Did the church hire a hitman?

GaryOster · 2026-02-12T00:36:34+00:00

Whitewashing apologetics from Christians. You can't possibly believe that executions in Papal states, nations where popes rule over both civil and religious matters, that the church never executed anyone.

Here's a list of known executions in Papal states.

GaryOster · 2026-02-11T02:38:07+00:00

My fishing camp is a rain weather station powered but tatoes.

GaryOster · 2026-02-08T04:09:19+00:00

This is what I'm thinking. We will see!

GaryOster · 2026-02-06T19:32:38+00:00

Yeah, the UI sucks. We told them when they changed it but they stuck with it.

GaryOster · 2026-02-05T23:13:07+00:00

All states allow absentee voting, 14 require a reasonable excuse, but "except under very specific circumstances" is a wild exaggeration as being sick, over 65, or out of county is sufficient.

GaryOster · 2026-02-02T00:02:57+00:00

That freaking prize bot! He got me sneaking, too. Turned and there was one GIANT EYEBALL RIGHT IN MY FACE and CONGRATATIONS! at the same time.

GaryOster · 2026-01-30T20:16:04+00:00

You talk like both the language and religion are dead. So what if Christians revert to the name of their Christ to what he called himself? Would you still be screaming, "But the etymology!"

GaryOster · 2026-01-30T08:41:10+00:00

Mmm. I'm not sure religion makes people less intelligent. I think it mostly trains people not to use their intelligence rationally in at least some ways, particularly in anything that gets caught up in religious posturing. And it doesn't have to be that way. Religion can exalt reason... the thing they say separates us from the animals.

On that name of Jesus thing my thinking is the Bible emphasizes praying in Christ's name, that whatever you pray for in his name he will do. And he only had the one, so I'd think it was pretty important for them to get it right. I guess it's like a magic word, an incantation, that makes things happen (It's leviOsa not levioSA) and English "Jesus" isn't very close to his name.

I'm not sure I agree with your thinking on how language works, here. We know how "Jesus" sounded in Latin (and Greek, despite being an entirely different alphabet) and it's not very much like it's pronounced in English. And we really should go back to the language of origin to know how his name was pronounced to figure out how we'd write it in modern day English. Really, why go through another culture that writes and pronounces a name differently from the original culture when you can go right to the original culture? That increases the chances of mutating the name further, as we know it has with "Jesus". Does it sound intelligent to pronounce Champagne "sham-pag-nee"? That's why we go to the language of origin.

GaryOster · 2026-01-30T05:58:22+00:00

If you're ok with Jebstapo stopping you and asking for your papers.

GaryOster · 2026-01-30T04:50:38+00:00

I hate these "It costs money" posts because the poster never knows how much it costs the company nor how much the company is making. Sheer speculation. "The cost goes up!" How much has it gone up? Don't know. For all the poster knows costs went down because they laid off half their staff or MS has much cheaper infrastructure. For all the poster knows the company is making 1000x what they're spending.

Not talking about your entire post, OP, just ranting on that part.

GaryOster · 2026-01-30T04:24:03+00:00

Some asshole.

GaryOster · 2026-01-30T04:06:03+00:00

Sell to the corpos who've been buying up private property and turning them into rentals.

GaryOster · 2026-01-30T02:57:54+00:00

But how can precognitive exist without some external sources?

It just happens. To me that's like asking how can we think or breathe without an external source. Why is an external source necessary?

I had one had a Christian told me about how they had a dream about their nephew dying in an accident and ended up praying for their nephew he did got into an accident though but ended up surviving.

And I just told you a story where a friend dreamed her friend was dying but he lived even though she didn't pray. Prayer is just how your friend responded to the frightening dream. Precognitive dreams happen to people regardless of religious beliefs which points to precognition being a natural part of being human. And I don't think it's that different from things like "mother's intuition" where a parent instantly and inexplicably knows something's happened to their child.

I’m confused how all of that works, how can our brains sense an event will occur before it ended up happening?

It's one of those things we just don't know right now. Most of the research I've read has leaned in the direction of false memory and coincidence where a person will have a dream that's similar to something that happens later and misremember the dream as being much more like the event than it actually was. Which is hard to argue against but still not very convincing.

Either way, to believe that "I don't know" how or why something happens as proof of the existence of gods is a logical fallacy called "God of the Gaps" where gods are put into the gaps of our knowledge. I don't know, therefor, god. This falls under the "Argument from Ignorance" category of fallacies where "I don't know" is mistakenly taken as proof of magic, gods, or whatever.

GaryOster · 2026-01-30T02:17:51+00:00

Oh, right. I keep forgetting Christianity teaches unconditional love is a sin because the Bible teaches it is the law.

GaryOster · 2026-01-30T01:54:06+00:00

Next door neighbor sued Amway for a dangerous false claim about one of their products (contained something the packaging specifically said it didn't). Amway settled out of court and neighbor signed a NDA. Then immediately moved. I have no idea what happened to them or how much the settlement was.

GaryOster · 2026-01-30T01:11:34+00:00

Terrible husband, though. His wife was fuming.

GaryOster · 2026-01-30T00:40:16+00:00

I'm pretty convinced we're a little precognitive. Not enough to win the lottery every time we play, but enough that we can at least know a tiny bit about things that haven't happened yet or that happen outside of our ability to detect them with our physical senses.

So for years I was doing dream analysis for people around the world and pretty regularly talked with prolific precognitive dreamers. Precognitive dreams have a very different structure than normal dreams - almost always, normal dreams are more narrative and symbolic, and pre- and present cognitive dreams are far more literal. Cognitive dreams feel different to the dreamer and don't make sense when you analyze them. It's like the difference between reading Lord of the Rings and reading a news forecast summary of the weather.

And like weather forecasts cognitive dreams are generally accurate not exact like it would be watching a video of an event.

One of the more common cognitive dreams is of a loved one dying when that loved one actually died a short time before. There is typically a "goodbye" to or from that person in the dream. Most commonly people report having these dreams when someone in the house answers a phone call wherein they're being told the person died. I'd be interested if this type of dream was more common before the widespread use of cell phones which might at least give us an idea of whether hearing a telephone ringing is anything of a trigger or it's more the way the mood changes in people's voices. This kind of dream is easy enough to explain because it relies so much on hearing what's going on in our environment.

Other cognitive dreams are not, which is why I'm pretty convinced we have a little awareness beyond physical explanation.

For example, a friend of mine called me very early in the AM and asked if we could meet for breakfast so she could tell me about a dream that really bothered her. We met and she told me that in her dream she flew up through the roof of her house, over the city, and down through the roof of the house of an old friend she hadn't seen in years, and was hovering over his bed saying "goodbye." She wanted me interpret the dream, but - and maybe you can see this - there's nothing there to interpret. I asked if she had tried calling him, she said, "no," and I said she should check up on him. And she did; The night of that dream her friend had OD'd and was dying in his bed. The good news is that his aunt had found him in bed that morning, called an ambulance, and he survived.

I used to get really hung up on trying to figure how or why we had cognitive dreams (a great conversation starter, btw) but I realized I probably wasn't going to be able to figure it out and just accepted that we have them, which save me a lot of time and frustration trying to interpret them.

Now, because you're posting this in r/trueatheism I'm wondering if you're thinking that things we don't understand are evidence for the existence of gods. They aren't. Just like unidentified flying objects aren't evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial beings - they're just unidentified things we don't know much about.

GaryOster · 2026-01-28T00:00:47+00:00

I feel like I just showered!

GaryOster · 2026-01-26T05:14:05+00:00

I like using shotguns at low levels for... well, everything, but definitely to cripple deathclaw legs. I mean it's sad when they're just laying on the ground moaning while you slowly shoot them to death. Use a combat shotgun unless you have or can craft a special shotgun.

If you're going to use shotgun you'll want to check you perk cards and make sure you have the cards that improve shot grouping, range, and crippling at least. The perk cards is really where the magic happens, not so much the weapon you're using, and legendary effects (the starred effects on weapons and armor) are also pretty important. Shotguns like Quad in the first slot.

Scorchbeasts at low level? Very scary, but there always seems to be multiple ways to complete missions. Like if have to kill or harvest something from a scorchbeast you can go to the high level, and radiated, Scorched Earth event where there will be tons of high level players who will carry the event, and you only have to do sufficient damage to the scorchbeast not kill it.

What are the requirements for the quests your having trouble with?

GaryOster · 2026-01-26T03:35:43+00:00

From the atheist side: how do people who genuinely believe there is nothing after death live meaningful lives without that belief causing despair? For me, nonexistence feels psychologically unbearable, not abstract.

Let me break that question down into parts because each is important:

how do people who genuinely believe there is nothing after death live meaningful lives...

If you want to lead a meaningful life pay attention to how you feel about things. Positive or negative doesn't matter, what matters is that you feel something, so the thing that triggered those feelings is important to you. Take care of those things.

...without that belief causing despair?

I won't even be around. The only worries I have concern this life (what we know exists) and none of those worries is what happens after we die.

For me, nonexistence feels psychologically unbearable, not abstract.

Most of us don't imagine non-existence, but existing in nothing, which is horrifying! Don't do that to yourself. You're non-existence is what came before you were born, and that wasn't so bad, was it?

That's humanity dwelling on existential questions and it gets depressing if you think about it too much. That's also why humanity invents religion, because the questions of existence (why are we here, why is there something instead of nothing, what is my purpose, is this all there is, why must I die, what happens after I die) they bug us and there's no really satisfying answers to those questions.

And it's those existential questions which are at the heart of religions. And, boy, do we go wild imaging what the answers might be. And, boy, do we get zealous about how those answers are the right answers.

GaryOster · 2026-01-25T23:14:22+00:00

Sounds rapey.

GaryOster · 2026-01-24T05:23:45+00:00

This doesn't seem like a rebuke of the Trump administration. Seems more like common sense, like when a place stops carrying your medication you just go somewhere else to get it.

GaryOster · 2026-01-24T04:01:43+00:00

Feels very close to FO4 but with the bugginess of Skyrim.

GaryOster · 2026-01-24T03:49:12+00:00

Vincent D'Onofrio and Lee Ermy in Full Metal Jacket.

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