There was a place by the beach called Helenback.
My siblings and I in the car: Where are we going?
Mum (shouting): Hell and back!
I was an adult before I realised it had another name.
When I was very young, my dad told me we were going to Miami. I thought he said “my Ami”, which I assumed was a word for some kind of relative, like Auntie, Granny, etc.
That there’s a loving God.
Now it seems clear that even if he did exist, he’s just above average asshole
I would argue that they would be fully evil depending on your definition of god.
In my case, the abrahamic one. Narcissistic asshole
Ya that one is evil.
I would argue that if God exists, they aren’t intentionally being an asshole. They are being completely hands off so as not to corrupt the experiment, or override free will. After all, the only reason any god would need a prime material plane of existence is to see if they can create a peer of themselves, and at least as far as most of the major religions seem to be concerned, if someone created this universe, they decided that we have free will, so it’s kinda hard to directly intervene. They could send avatars from time to time to attempt to intervene, but they kinda tied their hands in the act of creation.
You can absolutely intervene without affecting free will and that is assuming we even have free will. I am not convinced that we do.
Also why would you presume to know what a being (that as we imagine it) with unlimited power and knowledge would want or even need?
If you are a god and you see 25,000 people (10,000 of which are children) starving to death every single day and you have the power to stop that and you don’t then you are an immortal monster.
I was a real piece of shit for a good handful of years when I was a kid because I believed I was destined for hell. I figured if I’m going to spend eternity being tortured I may as well enjoy life to the max, even at the expense of others. Because I’m already going to hell, so why not, right?
Religion is fucking toxic, man. I hurt a lot of people and made a lot of decisions I can’t recover from.
See also, Just World Fallacy
That Everyone the Police arrest is a bad person.
“The police are your friend”. Maybe they where right, as im white.
I’m so white that Casper the friendly ghost calls me a cracker. The thugs with badges are noones friends, except the owners. They never help any situation, and can literally only destroy more lives, and make every situation they come in contact with worse. This will always be true as long as they are profit motivated, which they are, at least in the US, and many other countries that copied us.
I thought that dogs were boys and cats were girls. No idea why.
Its funny, my niece made it to like 8 thinking that aunts were adults and uncles were kids. She had one young uncle, and me. Called me “Auntie Phanto.” I still haven’t lived it down.
Dogs = boys due to energetic, clumsy and loud.
Cats = girls due to classy, well-behaved and quiet.
I’d guess it would be a trend similar to saying girls play with dolls and boys play with action figures.
classy, well-behaved and quiet
Except when they decide not to be, of course. Or when they’re in heat.
my niece made it to like 8 thinking that aunts were adults and uncles were kids
This fits well with the accidental mild misandry in Catholic school when we learned about differences between men and women. One of the books we had to read said something like “men consistently outperform their female counterparts at making almost miraculously stupid decisions”
Troy is that you?
That prayers appease god to make things better.
it still blows my mind on a daily basis, the arrogance of humans to think they not only know what their creator-god wants but can sway “Him” with some fucking magic words
I mean… If I was playing like The Sims and one of the Sims was like “yo can I get a new bike?” I might be like sure bro. From their perspective I’m a god that exists outside time and space.
That’s not really how Christianity talks about its God though, usually. But also like the story of Job does seem like a kid and his friend fucking with their game.
The more complex computers get, the greater probability that we are actually living in a simulation!
I don’t think we could classify it as “false belief” since we can’t verify that statement.
Sure you can!
Get a coin, and flip it 100 times. Record each time it lands on heads/tails.
Now get a devout believer, and have the believer continuously say devout prayers petitioning God to make the coin read heads. Then, flip the coin 100 times, and record heads/tails.
Do statistical analysis to see whether there is a statistically significant difference between the control group and the prayer group. Pretty easy to verify if true.
That line of thinking led to the “docudrama” ‘What the bleep do we know?’ and the extended version “What the bleep, further down the rabbit hole.” Both of which can appear to be rational to most laymen, but are basically religious BS forced on a quantum physics foundation.
I can’t believe we’re still talking about that shitty propaganda! I remember anticipating an interesting documentary about quantum implications, then went to see it with some other physics nerds and being disgusted by the hamfisted mix of fundamentalist religion framed as “science”. What have they done to us? WHAT DID THEY DO TO US
Even a recent book advocating the efficacy of prayer in treating disease (Larry Dossey, Healing Words) is troubled by the fact that some diseases are more easily cured or mitigated than others. If prayer works, why can’t God cure cancer or grow back a severed limb?
– Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World (1995)
I’m completely on board with that, except for the “wish fulfillment”. I don’t know how it got twisted around that you could presume to tell God what to do or that he would - it seems so entirely inconsistent with anything else about religious beliefs
So we have this all powerful and all knowing supreme being , right? And he’s got a plan for the entire universe and all of time, right? But he’ll disrupt all of that to grant you a favor if you wish hard enough? Or you can blame him if something bad happens to you specifically, out of all the universe over all time? What hubris, what ego could make us think we’re in control and can use it for personal gain?
We can verify that prair has no effect and is at best a placebo.
That America was the greatest country in the world. And truly, not trying to be political, but honestly the propaganda in Midwest America was real. I didn’t know anything about other countries - except for we were better. We figured it out, we built the best system ever and everyone else wanted to be like us.
Now those are the people I see overseas who are about to get punched in a pub.
That midwest propaganda is still around, just chewed out a coworker who said they’d be fine with everyone in Ukraine dying so that the US can ‘have more money’ and ‘be independant’
Good. Americana think they’re so much different from everyone else and we’re literally not. I hold a form belief that everyone just wants to go to work, get off work, they’d rather get a pizza for dinner but they’re going to try to eat something better, are looking forward to their next day off, and when it comes they’re going to go to their target equivalent for a boring errands run. I think about 90% of the people are in this category, just average working people, and that makes me feel a little more connected with them.
Yes, many millenials have been mentally fucked up by being constantly told that they were special or they would grow up to be special or achieve to become special. Now they’re not special, they’re average, just like everyone else, but they can’t handle it or accept it. They grow depressed, of get a bloated ego or vote for Donald Trump et al.
I personally think it’s a liberating feeling to just be average. Make the best of your life, no pressure. I’ve made some lasting (positive) impressions on a handful of individuals and that gives me loads more satisfaction than being a world changer and loads less stress.
I know I failed out of my first year of college simply because all through school I was told I was so smart. So I got to college and was bitch slapped by what actual work looked like. Luckily I turned it around. However I had someone who was sort of my counter part who was in the same advanced classes as me, same thing happened and he works at a gas station in the middle of nowhere now. You want to think your kids are special and want to encourage them, but no.
We need to teach that special is earned, not a given.
Gen X had the same messaging. We were told we were all special, and then reality set in and we couldn’t do shit about anything. That’s literally the plot of Fight Club. Late stage capitalism is a bitch and we’ve been here for at least 15 if not 20 years.
How did they react to you calling them out?
They shut up luckily enough
Definitely heard this all the time and went with it blindly. I grew up in Ohio, now live on the other side of the planet with zero intention of ever living in the US again.
That our blood was blue, but turned red when exposed to air and light. All because a teacher told us so.
I heard this one from a teacher as well when I was very young! And it may well have been the same teacher telling us that blood was made of white blood cells and red blood cells, and I knew from my deep work in relevant fields (paints and crayons) that this combination did not result in blue.
We were told that the arteries carry oxygen rich blood, that was red because of a high iron oxide content, away from the heart and lungs to the extremities of the body. At that point capillaries get involved, and it’s really best not to worry too much here. Then the veins carry the oxygen depleted blood back to the heart and lungs to be reoxygenated, and that that blood appears blue through your skin. I think copper may have had something to do with the blue coloration, but that blood is also red in color, even if you managed to pull it directly into a vacuum tube. It just appears blue because of your skin or something.
Oxygenated blood is bright red, whereas deoxygenated blood is a darker red. And it looks blue because blue light doesn’t penetrate the skin as deeply as red light. The ones closer to the surface appear blue while deeper ones are purpleish due to the red light reflecting deeper.
I used to think that hair grew when it was watered - like a plant - and therefore showering was what allowed your hair to grow. No one ever told me that, I just assumed it to be true at a young age.
Volcanos being caused by overpopulation in hell.
I thought elevator shafts were the gateway to hell
That my parents never had parents. Sure, I had grandparents and saw them daily, but I somehow never realized that they were my dad’s parents.
I thought that women drank tea and men drank coffee, because that was what my mum and dad did.
Looking at my mum, dad and sisters drinking habits I can confirm this is true. Also, I’m NB and don’t drink either
Oddly, it’s also true of me and my wife. Maybe I was on to something?
My mom still drinks tea
How deep does the rabbit hole go?
Double rainbow deep
I don’t drink coffee, and rarely drink tea. Caffeine and I don’t really get along, and I think coffee tastes bitter.
My mother drinks coffee, and tea. My father drinks tea.
One morning I got up before my mother did, and decided to make her a pot of coffee because of Folgers commercials, and wanting to be nice. I think I was 7 at the time. I thought that one scoop of coffee grounds = one cup of coffee, and the coffee maker clearly said that it made 12 cups of coffee.
My mother wandered into the kitchen smelling fresh coffee and prematurely thanked me for making coffee for her. She added the cream and sugar that she always did, and took a sip. Her eyes shot wide open, and she sat the cup on the counter before asking me how much coffee grounds I had added to that pot.
Apparently she only used 1.5 scoops of grounds, so I accidentally made something akin to cappuccino, except not. All I know is that because she taught me how to make coffee properly, I can still make a good pot of coffee for all the coffee zombies in my life, and my ADD wakes me up earlier than anyone that drinks the stuff.
It’s an important skill to have, even if you don’t drink it. Actually, a coffee maker was one of the first things my parents made sure I had when I left home. Even though I didn’t drink coffee at the time, it’s common enough to be an important amenity.
Of course now I’m addicted and the one thing I no longer have is a drip coffeemaker. However I have a variety of k-cups you can use at any time, some cold brew in the fridge, or a couple choices I can make in my French press
I swear a social studies teacher told us that most rivers tend to flow north to south. Young impressionable child I was, I of course filed it away as a long-term core memory – right there next to PEMDAS, FOIL, and so on.
Then I mentioned it in college and got fucking embarrassed.
Similar, I had one declare rivers flow towards the equator. Which is slightly better than claiming they all flow N to S, but still inaccurate.
Rivers flow downhill. That’s it. In case anyone else needs to check their mental model of the world.
I was taught the same. I got extra credit for memorizing that the Nile River was a “notable exception”.
While I didn’t go to school in Texas, our school district used material developed there. It figures.
I believed that peas were the pupa of something similar to a butterfly or a moth. I refused to eat peas for years because I felt so bad eating little baby critters. I think my aunt might’ve “encouraged” me to think that.
They are suspiciously similar in color and conceptually to Metapod the Pokémon
Had to watch a YouTube video about Metapod to know what you were talking about. I don’t think Pokemon existed when I was a kid but Metapod isn’t a million miles away from what I imagined.
My mom told me that Dad went to work to make money, and I actually expected to see money making machines when I visited him at the office.
Plot twist: OPs father actually works at the United States Mint (but in an office job)
Unfortunately, he worked in a school district setting the routes busses take.
Oh dear. I hope for his sake that he understood polynomial expressions, otherwise he was constantly being berated for “his stupid decisions,” by parents that also didn’t have any data to back them up.
I imagined work as a building with a big neon sign out front that said “work”.
Removed by mod
This removed comment said “That I could have being a successful adult when I grow up, falling in love, making with my own family, and have a job.”
