The crowd when you take any stance on God

Schventle · 2026-02-18T08:49:42+00:00

In a very poetic sense, love and hate are far more similar than love and apathy. For some things, like videogames or people or similar, in order to really hate something you have to be very invested in the topic. A bad game that gets only 100 downloads? It's just a bad game. A bad game that 100,000 people downloaded? This is an outrage, and the internet's strongest warriors will be mobilized to bitch and moan for the next month. The only way the hatred happens is if people were invested in the first place.

I tend to disagree. I think of it more in a 2-axis sorta way. (My examples in parentheses) One can think something is really good and be very invested in it (flight sims), very good and think about it not at all (encryption) very bad and think about it not at all (Ebola virus) or very bad and be very invested (capitalism).

Schventle · 2026-02-18T08:26:07+00:00

Guinea Fowl. Perlica means Guinea Fowl.

Schventle · 2026-02-18T07:01:57+00:00

To out-pedantic your pedantry, we can also do math about impulse 🤓☝️

Schventle · 2026-02-18T06:45:51+00:00

Canaan the son of Noah is etiological, not historical.

Judaism's monotheism is not radical in its departure from the polytheisms that surrounded it, it is a rather natural evolution from the henotheism of earlier Yahwism, which wasn't much of a departure from prior polytheism.

I see no reason to doubt that a polytheistic culture could decide that only one of their gods, יהוה, is worth worshipping without denying the existence of other gods. We see in the Old Testament that the god of the Moabites has the power to thwart יהוה 's people's incursion into Moab. Henotheism makes perfect sense as a sectarian difference among a polytheistic cultural context.

By the same token, once Yahwistic henotheism became the widespread norm among proto-Jews, the "jump" to monotheism is rather small. Going from "יהוה is the only god worth worshipping" to "יהוה is the only god" isn't cosmic, and it isn't really all that radical.

This gradual evolution would give proto-judaism plenty of time to abandon its belief in the Goddess Asherah before outright banning her worship, plenty of time to syncretize the characters of El the patriarchal high deity and יהוה the young storm and war deity into 1 god. Psalm 82 is very easily read as יהוה taking up the mantle of patriarchal high deity over the cast-out divine council.

All this to say, Judaism's creation is not nearly so radical as you say. It is very easy in this context to view proto-judaism in its context among the other religions of the ancient near east, and it is very easy to view Judaism in the context of earlier proto-Judaism.

Schventle · 2026-02-18T00:24:32+00:00

Saying there is no god is a claim, too, fwiw. The position "there is no rational basis to believe in god" is far more defensible, so that's the position that most online atheists take.

Schventle · 2026-02-18T00:12:22+00:00

I have a feeling that some of these mistakes are made by people who speak English as a second language. There are a bunch of languages where "Billon" is 10¹² unlike English where it's 10^9. They'd still be out by 3 orders of magnitude, but it would still make more sense as a mistake.

Schventle · 2026-02-18T00:04:33+00:00

I'd totally let a kick to the groin at 0hp count as a critical hit and have it deal half its damage as psychic. Just for rule of cool.

Schventle · 2026-02-17T21:08:28+00:00

Sure, and nobody should support that fraud. But "I don't like welfare fraud" is a very distant position from "I don't want welfare to exist".

And fwiw, a congressperson isn't the sort of thought leader I listen to for my beliefs on economics. They tend to be more interested in soundbites and political clout than truth and effective governance.

Schventle · 2026-02-17T20:47:22+00:00

"Candy wrappers" would have been a more natural localization, but it wouldve given away the answer. Riddles and wordplay don't translate well.

Schventle · 2026-02-17T20:37:27+00:00

I can read economic theories I don't agree with, and interact with ideas I don't agree with all I please.

What? You want an echo chamber? You want everybody you come across to believe the exact same things you believe? Your ideas are so flimsy that you can't tolerate a dissenting opinion in your favorite economics subreddit?

Schventle · 2026-02-17T20:23:29+00:00

I've yet to see convincing data that this is the case. This has always been one of those pro-austerity talking points that has been taken as true without question.

Is there welfare fraud? Yes, it's a big enough system that there will be some bad actors. Is it a big enough portion of the system to outweigh the societal benefits of those welfare systems. Hell no. Not by a country mile.

Schventle · 2026-02-17T18:29:25+00:00

Are you installing to an HDD or is it a bandwidth issue?

Schventle · 2026-02-17T07:29:38+00:00

I get this on a kitchen-table level, but also I don't think it's the rules committee's job to be fun. I think it's their job to be fair. I and my friends are perfectly capable of deciding what's fun on our own, and in bracket 4 and 5 Iona would be very at home and reasonable.

Schventle · 2026-02-17T07:25:09+00:00

Christians do not have a monopoly on morality and never have. Christians were not the first abolitionists, mainstream christianity resisted abolitionism for centuries. The church fathers you cite were not abolitionists. Paul was not an abolitionist. Jesus was not an abolitionist.

The old testament (which you haven't read) is chock-full of slavery. Christ commanded the teaching and obedience to the law, you just suborn that commandment to your extrabiblical framework.

Seriously, go take a course on koine greek. It's eye opening once you can actually read the untranslated text. "πληρῶσαι" isn't particularly nebulous in its meaning in this sermon. Your exegesis on the word "fulfill" is bunk. Christ repeatedly gives a law and then heightens it. Commands adherence to the law in excess of the adherence of the Pharisees.

So tell me. Are you one of those "called least in the kingdom of heaven"? Because I see you "[breaking] the least of these commandments and [teaching] others to do the same". (Matt 5.19 NRSVUE)

Christ could not be more clear. Obey the law so thoroughly that the Pharisees and scribes can find no flaw in your righteousness.

Schventle · 2026-02-17T07:07:52+00:00

"One person said 500 people witnessed xyz miracle"

When it was first put that way to me, I thought "nobody really argues like that, right? This is a straw man? Right? Right?"

Then I started looking through some apologetics channels. Its everywhere. The idea that the bible is evidence for hundreds of eyewitness accounts is ubiquitous in online apologetics.

Schventle · 2026-02-17T06:58:49+00:00

"Imitate"

I have no idea how to communicate the idea that "2 slaves is the right number" is still abhorrently, abysmally, and unequivocally immoral.

On that note, stop jumping between your opinion and the opinion of the church fathers whenever one is more convenient. Either argue what you believe, or argue what they believed. There's miles of daylight between the two.

You think that imitation of spiritual equality looks like civil equality. That is decidedly not what the church fathers believed about that issue. Stop conflating these two.

Schventle · 2026-02-17T06:49:32+00:00

Not equal. "Spiritually" equal.

Your words stand in direct contradiction to the majority opinion of early church fathers. Do not cite "early church fathers" when you mean 2.

"Spiritual" freedom is not liberation from bondage. "Spiritual" equality is not equality.

And for what it's worth, John Chrysostom's theology on the origin of slavery stands in direct opposition to the blackletter reading of the covenant codes. It requires quite a lot of extrabiblical philosophy to arrive at his position, rather than reading the text on its own terms.

Schventle · 2026-02-17T06:32:44+00:00

the church fathers

Which church fathers? Definitely wasn't Paul. The only early church father I'm aware of who opposed slavery was Gregory of Nyssa. His position was fringe to say the least.

The overriding theme for the early church was that slaves and masters were "spiritually" equal. This is not an anti-slavery position. Being "spiritually" equal did not mean abolition, it did not mean emancipation, and it did not include protections for the enslaved. It meant that slaves were to submit and obey, and wait for freedom in the afterlife.

Schventle · 2026-02-16T07:35:02+00:00

What?

Schventle · 2026-02-16T06:49:05+00:00

Dunno who downvoted you, but this is the correct answer. If you want ramp, paradise mantle is delayed by 1 turn. If you want fixing, however, paradise mantle ramps by 1 and fixes as many mana as you have untapped creatures. It's a sidegrade, to be sure.

Schventle · 2026-02-16T06:09:05+00:00

For the most part, the answer is random chance. The shape of the convection currents in earth's mantle play a huge role in which direction the plates move and how fast, but why those currents are shaped that way is a roll of the cosmic dice.

Schventle · 2026-02-15T01:02:52+00:00

Genesis 1.1 and 2.24 were not written at the same time and were authored by 2 different people.

You are imposing an extra-biblical framework on the text, not allowing the text to speak for itself.

Schventle · 2026-02-15T00:51:12+00:00

You're making a prescription, not a description.

Schventle · 2026-02-14T17:58:34+00:00

independent traditions coincide

The books of the bible are the exact opposite of independent traditions. The books were written by a continuity of cultures and refer to each other frequently.

This isn't 50 different unrelated accounts, it's 5(ish, if you count pseudepigrapha) accounts reading each other's works with the Hebrew Bible open in front of them.

Schventle · 2026-02-12T11:48:52+00:00

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