this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
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- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
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If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
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The best explanation I've heard, as an agnostic, is this is our misperception of this life vs an eternal (infinite) afterlife.
Sure, bad people might live really fun lives for maybe 100 years while good people might suffer for the same. But then, for millions and millions and gazillions of millennia after that, both are punished or rewarded for how they chose to live those 100 years.
My friend's baby had a bunch of vaccinations the other day. Horrible day for the kid, unfun and stabby. But in a dozen years, will she remember it? Nope. But that day, that's all she could comprehend. Similarly, for this brief go around, yeah, what we can see and experience is all we can really comprehend. But the promise of at least Christianity, but I think many other religions, is that the next life is infinite and all that matters.
Conclusion: its use to keep the miserable good people placid while the bad guys have all the fun
If there's no God, then sure. If there is a God, there's a life of infinite paradise for those who deserve it.
That's the whole thing. The conclusion changes dramatically if there is or isn't a God.
At least as long as you believe in the right god. Because if you bet wrong, and the ownership rights to heaven and hell are not the Christian God's, but someone else's, you're fucked.
As an atheist. You create a straw man. You don't know what a god is looking for
Yeah, I was trying to joke about this a bit, but in all honesty, I just find this specific argument for belief to be basically Stockholm syndrome.
First things first, it's a really old argument. It's called Pascal's Wager, and the little joke I tried to make was about a criticism of it, called "argument from inconsistent revelations". This whole conversation has been done before. (This goes to OP about this, as well @MyBrainHurts@piefed.ca)
But, fundamentally, this whole deal with the "infinite value" of heaven and hell, is just a threat. It's your pimp saying "Obey me, and you get money and comfort. Don't, and I break all your bones and destroy you. Nothing else in your life matters, due to the absolute power I have over you".
There's nothing more to this argument. It's just taking a carrot-and-stick threat at face value.