Godlessness and coffee

[sarahmichigan]

I've got a "Why I'm an atheist" post percolating, especially after some discussion with dionysus1999 yesterday, but it's not quite ready for posting.

So, in the meantime, do you like coffee? Why or why not?
How do you like it? Black? With cream or sugar?
Do you like it prepared a certain way, say on the stove in and old-fashioned percolator, or in a french press? What makes this method superior?
Do you have a favorite "froofy" drink when you go out to a coffee shop?
Which coffee shops make the best coffee and which are over-rated?
Have you tried to cut down on caffeine, and how successful were you?
Did you used to dislike coffee but acquired a taste for it?
What do you think about flavored coffees?

Tell me your thoughts on java, please!

Comments

[pstscrpt.livejournal.com]

many people use that word to mean different variants of agnosticism or "passive" atheism
While I don't really have a position on other religions, I specifically disbelieve in Judaism and its descendants, so I don't really like to call myself agnostic.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_earthshine_/]

Understood... It seems perfectly viable to start to describe one's belief by saying "that's definitely not it!". :)

I guess i would want to ask if there are other things you do believe, or if you more just have inclinations away from certain things that you definitely know you don't believe are it.

If the latter, i can see how agnostic wouldn't quite be right, since it's more specific than that, but other terms also wouldn't fit, since it's not necessarily any one thing, either.

[pstscrpt.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say I believe in pantheism, but I think there's a significant chance. Buddhism could be true, but I frankly don't care if it is because I'm not interested in its goals. I rather like the Quakers, but I don't actually think they're correct (seeing how they're Christian).

Nothing I've seen so far in my mythology class strikes me as likely, although it's very interesting from a historical and psychological perspective.

Basically, I'm fairly neutral as to whether there's *anything* (but not the hardline agnostic "I don't know and neither do you."), but I have no problem ruling out the possibilities I'm familiar with. I do think that if some overarching intelligence exists, it's probably either spread through the universe without much sense of identity (pantheism), or a rather limited tinkerer deity with an awful lot of time to try stuff out.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_earthshine_/]

I think our beliefs may overlap a lot. I tend to shy away from humanocentric (or even geocentric) ideas of God -- i can't buy into the idea that the Universal Force that creates All has any preference for us crazy monkeys over anything else. :)

I dig on a lot of the Buddhist and Quaker ideas i've run into, too, and actually am even quite down with Christ's actual message (tho not so much with the rest of the dogma that tends to come along with most flavors of Christianity)... but as seems to be the case with you, none of them seem to sync up with my actual spiritual beliefs, per se.

What's been rolling around in my head the past few years are some beliefs and ideas that sort of map many religions/philosophies into a common view of God. What's also fascinating me is that the workings of science and perhaps even the atheistic viewpoint might fold into it, too...

...and that's partially why i'm interested in the atheist viewpoint. That, and i have some very good friends who are atheists, and i am really interested to see if the ideas of many folks who i love and respect might somehow fit into the big picture of "spiritual" ideas.