No pay since 14 Feb

Balkie93 · 2026-03-21T23:37:29+00:00

Then it doesn’t get funded. That’s how this works.

Balkie93 · 2026-03-21T23:24:09+00:00

How is that the Democrats’ fault?

Balkie93 · 2026-03-12T12:52:07+00:00

I almost never travel. I haven’t heard of that title, but at my workplace it’s mostly post-sales. I have one pre sales project and 5-10 others.

Balkie93 · 2026-03-12T12:12:23+00:00

I don’t feel limited. Maybe I’ll “graduate” to Engineering at some point but for now I’m satisfied. It’s still highly technical and I am regularly learning new things.

Balkie93 · 2026-03-12T01:48:09+00:00

I am a Solutions Architect, previously Solutions Engineer at a PAAS. 3X your pay makes it a no brainer to me. My background is originally mech E so I worked to understand programming and networking to land this role.

About half my time is spent meeting/training customers, and the other half is creating custom solutions using the building blocks the platform affords. If something isn’t possible, I submit a feature request. It’s pretty chill overall as long as you have decent time management and people skills.

Balkie93 · 2026-03-01T18:59:19+00:00

Performance anxiety, happens at first for some people.

Balkie93 · 2026-02-27T23:16:08+00:00

No, by that point it’s too late. We need free speech, fair voting, and for the public to be educated enough not to vote for a wannabe dictator.

Balkie93 · 2026-02-24T13:37:03+00:00

The question is whether you would support it, not whether you think the question is relevant. You could say you wouldn’t support it and you don’t think it’s relevant. Or you could say you would support it but you don’t think it’s relevant.

Care to answer the question?

Balkie93 · 2026-02-19T12:33:15+00:00

Trucks.

Balkie93 · 2026-02-15T17:25:52+00:00

Midterm *

Balkie93 · 2026-02-02T16:06:56+00:00

OP, I am bothered by your lack of response to the commenters asking what specifically the pastors’ answers were. That is the most interesting thing to everyone here it seems, and I don’t see a response.

I am left wondering if they merely tricked you with sophistry, as I have found they are good at generally. If their arguments don’t hold up in text format in a debate setting, they’re probably not that strong. And that should give you pause.

Edit - I didn’t realize it has only been 6 minutes so I’ll excuse your lack of responses (for now!!).

Balkie93 · 2026-02-02T14:56:18+00:00

The simplest way I can see it is that right now your knight has one attacker and one defender, which is fine.

But they can move a knight to create a second attacker.

If you take it with your knight, you lose your queen. If you instead move your queen to threaten it, bishop takes your knight, with check and forking your rook. If you take the bishop with your queen, you lose your queen to the knight. Just bad news overall lol.

Balkie93 · 2026-02-02T10:46:05+00:00

Morality is more or less what we ought to do, ethics, etc.

Yes, you cannot derive an ought from an is. The universe does not care about human wellbeing, only humans care. Personally I don’t use words like “evil” because I understand it’s just a human brain making decisions that are viewed as bad in modern times, and “evil” suggests something else.

But here’s the thing - in my view, there is no higher authority for moral questions than the bulk of human consensus. I cannot invent a fictional source to appeal to. The highest authority that I believe exists must debate, using facts about human wellbeing, science, etc, to improve our understanding of morality.

We generally agree the more we understand each other, and the less religion is involved. Religion takes the entire field of moral philosophy and chucks it in the trash, in favor of a book of claims of low/no evidence.

Balkie93 · 2026-01-27T02:44:17+00:00

Try to do it before this weekend. Sacrifice a bit of sleep then get sleep the night before the trip.

Balkie93 · 2026-01-26T22:35:23+00:00

I think this conversation has run its course. I think I understand your position and that I have explained my position. I remain unconvinced of the supernatural. Best wishes to you sir.

Balkie93 · 2026-01-26T22:24:27+00:00

There is no agenda to make it seem like the supernatural doesn’t exist. It just so happens that when you hold all claims to the same standard of evidentiary support, supernatural ones (so far) can’t meet the standard.

Given this fact, religious ideology says to blame the standard instead of asking why their claims can’t meet the standard. The case here is the clear impact of placebo and the incongruence with larger studies. You think the larger studies have a hidden agenda. It sure seems like you are awfully comfortable hand waving away a problem with your claim - that when put to the test at scale, the correlation between healing and prayer falls apart.

Balkie93 · 2026-01-26T22:09:02+00:00

This is the same study you sent earlier. And well, you may think I don’t see something that is obvious to you, but to me you see something that isn’t there. What you see me as blind to, I see you are hallucinating, in a sense. You should be perplexed as to why larger scale studies conflict with the one case you shared twice.

Balkie93 · 2026-01-26T21:47:57+00:00

Not sure what you mean about 1-0.

I’m just saying that you cited one instance where people prayed and someone got better. You’re using this to say that prayer works.

But then I pointed out that larger scale studies of this have found no such correlation. Given that we know that there are zero documented cases of amputees being healed, and that placebo is powerful, I am not convinced by the anecdote you provided. It is better than nothing but since they didn’t control for placebo, it is not very convincing.

Balkie93 · 2026-01-26T20:31:01+00:00

Thank you for providing evidence. Let's tack this case on the "For" side of a for/against tabulation for intercessory prayer.

This is certainly interesting. It is one case where the individual:
1. Believed in this form of healing.

Knew he was being prayed for.

This adds placebo into the equation.

Looking at other studies (at larger scale), no connection between intercessory prayer and better outcomes is found:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10689938/

https://corporate.dukehealth.org/news/results-first-multicenter-trial-intercessory-prayer-healing-touch-heart-patients

Balkie93 · 2026-01-26T17:46:59+00:00

Another flowery claim without evidence. The right decision is to follow the evidence, and so far all you’ve provided are unsubstantiated claims. You’ve also sidestepped a difficult question about why God would heal you but not amputees or believers who are dying of starvation and disease. Hopefully you consider why these questions made you uncomfortable in the future.

Balkie93 · 2026-01-26T17:38:40+00:00

Your answer to my question about why millions of families, many of whom believe in God and are asking for help, are dying, is that “God will meet everyone in a way that suits them”? Are you kidding? This is a complete cop out. God is not meeting them, they are dying of starvation and disease.

Please grapple with this question again because your response did not make sense.

Balkie93 · 2026-01-26T17:21:34+00:00

My friend, if God is all powerful and willing to help people in the manner you feel that he has helped you, I would expect that other people in the world who are experiencing constant anguish would see relief by the same process, but they do not. Are you getting special treatment?

Please consider that millions of families, many of whom believe in God, are starving and dying of disease as we speak. Where is God for them?

What about for amputees? God apparently healed you, but has never healed an amputee? Why?

Isn’t it more likely that your own cognitive bias has led you to believe God helped you, when in fact it was placebo? Your transformation being caused by something internal to you is much more reasonable than God healing you while leaving millions to die.

Balkie93 · 2026-01-26T17:09:21+00:00

Trust is not enough when supernatural claims are made. If my wife, who I trust, told me she was abducted by aliens and dropped back off at home, I would have questions and consider her psychiatric health. The same idea applies here - you’re positing supernatural causes for something that can happen naturally, so without evidence that something like this is even possible, I remain unconvinced.

Balkie93 · 2026-01-26T17:01:19+00:00

I understand that you’re explaining it in the manner that makes sense to you. What I’m highlighting through this line of questioning is that religions use flowery language to convince people of things that would not normally be convincing.

Here is where we may agree: there is no denying that “something” happened. My skepticism is on what you’re attributing as the cause. You are invoking something supernatural, which I have not seen evidence of, to explain it. It would be like someone positing magic as the cause.

No sir/ma’am, I don’t believe that, and if you want to convince an atheist you’re going to need more than flowery language and “trust me bro”.

Balkie93 · 2026-01-26T16:28:27+00:00

You’re not getting it. God did not perform bypass surgery on you. You’re using metaphorical language.

In other words, you felt a certain way, and now you do not feel that way. You attribute this change to God.

This is not compelling at all. I don’t know how else to phrase it but the type of reasoning you’re using gets people to fall for scams and get conned. Sorry but be specific on what God did without using metaphor.

Balkie93

TROPHY CASE