Happy Holidays!
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
Normally, someone like me who is non-religious (I don’t choose to use the term “atheist” because it implies actively disbelieving in something, which is in and of itself a belief) and who is decidedly left-of-center politically would be stumbling all over himself to provide a “Happy… something!” that is both completely ecumenical and entirely secular.
This is a difficult task, because you have to take in to account the “reason for the season,” which (aside from the axial tilt of the planet) is essentially Judaeo-Christian in basis, plus the amalgamation of Christian, pagan, and modern inventions that comprise “Christmas,” plus all the made-up recent shit (the Wiccan iteration of Yule, Kwanzaa, et al), plus real Atheists who get all prissy if you even imply that the modern version of Sinterklaas and the Baby Jesus have anything at all to do with the fact that it is late December. (I’ve actually heard someone utter the following phrase with righteous indignation: “First of all, Jesus was born in the summer.”) Did I leave anyone out? Oh, Jews and Muslims, who have their own fucked up shit all wrapped up in words like “tradition” and what-not, but which conveniently fall close enough to the Christ Mass to cause all sorts of headaches. Cthulhu only knows what the hell goes on over in the exotic Orient.
So you know what? I just ain’t gonna bother. It’s Christmas. Have a good time! Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and the best for your endeavors in the year to come, no matter where you are or what you believe!
26 comments
Yeah, the same to you. Whereas it's questionable that it's a believe that an Atheist (like me) is not believing in any supra-natural concepts like gods, ghosts, ghouls or whatever. This seems to be an antagonism because atheism is the absence of believing. Maybe your standpoint is more of an agnosticism. However, I think it's neither the right place nor the right time to discuss something like that. I wish you and your wife Elle a happy new year as well. And some new AD plugins for all of us. :)
Happy mansaquanika everyone .
I believe I can fly
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Hey CR,
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and yours.
May 2012 bring you nothing but non-fixed rate development contracts, limited Apple OS updates and reasonable support requests.
Happy winter solstice to you all.
An agnostic is defined as a chickenshit atheist.....but other than that ...make lots of noise and burn bright lights and maybe the sun will come back up in the sky ...it usually seems to work but these days I have my doubts
oh and btw if faith is defined as a belief in the unknowable then god must be an atheist since its impossible to have faith when you already know everything
I quit caring about saying "Merry Christmas" years ago. I have Christmas lights up at my apartment. I'm going to a Christmas party in a bit. Who the hell cares.
@bcomnes: Agnostic means you have no direct knowledge of a god. Atheist means you reject specific claims of a deity, not that you actively believe there are no gods. Those are for different things, one if for belief, the other is for knowledge. Most "atheists" are bot atheist and agnostic. And, as a hardcore agnostic-atheist, I wish everyone a merry Christmas.
Whatever one calls it or not, just enjoy the next few days.
Try to do some of the stuff you had queued up all year, and be happy you finally got to it :D
Christmas for us means sitting around eating like pigs, giving gifts and watching movies and The Avengers christmas episode. That's our holiday and no one else gets to tell us what it means. It's really weird for anyone to get offended by "Merry Christmas" or the lack of, you don't know what it means to me and I don't know what it means to you.
Happy Christmas to all.
>An agnostic is defined as a chickenshit atheist<
Atheists and Evangelicals are the same thing to me, two sides of a coin. They both pretend to know all about more than it's possible to know.
I always thought an agnostic was just an unbeliever without the ego, or someone who doesn't give a shit and doesn't want to argue about it. All the atheists I know won't fucking stop talking about religion.
I'm with bongo_x. Either approach is hubris.
-CR
I actually believe in a god. Not necessarily a good god and I don't worship any. If the christian god is the true one then I have some things to discuss with him. Anyway, Merry Xmas to you all :-)
http://bit.ly/vmW89A
And Merry Christmas.
- c
I'm with bongo_x. Atheists do believe in something. I call myself an agnostic because I just don't know, and because I'm not worried that I don't know.
Maybe I'll find out someday, meanwhile I should at least be nice to other people simply because it ultimately makes my own life better.
Here's to not having to define a reason, religion, spiritual or other belief, non belief, brain washing, cult, food obsession, guilt trip, big corp power trip, perversion or whatever it is to you, in order to simply enjoy a time of the year when it has become an extremely widespread 'thing' to share some good times and cheers with those people that matter the most to you, and who you might not spend that much time with, at least not in the same way, during the rest of the year. Merry X-mas and Happy New Year to all.
You know, I used to walk around being all atheist, and trying to talk to everyone about how atheist I was. Then I realized that it was as big of a waste of my life to do that as it would be if I was a hardcore evangelical going around talking about Jesus all the time.
I think that the best approach is to never think of or discuss it in any serious way. IMO it's really impossible to know, and not worth even calling myself an agnostic.
Christmas is a nice holiday for friends and family and maybe in 800 years folks won't even remember it's origins.
I don't think that a football would make a very Christmas present
Festivus
happy whatever you believe for whatever.
What Chad linked to, exactly. I typed my earlier reply on my phone, so it was necessarily brief, but my point was that I'm smart enough to know what I don't know, and I simply don't know. Some people would say that science is enough, but science doesn't traditionally deal in absolutes; science is smart enough to know that better or different science is likely to come around and dispute any absolutes it may throw up. Just a couple weeks ago, although it turned out to be bullshit, people were having a serious conversation about whether the LHC measured particles travelling faster than the speed of light.
Serious people, in a serious conversation about the most absolute of all scientific absolutes being not so absolute. This makes me happy, and proves the point that any absolute is simply a statement based upon observable evidence at the time the absolute is created.
People that say there is no God, and people that say there is and he talks to them are in the same exact boat. You simply don't know, and saying anything other than "I'm pretty sure about this, but all the facts aren't in" is utter fabrication. One could say that the beauty of faith is that it doesn't require empirical evidence; well, you can't prove a negative, and that's an absolute. So atheists have the same faith that evangelicals do.
Am I an agnostic? I guess. Is there a "don'tgiveashit" option?
-CR
I just been saying Happy Synthmas for the past few years. Fuck all the rest. May all your Sine Waves be pure =o]
@Nostradamus: If you read your initial response, then my response to that, then what you just wrote in a row, you'd rapidly come to the realization that between the two of us, we said the same thing three times.
That said, you're just arguing semantics at this point, which you know as a long-time reader of this site is a fruitless endeavor with me. You know exactly what I mean, and you're just trying to get me to type it in a fashion that is more, what, correct? My patience with this sort of conversation withers rapidly.
-CR
let's just...
http://youtu.be/Bxfxfh9w44g
I'm an atheist. In fact, I'd argue that i am a quiet atheist, in that Ive never felt the need to argue my position, since at the end of the day, i dont give a fuck what anyone else chooses to believe or not believe in, really. I mean, what ever makes you happy....
But religion is so damn touchy for people, especially here in TN. Maybe that's why the only atheists I've ever met here were also quiet, too ;)
"I'm an atheist. In fact, I'd argue that i am a quiet atheist, in that Ive never felt the need to argue my position, since at the end of the day, "
Some years ago this was an important topic for me. I also spent some years trying to find answers to questions about believing and non-believing, the (non-)existence of "god" etc. I read books, I discussed with theists and atheists and so on.
So what Chris calls a semantic arguing is in fact a thoughtful way of arguing caused by lots of experiences I made with discussions like that. Especially theists try to turn around the meaning of nearly every word if that suit them (this is especially true for those who are trained in rhetorics), they tend to argue in a very fuzzy way which makes it nearly impossible to nail them down to a certain standpoint. Hence my demand on an exact language, as far as possible. Back then I sometimes wished that language is as logically clear as math.
"Language being clear as math" would certainly help, wouldn't it?
And yes, there was a time I did my own research into God- it was prompted at the time by me being an Agnostic who was in the process of marrying a Mormon gal. Ultimately, that led me from having an Agnostic position to calling myself an Atheist.
What if a black hole is the Universe's way of sterilizing itself of life.
Maybe one day we will have a microscope so powerful that we can see ourselves looking through the most powerful telescope.
When I wake up and am actually a butterfly will I remember how much I hate cucumbers?
If I post a comment on a blog post that is 6 days old will anyone read it?
Hope you had good Christmas. Have a great New Year!
- Hugo
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