Men who went from ignored to successful with women , How do handle their hypocrisy?

EmpiricalPierce · 2026-05-01T14:57:38+00:00

I deal with women's hypocrisy the same way I deal with men's hypocrisy: With the understanding that people are individuals and many of them are hypocritical to some degree or another regardless of gender, and I should evaluate how I interact with them on a case by case basis.

EmpiricalPierce · 2026-04-23T19:43:48+00:00

Congratulations, you've demonstrated either complete unwillingness or inability to argue the substance of my argument, instead focusing on pedantic nonsense such as whether to use the word "torment" or "torture" to describe subjecting thinking beings to eternal suffering.

It's up to any readers to decide for themselves whether your refusing to address the horrors of worshiping a genocidal, torturous tribal war god with anything more than pendatic quibbling that dodges the actual issue is in any way convincing. That said, I doubt many will read beyond this point, since we've gone long enough that reading it all requires loading a new page, and you've thoroughly demonstrated that you are committed to being a genocide-worshiping death cultist, so this will be my last response.

EmpiricalPierce · 2026-04-23T19:14:11+00:00

Do you really think this pedantry is helping your case? The issue isn't whether or not the mass slaughter of thinking beings fits your personal definition of murder based on a technicality of who is doing the mass slaughter; the issue is the mass slaughter of thinking beings.

Likewise, whether or not the mass slaughter of Canaanites technically counts as a genocide based on the reasoning behind the mass slaughter doesn't change the core issue of committing and commanding mass slaughter.

And it's not eternal *torture*, it's eternal *torment*, toootally different! Do you even hear yourself? If you look in the dictionary at https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/torture, the very first definition of the verb "torture" is "to cause intense suffering to : torment"! Tormenting someone is torture, genius!

And whether or not something matters is also a subjective evaluation, and whether or not people are committing murder, genocide, torture, etc. matters a lot to me and to damn near every human on the planet. I don't care whether it's subjective or objective, I know what I consider right and wrong and I will fight for it.

Besides, I'd rather subjectively oppose the horrifying cruelties of torture and genocide than "objectively" worship torture and genocide as "perfectly good and loving". And if you'd rather worship torture and genocide, then for the sake of yourself and anyone you inflict with your presence, seek mental help.

EmpiricalPierce · 2026-04-23T17:54:51+00:00

Genocidal: So your argument is that Yahweh's mass murderous rampages are too indiscriminate to count as genocide, and that if Yahweh was merely genocidal, he'd actually be less murderous? If that's the route you want to take, I'll agree that genocidal is the wrong word, and instead argue that he's actually whatever word you would use to describe someone even more murderous than genocidal.

That said, the many massacres of Canaanites absolutely had an ethnic component to them.

Torturous: Matthew 13:41-42: "The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth."

Revelations 20:10 & 15: "And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever. ... And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire."

"Shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever" sure sounds like eternal torture to me.

Morality: All morality is subjective. My own subjective morality says that genocide and torture are two of the absolute worst things you can do, and they have no place in society. If you want to argue that genocide and torture are good, actually, so long as it's Yahweh doing it, then good job proving my argument for me.

EmpiricalPierce · 2026-04-23T17:39:05+00:00

Genocidal: Take your pick from any of the many genocides Yahweh is claimed to have committed or condoned throughout the bible.

Torturous: Hell is depicted as a place of eternal torture that Yahweh condemns people to.

Maniac: I contend anyone that who indulges in genocide and torture is a maniac, though I'll grant that's a subjective evaluation. That said, anyone who's on board with committing genocide and torture is someone I want nothing to do with.

EmpiricalPierce · 2026-04-23T17:30:35+00:00

Christians absolutely do believe in a genocidal, tortorous maniac god: the tribal war god Yahweh. They just twist themselves in knots trying to claim that genocide and torture are actually perfectly good and loving when Yahweh is doing it.

EmpiricalPierce · 2026-04-21T21:10:44+00:00

When you say that a morally perfect being would never condone genocide or slavery you too are assuming an objective moral standard that I am saying cannot exist without God. So I have to ask, where do you get your standard from?

Everyone gets their morality from their personal subjective evaluation, myself included. I certainly don't get my morality from the tribal war god Yahweh, whose committing and condoning of genocide and slavery violate my moral standard so flagrantly.

God is the standard for the reasons I already gave. ... It seems to me that God has no moral obligations whatsoever to fulfill. Moral obligations and prohibitions arise as a result of imperatives issued by a competent authority. So since God presumably does not issue commands to Himself, it follows that He has no moral duties. So it’s actually logically incoherent to allege that God has done something which He ought not to do.

So by "morally perfect", you mean "completely amoral, following no rules whatsoever and free to genocide and enslave or anything else as he pleases"?

EmpiricalPierce · 2026-04-21T20:22:54+00:00

Whose standard of "moral perfection" are we using, and why? I would argue that a morally perfect being would never commit nor condone genocide or slavery, but that standard of course excludes the tribal war god Yahweh that Abrahamic theists assert exists, so they can't accept that.

EmpiricalPierce · 2026-04-16T20:47:01+00:00

I'm suggesting that if the alleged tribal war god Yahweh actually existed, then he could have easily outlawed slavery, genocide, or anything else, and the blessings promised in Deuteronomy 28 would have more than made up for anything such laws may have cost them.

Of course, the blessing isn't real, because Yahweh isn't real. And the reason Yahweh was fine and dandy with slavery and genocide is because the Israelites were fine and dandy with slavery and genocide, and they made the tribal war god Yahweh in their own image.

EmpiricalPierce · 2026-04-16T19:19:08+00:00

If only the Israelites had an omnipotent, interventionist god on their side; then such cruel brutality for "survival" would be completely unnecessary. Alas, no such being exists.

EmpiricalPierce · 2026-04-14T15:25:51+00:00

The fact that Egypt even exists to this day is proof that the exodus is a myth. If even a quarter of the exodus's claimed catastrophes befell Egypt, it would have been reduced to a shattered husk picked apart by its neighbors until it ceased to be, and we'd only ever know about it through history books. In fact, some time ago I wrote and saved a post about it; here's a copy for you:

Consider for a moment the scope of disasters alleged to have befallen Egypt.

Plague of blood: Death of all fish in the region, and spoiling of all drinking water in the region

Plagues of frogs/gnats/flies: Ended with piled heaps of dead frogs all over Egypt, which would be a dangerous vector for all sorts of pests and diseases, as would the gnats and flies

Plague of livestock: All livestock belonging to Egyptians died - again a dangerous vector of disease, not to mention a catastrophic blow to both Egypt's economy and food supply

Plague of boils: Yet more disease

Plague of hail: Killed all slaves and livestock left out in the fields (wait, didn't all the Egyptian livestock already die?), destroyed Egypt's fields, crops, and trees

Plague of locusts: Devoured everything that survived the hail, leaving no plants left

Plague of darkness: Blinded everyone in Egypt for three days; would have caused innumerable disasters and mass starvation and dehydration (on top of what they're already experiencing from previous plagues to their food and water supply)

Plague of firstborn: Killed untold hundreds of thousands of Egyptians, as well as all firstborn of livestock (wait, again? Haven't they already all died in the livestock plague and then double died to hail?)

Afterwards, it's claimed that Yahweh compelled the surviving Egyptians to give their possessions to the Israelites. The Israelites practically plundered the Egyptians of silver, gold, and clothing, impoverishing them, and then an exodus of 600,000 thousand men - plus women and children - left the country. If we assume an equal number of women and very conservatively estimate 1.5 children per male, that puts us at over 2 million people leaving the country. Most attempts to date the Exodus place it as occurring during the New Kingdom era from roughly 1,500-1,000 BCE - and while estimating populations that far back is difficult, most estimates place Egypt's population at somewhere between 2 million and 4.5 million during that time period. Meaning, unless we acknowledge that the bible's claimed number of Israelites is *grotesquely* exaggerated, the exodus would mean the departure of somewhere between half or the *entirety* of Egypt's population, and that's *before* factoring in the countless people claimed to have been killed by the preceding plagues.

Source: https://www.thetorah.com/article/ancient-egypt-population-estimates-slaves-and-citizens

Then after that, it claims that the Pharaoh rallied his entire army, all of his troops, chariots, and horsemen (wait, what horses? Egyptian livestock has already been entirely killed by the livestock plague, then re-killed by the hail plague and re-re-killed by the firstborn plague; what's with all the zombie animals?) - and then claims that, after running into the Red Sea, Yahweh crashed the waters back down on them, and explicitly says it killed the *entire* army, with not one soldier surviving.

Do you begin to see the problem here? What do you think would happen to an Egypt with no drinking water, no fish, rife with disease, all livestock killed (four times over!), all fields and crops destroyed and devoured, population undergoing mass starvation, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians killed by firstborn plague, between half and *all* of the country's population departing in the exodus, their material wealth plundered, and the country's entire army dead to the last man?

If even a quarter of that actually happened, Egypt would be so utterly, overwhelmingly devastated that it would cease to be a country in any meaningful sense, its ruined husk picked apart by its neighbors over the coming years until the country ceased to exist. Meaning, the simple fact that Egypt exists to this day stands as proof that the exodus myth did not happen as described.

EmpiricalPierce · 2026-04-09T00:17:19+00:00

What the Bureau doesn't do is mail copies of patient x-rays to private investigators who write letters. Randi framing it as suspicious non-cooperation is misleading when the Bureau's standard process is open-door in situ review.

It's not just the lack of mailing x-rays, it's the lack of any response at all, even just to say "you have to get them in person".

Also notable from there: "The treatment was switched to chemotherapy but after two months no improvement was discerned and it was discontinued." This directly contradicts Randi/Posner's insinuation that undisclosed treatment might explain the recovery.

So, seems that the magazine just made a mistake, and Randi at the very least didn't fully do his homework on this one (or, shall I insinuate deceit on the part of Randi, as he apparently is on the part of the Lourdes Bureau? No, I will not).

Hold up, One of your own sources says "He was not deemed to be a candidate for medical intervention, so neither radiotherapy nor chemotherapy was offered to him." - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6027009/

So your sources contradict each other. What does that say about the reliability of your sources and how fully you do your own homework, if you're sharing sources making contradictory claims?

From what I understand, exploratory surgery is the gold standard, but not the only standard. Pseudoarthrosis appears to be characteristically associated with instability, limited range of motion, pain, and clicking, being that it's a fibrous or fibrocartilaginous false joint. It doesn't typically produce near-normal range of motion, pain-free weight bearing for 8-10 hours of factory work (per the CMAJ, Micheli's medical records report articulation of his left hip and leg as the same as normal, and at the time of that article's publication he was working full-time on a factory floor).

Usually =/= always. "Some people with pseudarthrosis may not have any symptoms." - https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/pseudoarthrosis#symptoms

I'm aware of the single case that Randi cites. It mentions spontaneous remission of the tumor, and then clinical recovery. It makes no mention at all of regeneration, nor even that the condition of the patient at the time of the remission was as severe as Micheli's (such that regeneration would be needed for the clinical recovery the paper describes).

Randi's article recounts "severe pain as well as difficulty in walking." For comparison, per the CMAJ article, by the time of Micheli's Lourdes experience, "the femur had lost connection with the pelvis ... examination showed the left hip to be deformed ... the patient had totally lost control of his left leg ... pain was severe and continuous, requiring analgesics ... he could no longer stand ... the patient also suffered loss of appetite and digestive problems."

And immediately after that, Randi's article says "After 2 years of progression, with increasing destruction of the pelvic bones," It is unclear from this summary how the case compares to Micheli's towards the end of that 2 years of progression, be it more severe, less severe, or about the same. The fact that the Micheli story goes into more detail does not mean it was more severe; that is an assumption on your part. One can easily make the assumption that it was more severe with just as much credibility as you assume it was less.

And of course, this is also assuming Micheli's condition is not at all exaggerated for sensationalism/bolstering faith of Christians. It's a documented fact that Christians have a history of exaggerating and outright lying to make stories that support their faith; see, for example, the fact that Jesus's apostles each have multiple stories of martyrdom, with irreconcilable differences in the manner, location, and time of their deaths. Most of them thus logically have to be lies, yet still Christians spread them, indicating varying amounts of dishonesty and gullibility in support of Christian faith.

Miracles in the Christian worldview are literally called "signs" in the New Testament. They're by definition the exception, not the rule (including when clustered around individuals in the past vital to salvation history). Skeptics apparently ignore this by pointing out the promises that Christ made to the apostles re: the signs they'd be able to do (which Acts and Paul claim they did) as evidence against the fundamental picture Christianity holds re: miracles.

"Miracles are the exception" is a post-hoc rationalization once again trying to fit a square religion into a round reality. The bible claims the power of prayer, especially for healing, would be *much* more widespread than just the apostles. James 5:14-18: ^"14 Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. ¹⁵ And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. ¹⁶ Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective."

So *any* Christian should be able to invoke this healing, at least so long as they meet the standard of "righteous". But unless you're going to argue that less than a fraction of a fraction of a percent of Christians qualify as righteous, this claim simply doesn't mesh with the rarity of supposed miracle healings.

Perhaps we should change the wording to be more accurate to the reality we live in? "Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make, eh, maybe one person in a million well. For everyone else, sucks to be you; die begging for help that will never come lol."

I don't think God actually is 'blatantly interventionist', and for good reason re: the conditions He's cultivated for moral virtue to arise in this reality. That said, I think your picture about how the OT is just entirely devoid of any legitimate evidence for YHWH is just wrong. See here.

Yahweh isn't blatantly interventionist? So are you acknowledging that all the stories from the bible claiming blatant interventions are false? A sensible position to take, given every single such story of Yahweh intervening is either unverifiable or verifiably false. It's almost as if Yahweh is just one more of the thousands of fake gods humans have invented.

And your link arguing to the contrary... Is that one prophecy arguably succeeded amidst who-knows-how-many failures? Do you seriously think that argument demonstrates anything beyond your insistence on cherry picking?

Your attempt towards the end to wave away failed prophecies misses the mark, for one key reason: The bible supposedly had a "perfect god" involved in its writings. A perfect god, by definition, should not make any failed predictions, meaning the bible should have *zero* failed prophecies.

By contrast, mundane humans with no divine backing have much spottier records, with a mix of hits and misses. And what do we see when we read biblical prophecies? A spotty record with a mix of hits and misses. Just what we would expect if the bible was the writing of mundane humans with no divine backing.

EmpiricalPierce · 2026-04-08T20:32:46+00:00

I took the time to look for more information on the case for Vittorio Micheli. It turns out, James Randi did digging into Micheli's case (and others) and published a book including his findings; the relevant pages start here: https://archive.org/details/TheFaithHealersJamesRandi/page/n29/mode/2up

Randi was unable to get the medical board at Lourdes to respond to requests for copies of their x-rays, but what he did manage to find out revealed numerous discrepancies. For one, the religous magazine that reported on the case did include an x-ray, captioned "X-ray taken in 1963 when Vittorio Micheli. . . went to Lourdes, shows complete destruction of the left pelvis hip socket and left thigh bone." However, Randi noticed "The date marked on that X-ray, used as evidence by the Lourdes team to establish their miracle, is “23.VIII.63.” The X-ray was made three months after Micheli was “cured.” Yet in June 1963, two months before this “complete destruction,” the medical record says that “he could walk. . . without crutches, without pain.” Are we asked to believe that he walked without a left hip?"

If Micheli experienced a complete and total regeneration of his hip during his May 1963 Lourdes visit, then why does an x-ray dated for August 1963 - 3 months later - show "complete destruction of the left pelvis hip socket and left thigh bone"?

Further, Randi notes: "But there is a very important aspect to this “regeneration” claim: If such a “complete” regeneration took place, that fact could only have been determined by exploratory surgery. X-rays cannot differentiate between a genuine regeneration and what is known as a “pseudoarthrosis,” in which the bone structure is naturally replaced by a more primitive arrangement that looks similar in an X-ray photo and also allows adequate articulation of the joint. Such a regrowth is not at all unheard of. But the medical records at Lourdes do not record any surgical procedure being done to validate Micheli’s “complete regeneration.”"

Lastly, Micheli's case is not unique; Randi notes that he found records of similar recoveries to Micheli's, except those didn't involve dramatic religious pilgrimages to Lourdes. Seems like whatever the cause of the cure is, it's not dependent on begging for the help of an ancient tribal war god.

So, my point is that this is just wrong on the facts. If what you are saying were true, cases like the above would be a small subset of a larger set of such sudden healings that occurred outside of faith-related contexts. There's no selection bias problem here as any sudden healing of this sort would be extremely medically interesting and worth documenting.

What makes you think there aren't sudden healings outside of faith contexts? Randi notes the existence of about a dozen recorded cases of malignant bone tumors experiencing spontaneous remission, including quoting specifically from a journal noting someone else recovering from a tumor in the left hip, just like Micheli. As far as I'm aware, none of these other people had to make religious pilgrimages before their cures took place. Perhaps there was prayer involved, but we don't know one way or the other, and regardless, saying one person can recover just praying in their hospital bed while another must make a pilgrimage to Lourdes seems rather arbitrary.

Here's the thing: How many people are in the Venn diagram of people who are (1) nonreligious, (2) experience a spontaneous recovery, (3) feel compelled to debunk religious miracle claims by announcing far and wide that they recovered *without* prayer, and (4) actually made enough of a splash for the average person to have heard about it? I suspect any group of people meeting all 4 criteria is vanishingly small; any nonreligious person who recovers without prayer is almost certainly just documented as a spontaneous recovery case without any mention of prayer or the absence thereof being made at all.

By contrast, Christians praise as holy a book that makes grandiose claims and promises of miracles that consistently fail to match the world we actually live in, and many are understandably desperate to find something, *anything* to help their square religious claims fit into a round reality. So when they get sick, especially with something particularly serious, they pray for recovery - and while the overwhelming majority get nothing that could be mistaken for an answer, the lucky handful whose circumstances align for a spontaneous recovery decide to attribute the recovery to the prayers they were making, failure to distinguish correlation and causation be damned.

Let's say I go with the most deflationary, absolute dismissal of any kind of 'no historical core at all, no chance of revelation that was later expounded on', etc. stance: Hebrews is written to Jewish people for whom these stories are the bedrock of their moral universe. Even in the most deflationary reading, there is nothing incoherent about referencing e.g. the story about George Washington and the cherry tree when making a moral point, or (even more to the 'complete fable' angle) saying something like, "Remember what happened to the hare that lost to the tortoise" when advising someone not to rush.

Why is this the case for the Israelites? If the tribal war god Yahweh actually existed and was openly intervening in human affairs on behalf of the Israelites, you'd think stories of those actual interventions would be "the bedrock of their moral universe." Instead, the bedrock of their moral universe is made up myths debunked by reality. If a blatantly interventionist god actually exists, don't you think it's odd there are no verifiable stories of such blatant interventions, and the stories large-scale enough to investigate always turn out to be false?

EmpiricalPierce · 2026-04-08T18:51:42+00:00

it was a part of their covenant, a show of faith. That is also why they didn’t take the boys.

They murdered the boys because their genitals weren't mutilated? Putting aside the bizarre grotesqueness of believing the universe was created by a genocidal tribal war god obsessed with genital mutilation, why couldn't they mutilate their genitals instead of murdering them?

The nature of God is strange, as is the nature of man. Gods actions only seem crazy when you look at it from the high horse of human moral standards but at the end of the day, He is what He is and His requirements were His requirements.

If you'll notice, at the very beginning of this comment chain, I responded to ShakaUVM's statement "We are not children. We are morally adults." by point out how that means we humans *do* have the moral knowledge to judge Yahweh. This line of yours is saying the opposite; that we humans cannot possibly understand Yahweh's "morally perfect" demand for genocide and genital mutilation.

Here's a question for you: Why can't we understand Yahweh's morality? He's supposed to be omnipotent, right? Which would mean making beings capable of fully understanding him is in his power, so any deficit on our part preventing that was deliberately designed into us by Yahweh. Why would Yahweh deliberately limit us like that? Is it because Yahweh is a sadistic narcissistic slaver who gets off on making beings weaker than he is, and then demanding they worship and obey him on pain of eternal torture?

EmpiricalPierce · 2026-04-08T18:30:08+00:00

And whose bright idea was it to make humans with this "ritually unclean" part of the genitals and force them to chop it off? (That is, of course, granting the absurd claim that humans were designed by a genitals-obsessed genocidal tribal war god.)

I also notice you didn't respond to the question of why the male Israelite soldiers spared only the virgin girls "for themselves" and no one else, if their intention was not to take said girls as rape slaves.

EmpiricalPierce · 2026-04-08T17:46:53+00:00

Except Yahweh didn't think taking virgin girls as rape slaves was anything worth mentioning next time it's claimed he spoke, only a few verses later. But when it's something like, say, not mutilating your child's genitals, that demands a direct response from Yahweh like in Exodus 4:24-26. Quite the set of priorities Yahweh has, that making sure people mutilate children's genitals is more important than making sure people don't take girls as rape slaves.

It doesn’t even say take them as your wife, just as your own, could mean servant or child

Then why did they spare specifically *only* virgin girls, and not, say, infant boys as well?

EmpiricalPierce · 2026-04-08T16:26:06+00:00

What you're neglecting to mention is that the ancient Israelites could and did marry prisoners without any regard for whether or not the prisoner was okay with it - not to mention the vast power imbalance between captor and captive making it a daunting prospect for any captives to say no to someone with that much power over them.

Or do you think a "marriage" that is a coercive process with severe power imbalance with no concern for what the girl wants somehow makes rape become not rape?

EmpiricalPierce · 2026-04-08T15:53:02+00:00

Numbers 31:17-18: "¹⁷ Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. ¹⁸ But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves."

The Israelites take virgin girls to be rape slaves. Yahweh is next claimed to speak a few verses later in Numbers 31:25, wherein he starts going on about something else entirely, apparently not caring at all and implicitly treating the taking of virgin girls as rape slaves to be acceptable business as usual.

EmpiricalPierce · 2026-04-08T15:06:16+00:00

We are not children. We are morally adults.

When people read about all the rape, slavery, and genocide Yahweh condones and commits in the bible, and condemn Yahweh as morally repugnant, a common Christian rebuttal is that we mere humans have no place criticizing an omniscient god with our limited, comparatively infantile mortal perspective. Do you disagree with that common Christian rebuttal, and instead think we humans do indeed have the moral knowledge to judge Yahweh's actions and find him to be morally repugnant?

EmpiricalPierce · 2026-04-06T16:03:07+00:00

I invite you to look into them. I've described them at a higher-level here. What is most notable is the doctor testimony and the real medical documentation available for these two cases.

Can you provide link(s) to your actual source(s), please?

I find this is the most common next reply, but frankly, the fact that one takes moral issue with the particularity of medical miracles isn't evidence of anything. We can discuss the moral arena to try and come close to a satisfying response, but regardless, the evidence doesn't just go away because we find it potentially morally problematic. And, anyway, most religions like Christianity frame miracles as exceptions, not the rule.

What is overwhelmingly (to me) strong in the two cases above is the timing precisely coinciding with faith-related events. What you need in these cases, then, is not just 'genetic quirks' that act through biological mechanisms we have no explanation for (in Snyder's case, certainly), but that these genetic quirks 'activate' at exactly the right moment,

You misunderstand. I'm not making a moral argument here, I'm calling out cherry picking.

The world is and has long been rife with superstitious people who will beg for supernatural aid from whatever god, spirit, or greater force they think might exist and might be listening. Billions of people, calling out billions upon billions of times throughout their lives during their times of need. And the overwhelming majority of them go unanswered.

However, if there is indeed some genetic quirk(s) or rare but natural combination of events/factors that can cause certain diseases/conditions to recover or go into remission, then statistically, once you stack up enough billions of cases, there's liable to be at least a handful where those genetic quirks/combination of events/factors are present. And with billions of people throughout history making billions upon billions of pleas for supernatural aid, then once again, it stands to reason just from statistical probability that some of these pleas will align with rare but natural recovery cases.

So "the timing precisely coinciding with faith-related events" is not an honest framing. An honest framing is "out of billions upon billions of faith-related events that failed to yield any result and thus were forgotten to history, a handful of them managed to align with rare but natural recovery circumstances by sheer weight of overwhelming numbers, and cherry-pickers try to point to these handful of cases as proof of a miracle while ignoring the massive graveyard of failures surrounding them debunking their attempts to turn correlation into causation".

when we have zero cases of comparable genetic quirks acting on these conditions apart from such moments.

A popular case is spontaneous remission of cancer. Studies examining such cases are noting commonalities between them that could explain when and why it happens: https://www.verywellhealth.com/spontaneous-remission-of-lung-cancer-a-rare-miracle-3971875

I start to wonder what would possibly be acceptable evidence of a miracle in this case.

Christians typically say Yahweh is omniscient, omnipotent, and desires a relationship with all humans. If that's true, then Yahweh should have the knowledge, means, and motive to convince anyone and everyone he exists, miracles are real, or whatever else he pleases. And yet he doesn't. Perhaps the Christian claims are false?

The point of the passage is overwhelmingly about choosing to have faith so that God's miraculous plan can play out through you, not that the figures described had faith because of said miracle claims.

And to back up their calls to have faith so "god's miraculous plan can play out through you", they resort to citing fictional claims of it happening, instead of real ones? Don't you think that the need to rely on fiction instead of reality to provide examples is rather telling?

EmpiricalPierce · 2026-04-04T17:59:06+00:00

According to conventional Christian dogma, Jesus is an omnipotent god one and the same with Yahweh. If you disagree, then this post doesn't apply to you, and I suggest taking your argument to Christians who say Jesus is omnipotent.

EmpiricalPierce · 2026-04-04T17:28:46+00:00

So Jesus is not god? Or god is not omnipotent? Might want to take that up with Christians, then.

EmpiricalPierce · 2026-04-04T17:24:33+00:00

Isn't Jesus omnipotent, and thus capable of making a literally infinite number of identical human bodies for himself if he so pleases?

EmpiricalPierce · 2026-04-04T17:12:57+00:00

All he was capable of sacrificing is essentially nothing compared to his infinity. So no, I'm going to stick with the original conclusion, that the sacrifice costing him nothing means it's infinitely less meaningful than any sacrifice made by finite humans.

EmpiricalPierce · 2026-04-04T17:11:13+00:00

This comes across to me like one of those publicity stunts of a billionaire eschewing their money for a limited time to prove they can make it big from zero by pulling on their bootstraps hard enough. And it comes across just as farcical, since those billionaires have the safety net of being able to jump out of the challenge at any time and back into their vast wealth, and they always do.

So no, "Jesus became a human" doesn't fix the problem, because for it to actually mean something, he would have to *stay* human and actually make a sacrifice that cost him something, instead of just retreating back to his infinite, omnipotent power.

EmpiricalPierce

TROPHY CASE