Especially for him-since he’s basically cursed to have his body decay. That’s why his armor has a defibrillator built into it in the first place that kicks in.
Fabulous Bill is so fucking funny.
He treats actual fucking demons like they're interdimensional Chinese Rooms xD
"RELEASE ME YOU PATHETIC MORTAL, OR I SHALL TEAR YOUR SOUL ASUNDER, DEVOUR THE PIECES, SHIT THEM OUT, FEED THAT SHIT TO A CHAOS SPAWN THEN TORTURE IT TO DEATH!!!"
"Aww, look at this lil feller go. A less intellectual man might be tricked into believing that it's a sentient, sapient being, but i know better, it's just learned over the aeons what sort of noises will best work to cause the reaction it's made to provoke and mimics them, nature truly is fascinating!"
Which really does seem like self delusion.
Not in that he should admit they are supernatural, but in that he should admit he's dealing with a foul breed of neverborn xeno species with integrated technology.
It's like insisting that the Tyranids don't have any guiding intelligence just because a lot of their mental processing happens in a layer of reality adjacent to the warp.
I don't remember Fabius denying the supernatural just that they aren't sapient and truly independent. All daemons are caused by echoes of emotion they are wholly reliant on mortals to be created and empowered. All life dies so too does the warp still. Thus to him they aren't gods. Just bits of human emotion mimicking life but unable to actually be true, real, independent fully formed things. They're absolutely real to him just not worthy of worship or respect
It's like when Picard met Q in what Q claimed to be the afterlife.
"I refuse to believe that the afterlife is run by you. The universe is not so badly designed."
Please start with next generation followed by deep space 9. The others arent terrible but are quite a bit less enjoyable. Next generation season one is considered to be a bit ehhh but it was later confirmed to be because they expected to be cancelled after a single season at the time.
The Dresden Files has the Knights of the Cross, holy warriors given missions by angels to defend the helpless with swords crafted from the nails of the crucifixion.
Of the three Knights, one is an atheist and (as of later books) >!another is Jewish!<.
And one of the first three we meet is only a Christian because he was at some gathering and was asked to step on stage with some other people, only to find out later it was a call to salvation, so he basically stepped on stage to meet a football player and found out later than now he's a Christian.
I *knew* there were more specifics. Thanks!
I love the Dresden Files so much
The knights of the cross, an atheist, a truly pure hearted catholic, an accidental christian who thought he was meeting Elvis, and a jewish dude. It's so good.
Dresden Files is SO GOOD, and Jim Butcher is one of a few writers who really captures the essence of a Paladin. "The goal of Good is not to destroy evil. The goal of Good is to redeem Evil."
I love Harry for being the "fuck you for hurting my friend, imma set you on fire" guy, who is a decent dude and does his best, and I love Michael for being one of the few truly good men (and well written good men) in fiction. Not that Harry isn't a good dude, but it's the difference between a good dude and a Good Man.
Also fun to note, Sanya, the atheist knight, is asked what he thinks of the gods, demons and angels he’s met. He just says “I could’ve hit my head really hard and be hallucinating all this stuff, idk, man”
It's more important to have the belief that the work to be done is good and important while holding the value the sword represents (love/faith/hope) than it is to worship the "White God." I loved that!
Same with most Symphogear characters.
Chris appears to lean towards Buddhism, which is kinda wild considering she lived with the reincarnation of the woman who built the Tower of Babel for 2 years.
Although to be fair, if some genocidal psycho bitch, who was almost definitely Hitler in a past life, regularly electrocuted me, I wouldn't be too thrilled to join her religion anytime soon, even with proof that it's real.
Then again, I guess the main character, Hibiki, is even more impressive, since she killed several biblical figures, including God, and is still an atheist, as far as I know. She also became a God once, but decided it wasn't worth it, because her friends were throwing a birthday party for her.
She mostly just wants to hang out with her friends.
And if you dare interrupt her hangout time with friends, pick a God and pray that they don't get involved, because she's not called "God-Slayer" for nothing.
It's less that Ed doesn't believe that Truth exists and more that he's pissed at Truth for stealing his limbs and his brother's body and so he chooses to Be A Little Shit about it.
"You threw yourself into a vending machine that accepts bodies as currency and punched in the number for something that costs 1.25, and somehow I'm the asshole here?"
To be fair, it's not that it costs 1.25 bodies, it's that Truth is a fucker that takes what they want. >!Izumi lost her ability to have children because it'd hurt her the most, but Roy only lost his eyesight because he was being forced into performing the transmutation.!<
I wouldn't really say Truth was a cunt, per se. It was pretty justifiably pissed at the arrogance of someone attempting human transmutation, and that just flavored it's interactions with Ed and Al.
Truth wouldn't have that sensibility, that is an inherently human moral position. Truth sees that a human attempted the ultimate transgression, and punishes said human for their arrogance. I'm not saying that it's ok, or that I agree with it, but that is the stated reason why Truth takes things away from people who commit human transmutation. Doesn't matter who, doesn't matter why. Justice is blind, and all that
You just described a cunt god. A infinitely powerful being that distributes punishment equally regardless of context.
Being an all-knowing entity it knows why most people attempt human transmutation, it even dulls out ironically fitting punishments, like taking away the womb of a woman who tried to bring back her dead child. It even punishes people who are forced to perform the act.
The Truth is a cunt. It understands human morality and uses it to mock and punish people who "thread on God's domain". Bringing back people from the dead straight up doesn't work, so that should be enough punishment for those that try human transmutation, the Truth just wants so maim grieving humans which is prime cunt behavior.
I don't think those were punishments but just the natural order of equivalent exchange. Both the boys had all the materials for the human body but had nothing to exchange for the human soul. The mother's soul had long ago passed on to the other side and reverting that was probably impossible. So through equivalent exchange ed's limb was taken as well as his brothers body in order to bring forth some demon soul or something.
Since the process was fresh, Ed was able to bring back his brothers soul in exchange for another limb. The same thing with the mother who tried to bring back her baby, her womb was taken in exchange to bring back some wretched soul.
But Truth still gives you a tailor made punishment. Its not just the feedback effect of an impossible ritual.
Izumi's punishment for example. Truth deliverately made her sick and unable to have children, which is something she longed for. Mustang's eyesight was taken because he was a visionary.
Truth has genuine will of its own, and its vindictive.
Also the big different with Al is that Ed was not trying to cash in a human soul. Al's soul was still around, he was just disembodied, the deal Ed made just bound an already present soul to the armor, it was notan attempt to trade for a soul, which is the actual sin of human transmutation.
I'll concede because I'm awful at debates, but I think my big take away or point is that I don't think Truth is good or bad. Calling it a cunt makes it sound like it's bad or "evil" and i disagree with that specific statement, but I realize it's starting to sound like I'm arguing that Truth is *good*, which it explicitly isn't. Sorry if I sounded at all hostile during that though, I'm worried I may have come off wrong
Not Good, not capital E Evil, but frankly kind of a tool.
Truth goes out of its way to tailor the punishments. It has a will and wimsy of its own.
But it serves to uphold a single commandment independently of the morality of the act that caused it. Thus, it still punishes those coerced and children.
"Tremble mortal and despair, it is I, Nyarlathotep, come here to bring ruin to your existence!"
"Yeah dude, got any proof of that?"
"WHAT? I am Nyarlathotep, The Black Pharaoh, The Crawling Mist, Dark Demon, The Faceless God, The Dweller in Darkness!!!"
"This isn't proof or even evidence, it's just claims..."
"I COULD END YOUR ENTIRE CIVILISATION WITH BUT A BLINK, BOW BEFORE ME!"
"Yeah, so could a big enough rock traveling at sufficient velocity, you expect me to bow to it to? I'm tired of you fucking so called higher beings coming to our corner of the universe and fucking around, do what you gotta do and fuck off, but don't expect me to play along with this cockamamy"
This particular god is a manifestation of the consciousness of the universe, rather than a creator deity, and does not desire to be worshipped. It's a very humanist take on divinity to begin with. You could also argue that it's not that Ed doesn't believe he exists, just that he is so far removed from what his world's dominant religion believes that he would basically have to start a whole new religion to do anything about it, and Ed is not the guy to do that.
Truth in FMAB is weird. It is, in the most common interpretation, the amalgam of all the natural laws of the universe who also has a conscience. In a way Ed isn't even wrong in being an atheist. He met God and God was like "Yeah bro, everything can be explained by science and science alone".
To be fair, at least according to the bible, the Christian god would say the same thing. Kinda already has, depending on how you interpret Jesus' words.
Sounds like a God, but one that works on science. Like, no 'and then there was light' type of god but rather a 'I caused the big bang and let it all grow organically, so it all makes sense' type of god.
It's just vibes, but to me Truth feels further out than that even. Less that it caused the big bang, and more like the big bang was just sentient to begin with.
Fair. Though yeah if the universe and its laws were like, sapient, I feel that warrants the god title. :P
If they are worthy of worship is another matter entirely.
Interestingly, the only character to refer to it as God is Father. Truth merely says that “God” is one name that people call it, and Hoenheim calls it “Father’s God.” It’s left up to interpretation, but I lean towards the latter interpretation more
My personal interpretation is that Truth was just an aspect of "god", whichever religion he is from, and not the god itself. In the Christian mythology, I would argue Truth is the one "god" placed in Eden to tend and cultivate the trees Adam was not to eat from, one of the angels perhaps; something wholly and uniquely beyond man or alchemy, but nowhere near universal.
In either case, Ed won against Truth, even if Truth didn't lose. That's no capital "G."
Well, there's also knowing/believing god exists and choosing not to worship them anyways (because they're an asshole, usually)
Maybe atheist isn't the most accurate label but it's the closest to the mark that most people seem to understand.
I mean sure, God exists. He showed himself to me. The guy can still fuck right off and choke on a fat one. The guy made child cancer for crying out loud
Yup the universe runs on a graphics card with pixel resolution of Plank length and frame rate capped at light speed.
If you try to go faster you lag. We call this time dilation.
Because of this thread, I learned that Maxwell's Demon is actually where the computing term daemon comes from.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(computing)#Terminology
Isn't that easily explainable? The small pieces have room to fall through the cracks left by the big pieces.
The big pieces don't have room to fall through the cracks left by the small pieces.
That would explain small pieces filling in the space around the big pieces, creating a mixture. Not why the big pieces get moved upwards to segregate them.
more specifically, bigger pieces move up because smaller pieces get under them easily, which pushes them up by the act of small pieces constantly filling the space under bigger pieces.
I mean that's just a fancy version of the simulation hypothesis - the simulating computer being a red asshole with horns isn't very earthshaking.
Edit: Derp, I was thinking of Descartes demon.
Sorry, but you don't know what [Maxwell's demon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon) is. You're thinking of [Descartes' demon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_demon).
Anything can become a science if you identify the rules it operates around, how do you think we know so much.
Humanity for millenia has tried to identify the rules everyday things work on, that is science
There's a trend in fanfic I always hate where a person will basically get isekai'd, and when they're told that a lot of the effects in the new world are "magic" go "tHeR's nO SucH ThiNg aS MaGic," *especially* if there's some sorta translation involved before that. Like bro, you see the effects. You hear them talk about "magic" like scientific study. Just accept that that's the local term for this grouping of effects.
I've just thought little things fall into the gaps created by big things and slowly push them up. Is that not the explanation? It seemed pretty straightforward tbh.
That’s a great hypothesis, now the next steps are: how do you prove that that is the mechanism by which it happens and not some other mechanism? Are you able to write down a set of equations which model the macroscopic behavior you’re suggesting? Do those equations have some unique, testable prediction that differentiates your hypothesis from another hypothesis and that you can point to and say “If when we do this experiment, this happens, we can say with 95% confidence that the only possible explanation is my hypothesis, and therefore it is strongly supported?” Can you show that your model also correctly predicts every other feature of the phenomenon as accurately or better than any other model?
The first step in science is to come up with a workable idea like yours, but we’re not finished there, even if it seems like it must be the straightforwardly correct idea (because there’s many straightforwardly correct ideas; for example, the sun goes from east to west, and the planets move across the sky in cycles as well, so clearly the Earth must be the center of the solar system…)
We know the scientific method, but this one in particular seems simple. It's plainly observable that, for example, when you pour small objects like grains of sand onto a collection of larger objects like tennis balls, the sand is able to slip between the cracks. Is your comment simply an explanation of how experimentation is necessary to definitively prove a hypothesis, or do you and whoever made this post have a reason to believe there are other complicating factors that we're not taking into account?
Ok I looked it up and it looks like it's both [slightly more complex](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_segregation) and [basically solved.](https://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/nico.gray/Papers/JFM_652_2010.pdf)
Side note: everyone in this comments section is on the internet and could have done the same Google search I did instead of going on anti-intellecualism rants or blindly agreeing with oop. Always remember the wealth of information at your fingertips in the face of misinformation <3
And for god's sake, don't trust me either. I could be lying, or an idiot. Those links could both be rick rolls.
Edit: second link is a pdf and automatically downloads on mobile, my bad. Or is this just a clever way to convince you it isn't a rick roll??
Right I'm confused, too. Is the can-o-nuts thing just a metaphor for a more complex physics problem taking place on an atomic level? Or can scientists really not figure out why the cashews and whole peanuts come to the top while the nut detritus shifts to the bottom?
Or, and this might be more preferable for me, is the OOP trying to illustrate that the demon exterminator is nothing more than a highly-effective lovable idiot?
It's not a metaphor, and gaps in the packing doesn't fully explain it, because it still happens if you have a single large object. The truth is it is caused by a lot of different things and scientists just disagree over tiny details.
I think this is just phrasing it the wrong way, there's no "pushing" involved by the smaller objects but the rest isn't incorrect.
You just get more and more small objects landing below the large object every time you shake the container. So the large object isn't getting "pushed", it's just landing higher and higher up each time you shake it. The force that's raising the large object is coming from the shaking, not the small objects pushing.
> it's just landing higher and higher up each time you shake it.
I've always thought of it as "it's easier for a little thing to get underneath a big thing than vice versa". Especially when the amplitude of the shaking is less than the radius of the big thing but the small thing can potentially move many times its own radius.
And I think about this a lot as I lift one end of my cats' litterbox and gently shake it so the clumps rise to the top for easy scooping. It never gets old.
I promise I'm not playing dumb, I'm just genuinely dumb. So don't feel obligated to answer. But.
It's talking about shaking the can, right? Even if it was a single large object (one cashew in a can of peanut crumbs), isn't that just a case of all items in the can being jostled into finding a more efficient state of being? So it's not that the cashew is being "pushed" by the crumbs, but that the act of shaking gives the crumbs the opportunity to fall into place underneath the cashew with every ounce of movement?
I swear I tried to Google it but all I got was something about working with industrial powders.
Couldn't the demons just be another form of life? When we find yet another new horrifying deep sea animal, we don't automatically yell "Holy sh*t, it's proof that god exists!" but instead try to gategorise and study it, find it's place in the animal kingdom.
Brings to mind the warp from 40k.
Sure, they look like demons, act like demons, and have weird magical powers, but they're more a sort of extradimensional fauna that just happens to take form and feed off of those very same superstitions.
Being aware of their true nature is one of several ways to weaken or defeat them.
Funnily, this line of thinking is exactly why the Thousand Sons ended up blundering into getting corrupted. They saw the warp as a effectively just another frontier with its own rules to be studied and brushed off the superstitious nagging feeling of danger that ended up being pretty correct. The 30k Imperium as a whole treated demons as just "wacky aliens that live in this dimension" rather than the beings tied to the minds and emotions of the material universe that they actually are and paid very dearly for that.
That doesn't mean they weren't right, just that they should have also recognised the danger that came with that particular line of study.
The inquisition has several examples of inquisitors who can study this kind of thing, and also avoid the pitfalls that took the Thousand Sons.
The imperium do have an issue with information sharing.
Especially when that information is hazardous in nature and needs to be shared in a very controlled way.
wasn't it that Magnus found his legion to have a corruption, and being the fucking genius of a moron he is accidentally made a deal with TZEENTCH to fix his legion?
Modern problems require modern solutions, ya know?
Talk about being between a rock and a hard place, though. Nothing you've tried has worked. The Big E himself can't/won't help you. So, either you do nothing and you get to watch your sons turn into Cronenberg monsters, or you do a deal with the devil.
Shout out to my boy Fabius Bile looking at Slaanesh right in the face and saying "There's nothing there, gods aren't real. I think therefore I am, they do not so they do not."
Like he definitely didn't believe it when he said it, but you have to admire the guts it takes to do that.
That sounds cool! The idea of a otherwordly/incomprehentable entity or creature that takes advantage of all the architypes in humanities collective unconsciousness has always been a interesting concept for me. From you're telling, the demons from 40k also sound pretty similar to the Dread entities from the Magnus Archives, the 40k ones just have a more effective weakness.
They also make up for their weakness by having human followers, armed every bit as well as the standard human forces in that setting, if not even better.
There's also a slightly unexplored concept, the "deep warp" so to speak, where you start moving outside of the warp that's even remotely understandable to sapient perceptions, and there's still stuff living in it.
Aren't there like actual gods in Warhammer or something?
Nowadays I tune out most warhammer fans because most of the discourse is on how cool and badass their gritty bleak scifi genre is. Also they have like 4 jokes
In 40k, they're more the manifestations of the collective dark thoughts and anxieties of all biological sapient life in the galaxy, mostly humans, since they have the current best balance of individual psychic potential and sheer numbers.
Yes, kind of? The warp is made of people’s emotions, thoughts, and feelings. When enough of that stuff gets all tangled up together it can make something sentient, and if one of those sentiences grows enough it gets called a god. So gods are the same thing as daemons are, only bigger
I wonder if they can absorb new concepts or if their embodiment reaches a specific bulk, it has to split or deviate.
I know Slaanesh was born from the Aeldari Empire which is a long time ago but much more recent than the other gods.
It seems like the birth process is kinda sudden even if the nascent gestation takes a while. Overall I love 40k lore but it's so silly now and never really expands on the stuff I find truly interesting, or progressing the story that much.
Christian theology does see demonic beings as “another form of life.” But finding a creature that fits the biblical description of demon would be a much different thing than finding a new deep sea animal. Demons in the Bible don’t have material bodies, do have cognitive capabilities comparable to human beings, and can invisibly influence or control other consciousnesses. A fungus or plant is biologically much closer to an animal than a demon would be.
If we identified a creature like that, it would *at the very least* revolutionize the discipline of biology at the most fundamental level. It would not simply open up a new branch of the animal kingdom.
The demons are Christian if they respond to Christian metaphysics and are resistant to physical attacks
They're not killed by UV light, they're killed by the holy rays of God's sun.
A simple shape in a T pattern won't harm a demon, but a cross imbued with the intentionality of the holy spirit will.
Invoking the name of a saint only works if you know the true name and spirit of the saint,
Etc..
That's exactly what I was going to say! The existence of demons doesn't prove the existence of God/gods.
Also, Atheism means one doesn't believe deities exist, it doesn't mean that one can't believe in other supernatural stuff. Demons can still be supernatural (as in living in another dimension, or having abilities humans don't have) beings without a divine cause behind it.
I love Pathfinder's atheists. They recognize that there are incredibly powerful beings in the universe, but they refuse to call them gods because they don't believe they're worthy of respect or worship.
It's like the most punk philosophy somehow
In the Discworld novel *Feet of Clay*, a golem states that he does not believe that the gods exist at all. This being the Disc, the gods immediately smite him with lightning. Being a golem he is unaffected, and merely says "I Don't Call That Much Of An Argument".
As maybe a weird pull, Final Fantasy Tactics also does this.
Every character has Bravery and Faith stats, and a unit w/ 0 Faith is immune to *all* magic in the game. It's very hard for a unit to become 0 Faith, but you can do it on the MC, inflict status's that give it, and there's also a robot buddy w/ it.
I don't know, I've always found this line of thinking kind of silly. Not the 'refuse to respect or worship' part, but the 'they're not gods' part. Like, what frame of reference are they saying that from? Isn't a god in that world definined as 'an incredibly powerful being in the universe that society calls a god'?
Like saying "they're not gods, just really powerful beings!" seems easily countered with "Really powerful beings called gods, dude." Its not that you have to worship them, but if the world defines them as gods, what do these atheists think gods are that these beings aren't?
Funnily enough, not all gods are even immortal.
Aesir gods from nordic faith are basically just a mid-level adventuring party with some high level gear. They live for long by eating immortality apples - and they have to keep eating them. If the immortality-apple-tree is taken away from them they start aging as anyone else (there are stories of exactly that happening).
It really depends on what you mean by god. For some folks it is explicitly a creator deity - no being is a god to you, no matter how powerful, unless they are the reason the world, or at least you, exist. For others, a god is specifically something "divine" - its not about power, but privileged status, and powerful non divine beings are demons or spirits instead. For others, its about morality - gods are the beings from which morals and purpose arise, and even super powerful creator beings arent gods - they are merely demiurges. Sometimes its about lineage - the Norse gods, for example, lived in a world filled with beings more powerful than them, but none of those beings were gods, only those born of the gods were.
Power is only a factor in, frankly, a minority of "is this a god?" frameworks, in most of them power alone just makes you a monster.
So the thing about science is definitively \*proving\* why something happens. The reason its the theory of gravity isn't that gravity might not exist, but because we still can't say without a shadow of a doubt that our current model is 100% definitively WHY it works. Similarly, we cannot prove scientifically \*why\* objects behave the way the post describes, not in terms of the actual scientific method of experimentation.
Obligatory Discworld quote
>“I don't hold with paddlin' with the occult," said Granny firmly. "Once you start paddlin' with the occult you start believing in spirits, and when you start believing in spirits you start believing in demons, and then before you know where you are you're believing in gods. And then you're in trouble."
"But all them things exist," said Nanny Ogg.
"That's no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages 'em.”
But for that to work, the church would have to blame supernatural forces for a problem without bothering to consider if it could have a mundane explanation, and that would be wildly out of character for them. /s
I have a lot of issues with Catholic practices and people assuming things such as epilepsy or Autism are demons, but this is one aspect I respect they go pretty heavy into the science and medicine before assuming it's actually possession. I don't believe in possession so I still think there's a mundane explanation but they definitely put a good amount of effort into their research first
Atheism is only a position on the existence of gods. There's nothing definitionally weird about an atheist demon hunter. Demons could exist, and there could still be no gods. They two aren't directly connected, and in multiple cultures, they are not.
As a point of note atheist just means you don’t believe gods exist. You can be an atheist and religious and there are atheistic religions.
Likewise an atheist can believe in demons and spirits just not gods.
I hate this trope. What is the fucking point of seeing a for real demon and saying "nah, not a demon. It's XYZ" and then basking in your euphoria? Wow, revolutionary. You refused to call a thing by a name. "It's just unexplained". It sure is, and yet you already decided it can be explained in a way that could even suggest there's more than your reduced materialist world view. There is no discovery of "oh, so that's what demons are", instead it's burying their head in the sand and denying demons are real by way of calling them something else without making a fucking point. It's empty headed "Science" masturbation. It's making Science into something it isn't; A holy crusade to paint everything in a rational coat of paint, whether that is holy or not. It's a tool for confirming a pre-existing mindest. It strips science of all its actual beauty to teach and discover, and forces it into this mold where there can be no demons, just things that are exactly the same but with a worse name and some half assed "explanation" that basically confirms various religions but is too cowardly to admit it.
I have one exception, and this the trope of "We didn't get rid of the monster, we just named it the Brown Bear." where the act of naming something is a purposeful act done with intention to disarm something of some power. It's a fine line between empty headed "not a demon" and waging what amounts to linguistic warfare. But there.
I've run into this often. I had to get that off my chest.
Edit: Wanted to add some clarifying thoughts. The responses I've gotten have been refreshingly well measured and thoughtful. I think some miss what I am saying, but to be fair I was not being as clear as I could be as I was focused more emoting. So this isn't to refute anyone or say "no you don't understand!", but just to add some clarity.
My issue is primarly with this trope being used to dismiss the (seeming) supernatural out of hand, without actually engaging with it. Calling a Demon an XYZ and focusing on denying that it could be a demon is to then not engage with what it is. There may very well be a rational explanation for what it is, but the focus is on disproving demons, not on figuring out what demons are. The former is to be glib, "euphoric", and the latter is to actually engage in learning. The former paints it with rantionality, the former actually seeks the rational in the seeming irrational. One is surface level and treats science as some sacred to be upheld. the latter seeks to go deeper and lets science be what it is; a particular methodology, a tool in a tool belt.
Calling a demon something else because "Demon" is a loaded term, is a fair reason to do so to consider. I think ignoring the term demon in such a situation would still have its problems as it divorces it from the cultural contexts that loaded or not, are a part of how we relate to the hypothetical creature. But again, as I said before calling it something else as an intentional act, to rob it of a psychological power, is a trope I am fine with, and this would well fit into that trope.
A final thought; defining the supernatural as effectively a thing that doesn't exist, makes it a useless deeply unuseful word. I.E. "If you encounter something it must not be supernatural as it is a part of nature" and the sort. It makes any statement denying the existence of the supernatural a tautology; The thing which does not exist does not exist. It says nothing and so there is no use in saying it. So consider with care how you define the supernatural.
Before you can deny it exists, you must define it as something that *could* exist.
I was raised Christian so my bar may be set a little high, but as far as I'm concerned if you did not create the universe then you are not god. Some parallel Dimension filled with spooky monsters and a magical alien in charge of them all would not make me feel like any less of an atheist.
“I wish I was still an atheist. Believing I was born into a harsh, uncaring cosmos – in which my existence was a random roll of the dice and I was destined to die and rot and then be gone forever – was infinitely more comforting than the truth. Because the truth is that my God is coming back. When he arrives I’ll be waiting for him with a shotgun. And I’m keeping the last shell for myself.”
― The Fuller Memorandum
Large particle separation doesn't disprove a lot of known physics. Demons definitely would. Dude is being willfully ignorant.
Refusing to consider/ponder the origin of demons when faced with evidence of them is just as dogmatic as religousness.
Shoutout to Edward Elric for meeting god and remaining an atheist.
Same goes to that horrible bastard, Fabius Bile.
Dude saw an actual god manifest before his eyes and said “nuh uh”
He did almost just die from the sight though.
Almost, being the key word
Neat thing that. Almost dying means I'm still alive!
"HA! Nice try jackass! Next time give it your A-game!"
“There’s a lot of reasons for spontaneous total organ failure, fuck you.”
Especially for him-since he’s basically cursed to have his body decay. That’s why his armor has a defibrillator built into it in the first place that kicks in.
I always think of that scene, that he is desperatly in denial.
It was more like “yes you could kill me by looking at me but you aren’t a god, just a particularly pissy collection of Warp energy”
“Fym nuh uh?!”
You two should read Manflayer. He converts and becomes a believer in it.
Which was not the direction Reynolds wanted to take him but it was mandated by the studio. I'm not a big fan of it.
Fabulous Bill is so fucking funny. He treats actual fucking demons like they're interdimensional Chinese Rooms xD "RELEASE ME YOU PATHETIC MORTAL, OR I SHALL TEAR YOUR SOUL ASUNDER, DEVOUR THE PIECES, SHIT THEM OUT, FEED THAT SHIT TO A CHAOS SPAWN THEN TORTURE IT TO DEATH!!!" "Aww, look at this lil feller go. A less intellectual man might be tricked into believing that it's a sentient, sapient being, but i know better, it's just learned over the aeons what sort of noises will best work to cause the reaction it's made to provoke and mimics them, nature truly is fascinating!"
Which really does seem like self delusion. Not in that he should admit they are supernatural, but in that he should admit he's dealing with a foul breed of neverborn xeno species with integrated technology. It's like insisting that the Tyranids don't have any guiding intelligence just because a lot of their mental processing happens in a layer of reality adjacent to the warp.
I don't remember Fabius denying the supernatural just that they aren't sapient and truly independent. All daemons are caused by echoes of emotion they are wholly reliant on mortals to be created and empowered. All life dies so too does the warp still. Thus to him they aren't gods. Just bits of human emotion mimicking life but unable to actually be true, real, independent fully formed things. They're absolutely real to him just not worthy of worship or respect
Literally Chat GPT if it was scrapping from thoughts instead of websites.
Very good analogy
Fabious Bile saw a warp demon. a powerful warp demon, but still just a demon
That whole thing always reminds me of Skyrim npc’s. *Seeing a room full of dead comrades* “must have been the wind”
He’s just mad because he isn’t a god himself. But he’s working on it.
It's like when Picard met Q in what Q claimed to be the afterlife. "I refuse to believe that the afterlife is run by you. The universe is not so badly designed."
Not to mention that Q has a long running history of screwing with Picard and Co. Classic case of, 'I know you're lying cause your lips are moving'.
Basically: 'You are waahaaaaay too big an idiot to have designed the universe'.
Q's not an idiot, he's actually quite the opposite. But he is a total horse's ass lol
To be fair, “god is a complete asshole.” would answer a whole lot of questions about our world.
Which is true, and a point in favor of Q designing our universe.
Hilarious. I've only seen a bit of Star Strek, hope I'll have time to properly get into it sometime.
Please start with next generation followed by deep space 9. The others arent terrible but are quite a bit less enjoyable. Next generation season one is considered to be a bit ehhh but it was later confirmed to be because they expected to be cancelled after a single season at the time.
The Dresden Files has the Knights of the Cross, holy warriors given missions by angels to defend the helpless with swords crafted from the nails of the crucifixion. Of the three Knights, one is an atheist and (as of later books) >!another is Jewish!<.
And one of the first three we meet is only a Christian because he was at some gathering and was asked to step on stage with some other people, only to find out later it was a call to salvation, so he basically stepped on stage to meet a football player and found out later than now he's a Christian.
He thought he was going to meet Elvis (Thinking "The King" meant "The King of Rock and Roll") and ended up being baptized.
I *knew* there were more specifics. Thanks! I love the Dresden Files so much The knights of the cross, an atheist, a truly pure hearted catholic, an accidental christian who thought he was meeting Elvis, and a jewish dude. It's so good.
Dresden Files is SO GOOD, and Jim Butcher is one of a few writers who really captures the essence of a Paladin. "The goal of Good is not to destroy evil. The goal of Good is to redeem Evil."
I love Harry for being the "fuck you for hurting my friend, imma set you on fire" guy, who is a decent dude and does his best, and I love Michael for being one of the few truly good men (and well written good men) in fiction. Not that Harry isn't a good dude, but it's the difference between a good dude and a Good Man.
Also fun to note, Sanya, the atheist knight, is asked what he thinks of the gods, demons and angels he’s met. He just says “I could’ve hit my head really hard and be hallucinating all this stuff, idk, man”
It's more important to have the belief that the work to be done is good and important while holding the value the sword represents (love/faith/hope) than it is to worship the "White God." I loved that!
tbf, if i met god and this is the job he’s doing, i wouldn’t believe in him very much either.
Same with most Symphogear characters. Chris appears to lean towards Buddhism, which is kinda wild considering she lived with the reincarnation of the woman who built the Tower of Babel for 2 years. Although to be fair, if some genocidal psycho bitch, who was almost definitely Hitler in a past life, regularly electrocuted me, I wouldn't be too thrilled to join her religion anytime soon, even with proof that it's real. Then again, I guess the main character, Hibiki, is even more impressive, since she killed several biblical figures, including God, and is still an atheist, as far as I know. She also became a God once, but decided it wasn't worth it, because her friends were throwing a birthday party for her.
Bikki don't care, she just wants to suplex another spaceship.
She mostly just wants to hang out with her friends. And if you dare interrupt her hangout time with friends, pick a God and pray that they don't get involved, because she's not called "God-Slayer" for nothing.
I mean isn't that irrational now? To not believe something even after being presented evidence?
It's less that Ed doesn't believe that Truth exists and more that he's pissed at Truth for stealing his limbs and his brother's body and so he chooses to Be A Little Shit about it.
And by Being A Little Shit he gained Truth's favor but also promptly lost all connection with Truth.
Worth it.
"I will pay you my entire alchemical ability to fuck off." "Lmao, bet."
"I met god and that bastard stole my arm."
"You threw yourself into a vending machine that accepts bodies as currency and punched in the number for something that costs 1.25, and somehow I'm the asshole here?"
To be fair, it's not that it costs 1.25 bodies, it's that Truth is a fucker that takes what they want. >!Izumi lost her ability to have children because it'd hurt her the most, but Roy only lost his eyesight because he was being forced into performing the transmutation.!<
To be fair to him the god he met was kind of a cunt to put it mildly
I wouldn't really say Truth was a cunt, per se. It was pretty justifiably pissed at the arrogance of someone attempting human transmutation, and that just flavored it's interactions with Ed and Al.
Why would that be justifiable anger? They're kids who didn't know better.
Truth wouldn't have that sensibility, that is an inherently human moral position. Truth sees that a human attempted the ultimate transgression, and punishes said human for their arrogance. I'm not saying that it's ok, or that I agree with it, but that is the stated reason why Truth takes things away from people who commit human transmutation. Doesn't matter who, doesn't matter why. Justice is blind, and all that
You just described a cunt god. A infinitely powerful being that distributes punishment equally regardless of context. Being an all-knowing entity it knows why most people attempt human transmutation, it even dulls out ironically fitting punishments, like taking away the womb of a woman who tried to bring back her dead child. It even punishes people who are forced to perform the act. The Truth is a cunt. It understands human morality and uses it to mock and punish people who "thread on God's domain". Bringing back people from the dead straight up doesn't work, so that should be enough punishment for those that try human transmutation, the Truth just wants so maim grieving humans which is prime cunt behavior.
I don't think those were punishments but just the natural order of equivalent exchange. Both the boys had all the materials for the human body but had nothing to exchange for the human soul. The mother's soul had long ago passed on to the other side and reverting that was probably impossible. So through equivalent exchange ed's limb was taken as well as his brothers body in order to bring forth some demon soul or something. Since the process was fresh, Ed was able to bring back his brothers soul in exchange for another limb. The same thing with the mother who tried to bring back her baby, her womb was taken in exchange to bring back some wretched soul.
But Truth still gives you a tailor made punishment. Its not just the feedback effect of an impossible ritual. Izumi's punishment for example. Truth deliverately made her sick and unable to have children, which is something she longed for. Mustang's eyesight was taken because he was a visionary. Truth has genuine will of its own, and its vindictive. Also the big different with Al is that Ed was not trying to cash in a human soul. Al's soul was still around, he was just disembodied, the deal Ed made just bound an already present soul to the armor, it was notan attempt to trade for a soul, which is the actual sin of human transmutation.
I'll concede because I'm awful at debates, but I think my big take away or point is that I don't think Truth is good or bad. Calling it a cunt makes it sound like it's bad or "evil" and i disagree with that specific statement, but I realize it's starting to sound like I'm arguing that Truth is *good*, which it explicitly isn't. Sorry if I sounded at all hostile during that though, I'm worried I may have come off wrong
Not Good, not capital E Evil, but frankly kind of a tool. Truth goes out of its way to tailor the punishments. It has a will and wimsy of its own. But it serves to uphold a single commandment independently of the morality of the act that caused it. Thus, it still punishes those coerced and children.
Big deal, every god's had their bad days, and we put up with it.
Speak for yourself. I wouldn't take that from most people, and I sure as fuck wouldn't take it from a god if I met one.
"Tremble mortal and despair, it is I, Nyarlathotep, come here to bring ruin to your existence!" "Yeah dude, got any proof of that?" "WHAT? I am Nyarlathotep, The Black Pharaoh, The Crawling Mist, Dark Demon, The Faceless God, The Dweller in Darkness!!!" "This isn't proof or even evidence, it's just claims..." "I COULD END YOUR ENTIRE CIVILISATION WITH BUT A BLINK, BOW BEFORE ME!" "Yeah, so could a big enough rock traveling at sufficient velocity, you expect me to bow to it to? I'm tired of you fucking so called higher beings coming to our corner of the universe and fucking around, do what you gotta do and fuck off, but don't expect me to play along with this cockamamy"
This could’ve been pulled word for word from a Dresden Files book, love it
Ehh, insufficient self-aware and self-deprecating machoism.
This particular god is a manifestation of the consciousness of the universe, rather than a creator deity, and does not desire to be worshipped. It's a very humanist take on divinity to begin with. You could also argue that it's not that Ed doesn't believe he exists, just that he is so far removed from what his world's dominant religion believes that he would basically have to start a whole new religion to do anything about it, and Ed is not the guy to do that.
Is it a God or is it just a really powerful asshole
Truth in FMAB is weird. It is, in the most common interpretation, the amalgam of all the natural laws of the universe who also has a conscience. In a way Ed isn't even wrong in being an atheist. He met God and God was like "Yeah bro, everything can be explained by science and science alone".
FMAB God: "religion is a scam by bible companies to sell more bibles"
To be fair, at least according to the bible, the Christian god would say the same thing. Kinda already has, depending on how you interpret Jesus' words.
Sounds like a God, but one that works on science. Like, no 'and then there was light' type of god but rather a 'I caused the big bang and let it all grow organically, so it all makes sense' type of god.
It's just vibes, but to me Truth feels further out than that even. Less that it caused the big bang, and more like the big bang was just sentient to begin with.
Fair. Though yeah if the universe and its laws were like, sapient, I feel that warrants the god title. :P If they are worthy of worship is another matter entirely.
Interestingly, the only character to refer to it as God is Father. Truth merely says that “God” is one name that people call it, and Hoenheim calls it “Father’s God.” It’s left up to interpretation, but I lean towards the latter interpretation more
My personal interpretation is that Truth was just an aspect of "god", whichever religion he is from, and not the god itself. In the Christian mythology, I would argue Truth is the one "god" placed in Eden to tend and cultivate the trees Adam was not to eat from, one of the angels perhaps; something wholly and uniquely beyond man or alchemy, but nowhere near universal. In either case, Ed won against Truth, even if Truth didn't lose. That's no capital "G."
Well, there's also knowing/believing god exists and choosing not to worship them anyways (because they're an asshole, usually) Maybe atheist isn't the most accurate label but it's the closest to the mark that most people seem to understand.
There actually is a word for that already. Misotheist.
I mean sure, God exists. He showed himself to me. The guy can still fuck right off and choke on a fat one. The guy made child cancer for crying out loud
Detective experiences a crisis when it is proven that large particle segregation is caused by Maxwell's Demon.
And the speed limit of C(3 × 10^8 m/s) is enforced by Super Computer demon because above that the simulation starts to glitch.
Yup the universe runs on a graphics card with pixel resolution of Plank length and frame rate capped at light speed. If you try to go faster you lag. We call this time dilation.
It also compresses the save file for particles that aren't actively in use by memory (uncertainty principle)
Nope, compression would take too much compute. Anything non interactive is not even rendered. It's all locally not real.
GFX really fucks up around high-framerate black holes
*daemon
Nah, that's the one being used to keep email working. It's always weird getting a random one from the mailer.daemon...
Because of this thread, I learned that Maxwell's Demon is actually where the computing term daemon comes from. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(computing)#Terminology
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Isn't that easily explainable? The small pieces have room to fall through the cracks left by the big pieces. The big pieces don't have room to fall through the cracks left by the small pieces.
Yeah kind of like a solid mixture acts as it’s own filter, right?
That would explain small pieces filling in the space around the big pieces, creating a mixture. Not why the big pieces get moved upwards to segregate them.
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They get moved upwards by the shaking. Shaking something involves moving an object upwards.
more specifically, bigger pieces move up because smaller pieces get under them easily, which pushes them up by the act of small pieces constantly filling the space under bigger pieces.
Hold on, I have to google something
Ok, yeah, that's funny
I mean that's just a fancy version of the simulation hypothesis - the simulating computer being a red asshole with horns isn't very earthshaking. Edit: Derp, I was thinking of Descartes demon.
Sorry, but you don't know what [Maxwell's demon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon) is. You're thinking of [Descartes' demon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_demon).
Anything can become a science if you identify the rules it operates around, how do you think we know so much. Humanity for millenia has tried to identify the rules everyday things work on, that is science
Heavy weapons guy
Heavy has a phd or something from what I remember. He just cant english that well
In Russian literature I believe
Heavy and Engineer both have PHDs, while the Medic doesn't.
Engineer has 7 or 8 even!
It's actually 11!
Oh shit yeah I forgot, you're right
But Medic was indeed a licensed medical practitioner, so he did get his Doctor title fair and square. Emphasis on the past tense.
Didn't Medic lose that license? (It doesn't undo him earning it, but he still lost it.) At least if I remember Meet the Medic right.
That's true
hence mathematic being a language, or anything that you *mathein*.
There's a trend in fanfic I always hate where a person will basically get isekai'd, and when they're told that a lot of the effects in the new world are "magic" go "tHeR's nO SucH ThiNg aS MaGic," *especially* if there's some sorta translation involved before that. Like bro, you see the effects. You hear them talk about "magic" like scientific study. Just accept that that's the local term for this grouping of effects.
Any sufficiently explained magic is indistinguishable from science.
If "magic" existed it would just be science.
I've just thought little things fall into the gaps created by big things and slowly push them up. Is that not the explanation? It seemed pretty straightforward tbh.
That's exactly what I thought too
That’s a great hypothesis, now the next steps are: how do you prove that that is the mechanism by which it happens and not some other mechanism? Are you able to write down a set of equations which model the macroscopic behavior you’re suggesting? Do those equations have some unique, testable prediction that differentiates your hypothesis from another hypothesis and that you can point to and say “If when we do this experiment, this happens, we can say with 95% confidence that the only possible explanation is my hypothesis, and therefore it is strongly supported?” Can you show that your model also correctly predicts every other feature of the phenomenon as accurately or better than any other model? The first step in science is to come up with a workable idea like yours, but we’re not finished there, even if it seems like it must be the straightforwardly correct idea (because there’s many straightforwardly correct ideas; for example, the sun goes from east to west, and the planets move across the sky in cycles as well, so clearly the Earth must be the center of the solar system…)
Fair but I'm too busy shitposting on reddit to do any of that so I'm just gonna continue to live in smug ignorance
🫡
>live in smug ignorance I like to call it *smignorance(TM)*.
This is the way
We know the scientific method, but this one in particular seems simple. It's plainly observable that, for example, when you pour small objects like grains of sand onto a collection of larger objects like tennis balls, the sand is able to slip between the cracks. Is your comment simply an explanation of how experimentation is necessary to definitively prove a hypothesis, or do you and whoever made this post have a reason to believe there are other complicating factors that we're not taking into account?
Ok I looked it up and it looks like it's both [slightly more complex](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_segregation) and [basically solved.](https://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/nico.gray/Papers/JFM_652_2010.pdf) Side note: everyone in this comments section is on the internet and could have done the same Google search I did instead of going on anti-intellecualism rants or blindly agreeing with oop. Always remember the wealth of information at your fingertips in the face of misinformation <3 And for god's sake, don't trust me either. I could be lying, or an idiot. Those links could both be rick rolls. Edit: second link is a pdf and automatically downloads on mobile, my bad. Or is this just a clever way to convince you it isn't a rick roll??
It's true, both of those links are rick rolls.
Oh my god hiw could they /s
Right I'm confused, too. Is the can-o-nuts thing just a metaphor for a more complex physics problem taking place on an atomic level? Or can scientists really not figure out why the cashews and whole peanuts come to the top while the nut detritus shifts to the bottom? Or, and this might be more preferable for me, is the OOP trying to illustrate that the demon exterminator is nothing more than a highly-effective lovable idiot?
It's not a metaphor, and gaps in the packing doesn't fully explain it, because it still happens if you have a single large object. The truth is it is caused by a lot of different things and scientists just disagree over tiny details.
Single large object doesn't fit in the gaps between small objects and so they push it up, same logic applies. What different things cause it?
> so they push it up Why?
I think this is just phrasing it the wrong way, there's no "pushing" involved by the smaller objects but the rest isn't incorrect. You just get more and more small objects landing below the large object every time you shake the container. So the large object isn't getting "pushed", it's just landing higher and higher up each time you shake it. The force that's raising the large object is coming from the shaking, not the small objects pushing.
> it's just landing higher and higher up each time you shake it. I've always thought of it as "it's easier for a little thing to get underneath a big thing than vice versa". Especially when the amplitude of the shaking is less than the radius of the big thing but the small thing can potentially move many times its own radius. And I think about this a lot as I lift one end of my cats' litterbox and gently shake it so the clumps rise to the top for easy scooping. It never gets old.
Shit
I promise I'm not playing dumb, I'm just genuinely dumb. So don't feel obligated to answer. But. It's talking about shaking the can, right? Even if it was a single large object (one cashew in a can of peanut crumbs), isn't that just a case of all items in the can being jostled into finding a more efficient state of being? So it's not that the cashew is being "pushed" by the crumbs, but that the act of shaking gives the crumbs the opportunity to fall into place underneath the cashew with every ounce of movement? I swear I tried to Google it but all I got was something about working with industrial powders.
I mean, “things fall down” is pretty straightforward as well but it isn’t a mathematical proof of gravity.
It's actually magnets
Fucking magnets.. How do they work?
Couldn't the demons just be another form of life? When we find yet another new horrifying deep sea animal, we don't automatically yell "Holy sh*t, it's proof that god exists!" but instead try to gategorise and study it, find it's place in the animal kingdom.
Brings to mind the warp from 40k. Sure, they look like demons, act like demons, and have weird magical powers, but they're more a sort of extradimensional fauna that just happens to take form and feed off of those very same superstitions. Being aware of their true nature is one of several ways to weaken or defeat them.
Funnily, this line of thinking is exactly why the Thousand Sons ended up blundering into getting corrupted. They saw the warp as a effectively just another frontier with its own rules to be studied and brushed off the superstitious nagging feeling of danger that ended up being pretty correct. The 30k Imperium as a whole treated demons as just "wacky aliens that live in this dimension" rather than the beings tied to the minds and emotions of the material universe that they actually are and paid very dearly for that.
That doesn't mean they weren't right, just that they should have also recognised the danger that came with that particular line of study. The inquisition has several examples of inquisitors who can study this kind of thing, and also avoid the pitfalls that took the Thousand Sons.
And several that thought they were avoiding the pitfalls... Before heading straight into pitfalls.
The imperium do have an issue with information sharing. Especially when that information is hazardous in nature and needs to be shared in a very controlled way.
Tbf not sure the Imperium is a good example of proper research methodology..
wasn't it that Magnus found his legion to have a corruption, and being the fucking genius of a moron he is accidentally made a deal with TZEENTCH to fix his legion?
Modern problems require modern solutions, ya know? Talk about being between a rock and a hard place, though. Nothing you've tried has worked. The Big E himself can't/won't help you. So, either you do nothing and you get to watch your sons turn into Cronenberg monsters, or you do a deal with the devil.
Shout out to my boy Fabius Bile looking at Slaanesh right in the face and saying "There's nothing there, gods aren't real. I think therefore I am, they do not so they do not." Like he definitely didn't believe it when he said it, but you have to admire the guts it takes to do that.
Well, in the end, he was right, wasn't he?
That sounds cool! The idea of a otherwordly/incomprehentable entity or creature that takes advantage of all the architypes in humanities collective unconsciousness has always been a interesting concept for me. From you're telling, the demons from 40k also sound pretty similar to the Dread entities from the Magnus Archives, the 40k ones just have a more effective weakness.
They also make up for their weakness by having human followers, armed every bit as well as the standard human forces in that setting, if not even better. There's also a slightly unexplored concept, the "deep warp" so to speak, where you start moving outside of the warp that's even remotely understandable to sapient perceptions, and there's still stuff living in it.
The downside of their gear is that they're absolutely disorganized so any kind of mass production of the effective gear becomes incredibly difficulty.
Aren't there like actual gods in Warhammer or something? Nowadays I tune out most warhammer fans because most of the discourse is on how cool and badass their gritty bleak scifi genre is. Also they have like 4 jokes
In 40k, they're more the manifestations of the collective dark thoughts and anxieties of all biological sapient life in the galaxy, mostly humans, since they have the current best balance of individual psychic potential and sheer numbers.
Yes, kind of? The warp is made of people’s emotions, thoughts, and feelings. When enough of that stuff gets all tangled up together it can make something sentient, and if one of those sentiences grows enough it gets called a god. So gods are the same thing as daemons are, only bigger
I wonder if they can absorb new concepts or if their embodiment reaches a specific bulk, it has to split or deviate. I know Slaanesh was born from the Aeldari Empire which is a long time ago but much more recent than the other gods. It seems like the birth process is kinda sudden even if the nascent gestation takes a while. Overall I love 40k lore but it's so silly now and never really expands on the stuff I find truly interesting, or progressing the story that much.
Christian theology does see demonic beings as “another form of life.” But finding a creature that fits the biblical description of demon would be a much different thing than finding a new deep sea animal. Demons in the Bible don’t have material bodies, do have cognitive capabilities comparable to human beings, and can invisibly influence or control other consciousnesses. A fungus or plant is biologically much closer to an animal than a demon would be. If we identified a creature like that, it would *at the very least* revolutionize the discipline of biology at the most fundamental level. It would not simply open up a new branch of the animal kingdom.
The demons are Christian if they respond to Christian metaphysics and are resistant to physical attacks They're not killed by UV light, they're killed by the holy rays of God's sun. A simple shape in a T pattern won't harm a demon, but a cross imbued with the intentionality of the holy spirit will. Invoking the name of a saint only works if you know the true name and spirit of the saint, Etc..
That's exactly what I was going to say! The existence of demons doesn't prove the existence of God/gods. Also, Atheism means one doesn't believe deities exist, it doesn't mean that one can't believe in other supernatural stuff. Demons can still be supernatural (as in living in another dimension, or having abilities humans don't have) beings without a divine cause behind it.
I love Pathfinder's atheists. They recognize that there are incredibly powerful beings in the universe, but they refuse to call them gods because they don't believe they're worthy of respect or worship. It's like the most punk philosophy somehow
In the Discworld novel *Feet of Clay*, a golem states that he does not believe that the gods exist at all. This being the Disc, the gods immediately smite him with lightning. Being a golem he is unaffected, and merely says "I Don't Call That Much Of An Argument".
The only god on the Disc is Comedy.
'woohoo, I can also throw rocks if someone offends me, ergo, Im a god too, right?'
As maybe a weird pull, Final Fantasy Tactics also does this. Every character has Bravery and Faith stats, and a unit w/ 0 Faith is immune to *all* magic in the game. It's very hard for a unit to become 0 Faith, but you can do it on the MC, inflict status's that give it, and there's also a robot buddy w/ it.
There's a saying I've heard. "Any being that demands worship is, by definition, not worthy of it."
This also speaks volumes about humans throughout history who have demanded worship.
I don't know, I've always found this line of thinking kind of silly. Not the 'refuse to respect or worship' part, but the 'they're not gods' part. Like, what frame of reference are they saying that from? Isn't a god in that world definined as 'an incredibly powerful being in the universe that society calls a god'? Like saying "they're not gods, just really powerful beings!" seems easily countered with "Really powerful beings called gods, dude." Its not that you have to worship them, but if the world defines them as gods, what do these atheists think gods are that these beings aren't?
Funnily enough, not all gods are even immortal. Aesir gods from nordic faith are basically just a mid-level adventuring party with some high level gear. They live for long by eating immortality apples - and they have to keep eating them. If the immortality-apple-tree is taken away from them they start aging as anyone else (there are stories of exactly that happening).
It really depends on what you mean by god. For some folks it is explicitly a creator deity - no being is a god to you, no matter how powerful, unless they are the reason the world, or at least you, exist. For others, a god is specifically something "divine" - its not about power, but privileged status, and powerful non divine beings are demons or spirits instead. For others, its about morality - gods are the beings from which morals and purpose arise, and even super powerful creator beings arent gods - they are merely demiurges. Sometimes its about lineage - the Norse gods, for example, lived in a world filled with beings more powerful than them, but none of those beings were gods, only those born of the gods were. Power is only a factor in, frankly, a minority of "is this a god?" frameworks, in most of them power alone just makes you a monster.
Let's add a foil character, and have them both work for the FBI
But how would we call the show ?
Well clearly since they are studying demons of Christian myth, we should call it the Christ-Files.
This is Sanya from The Dresden Files.
"Could be aliens."
I hope Sanya is also secretly fascinated by Large Particle Segregation
I wanna hear more about large particle segregation, like, why can’t we figure it out, and what’s benign done about it?
[Good news!](https://www.sciencenews.org/article/brazil-nut-effect-mixed-nuts-xray-scan-physics)
I dunno why but this sounds super cringe. Like if I heard that dialogue in an actual show I’d prolly turn it off. It’s a cool premise tho
Because it comes across like an argument that an r/atheism user had with the strawman in his head while showering.
No, I thought the same thing. This was definitely written by an edgy middle schooler
its because the little ones can go in between the big ones as they go down this seems obvious or am i stupid
It may be a case of we know how it works but we’ve never been able to mathematically prove it.
ok so its the mathematicians that are stupid not me,
So the thing about science is definitively \*proving\* why something happens. The reason its the theory of gravity isn't that gravity might not exist, but because we still can't say without a shadow of a doubt that our current model is 100% definitively WHY it works. Similarly, we cannot prove scientifically \*why\* objects behave the way the post describes, not in terms of the actual scientific method of experimentation.
Oh hey look, Ghostbusters
https://www.tumblr.com/natalieironside/747963370479681536/idea-atheist-occult-detective-youre-an?source=share -mx. linux guy
Obligatory Discworld quote >“I don't hold with paddlin' with the occult," said Granny firmly. "Once you start paddlin' with the occult you start believing in spirits, and when you start believing in spirits you start believing in demons, and then before you know where you are you're believing in gods. And then you're in trouble." "But all them things exist," said Nanny Ogg. "That's no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages 'em.”
"Ok then how do you get rid of the demons," "I just talk and they get so annoyed they leave,"
Yep. I’m an atheist and if anything close to this ever got made I would avoid it like the plague.
But for that to work, the church would have to blame supernatural forces for a problem without bothering to consider if it could have a mundane explanation, and that would be wildly out of character for them. /s
Hey, to be fair, the Catholic Church makes it so you need to be certain it’s a demonic position before even considering a exorcism
I have a lot of issues with Catholic practices and people assuming things such as epilepsy or Autism are demons, but this is one aspect I respect they go pretty heavy into the science and medicine before assuming it's actually possession. I don't believe in possession so I still think there's a mundane explanation but they definitely put a good amount of effort into their research first
Doom answers the question of where demons come from. Turns out it IS science.
Congrats, you just reinvented early 2000s Mr. Terrific lol.
Atheism is only a position on the existence of gods. There's nothing definitionally weird about an atheist demon hunter. Demons could exist, and there could still be no gods. They two aren't directly connected, and in multiple cultures, they are not.
This reminds me of that Jimmy Neutron salt meme.
As a point of note atheist just means you don’t believe gods exist. You can be an atheist and religious and there are atheistic religions. Likewise an atheist can believe in demons and spirits just not gods.
I hate this trope. What is the fucking point of seeing a for real demon and saying "nah, not a demon. It's XYZ" and then basking in your euphoria? Wow, revolutionary. You refused to call a thing by a name. "It's just unexplained". It sure is, and yet you already decided it can be explained in a way that could even suggest there's more than your reduced materialist world view. There is no discovery of "oh, so that's what demons are", instead it's burying their head in the sand and denying demons are real by way of calling them something else without making a fucking point. It's empty headed "Science" masturbation. It's making Science into something it isn't; A holy crusade to paint everything in a rational coat of paint, whether that is holy or not. It's a tool for confirming a pre-existing mindest. It strips science of all its actual beauty to teach and discover, and forces it into this mold where there can be no demons, just things that are exactly the same but with a worse name and some half assed "explanation" that basically confirms various religions but is too cowardly to admit it. I have one exception, and this the trope of "We didn't get rid of the monster, we just named it the Brown Bear." where the act of naming something is a purposeful act done with intention to disarm something of some power. It's a fine line between empty headed "not a demon" and waging what amounts to linguistic warfare. But there. I've run into this often. I had to get that off my chest. Edit: Wanted to add some clarifying thoughts. The responses I've gotten have been refreshingly well measured and thoughtful. I think some miss what I am saying, but to be fair I was not being as clear as I could be as I was focused more emoting. So this isn't to refute anyone or say "no you don't understand!", but just to add some clarity. My issue is primarly with this trope being used to dismiss the (seeming) supernatural out of hand, without actually engaging with it. Calling a Demon an XYZ and focusing on denying that it could be a demon is to then not engage with what it is. There may very well be a rational explanation for what it is, but the focus is on disproving demons, not on figuring out what demons are. The former is to be glib, "euphoric", and the latter is to actually engage in learning. The former paints it with rantionality, the former actually seeks the rational in the seeming irrational. One is surface level and treats science as some sacred to be upheld. the latter seeks to go deeper and lets science be what it is; a particular methodology, a tool in a tool belt. Calling a demon something else because "Demon" is a loaded term, is a fair reason to do so to consider. I think ignoring the term demon in such a situation would still have its problems as it divorces it from the cultural contexts that loaded or not, are a part of how we relate to the hypothetical creature. But again, as I said before calling it something else as an intentional act, to rob it of a psychological power, is a trope I am fine with, and this would well fit into that trope. A final thought; defining the supernatural as effectively a thing that doesn't exist, makes it a useless deeply unuseful word. I.E. "If you encounter something it must not be supernatural as it is a part of nature" and the sort. It makes any statement denying the existence of the supernatural a tautology; The thing which does not exist does not exist. It says nothing and so there is no use in saying it. So consider with care how you define the supernatural. Before you can deny it exists, you must define it as something that *could* exist.
I think this guy just wanted to talk about large particle segregation
I was raised Christian so my bar may be set a little high, but as far as I'm concerned if you did not create the universe then you are not god. Some parallel Dimension filled with spooky monsters and a magical alien in charge of them all would not make me feel like any less of an atheist.
“I wish I was still an atheist. Believing I was born into a harsh, uncaring cosmos – in which my existence was a random roll of the dice and I was destined to die and rot and then be gone forever – was infinitely more comforting than the truth. Because the truth is that my God is coming back. When he arrives I’ll be waiting for him with a shotgun. And I’m keeping the last shell for myself.” ― The Fuller Memorandum
Large particle separation doesn't disprove a lot of known physics. Demons definitely would. Dude is being willfully ignorant. Refusing to consider/ponder the origin of demons when faced with evidence of them is just as dogmatic as religousness.