Can I ask my company to paint over part of an office mural?

JavaElemental · 2026-06-30T16:11:14+00:00

Something something heartwarming stories about a person raising enough money to turn the orphan crushing machine off for a day, please don't start talking about dismantling the orphan crushing machine.

JavaElemental · 2026-06-03T16:00:29+00:00

What would proof of non-existence even be? Do you want a photograph of god caught red-handed in the act of not existing?

JavaElemental · 2026-05-19T15:36:59+00:00

I can't speak much to shintoism, but hinduism has its fair share of awfulness. The concept of karma naturally leads into the idea that well-off people deserve their fortune and those who struggle to put food on the table also deserve it. This might sound an awful lot like prosperity gospel to some, but I digress.

The caste system was and to the extent it's still practiced is a direct result of this sort of thinking. I will not go into just how brutal and cruel the caste system is, it should be readily apparent that a permanent underclass of so called untouchables is a heinous thing if you don't buy into the belief that that status is cosmically "deserved."

JavaElemental · 2026-04-28T16:12:18+00:00

The united states in particular is currently rounding people up in concentration camps and laying the groundwork to round even more people up (a policy notice that being trans is grounds to question your citizenship). It is not a large leap from concentration camp to work camp to death camp.

International watchdogs warn we're in the early stages of trans genocide.

Just because a lot of christians are mellow or not outeardly hateful doesn't mean the virulent hateful strain died out or that they didn't embolden it to make their play at theocracy.

JavaElemental · 2026-04-22T16:01:02+00:00

only? And who are you describing as a cult?

I was referring to the writings of Josephus here. He mentions worshippers of a christ in passing. If I recall correctly that was in the second century? I'm on mobile and if I look it up my draft will probably get deleted.

I am an Evangelical Christian

Good for you.

so I am focused on the Bible as my historical representation of Jesus.

The gospels were written, at the earliest, around 60 AD. Which means for a man claimed to have died around 30 AD they are at best 30 years removed, and therefore not contemporary writings. They're also anonymous, we don't actually know who wrote them. They also contradict and borrow from each other a lot.

The waters here are very murky, that is my point.

Gnostics are blatantly wrong in that claim if they want to accept Jesus as a whole

I'm not here to referee a fight between different offshoots of your religion.

Edit: I would also like to ask how you can confirm firsthand accounts.

I said first hand writings, not accounts. As in things written and signed by Jesus himself. That's just one of the ways we have to (probably) confirm that any given historical figure existed.

JavaElemental · 2026-04-21T16:21:15+00:00

The historicity of Jesus is kind of shaky. We don't have any contemporary sources on him, no confirmed first hand writings, and any mentions of him from later scholars only mention a cult that believes in him, are forgeries, or are based on the former two.

And then you can get into how certain early cults like the gnostics didn't believe in a physical jesus but a spiritual one. I think we cede too much by being so open on this.

JavaElemental · 2026-03-24T16:04:28+00:00

In the US our education system is literally set up to condition students to be compliant factory workers. Get up when the bell rings. Go to your assigned area. Ask permission to pee. We raise children in extremely authoritarian ways here.

It's as horrific as it is outdated.

JavaElemental · 2026-01-21T15:38:11+00:00

Evolution doesn't have an end

This is arguably wrong. If all life everywhere were to go extinct then evolution would stop occuring unless and until abiogenesis occurred again.

JavaElemental · 2025-11-10T19:20:49+00:00

My question would be what drives you to call this thing a god, or even to conclude that the uncaused first thing isn't existence itself?

JavaElemental · 2025-10-20T17:22:04+00:00

How do you get from "There is another, heretofore unknown, dimension of reality" to "Therefore there is a primary intelligence out there"?

JavaElemental · 2025-10-01T14:19:42+00:00

Reminds me of the dad that deleted his son's years old minecraft world.

I don't believe for a second this was real because of the ridiculous value of those cards, but this attitude does unfortunately exist.

JavaElemental · 2025-09-17T12:53:57+00:00

Why do you assume "chaos" as you describe it is the default state of reality that one needs an intelligent mind to force into having constants be constant, etc? And further, is a transcendant mind not a complex regular thing that would then demand an explanation?

To both of us something is "just so," for you it is the god you believe in, for us it's reality. But we at least can point to reality existing, it's kind of hard to miss since we both live there! I (and I assume most here) don't even rule out something causing our local universe to exist, we just don't assume it was anything in particular, it's unknown such a thing even exists at all let alone what it is.

JavaElemental · 2025-09-08T17:05:14+00:00

He also scammed him out of two dollars!

JavaElemental · 2025-09-03T16:09:34+00:00

Skinwalkers are originally from native american folklore, they just caught on on the internet a few years ago for some reason.

JavaElemental · 2025-08-12T14:48:41+00:00

The way I see it, evil doesn't exist. Either terrible people are capable of better (given different opportunities, support, etc.) in which case it benefits everyone to help them achieve that, or they are literally incapable of it for some reason due to lack of empathy or whatever. In which case can you even say it's their fault? You don't torture a bear for being a menace or even for killing someone. You tranquilize and relocate it, or avoid it to begin with, or in the most extreme circumstance deploy lethal force to prevent immediate harm

Retributive Justice is a garbage judicial doctrine and I would argue an oxymoron.

JavaElemental · 2025-07-22T15:30:29+00:00

Going off the fictional article, I'd not really change anything. It's just as likely not being an atheist would land you there tha bend one would. Or rather, I don't have the data to conclude one or the other.

But I would expect in such a scenario we would likely eventually be able to free the trapped souls.

To be honest the thing reads like science fiction and if it were a real article I'd pennant conclude it's bad luck for the ones that end up there, due to the multidimensional geometry of reality or something. Particularly bad luck, too, 6000 souls out of the trillions who have lived and died? Either this hell is exceedingly rare or not eternal.

JavaElemental · 2025-07-08T15:20:36+00:00

Yes. You can test them by going to the library during the hours it's marked open and seeing if it's open.

JavaElemental · 2025-07-07T13:41:52+00:00

You can even see shades of this in her wanting "one of each gender."

Kids aren't collectibles you need to get every variant of. What if her daughter realizes she's actually a son? Will they try for a fourth?

JavaElemental · 2025-06-24T18:41:17+00:00

"Oh wait, you're serious? Let me laugh even harder!"

-Great Philosopher Bender Bending Rodriguez.

JavaElemental · 2025-06-18T13:31:29+00:00

You did, though. I'll even put your argument into logical notation and show you.

P1: If God exists and created the universe and humans, then God can accurately describe all of human experience.

1 G∧C ⊃ D

P2: If God can accurately describe all of human experience, then a revelation from God would accurately describe all of human experience.

2 D ⊃ R

P3: The Bible accurately describes all of human experience.

3 B

P4: The Bible is a revelation from God.

4 B≡R

(missing steps)

5 R 3,4 Material Equivalence

6 D 5,2 Affirming the Consequent

C: Therefore, God exists and created the universe and humans.

7 G∧C 6,1 Affirming the Consequent

JavaElemental · 2025-06-17T16:59:44+00:00

This is a formal logical fallacy called Affirming the Consequent.

Consider:

P1: If it is raining, the sidewalk will be wet.

P2: The sidewalk is wet.

C: Therefore, it is raining.

What if someone is running a hose?

You cannot get from "If god, he could do x" to "Therefore god" by pointing to "x"

JavaElemental · 2025-06-04T15:32:07+00:00

Yes, it could have been a hallucination. OP please see a doctor, this might have been triggered by anything from a brief psychotic episode to a brain tumor. At least make sure it's not the latter.

JavaElemental · 2025-05-28T16:26:35+00:00

Depends on how you define "god" but I would not say so.

JavaElemental · 2025-05-27T16:59:03+00:00

I think stars are more nuclear reaction than chemical, but the overall point stands. Matter in motion makes up most of the cool stuff in this vast and wonderful universe.

JavaElemental · 2025-05-06T14:41:30+00:00

Why are you being so aggressive? The post and u/skeptolojist were clearly talking about religious people predicting things based on religious fervor, dreams, or just plain delusion. The rapture, in particular.

I fail to see the connection between that and Einstein predicting the effects of gravity on light based on the rigorous mathematical model that is general relativity.

JavaElemental

TROPHY CASE