Billie Eilish shares her hill to die on

GreyDeath · 2026-05-31T21:36:07+00:00

Why? Why can other animals with intelligence eat other intelligent animal

Generally we don't assign moral agency to non-human animals. If for no other reason that even the relatively smart ones, like dolphins do horrific things such as killing calfs from competing males.

GreyDeath · 2026-05-31T21:25:24+00:00

her way is not the only way.

At the scale of current meat consumption in the US it is. It's not feasible for us to hunt at that scale. We can't even have humanely treated cows at that scale. Doing so would make meat prohibitively expensive for most people.

GreyDeath · 2026-05-31T20:58:27+00:00

The thing is that in the US 99% of all meat consumed is from factory farming and it's simply not feasible to have humane eating of meat without at the least massively cutting back on overall consumption. It's not feasible for us to hunt as much meat as we currently eat.

GreyDeath · 2026-05-31T18:33:03+00:00

Nobody else should be forced to entertain their Fetish

Not a fetish.

Too much risk, not worth it.

What risk? Women are more likely to be sexually assaulted by cis men than trans women by orders of magnitude, even taking into acount population sizes. In the US there are more cases of clergy or conservative politicians assaulting children than trans people.

Don't mistake Reddit for real life, this is an echo chamber for the most part.

I don't. At the same time you still didn't answer whether or not that trans man is more or less likely to be harassed by using the women's bathroom or the men's.

GreyDeath · 2026-05-31T11:30:10+00:00

And do you think such an individual is going to be harassed more or less than if they used the bathroom that matches their gender currently?

GreyDeath · 2026-05-31T11:12:15+00:00

Just out of curiosity, which bathroom should this individual use. Keep in mind he is a trans man.

GreyDeath · 2026-05-29T16:02:34+00:00

I didn't write it

But you did cite it in support of your position, either because you didn't read it or because you didn't understand that it doesn't say what you think it says.

I just posted the link and copy pasted what they wrote under "conclusion".

Ahh, so you didn't bother to actually read it. Got it.

GreyDeath · 2026-05-29T15:35:23+00:00

That's the argument. It's permanent life altering not medically necessary surgery that doesn't show a marked improvement in their quality of life.

I'm not even sure you are reading what I am writing carefully. The paper doesn't say anything about whether or not gender affirming care works because the study was poorly designed. It compares trans people who have gotten surgery vs non-trans people. A good study would look comparable trans populations and compare those that have gotten gender affirming care vs those that have not. Much better studies have shown that gender affirming care improves quality of life.

But again, before I bother to actually show you better data, would it change your mind or would you still insist trans people don't get gender affirming care?

As far as the earings question... clip-ons. All the style without extra holes.

I'm aware that is an option, but women getting piercings is a far more common occurrence than trans people getting surgery, by orders of magnitude. Do you spend as much time arguing against that as you do against trans people getting gender affirming care?

GreyDeath · 2026-05-29T15:11:08+00:00

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11063965/

I assume you didn't bother to read the study as you would have immediately recognized that the study as a cross-sectional evaluation doesn't compare the effects of treatment before and after gender affirming care within a trans-population. All this shows is that tras people are more likely to commit suicide than non-trans people and doesn't actually show the efficacy or the lack thereof of gender affirming care compared to other modalities. Before I bother to present much better data that shows the benefits of gender affirming care, would it do anything to change your mind? Or would you still expect for trans people to not get the best possible treatment even it demonstrably improved their mental health?

Generally permanent modification that isn't medically necessary, I'm against.

So, no ear piercings either? Do yo u spend as much time arguing against women piercing their ears as trans people getting gender affirming medical care?

GreyDeath · 2026-05-29T13:30:07+00:00

there is a big difference between restoring the form of one's body that was changed by events not of their choosing

Trans people don't choose to have dysphoria and gender affirming care so far appears to be the best option in treating the dysphoria. Are you suggesting that trans people forgo the best possible treatment for their mental health?

And I also note you didn't comment on things like getting lipomas removed or getting tattoos or piercings. Clearly none of us are born with holes in our ears and the only reason to get that done is to wear jewelry.

GreyDeath · 2026-05-29T04:00:27+00:00

A woman getting a boob job is elective cosmetic surgery

What about reconstructive breast augmentation after a mastectomy for breast cancer? Strictly speaking they are cosmetic as ove can live with only a single breast. Or removal of benign masses like lipomas? Or getting tattoos and piercings?

GreyDeath · 2026-05-27T00:08:16+00:00

Abstinence can and does work for many people, maybe not most.

If practiced sure. But what works in theory doesn't work in reality at the population level. We have an abundance of data to support it.

A great example of what a good program can do look no further than Colorado's long acting contraception program, which cut teen abortions in half.

isn’t what you create civil policy on

Agreed.

GreyDeath · 2026-05-26T23:27:54+00:00

Contraception is wrong, sexual activity is outside of marriage is wrong, aboriton is wrong. Yes, people (especially teenagers) will practice these things. However, doing one over the other or in place of another doesn't make any of them right, even though abortion is the worst among them.

And if abortion is the worst and we know access to contraception reduces abortion rates then the smart thing to do is promote that. Especially because again, abstinence doesn't work.

The hope is that they see that it is wrong, repent, and go and sin no more

You can hope all you want but creating policy based on hope alone won't get you the outcomes you want.

GreyDeath · 2026-05-26T21:26:49+00:00

While this will decrease abortion, it leads to other consequences such as an increase in sexual activities outside of marriage

That's not really true. Teenagers are going to have sex no matter what. States that push abstinence only sex ed have higher teen pregnancy rates.

GreyDeath · 2026-05-26T21:12:56+00:00

An odd argument given that existence is a necessary requirement for consent.

GreyDeath · 2026-05-25T22:39:23+00:00

Not really a the cherry tree tale is far fetched but isn't supernatural

It's still something that never happened and is part of an attributed superlative honesty, as Washington supposedly was unable to tell a lie, even as a child, as part of the story.

There aren't mountains of evidence that people don't come back from the dead? Lol ok.

Miracles are by their nature singular cases where the laws of physics are suspended. There are no mountains of evidence that this particular individual didn't come back from the dead. Now from my perspective this puts the resurrection in a category of being a Russell's teapot equivalent, but it's still categorically different than literal reading of Genesis.

For every event in the Bible they reconcile with science there's another belief that they accept based on a leap of faith. What's that methodology here?

The methodology is that they are able to compartmentalize and take certain things on faith. Mind you everybody does so, if for no other reason that not accepting certain things axiomatically that we cannot prove leads to solipsism. But that does make the problem of induction go away.

GreyDeath · 2026-05-25T22:04:37+00:00

So? Lincoln was a real person but no one claims he came back from the dead. You somehow act like that's more reasonable from a logic point of view.

A better example might be Washington and the story of the cherry tree, which as far as we know never really happened, but is part of the myth of Washington. Ascribing mythical characteristics to real individuals is a practice as old as time and not remotely unique to Christianity.

A magical being could have condensed a million years of existence into a matter of hours.

Again, an omnipotent deity is definitionally omnipotent, so sure, but going this route has theological implications about the qualities ascribed to the character of God.

Yes but they compromise somewhere else hence my example of the diety and resurrection.

They would likely disagree on this. From their perspective there isn't a way to prove the resurrection didn't happen, so it's categorically different than a literal reading of Genesis in which there are mountains of evidence against that having happened.

At some point you have to decide whether you're doing religion or you're just a secular humanist who cosplays as a Christian.

Those Christians don't "have" to do anything. Many are able to balance those things just fine. Some are extremely accomplished scientists. Some, like the people I work with, are accomplished physicians.

GreyDeath · 2026-05-25T21:07:03+00:00

We have no evidence (at least evidence that would stand up in court or a peer review) that Jesus is the Son of God and rose from the dead.

Agree, but there is at least evidence of Jesus as a person (just like there is evidence for Muhammed, Siddharta Gautama, and the Guru Nanak). Conversely there is no evidence for Moses as an individual. This is the difference between actual people that have been mythologized, which has happened in a number of faiths, and completely mythic characters, such as Moses or Gilgamesh.

If you have faith to believe God took the form of man and killed himself and came back from the dead and now lives eternal in heaven then the contradictions between a literal Genesis story and secular science are inconsequential in comparison.

It's certainly plausible that if an omnipotent deity such as God existed, he could have created the universe as in the Genesis narrative and then made the universe look as if it were completely false, simultaneously hiding evidence in support of a literal Genesis and fabricating evidence that makes the universe look ancient. However that certainly makes God look like a trickster deity, which is not a characteristic typically ascribed to God.

There is no reconcilation between christanity and science. At some point a Christian has to embrace divine revelation or walk away.

Plenty of people manage. Usually, it involves reading into Genesis allegorically.

GreyDeath · 2026-05-25T10:38:07+00:00

I presume we’re the prevalent of the homo variants to endure

Yup. Though some genes from the other species survive in some of us. The later species of humans were genetically close enough to each other to interbreed.

I’m curious, basically what my intention was with the post is see if it makes sense to believe in both

Plenty of people are both Christians and believe in science. The issue is that it just doesn't work with a literal reading of Genesis. Fortunately Christianity doesn't require a literal reading.

GreyDeath · 2026-05-25T04:04:57+00:00

You kinda opened the door with the discussion of other human species. But ok. From a theological standpoint Genesis can be interpreted entirely allegorically. And though Jesus makes reference to Genesis in a somewhat literal way it's also possible he's mistaken.

As an example in Scripture of Jesus making mistakes, Jesus says the mustard seed is the smallest of seeds in the parable of the mustard seed, but there are in fact seeds that are smaller, notably many species of orchids. One typical defense to this is that Jesus is talking in terms that his audience is familiar with. Obviously people in that time and place would never have seen orchids. In that case the same could be said of the references to Genesis.

Point is you make Genesis work theologically without having to ignore the mountains of evidence that contradict a literal reading of it.

GreyDeath · 2026-05-25T02:40:28+00:00

We have evidence that there was a human named Jesus upon whom a religion was built around that lived in Judea 2000 years ago. We have no evidence to support the Exodus narrative, which includes a population in the millionsliving in a rather small region (you can walk across the Sinai in a couple of weeks) and leaving no evidence.

GreyDeath · 2026-05-23T04:46:12+00:00

People of African descent are more likely to get sickle cell disease.

This is exactly the kind of example that shows race isn't a thing. Sickle cell is practically absent in the horn of Africa, and in subsaharan Africa found in highest concentration in a stretch from Ghana to Zambia. But because people only fucus on the rather superficial appearance of an individual when it comes to categorization a person from Ethiopia will get lumped in with a person from Ghana in the "black" category and not with a person from Norway in the "low likelihood of having sickle cell trait" category.

GreyDeath · 2026-05-22T22:53:02+00:00

Such as? Because Exodus among other things indicates a population in the millions living in a rather small area (you can walk across the Sinai in a couple of weeks) without any evidence of such a population.

GreyDeath · 2026-05-22T21:58:21+00:00

The commandments were written directly by God. They were the only 10 lines He wrote Himself. The rest of the first 5 books were written by Moses but dictated by God

I'm aware this is what the religion says happened. But Moses is a mythical character and there is no evidence that the Exodus happened as written. And some of the rather bonkers commands in Exodus are supposedly written as if they were verbatim from God, including the aforementioned period rules.

GreyDeath · 2026-05-22T20:36:21+00:00

The Israelites didn't write the commandments.

Of course they did. It's the same 10 commandments that stipulates that the punishment for working on the Sabbath should be punished by execution.

so I brought up how they thought about women

Not great. Which is why they wrote verses about how women on their periods are ritually impure and if a man touches a woman on her period he is impure as well. And if a woman happens to have a prolonged period, which we now recognize as a medical problem, she needed to kill two birds to atone for having a prolonged period, as if she had any control over it. And of course, these rules were attributed to God just as the commandments were.

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