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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: August 7th, 2023

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  • The Tuesday/Monday example being arbitrary is my point, glad you pointed that out. This is the casual way that I “have faith” that there is no God. In my eyes your choice of deity to worship is just as arbitrary, there are thousands of religions. The fact that some of them promise “hell” to “sinners” is not a reason for me to operate as though these things are true. There are just as many if not more spiritual practices that have nothing to do with eternal damnation, why would I operate as if any of these are the reality when they’re all claiming to be The One Truth? I’m expected to pick yours just because you said so? That seems silly, and it’s also silly to call this thought process “faith” I think.

    Regarding the dinosaurs, we have fossil records, and that’s a bit different than “God is gonna getcha, better be a good boy, believe me bro,” but I do in fact believe that Jesus existed, because we have extensive historical context and documents talking about him. As stated elsewhere this is sufficient to generally consider a person to have existed. Most historians also claim as much, and I’m not a historian so I will defer to the experts. Whether or not he is the Messiah though, and has magic powers as stated in the bible, is a much more ridiculous claim. When you tell me a reality-bending zombie that is his own father exists, the burden of proof for that claim is much higher than “Did this person exist historically?” This is the point that FlyingSquid is making, which I agree with.


  • I think you’re operating on a different understanding of the words ‘faith’ and ‘belief’ here. Do you believe that Tuesday comes after Monday? Do you believe the Earth orbits the Sun, or that puppies are cute? Belief in something does not require faith, faith is a specific kind of belief. This is the kind of belief I have when talking about God.

    I do not need evidence to disprove the existence of God, much the same way that I do not need the same for Dragons, or Magic, or the Flat Earth. I am not claiming these things do not exist, I am simply not going to believe they do until there is some evidence of their existence. I would suspect you do not think that I am religious in my lack of belief in dragons.

    I also do not “believe” in science. That is a misunderstanding of science, which is simply a methodology. One cannot believe in it any more than they can math. It just is.






  • Yeah exactly! I’ve been around a lot of guns in my life, have shot several different types, come from a hunting family, yadda yadda. Honestly people in general shouldn’t be blanket trusted to be safe with weapons, because in my experience many of them just are not. I don’t think having guns is a problem in itself, we just need to make sure people are safe. Many serious self-defense experts advocate for running or removing yourself from potentially dangerous situations before exercising violence, and I think we can carry that philosophy forward into our lawmaking.

    Something I haven’t seen before that I’d like to see tried out would be some sort of required firearms training, but make it mandatory that a local certifier, a police or sheriff’s liaison or something, perform the training for free to citizens. I think if we had police doing it that might be a chance to foster some good will with the community, do some regular humanizing type stuff. No infringement of anyone’s rights, and I also get what I want in more safe gun owners.







  • Hi there. I did some reading on the deal and I’m not very happy they’re rolling out this package, I was hoping they would be more firm. However it looks like, should this deal go through, the equipment won’t be delivered for at least 2-3 years according to the AP. In that regard I do feel hopeful that Israel won’t be able to use these items against the people of Gaza, provided they can come to some sort of ceasefire.

    If we’re still examining this in the context of the election, I don’t believe this is enough cause for me to vote for Trump or another party. The Republicans want to nuke Gaza, so my perspective is that we have to do what we can to ensure the least harm possible comes to civilians, which means preventing them from leading our government. I don’t see another candidate who will be both able to defeat Trump and to single-handedly shift the US foreign policy apparatus, but I am all ears if that person does exist and I’ve just missed them somehow.