• 1984@lemmy.today
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    5 hours ago

    Is this irony or something? Use Ai to get closer to god? Its the exact opposite people need to do.

    But who is surprised in this upside down world.

  • ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online
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    5 hours ago

    I remember the smug internet atheist era that said that Christianity would fade away soon to science… and then slowly but surely many of those same atheists either became Christians or allied themselves with the same vile Christian nationalists who are actively exporting their filth all over the world.

    • abbiistabbii@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      3 hours ago

      and then slowly but surely many of those same atheists either became Christians or allied themselves with the same vile Christian nationalists who are actively exporting their filth all over the world.

      * Cough * Dawkins * Cough *

    • DarkAri@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 hour ago

      People don’t really change much. They are sort of set in their ways. All the toxic bootlickers back in the day used to constantly insult us for being Christians because being an atheist was the popular thing and the path to power, now the opposite is true so they switched sides. Now they call us nihlistic and corrupters of the western world. They just follow what’s popular. The politicians especially. They are obsessed with power and always appearing like they agree with the masses. They hated religion when it was antiwar, pro acceptance, anticorruption, they love it now that it is militant, right wing, and breeds corruption. The people never changed though. Most people who were Christians 20 years ago have abandoned the religion although ironically they are still very much like Christ. The people who were atheists 20 years ago in large part have embraced it. There is always those few people who stock to their principles. Who believe in truth. Unfortunately the world has changed a lot in 20 years. Our politicians started to bring in millions of immigrants and most people have become single issue voters on the issue of immigration because they see no other way to stop it. They are too foolish to see that the same people who allowed it are the same ones who are pumping billions of not trillions into promoting maga and Christian nationalism.

      Since people have become single issue voters they have seized the opportunity to push all the worst shit in the world. Trump might throw them part of a bone when it comes to immigration but he will also be the president of the most mass survellience in history. He cleaned out the doj and replaced them with loyalists, he openly defies the constitution. He is trying to starve states that aren’t loyal to his regime while also trying to steal their taxes.

      The atheists are somewhat at fault. They used to call people Nazis when they weren’t. They used to call people racist for not wanting unlimited immigration. They became too prideful of their own power. With all the hyperinflation the red states were hurt the worst. They threw protestors from Jan 6 in prison and then called them traitors. From their perspective if you are one who agrees with them, it actually seems perfectly rational because Democrats supported their politicians in doing many of the same things trump does to his enemies. They also would try to force policy with a tiny majority of the vote, like throwing people in prison for many years over relatively meaningless crimes, like modifying a rifle or something. Protesting the liberal government.

      The corporations of course just switch sides the instant that they realized it was going the other way. What trump is doing is far beyond what the Democrats did.

      However in the end, people mostly don’t care about truth. They care about power. Truth dies to the pursuit of power. Language itself is tortured and twisted to try to change reality for those who cannot see it clearly. We have truly become a democracy in this sense. Our state being reduced to a weapon for one minority to oppress others. For one group to oppress truth. Democracy is truly here in the form that our state now reflects the average voter. Someone who hates taking responsibility, someone who can’t see two sides of an issue. Someone in which everything is a means to power, and their only goal is to make other people feel the pain that they feel.

      The greatest irony still is that there are actually people out there that understand how to fix everything, but they are the most hated of all people, because they say what nobody wants to hear. They don’t validate any side nor agree with their extreme positions. They don’t promise people prosperity and growth in their 401k but decades of pain and actually fixing things the right way, the slow and painful and responsible way. Those people will never get power, and so the likely outcome is that our society will both collapse as the Democrats fear, and white people will get replaced like the Nazis fear. The Democrats will lose all of their freedom, to speak and to live who they love by nature, and the Nazis will be undercut by millions of people who can do their job for half the wages. Women will be oppressed by religion, and yet most men will still be alone because they are disgusting. The rich will lose everything and also will die in the greatest shame, knowing that in the end they choose to always pursue power and profits over human dignity and truth.

      There is a bit of sick joy to it in a way. Trump will be remembered in exactly the opposite of the way he wants. His legacy which is what he cares most about will be that he was the one who lied and manipulated people and destroyed freedom, not just in America but around the world. He nearly single handedly destroyed every good thing in the world. Hundreds of years where humanity finally escaped slavery and serfdom and religious brainwashing and most common people had a little bit of a decent life, where most people could be happy most of the time, and technology progressed fast, all gone away by his insatiable appetite for power. In the end he will realize that he is the worst president in human history. By his own choices no less. He might not say it but he will be remember that way. A perfect example of everything that’s wrong with humanity. All the ones who cling to religion now to cherry pick hateful quotes to justify their immortality, will be remembered as so. Humanity will maybe fall. Western civilization might get erased by religious cultures who traffic women into marriages and take over city by city. All the survellience in the world will not change the fact that nobody gives a shit anymore, and so the great crescendo that was the 20th century will flame out like a fire without fuel. Humanity will descend once more into the darkness, and everything will collapse into tyranny and tribalism once more. Every human on earth will hate this small group of rich assholes who somehow manage to trick all of us into hating each other.

      And maybe, on the other side of this, humanity will remember. They will remember that they want to be free, that they want to be nice to each other, that power is a waste of their one life. Maybe something good will come if it, like a flower out of ashes. Maybe all will be set right and wisdom will carry over from ages past. Humanity will awaken and with nothing to lose anymore, they will stop clinging to their materialistic world of power and status. There is many things going against authoritarianism. It’s not just that it’s evil, but it’s bad. It kills creativity, it ruins genetics, it takes away hopefully and also silences the dreamer. It cannot take responsibility and so in this way authoritarianism for all of its physical power, because frail and weak. It is so easy to overcome in that way once people decide they don’t want it anymore.

    • MrMcGasion@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      They’re just applying their business tactics to Christianity now. They realized that religion wasn’t going away as fast as they hoped, and have fallen back on the old embrace, extend, extinguish playbook. I doubt they’ve realized the power of religion to drive them certifiably insane during the “embrace” phase.

    • melitele@feddit.it
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      7 hours ago

      Reclaiming healthy spirituality as a personal practice instead of an institution is the only way to beat them, radical atheism will never work because most people need a connection to the world that goes beyond what’s material. Their mind, ergo their soul (psyche) is immaterial, and selling a worldview that cancels that immateriality is doomed to fail, leaving them to flock towards snake oil dealers

      • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
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        6 hours ago

        radical atheism will never work because most people need a connection to the world that goes beyond what’s material

        What’s “radical” atheism? Atheism is not believing in god(s). How do you exceed that? Believing in infinite negative numbers of non-gods? Or do you mean I’m running around trying to convince everyone I know to be an atheist? I don’t play with model trains, but feel no need to tell everyone I meet that they shouldn’t waste their time with it. Same with religion. Now, if either group tries to coerce me into participating in their favorite pastime, I’ll resist. No sirree Bob, not my job.

        And what would “moderate” atheism be? Believing in half a god? Not believing but going out of one’s way to conceal it? That might be a rational strategy to avoid persecution, but it’s not a belief system.

        I’m an atheist. I feel a sense of connection to other people and living things and a sense of wonder at nature. I just don’t need an alpha male in the sky to personify it. Lack of something unnecesary is not a deficit. There’s not a huge void in my life where the Easter Bunny should be.

        selling a worldview that cancels that immateriality is doomed to fail

        I don’t need to assume mythical entities in order to live. If the soul turns out to be a real thing, fine, though there’s no evidence for it so far. If it’s not, that’s fine too. Meanwhile, it’s irrelevant.

      • oftenawake@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        6 hours ago

        So glad to read your comment @SparrowHawk. This is exactly it, and why I am no longer a hardcore atheist. We can’t connect with anyone while we’re in the middle of telling them that they’re wrong - even if they are completely wrong about factual matters. It’s essential to build connection first, then conduct any education through the connection. Without connecting it’s wasted effort.

        The educating can’t come through coercion or condemnation either, because those shut people down. If we don’t offer something better then we push those people away. We might write them off and say “fuck em, who cares!” and that’s how we end up at political deadlock and perpetual war.

        This is why the fascists are so terrified of empathy, because intelligent, educated people (lots of those around!) who are highly empathic (not so many, it’s a harder skill) joining together and building connections with and between the masses, already have all the tools to dismantle the whole scam we’re living in.

        Empathy and education, from kindness not condemnation, is unstoppable. Though I will grant that there’s not much in it for rugged individualism, but lots in it for diverse, individuality-celebrating collectivism.

        Of course we’re supposed to be arguing - we’ll never get anywhere that way.

        Empathy lets you say “I absolutely disagree with your view, yet I still value you as a human, so am committed to your long-term wellbeing” and other similar bits of “radical hate speech” which, put into action will dismantle capitalism, fascism, authoritarianism, religions, prisons… you name it.

        But it can’t be passive, it is something for each person to be putting into action all the time.

        That’s my spiritual practise and I don’t feel personally affronted if someone disagrees with it or doesn’t understand it any more, because it’s just with myself and how I want to be in life with myself and others anyway.

        There are billions of us humans and we’re unstoppable when we put aside our petty differences and work together for common dreams.

        …besides, if you don’t agree with me, you’re wrong! /s

  • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
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    17 hours ago

    Where there was once purported atheism, there is now “a very loud, very visible and very specifically Christian-inflected technological culture” in Silicon Valley, said Damien Williams, a scholar at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte who studies how technologies are shaped by religious beliefs.

    Danger. Danger.

  • Yaztromo@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    Mark my words — but we’re going to see a time (in our lifetimes) where a group of people is going to worship an AI as “divine”. And you won’t be able to convince them otherwise. An AI-centric cult is all but inevitable at this point. And it will be self-reinforcing.

    • bampop@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      I don’t think it will take long either. When you look at all the grifts the American evangelists pull, and people fall for it every time, then you’ve got all these people thinking that Trump is anointed by God or some such crap. No problem at all in selling these idiots the idea that they have an instant always-on hotline to God via God’s Chosen LLM. Then you’ve got them locked in to whatever psychosis you choose to construct for them.

  • hraegsvelmir@ani.social
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    16 hours ago

    That thing better be running on TempleOS and be coded with HolyC, or I’m calling BS and telling people they’ve just found a new way to make LLMs even more annoying than they already were.

  • AnitaAmandaHuginskis@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    Curing cancer? Nooo

    Protecting children from gun shots? Nooo

    Making sure children are educated and fed? Nooo

    Let’s build a fucking ball room and create a Jesus chat bot – YES

    I cannot believe that this is the future we were waiting for.

  • abbiistabbii@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    16 hours ago

    ever notice that, with LLMs, the main goal of the people who own them is to turn them from machines that spit out information they gathered in realistic-ishly human ways to machines that spit out what their owners want people to believe?

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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      15 hours ago

      Exactly, one man’s mission to soak up as much money from religious nutters as possible.

      Just as the church has always done.