example. That's it. The rest of the guff might be supportive if applied correctly. Mostly, we don't do that.
- kromem 2y agoYet
- wudangmonk 2y ago[flagged]
- nyokodo 2y ago> they fail to even register the bigger cults now called religions “They” don’t need to because there’s always some atheist in the comment section to make bigoted generalizations and make wild claims that are demonstrably nonsense, such as… > I truely believe that humanity has a greater chance of being destroyed by one of these death cults than anything else out there. Yes, because the explicitly atheist regimes that are right now and for the last 70+ years been arming themselves to the teeth with world destroying nuclear arsenals and adopting belligerent stances against the other nuclear powers are way down the list of probable harbingers of doomsday.
- wudangmonk 2y agoWell not demonstrably as that would require you to prove a negative. The term cult has now a negative connotation but the way I meant it was as little religion, like a carrot an a baby carrot?. I agree on the atheist rebuttal although I honestly do not think the world is ruled by atheism regimes oppressing the poor religious minority. I have no idea what spawned the whole MAD ideology regarding nuclear weapons, it never made sense to me. It must have stemmed from an unshakeable belief that it was ther right thing to do. This blind faith in something is the problem. All I know is when the button that dooms us all is pressed, that person will have no doubts that he is making the right choice. Whether he calls himself a christian or an atheist makes no difference.
- D-Coder 2y ago> I have no idea what spawned the whole MAD ideology regarding nuclear weapons, it never made sense to me. Because the alternative is, "Hey, using just a few nuclear weapons would be okay." Which would (a) cause enormous destruction and (b) likely escalate to all-out nuclear war anyway. You're better off saying, "Don't ever ever _ever_ start this, because you will not live to regret it."
- toasterlovin 2y agoEven people who at first blush should be immune, since they, you know, worship reason and rationality, have created something which has all the outward appearances of a doomsday cult (a prophetic leader, who lives on donations from wealthy followers, elaborate prophesies about impending doom, an extensive corpus of religious texts w/ commentaries, polyamory, group living, an elaborate rationale to dissuade followers from being concerned about their finances, etc.). Like, if you created a dataset with the notable features of various doomsday cults and then compared them with the notable features of Rationalism, then used that dataset to inform your priors in an attempt to answer the question, “Are my concerns about impending doom reasonable or have I succumbed to a doomsday cult?” surely the only reasonable answer is, “I have succumbed to a doomsday cult.” And yet here we are.
- scotty79 2y agoWhat's this doomsday cult with polyamory and charismatic leader for rational people?
- psd1 2y agoHackerNews.
- bubblyworld 2y agoPossibly talking about LessWrong, founded by Eliezer Yudkowsky. But imo a pretty uncharitable take.
- OfficeChad 2y ago[dead]
- paulddraper 2y agoThe world only ends once
- m463 2y agoIt might have happened, and we are all living in a simulation. It would be hard to tell, because virtual device drivers have gotten so good.
- thyrsus 2y agoWhy contribute to an IRA if civilization will have ceased to function? Why make any investment in society at large if it's inevitably doomed?