Like, you’re trying to find motivation to eat good, healthy food?

Even just saying “I don’t believe in free will” is an acknowledgement of the possibilities and your own decision making, lol.

No, it’s a choice I am making. But how does anyone choose anything? Not magic, not free will. Biology, chemistry, physics. My physical brain is reacting to the stimuli it has been exposed to.

Don’t get me wrong, I am accountable for my choices. But there is no evidence to suggest free will exists.

But that’s for a different day in a different thread. 👍

🤷 You make the same dangerous mistakes as christians do, accepting claims with no evidence because they comfort you. Be careful.

The Divine, the One, the Creator, God, they’re all terms for the same entity.

According to you. But that’s in your head, you can’t demonstrate that it exists at all.

And idk, you’ll have to tell me what part of Jesus’ message or life just wandering around and apparently healing the sick and feeding the needy

He did some of that. He was also wasteful, racist, and delusional.

when he was not preaching about righteousness and love, you think is problematic.

“Listen to me, salvation is only through me, bad things will happen if you do not submit to my dad.” That is not love, that is a threat. Ain’t no hate like christian “love”.

It’s not Jesus’ fault some evil hellbound cunts killed him and used his image to profit from it. 😔🤷‍♂️

Kind of. But he let himself get crucified because he thought he was a magic man. He was not a great person. His best teachings originated elsewhere. I’m not pretending he never did anything good (if we generously assume that any of the bible comes close to accurately depicting his life), but too many people give him too much credit.

What he said makes entire sense today, just think how easy it would be for Trump loving morons that fall for his sweet lies designed for stupid and evil people to realize his idol is a monster!

What I’m getting at is that Jesus was also problematic, though not as bad as Trump. Jesus confused and misled a lot of people, his bullshit continues to harm us to this day.

Anyone who has had some communication or given extra capacities from the Divine, directly or indirectly, is considered a prophet. Abraham came with “news” of God, breaking with his polytheist culturally enforced beliefs, not prophecy; Moses came with God’s rules, not prophecy; Solomon came with God given wisdom and put it into words for the world to better guided, not prophecy…

Is god not divine? The bible calls them prophets:

10 And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face

I’m not Christian, as you can see by criticism of Roman Catholicism and offshoots here.

But you do believe in god? I am antitheist. Christianity is what I was personally abused by, but it could happen if we treat any god, any baseless claim as fact. People just make shit up and it causes problems.

if God Himself wanted to make people he couldn’t control, because He decided so, how would He? He can just remake a universe of actual sims if he wanted to.

I don’t believe in free will. Our brains are physical things. But if a god was all-powerful, they could do anything. Like, he could make people very similar to how we are (to make this example easier to imagine), but actually interact with them directly instead of being vague and absent. He could show us why he is worth worshipping, or confirm his existence to anyone with functioning senses, which he could guarantee we all have if he’s all-powerful.

That is one of infinite examples, because all-powerful suggests he could do anything. Christians show a startling lack of imagination when they pretend that the world must be the way it is.

And hey, you’re not the only one who has had it hard because of Christians/so called religious people, I get it and I’m sorry. I’m not defending them here.

Thank you. Others have it worse than I do. Many are dead and the number continues to rise. I think too many people have internalized the idea that everyone is entitled to their beliefs. We should all try to align our beliefs as closely with reality as we can.

It doesn’t bother me much, since the meaning is clear. It reminds me of German. We might have more compound words as English continues evolving and we keep slapping words together.

On a similar note, I am surprised to see “over-rule”. I’m used to seeing “overrule”.

Good point. Maybe I’m illiterate, lol.

Almost like we have solutions to your problems and could help if you would let us. Almost like we don’t want anyone to be in the situation you are in.

Good luck with that.

Not Fox news, I hope? They are notorious for lying to their audience, they get away with it because they are an entertainment company.

How would you define “politics”? Everything is political, but especially things like healthcare and the economy.

I don’t think Biden was great, but I also think he is often scapegoated for problems that somebody else created.

My concern is that you may have been tricked into voting against your own best interests (and mine).

How do you define “communism”? I am in favor of a universal basic income, which would help in a situation like you are currently facing. But I am wary of using labels, as they mean different things to different people, which is why I’m curious about your definitions.

Where do you get your news?

There’s no way to force people to act right without also deleting free will, man

So god is not all-powerful?

Education is the way forward. People will act right when they realize it benefits everybody, when they realize we’re all going to die if we don’t improve our behavior.

I have been suicidal all my life. I was abused by my christian parents. Please stop defending death cults.

I was referring to your comment:

The Creator, the one Jesus prayed to

This is a good point:

They is used as well

But it’s not consistent. I read the sermon on the mount, Jesus consistently refers to god with masculine language. So Jesus’s god seems to be male, while other authors had other ideas.

This was one of my favorite parts:

15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves. 16 By their fruits you will know them.

Let’s apply that logic to Jesus himself. By the fruits of Jesus (his failed predictions and the horrors that christianity has wrought in his name), we know he was a false prophet. By every available measure, prophets do not exist. Anyone can try to predict the future, especially if they’re vague about it. Those who have chosen to “believe” in advance ignore the misses and exaggerate the hits.

It is wild how much sympathy I lost reading this comment after the original post. Still, I hope your situation improves, it sounds like torture.

As far as lashing out. I have no issues with the ultra wealthy or police. Neither of those groups have harmed me.

They are the reason things are getting worse for us. They are the reason nothing is affordable, nothing can be owned, healthcare is a scam, etc.

I was curious about his motivation, so I did some reading to find out.

In a video he made some time before the attack, he was very upset about someone stealing a USB stick from his mailbox. He’s former muslim, anti-islam, pro-Israel, and generally right wing, though he called himself a leftist. He admires Alex Jones and Elon Musk. He tried to get close to the AfD while atheist organizations distanced themselves from him due to his extreme views. He tried to explain his motive for the vehicle attack during the trial, but was rambling, incoherent, disconnected.

He was sentenced to life in prison, which seems reasonable to me.

Having lived in the US all my life, I think the public reaction to cattle poison spray would be “well, as long as I can’t taste it in the meat.”

I wish we all had more empathy for the life we share this planet with.

is there a way I could gain enlightenment and become detached from nutriment?

Maybe I’m misunderstanding. You should definitely consume nutrition or you will die.

You were probably being rhetorical, but it does make sense, in a way that should provoke revolution. Rich people are paying to make everything worse. The self-serving and shortsighted are happily helping them do it.

I wasn’t there, either. But have you read the bible? It was absolutely written by:

illiterate, intellectually-lazy, misogynistic dumbasses

First example I can think of: Snake told Eve to eat fruit. Eve relayed the info to Adam. Adam and Eve ate the fruit. Eve gets all the blame.

If an all-powerful god allowed this to happen, it’s because he wanted it to. But he punished his creations for being the way he created them.

The bible exists to normalize abuse.

Lack of integrity, inconsistent or non-existent values. They just do whatever works for them at the time. My parents are the same way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance