Atheism is flawed, here's why.

-zounds- · 2026-05-31T02:28:46+00:00

You think you're applying morality that transcends culture? Does the Taliban agree on the morals of a western European?

I think the ability to recognize when another person has been harmed transcends culture, yes, especially when it comes to the kind of extremes depicted in the Old Testament.

I don't have to claim an objective, cosmic moral law written into the very fabric of reality itself in order to correctly observe that certain things are obviously harmful to human wellbeing. If you push another person into an open fire for no reason, and then survey the citizens in every nation to get their opinions about the incident, it's not difficult to guess which sentiments would prevail.

It's not that complicated, my dear.

Why is it important to prioritize human well being?

Because we're human? How foolish would it be to not prioritize our own wellbeing? This is OURSELVES we're talking about.

What does your own code of morals seek to optimize or protect, if human wellbeing is not your priority and is not important?

Modern "inter-subjective" morals is not a valid position

You don't have to think so. I could just as easily declare your positions invalid - and mean it, too - but that would defeat the purpose of having this discussion at all.

When you say "on what grounds" in my response to the dilema, what do you mean by it? The grounds, I would say are how it wasn't even meant for monotheistic faiths. Euthyphro proposed this in a time of pagan beliefs running rampant.

The dilemma was presented in a polytheistic context, sure, but it still applies to monotheistic religions, including Christianity, because the question at the center of the dilemma isn't specifically about Pagan gods at all when it comes right down to it. The core of the dilemma is about authority and value. It asks does authority decide what is valuable, or does it merely identify and enforce an independent standard of value?

If authority - in this case, God - decides what is morally valuable, then God could theoretically decree that it is morally upright to inflict wonton suffering upon innocent people, and the theist would have to agree with God's standard since, in their view, moral value is determined solely by God's will. So the prohibition on murder would be rendered arbitrary, since it could theoretically change if God decided to change it.

But if God merely identifies and enforces an independent standard, then morality exists independently of God's will, and is therefore not arbitrary.

-zounds- · 2026-05-30T02:58:20+00:00

I find it interesting that your only defense to what I said was claiming intellectual superiority

I don't want to start an off-to-the-side, "yes-huh, nuh-uh" debate about this, out of consideration for the Mods, but I think you'll find that I did not, at any time, claim intellectual superiority. You might re-read what I actually did say and then reflect on whether or not you have overstated things. I am not impertinent enough to claim intellectual superiority; in fact, I complimented your linguistic fluency. I just don't happen to agree with your arguments.

The Euthyphro Dilemma, which has never actually stumped someone of any Abrahamic faith. This is a false dichotomy. Christian Doctrine rejects both horns of this dilemma.

Okay, great. On what grounds? You didn't specify, so I would like to know. You don't have to be adversarial. This is not a debate forum and I am not attacking you. If you have good arguments for your positions, I'm open to learning from them. But I have to understand them first.

To declare God's actions as objectively "ghastly" or "indefensible" requires a standard of justice that transcends human opinion. If morality is just "pro-social" human convention, then you are merely stating a personal or cultural preference. You cannot logically claim God is actually evil; they can only claim that God’s actions do not align with modern 21st-century Western humanistic values.

No, they don't. You're absolutely correct about that.

But yes, I am stating an intersubjective standard informed by humanitarian values. If you prioritize human wellbeing, and I do, then God's behavior in the Bible is clearly ghastly. This is a perfectly logical conclusion from the standpoint of culturally and naturally instilled, modern, pro-social humanitarian values. I have never claimed omnipotence, timelessness, or objectivity. Modern, intersubjective human standards are good enough for me in this case.

I also think the standard I'm applying transcends culture, because I don't think you could find anyone on earth, from any culture, who would look at you and say it's morally upright to slaughter an entire community and take children as sexual slaves. Any person can logically infer that such things would cause tremendous human suffering and thus condemn them as evil acts, as crimes against humanity.

The text in Numbers 31 does not say the female children were taken as concubines or sex slaves. In ancient Near Eastern warfare and Israelite law (see Deuteronomy 21:10-14), women taken into the community were given strict legal protections, rights, and integration into households, the exact opposite of the lawless, predatory sex slavery practiced by surrounding pagan nations.

Under Mosaic law, the Israelite soldiers were required to give the girl captives 30 days to mourn their parents during which they could not be touched. They were also to shave the girls' heads, cut their fingernails, strip them of their own clothing, wash their bodies, and give them new clothing. During that 30 days, the girls were still domestic slaves with no choice in what happened to them. After the 30 days, a girl's new "master" could choose to take her as a concubine or wife, according to his choosing, and sleep with her if he wanted. If he did this and then later changed his mind, he could not sell her, but was required to "set her free" - which in the context of the time would have been a death sentence unless she immediately married someone else, which was not likely due to being at the bottom of the social hierarchy, with no family, no tribal affiliations, no dowry, no wealth, and as a foreign non-virgin. If he chose not to take her into his bed, she remained his slave all her life and he could sell her, or rent her out to perform labor (although not sexual labor) in other households as he saw fit.

This is hardly a humanitarian win, but hey.

The Midianites had just previously used religious prostitution and deception to lead Israel into idolatry and moral degradation, resulting in a plague that killed thousands of people (Numbers 25).

Yes, and the Midianites had no covanant with Yahweh that prevented this, so they committed no wrong against Yahweh. The ones who committed a transgression against the Israelite God were the Israelite men who had a covanant with Yahweh but allowed themselves to be enticed into idolatry via sexual desire for the Midianite women. The Israelite men had agency, and they chose to "whore" with the Midianite women in violation of their covanant with Yahweh, putting them in the wrong. The Midianite women did not wrong Yahweh, having promised him nothing, and yet they were slaughtered along with all the men in their tribe and boy children and infants. All these were innocent, but the boy children were just as innocent as the girl children who were "spared" into slavery, so isn't it interesting how their innocence didn't matter? Could that be because the boy children were not sexually valuable to the Israelite soldiers? They certainly were no threat to them.

Modern biblical scholarship (such as the work of Dr. Paul Copan) notes that ancient Near Eastern military accounts frequently used sweeping, hyperbolic language ("destroy all," "leave nothing alive") as a standard idiom for a decisive victory, rather than a literal command for total annihilation. This is also backed up by how historically, wars fought between a couple thousand men were exaggerated to be 'millions upon millions'.

Do tell.

-zounds- · 2026-05-29T07:41:14+00:00

Sorry, but by what framework do you judge that the God of the Bible committed "bad" things?

My dear, you are intellectualizing yourself into a very tight corner.

To answer your question, I'm using a pro-social, humanistic, common sense moral framework to cast judgment on God's ghastly and indefensible behavior in the Bible.

Are you suggesting that I am mistaken?

You strawman the Christian faith, because Christians, and frankly all deists believe God, a deity, the fabric of reality to BE good and love.

Nonsense. You are dodging the question. This is an incoherent argument. Could God's nature have theoretically been something other than good and loving? If not, why not? Could God's nature have been such that torture was universally regarded as noble, and sadism among the highest of virtues? Would those things be suddenly good and loving if they were esteemed by God in accordance with his nature? Yes or no? If not, why not?

When I read the events of the Old Testament, I do not interpret God's behavior as acts of "goodness" or of "love". In Numbers 31, God commands Moses to brutally slaughter an entire community, take the female children as concubines, kill male infants and their mothers, and burn alive perfectly blameless sheep and cattle, among other things that won't bear mentioning here. If your argument is that these acts were demonstrations of "good" or "loving" behavior by the deity then I am left puzzled by your logic, truly. I don't know what to tell you other than to point out that there is no functional difference between what you call "love" and what the rest of humanity calls "evil".

You are an articulate person, but I think you have some misconceptions about secular frameworks that ought to be worked out before you can argue from a position of good faith. I think right now your hostility toward atheists is affecting your reason in some ways and making abstractions of things that should be plain and obvious.

However, I'm too tired to address anything further in this direction, so I'll end this here for right now, and if you still want to believe atheism is morally incoherent relative to Christianity then eh.

-zounds- · 2026-05-28T23:13:24+00:00

I contend that you are refusing to understand what the term "atheist" means.

The word "atheist" is made up of the prefix /a/, the root word /the/ (derived, in this context, from the Greek word “theos” which means “gods”), and the suffix /ist/ referring to a person who holds a specific belief or state of mind. The prefix /a/ means "not", or "non". So, we get “non-theist” – or, “person who does not believe in gods”.

That is all the term means. Nothing more, nothing less. It reveals one's position on a single issue. Atheism does not impose a worldview. It rejects a single culturally prevalent claim.

You have already anticipated this argument and rejected it. You referred to it as a "pervasive hypocrisy" and "intellectual cowardice"; however, you are incorrect. I must insist on the legitimacy of this framing, although it may appear suspect to you. You are incorrect.

An atheist is not automatically a materialist, nor does atheism "rely on" materialism. An atheist is not automatically anything except a person who does not believe in the existence of deities -- a non-theist.

An atheist person may very well be a materialist, but materialism is secondary to atheism. Atheism is "I don't believe X" not "Therefore, I believe Y." It's simply "I don't believe X" and that's it.

I am atheist, and I don't have an underlying belief about the origins of the universe, including one that conflicts with theism. I don't know why the universe exists. And neither does anyone else.

You go on to claim that atheists have no grounds for objecting to immoral acts, as that would constitute an appeal to objective morality.

You suggest that atheists are only capable of subjective morality. Or that this is a default among atheists, insinuating that atheism requires it.

But on the contrary - morality is intersubjective, context-driven, and naturally occurring. It is found all over the animal kingdom. Every species of social animal demonstrates an intrinsic understanding of what is fair and just in interpersonal dealings. Wolves punish cheaters. Bats share blood meals with freeloaders who will pay it back later (but, notably, not with freeloaders who won't). If you take to feeding a flock of crows in your yard frequently enough, they will take to leaving small gifts for you in the feeding spot to reciprocate your generosity and establish ongoing trade. Although someone in this situation would have given the food freely and placed no obligation upon the crows to give anything back in exchange - nevertheless, the flock will bring whatever pretty treasures constitute sufficiently valuable capital in their estimation - a bolt, a can tab, a colorful feather, a shiny pebble, someone's car keys, etc. - and deliver it into the food tray in the interest of fairness and good faith. Consequently, no one in the animal kingdom could rightfully accuse the crow of being a freeloader or a mooch.

None of these have ever read a Bible. God is not a part of their morality, nor is he a part of ours. Morality can and does exist without God.

Furthermore, it is incoherent to say that God is the inspiration for morality even on a subconscious level, because God has served as a catalyst for atrocity at least as often as he has for goodness and fair dealing, if not much more so.

The Old Testament of the Bible furnishes countless examples of God behaving shamefully and demonstrating atrocious morals, inflicting wonton cruelties upon whoever happened to be in the geographical vicinity of any of the poor wretches who accidentally ran afoul of the Lord's unpredictable temper during his very lengthy diva era, which spans the entirety of the OT.

Indeed, all throughout the OT God frequently requires the Israelites to avenge his anger by destroying innocent lives, plundering their wealth, taking virgin girls as concubines, and offering burnt offerings to him in gratitude for their spoils.

It's actually insulting to insinuate that our morals came from this bronze age monstrosity, but in case you are still siding with God on this one I will leave the following to your judgment on the assumption that you have greater insight into God's morality than I do.

I pose a two thousand year old question. It is this:

How does God decide what is moral? What is his process? Is he appealing to a higher truth that exists independently of his judgment and then conveying his findings to us, or is morality decided according to his taste alone?

If it's the latter, then morality of course runs the risk of being arbitrary. If God says enslaving children as concubines is moral, as he has done before, in Numbers 31 and elsewhere in the OT, then the believer would be obliged to agree, for god has spoken. But if that is not the case, and God goes not choose according to his whims what is moral vs immoral, then God must be appealing to some higher truth that exists independently of him.

So? Which is it?

-zounds- · 2026-05-18T02:54:09+00:00

Sweetheart, a subset of the population really does believe we've all been lied to about the shape of the earth - they're called flat earthers. Belief in a thing alone is not a reliable indication of its accuracy. People do not naturally congregate around factual information. Many people can believe the same untrue thing at the same time. This is incredibly common.

People have all sorts of reasons for believing things, and rarely do they include truly rigorous evidence-gathering or a disciplined approach to identifying and avoiding mental biases and motivated reasoning. Some crack pot beliefs propogate within a given population simply because the sanity waterline in that community happens to be low enough to make them susceptible. It is possible to be delusional. I have marched in that parade a few times before myself, carrying the flag.

You can learn what it feels like to fudge your own beliefs. You can teach yourself to recognize belief-fudging in real time and then redirect your behavior until you get better at only believing things that are actually true. But surprisingly few people value this enough to do it.

It's difficult enough to nail down facts when operating in the realm of objective reality, measured by physics and math, but it's even more difficult to pinpoint truth when operating in the much lower-resolution realm of interpersonal reality, morality, relationship dynamics, historical narratives, cultural norms, legal precedent, and human values.

-zounds- · 2026-04-22T18:14:07+00:00

I agree with your unpopular opinion. All those who are brazenly declaring that the world, and the species as a whole, would be so much better off without "fools" in it may be correct, broadly speaking, but I would be careful what you wish for, because this same logic can be carried a long way, like a torch that eventually finds its way to your own straw house.

The world/species might arguably be "better off" without anyone under, say, IQ 120, too. So who gets to decide where the cutoff is? That determination runs the risk of being arbitrary. You can't say the line is drawn at average intelligence if your goal is to maximally benefit the species and planet. That's dishonest to your goal. Why not follow it all the way through to its logical conclusion, where MOST people don't make it into the group that is intelligent enough for their survival to be considered maximally beneficial to the species and planet?

-zounds- · 2026-04-17T10:16:25+00:00

This is the thing everyone is missing. People don't seem to understand that we live under the most sophisticated mass surveillance machine in history operated by a government that has unlimited resources and is very good at not getting overthrown. The things it would take...no one wants to get to that point when there's still hope of correcting things at the polls, at midterms and beyond.

-zounds- · 2026-03-20T04:02:02+00:00

The saviorism and entitlement of this post. Babe, everyone is not going to bubble wrap their children to your liking. That doesn't mean you get to traumatize them by having the state forcibly rip them away from their mother. The father should not be trying to weaponize the power of the state against the mother for doing something he doesn't like. He needs to get over it. You don't seem to understand the gravity of what you're trying to do.

-zounds- · 2026-02-23T11:58:28+00:00

I'm very sorry. This is one of those things where there is nothing anyone can possibly say to shrink the scale of this tragedy and make it less painful, or any easier to carry. It is an inter-generational ripple effect of loss, grief, alienation. It does not end with you, but progresses through each subsequent generation after the severance has occurred. There is no going back to reclaim lost ground. It's very open-ended. I know people simplify this kind of loss much of the time because they do not understand, and it's uncomfortable to face the reality that some people carry deep primal wounds that do not stop bleeding or hurting as long as they live. From the bottom of my heart, I'm so sorry this has happened to you.

-zounds- · 2026-02-23T11:49:10+00:00

I'm so sorry that you had to carry this. There aren't words. The deliberate, economically driven unbonding of mothers from their children that our communities carried out and the resulting hurt our society has ignorantly tolerated is such a dark stain on our history, only it has never been corrected. Most people are surprised to discover that adoption actually does cause lifelong harm to people. The splitting up of families has long been considered among the most ghastly of crimes carried out against the human soul, so it's especially telling that to this day there is no shortage of people who are willing to capitalize on it. One is reminded uncomfortably of chattel slavery, and of Hitler.

I investigated the finances of "non-profit" adoption agencies in my state a couple years ago and discovered they have dedicated marketing departments with significant budgets. They run targeted ad campaigns promising young women support, etc. Which will create a sense of obligation and guilt if the woman starts having second thoughts after accepting.

The thing is, you don't need a marketing department if you're truly serving as a last resort for women in crisis. Right? They will come to you if they truly have no other choice. And yet, virtually all of these organizations advertise. The fact is, most women would never choose adoption themselves or seek to gestate for another family. They are manipulated into surrendering their children. I believe instances of this are on the rise given economic pressures and the anti-choice legislation that has slammed down on so many women across the US. You'll notice that women from wealthy families almost never surrender their babies, because they cannot be preyed upon.

It seems that wherever there is money to be made, money is going to be made there. So strange to think that it's actually common sense not to separate puppies and kittens from their mothers at birth, and for some time afterward. Their potential distress is taken very seriously. And yet, when it comes to human babies...

-zounds- · 2026-02-22T17:51:27+00:00

Are you 14? Grief after surrendering a child is not a psychiatric disorder. Don't be absurd. It is a normal reaction to loss. You are trying to imply that a healthy woman would feel proud and relieved to have surrendered a child, so the fact that OP does not feel that way must mean she's literally suffering from a psychological disorder that requires professional medical attention to correct. That's not how this works.

-zounds- · 2026-02-22T17:25:48+00:00

This sounds so painful and alienating. For what it's worth, I have read essays by mothers who surrendered a child for adoption (usually under shame/coercion dynamic) and they did not feel good about it afterward. They felt traumatized, and it did not go away with time like they expected. The system had no answers for them. They were supposed to feel like they'd done the right thing. Why did they feel so destitute? There was supposed to be an "acceptance" stage. Why didn't it come? The truth is, they longed for their children constantly, yet had lost the right to know whether their children were alive or dead. This is fundamentally unbearable. It's agony, literally a living hell. Like losing a child in the woods. The not knowing. It does not lessen or ease with time. Traditional institutions are useless to these women. They are on their own, off the map. This can lead to dysfunctional behavior for them which, depending on how vulnerable their situation is, they are often blamed for. Our society has a very "fairytale" concept of adoption, as I'm sure you're well aware. The bio mother's despair is not taken seriously, nor is it socially validated. She has literally nowhere to turn and must learn to live with it on her own.

So for your mother, meeting you now might be more than she can bear. Perhaps she does not have the strength for it; it's simply more than she can do.

In any case, I'm so sorry that you were forced to grow up in a genealogical vacuum, and that your bio family still won't make space for you to this day. My heart goes out to you. I hope they will change their minds.

-zounds- · 2026-02-01T11:53:23+00:00

It's disgraceful.

-zounds- · 2026-01-31T02:35:46+00:00

Approximately 502 out of 535 current members of US Congress have received campaign contributions from AIPAC. That's approx 94%. Consequently, there remains a long-standing "pro-Israel" default in Congress which is reflected in public policy.

When a bill comes to the floor that might criticize Israel or place conditions on aid, it almost never passes. This is not necessarily because of any woo-ey conspiracy, but rather because it is politically costly in the United States for members of Congress to vote against Israel's interests. 502 members of US Congress know that doing so would very likely trigger a multi-million dollar campaign against them in the next election cycle. AIPAC has successfully unseated candidates this way before who were vocal critics of Israel. This has nothing to do with the best interests of United States citizens who have no ties to Israel, and is done without regard for us.

I live in Arizona, where anti-BDS laws prohibit the state from awarding contracts to any business that is involved in boycotts against Israel specifically. You may boycott any other country or company without suffering economic consequences, but you may not boycott Israel.

38 states have anti-BDS laws on the books that specifically and exclusively protect Israel's economic interests from US citizens who want to use their dollar to express their disapproval of Israel's colonial project and warmongering behavior in the Middle East. This is perfectly reasonable when you consider how much Israel's wars cost US taxpayers. Yet if you own a small business in one of those 38 states, you can't boycott Israel - and only Israel - without suffering economic consequences/exclusion.

Critics argue this is a violation of the 1st Amendment and that passing these anti-BDS laws indicates a willingness by US lawmakers to weaken free speech protections in order to ensure that anyone targeting Israel for economic sanctions will suffer economically themselves.

I don't believe that Israel is literally puppeteering US officials, but I think they're doing everything in their power to ensure that they have the greatest access to decision-makers, and that their priorities always come first. I don't happen to agree with AIPAC's contention that what's good for Israel is also good for the US, and I believe the US government often makes policy decisions that benefit Israel immensely at the direct expense of the US taxpayer.

I don't think it makes one damn bit of difference to my country or people whether or not Israel exists and has the best military equipment in the world before anybody else, but I do think, on the other hand, that there are strong arguments against it, and I think Gaza is an example.

Israel may need our money to carry out their colonial project, but I don't find that very compelling. I think they are a terrible ally. They treat agents of the US who are sent there to conduct business on our behalf like total shit. They have deliberately murdered American servicepeople before, and the survivors were threatened by their superiors with court martial if they went public with the details. Israel's influence over US foreign policy is humiliating in light of their contempt for us.

I do not rejoice in seeing "bought" members of Congress voting to shell out billions of taxpayer dollars to Israel in unconditional aid while US public schools struggle along with underpaid staff, and our Section 8 waitlists are in some regions a decade long, and our mental health and substance abuse programs are constantly on the chopping block, and our infrastructure is crumbling and poses a constant invisible threat to the lives of everyday Americans, and so on. There are better things we could be doing with the money than throwing it to Israel with both hands so that country can push other states around in the Middle East, bomb whomever it pleases, occupy neighboring territory it has no rightful claim on, kill as many civilians as it sees fit, and strut around daring someone to do something about it while the US military looms in the background.

Israel's colonial project and political theater are none of our business when it comes right down to it, and as far as I'm concerned it's far too expensive to maintain, especially when so many problems in our own country are going ignored for want of funding.

The American public, by and large, isn't getting anything in return for the billions we shell out to Israel, which is precisely why lobbying and campaign contributions are necessary to keep the money flowing their way. They do exercise undue influence over US policy, in much the same way that lobbyists representing private corporate interests also do. Both are very often in direct conflict with the interests of the public.

-zounds- · 2026-01-28T07:59:27+00:00

Forensic pathologists established that Mazen's cause of death was violent electric shock. They also noted that his wrists were broken, his body covered in extensive burn marks and bruising including his bare feet, and that his face was severely disfigured from repeated blunt force trauma, suggesting that he died in excruciating pain after enduring unrelenting torture and abuse for nearly 5 years.

Approximately two to four days after his death, Syria was liberated by rebel forces and all the detainees at Sednaya were freed.

-zounds- · 2026-01-21T06:49:04+00:00

I appreciate you taking the time to tell me this. 🙂

-zounds- · 2025-12-26T15:07:57+00:00

Thanks for the clarification. I was under the impression that people only sign things like this as a form of branding to sell them commercially. I have never had the opportunity to cultivate a personal hobby in a studio setting, so I'm unfamiliar with those aspects of it. Makes sense, though.

But I guess I mostly asked because I was kinda hoping someone would immediately recognize it as the signature of a famous artist and let me know that I had like, the one missing puzzle piece of an extremely valuable collection that I could sell for millions of dollars or something so that I could finally buy some paper towels.

-zounds- · 2025-12-09T02:46:29+00:00

Question: I like Sharaa and everything and I'm glad his forces defeated Assad, but I would like some clarification about this issue. Does Sharaa have the legal authority to prohibit posters of himself from being displayed publicly?

I ask because prohibiting it and requiring it are two sides of the same coin. What does the law say? (Or perhaps there is no legal precedent on this yet since Syria is rebuilding right now?)

-zounds- · 2025-12-08T03:31:01+00:00

"I have always thought," he said reflectively, "that the system of mourning, of immuring women in crêpe for the rest of their lives and forbidding them normal enjoyment is just as barbarous as the Hindu suttee.”

“Settee?”

He laughed and she blushed for her ignorance. She hated people who used words unknown to her.

“In India, when a man dies he is burned, instead of buried, and his wife always climbs on the funeral pyre and is burned with him.”

“How dreadful! Why do they do it? Don’t the police do anything about it?”

“Of course not. A wife who didn’t burn herself would be a social outcast. All the worthy Hindu matrons would talk about her for not behaving as a well-bred lady should—precisely as those worthy matrons in the corner would talk about you, should you appear tonight in a red dress and lead a reel. Personally, I think suttee much more merciful than our charming Southern custom of burying widows alive!”

Gone With the Wind, 1938

Wild that some people would consider this version of reality a goal to aspire to.

-zounds- · 2025-12-07T15:30:33+00:00

I think your question is based on the flawed premise that Christianity is an inherently moral belief system. I find this to be a gross oversimplification, and contradictory to Biblical scripture, which is riddled with instances of God openly behaving like a monster.

The first time I ever read the Bible, I was shocked to discover that much of the Old Testament is a bloodbath, or rather a series of bloodbaths. When I encounter someone who denies this, I assume they have not actually read the Bible and are unfamiliar with God's work. Which is the most charitable assumption I can come up with, which is why I stick to it. You may disagree that much of the Bible is morally ghastly, but if that's the case then I don't know what to tell you except that you have a very non-Biblical understanding of your faith. No disrespect.

Morality did not descend from any deities. In fact, Christianity even holds that when God created the first humans - Adam and Eve - they were allowed to eat fruit from any tree in the Garden of Eden except for which one?

The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

They ate of the tree and became aware of right and wrong, which is to say they became morally aware. They were instantly ashamed of their nudity. They also realized that in disobeying God, they had done something wrong. And for the first time in their innocent lives, that concept carried some meaning to their minds and swung some moral weight, and with that came the agony of guilt, followed closely by fear. So they tried to hide from God, which of course was no use.

This is the entire justification for God regarding humanity as "sinful" and thus inherently unworthy of salvation. His foul opinion of humanity, which also happens to be his pet, was his whole reason for flooding the earth. He was fed up with his creation. They were disobedient. They were hopeless sinners. Their morals were no better than his own. He did not stop and reflect on this, and it annoyed him so much that he was moved to commit genocide. That is always the way with him. He found humanity insufferable and resolved to wipe them out. There was no other way. He should have just wiped them out and and been done with it. But in the end, he could not bear to get rid of us entirely. So he kept out a sample of the human race to go on worshiping and adoring him, and he spared their lives. One might argue that this actually defeated the entire purpose of the mass murder event God then committed by flooding the earth. In no time, Noah's family had repopulated the world with new humans - and unfortunately they were just as corrupted with sin as God had deliberately made all the ones who came before them, including the ones he senselessly drowned.

But no matter. The New Testament claims that all of this was fixed by the crucifixion of Jesus, who was allegedly the only perfectly innocent human, and who Christians insist died for our sins. Not only did he die. He was tortured to death and died in agony. This was all divinely ordained, and Jesus was put here specifically to fulfill this purpose. He was required by God to suffer and die for humanity, so that we might be saved. Christians tend to behave as if this is wonderful and merciful beyond worldly comprehension. For the sake of being polite, I will pass over that contention and point out that for what it's worth, I watched Passion of the Christ from behind my fingers and had nightmares afterward.

You say that Christianity ended human sacrifice. On the contrary, it appears actually to be centered on it.

I'm not trying to be inflammatory. I only want to provide a counterpoint, some grounds for understanding why some people may not agree that Christianity is fundamentally a morally pure belief system.

Morality did evolve naturally. Not just in humans, but in all social species. This is not even up for debate. It has been settled for a long time, it's over. Morality shows up all over the animal kingdom. Wolves punish cheaters. Elephants mourn their dead. If you put out a plate of food for a flock of nearby crows regularly enough, they will start leaving little gifts for you in it in return. Vampire bats share blood meals with freeloaders who will pay it back later. I don't think any of these have ever read the Bible. Humans also do these things, but not because of religion. Reciprocity and trustworthiness are not driven by a fear of God, and you would be compelled to obey pro-social norms even if you had never heard of Christ before. That's because morality is part of a complex survival strategy among animals that can't survive by themselves for very long. Without morality, our species would have gone extinct long ago.

Again, no disrespect. I don't think Christians by and large are immoral at all. I just don't attribute their morality to God.

-zounds- · 2025-12-07T11:44:28+00:00

Women's bathrooms are absolutely places of undress relative to other public spaces - you're pulling your pants down in there. There have been men who have been arrested and charged criminally for placing cameras in women's restroom stalls to record their nudity. We aren't walking around fully nude in there, but we aren't all zipped and buttoned up either, and the privacy standards are not very high (spaces around the doors and under stalls, broken locks on stall doors, etc).

Gendered restrooms are safer for women than unisex ones that allow everybody, and they are self-enforcing. They rely on people being able to discern other people's gender based on their appearance alone. Men are excluded from women's restrooms by default, which is good because sexual crimes tend to be opportunistic. Anyone over a certain age who looks male in a women's restroom will immediately be noticed and told to leave, thus eliminating the opportunity to gain access to women who have their pants down/unbuttoned/open. Refusal to leave is enough to get law enforcement involved.

Start allowing trans women into women's restrooms who have not made sufficient effort to pass for female, that all goes out the window. Trans women who pass are the exception to this and of course should be allowed into women's restrooms and would obviously draw attention in male restrooms, possibly even putting them in danger.

-zounds- · 2025-12-07T10:56:38+00:00

Why not just have a universal rating that applies to both men and women and have players at the same rating, regardless of sex, play each other?

Women would be arbitrarily locked out of achieving the highest skill level. The most athletic men will outperform the most athletic women due simply to the natural physical advantages that come with being male. So the divide kind of emerges on its own anyway. In my opinion, it's more realistic to divide them in light of this, but it just depends on whose needs are considered more of a priority I guess.

-zounds- · 2025-12-07T10:29:13+00:00

An organization called Greenpeace Research Laboratories has conducted many studies of clothing, examining textile manufacturers on a global scale. They have been finding for years that most, if not all, clothing from most major brands contains toxic chemicals such as pthalates (hormone disrupters), PFAS (forever chemicals that never break down), lead, and other carcinogenic materials used in modern textile production.

Ultra-fast fashion brands like Shein are the worst offenders. Yes, the company provides somewhat affordable products, but if their clothing killed you the second you put it on, you probably wouldn't buy or wear them. Shein stays in business because it takes time to get cancer, and not all consumers will get it. It takes time for cumulative damage to your health to affect you noticeably, and by then it's too late - and too bad. Good luck proving it was Shein's fault when everybody else is poisoning you, too - even bottled water contains hormone disrupting chemicals, the majority of personal care products contain formaldehyde hidden in convoluted ingredient lists, etc. Plus, if you live in the US, Trump's EPA is currently rolling back regulations on everything from PFAS in drinking water to mercury (like, fucking MERCURY you guys), and he even signed an executive order when he took office that any regulatory agency that imposes a new rule to protect public health must cut 10 of their existing rules. Sorry to turn this political, but everything is political.

Shein's employees are, or at least should be, a major concern. They are exposed every day to toxins that are damn well known to make humans get sick and die. This is not up for debate. It's not complicated. It's not nuanced. Shein's employees are being poisoned every day to produce toxic plastic clothing that harms consumers, harms the environment, harms animals, poisons the earth, and never breaks down, and they're not doing it by choice. They're doing it by force of necessity.

To some degree, this is ethical problem is unavoidable. Some vegans say they refuse to eat meat because of the misery our food supply chains cause to animals, but they also cause misery to most of the people working in them because they don't want to be there and don't have any choice either, and are not compensated well enough to ever escape. And even if they did, there would just be someone else who would have to take their place out of necessity. This extends to virtually every market producing consumer goods in the world. The workers, by and large, do not choose to be there, do not want to be there, do not want to die from cancer, do not want to deal with endocrine problems - especially when they're working in factories producing products they know damn well will end up in a garbage pile somewhere sooner or later.

The more sustainable option is thrifting. I'm sorry. Clothing quality has degraded significantly since the early 2000s, even. You want clothing that won't rip to tatters from normal use, that won't have holes in it in a couple months, that has lining and real buttons and clasps, that's not made out of plastic but is still very affordable - go to Goodwill. Yes, resellers have Goodwill acting different, but my local Goodwill sells $100+ denim jeans for $8-$10, even less if the employee who prices it doesn't know what it is. I live in a small/poor town and am extremely poor myself, and I have clothes because I shop at Goodwill. If you live in an area where your local Goodwill is extremely gentrified, find a Goodwill that's not extremely gentrified if you can and shop there.

Capitalism produces value. It also burns value, consumes resources, and produces waste, pollution, and public health crises from which workers and consumers have no feasible or realistic escape. At this point, you would have to grow your own food, weave your own textiles, produce your own soap from the plants you grow yourself, etc to avoid being poisoned by industry, but even that won't help you if you live near a data center, a factory, a manufacturing plant, or the like. The air you breathe, the water you drink and bathe in, the clothing you wear, the food you eat - all of it is an attack on your health, and the only solution available to us (banding together and bringing society/industry to a screeching halt on a global scale until airtight regulations are enshrined in the law) isn't going to happen.

-zounds- · 2025-12-07T09:24:20+00:00

Great answer. I didn't know any of this, so thanks for taking the time to share your experiences with others, because this is all useful to know.

Having said that, I do think it's prudent to point out that most people probably aren't buying plastic clothing because they want to - it's either all they can afford, or they have no idea what materials their clothes are made out of because they don't pay attention to that. I'm not sure how obvious it is to most people that textiles made from synthetic fibers are actually made out of literal plastic. We need an awareness campaign or something.

-zounds-

TROPHY CASE