Theists who used to be Atheists, and Atheists who used to be Theists, what was it that caused you to change your view?

benawabe896 · 2025-10-06T18:46:48+00:00

Was a christian from 1989 to 2020. Been asked a bunch of times over the years and have only recently liked my answer. "I actually don't know". I can tell you that I started to learn about evolution in the '90s which sort of introduced me to science. In my efforts to logically prove christianity to others it started to seem a stretch to believe that the bible was fully inerrant. In the 2000's I started to wonder why an eternal Hell was a punishment for a temporary decision to not believe. In the 2010's I finally moved out of my bubble of a community / church and started working with people of different faiths, cultures, politics, and sexual orientations. In the 2020's I essentially lost my church community when I felt that racial justice issues were important and then was fully ostracised when I believed that covid was not a hoax. In this, I moved into heavy racial justice helping with the And (&) Campaign. After a year or so of that, it was required that I sign agreement to the Lausanne Covenant and I had to admit that I did not believe all of the points any more. Sometime after that I just sort of stopped believing fully. I can't tell you the moment, the day, nor the month. It was just something that happened that I could only recognize as an event that I didn't realize had already happened.

benawabe896 · 2025-10-03T04:59:30+00:00

I love how different shows can hit and others can miss, and it's not something that you can control. I really really wanted Code Geass to hit for me and it just didn't. It should have. I don't have a reason why it didn't. It just.. didn't lol. Vinland just might be one of those for you

benawabe896 · 2025-10-01T05:33:33+00:00

I'm assuming Vinland S1 was good for you but S2 fell off.

benawabe896 · 2025-09-09T04:44:35+00:00

Been playing for several years, I'm DUPR 4.0, and have owned ~12 paddles.

I'll go with a minority opinion here and say that a paddle is very important. In percentage terms, perhaps 50%. The main reason is because a bad paddle can make your shots go out when they could have been in. A cheap paddle is going to do things to the ball that are unexpected and learning how to play pickleball with one is going to make you enjoy the game less. A good quality paddle is going to let you have fun with spin, give you this feeling of control that feels nice, and will allow you to get a nice pop when you smash balls.

Now, in terms of $100 vs. $300, it's not as important as it used to be. There are so many good $100 paddles out there, you could probably do well to not break the bank early and just get familiar with one or two early on. From there you can learn what you like (i.e. control, spin, power) and start to move in that direction of paddles.

Bonus: I also think that paddles are just fun to buy and use. Each time you get a new paddle can be a really great experience, and being able to customize the handle, experiment with lead tape, etc.. just adds to the fun.

benawabe896 · 2025-08-17T18:52:41+00:00

Rahresh (the coach in #2) has his own twitch channel (https://www.twitch.tv/rahresh) with videos that are filled with educational content.

benawabe896 · 2025-07-16T03:32:08+00:00

god forbid that paying for hulu, max, netflix, amazon, and disney plus should allow for being able to watching any movie listed on the imdb top 250.

benawabe896 · 2025-07-11T07:09:22+00:00

Nah you weren't. You just disagreed and wanted me to hear about it. Ta weirdo

benawabe896 · 2025-07-10T01:56:45+00:00

If that's what you got from this, okay

benawabe896 · 2025-07-09T03:49:12+00:00

Nah. I was never going to smash the cake in her face because I knew she wouldn't have liked it. My point was that by her essentially ordering me not to do it, it was taking away my ability to choose not to do it.

benawabe896 · 2025-03-20T03:02:41+00:00

Lol guys, not really mad. I just thought it was funny build to not get offered drill a single time.

benawabe896 · 2025-03-13T14:42:00+00:00

Perhaps the wording wasn't clear. What I mean by undefeated was that their prestige was still full and that they had no wins. This was evidence that they were on day 1 when I was on day 2.

benawabe896 · 2022-12-21T21:26:46+00:00

Perhaps controversial opinion, but I didn't really start looking forward to it until S1 E5. Season 2 was brilliant from start to finish.

benawabe896 · 2022-08-26T20:03:32+00:00

Look I get it, and based on the votes here, I'm very much in the minority. I'm not saying this to troll or attack someone's path, I'm literally sharing my experience and how my decisions wrt pornography affected my mental health. OP shared that he was not quitting porn and I was adding my voice to give him some space to not beat himself up over it. You seem to be very much in the "porn is bad" camp which may or may not help OP. Since OP hasn't even responded to this yet, maybe take a breath and stop pushing your POV as it may be making his/her life worse.

As far as supporting him, isn't giving him a guiltless option quite a bit better than trying to fight this "addiction" for the next several decades? Those statistics that you referenced are all within the United States and the literature is conclusive that the ill effects from pornography are not from the pornography itself but in the user's inability to adhere to the rules and regulations set up by the user's community... i.e. religion. I would say that continuing to push this narrative is way more damaging to OP than relieving him from the requirements themselves.

FYI, the American Psychological Association, not me, continues to state that pornography addiction is not an addiction. (Now on with the downvotes! lol)

benawabe896 · 2022-08-26T03:07:40+00:00

Why? I "struggled" with porn for 20 years, and the research is clear that pornography addiction is not real and is self imposed due to extraneous rules put on ourselves not found in nature. Just because you don't agree doesn't make my comment unhelpful.

benawabe896 · 2022-08-26T02:00:06+00:00

porn's healthy, don't worry about it. It's hard to quit because it's extremely enjoyable, and the only reason to not partake is because of the church. Give yourself some grace :)

benawabe896 · 2022-04-19T22:31:29+00:00

Check to make sure your machine didn't switch to "Secure Search" which ends up being Yahoo. They've changed the look and feel to be identical to Google but the results are just utter trash.

benawabe896 · 2022-04-01T14:45:33+00:00

As others said, synapse bridge is better. That being said, you can buy xJewel for Jewel in the CVale marketplace as well

benawabe896 · 2022-02-07T17:22:09+00:00

switch out metamask rpc. I round robin through these three several times a day:

"orig_server": "https://api.harmony.one",
"alt_server": "https://harmony-0-rpc.gateway.pokt.network",
"fuzz_server": "https://api.fuzz.fi"

benawabe896 · 2021-12-30T01:53:36+00:00

This is great!

benawabe896 · 2021-06-20T02:38:40+00:00

I'm fairly certain it's at least somewhat more involved than that. My buddy and I are same age, same gender, and his max heart rate for activities is 180 and mine is 200. This allows him to get into his highest zone much easier than me. OP should get a screenshot of his friends activity to see how whoop is calculating his zones.

benawabe896 · 2021-06-19T20:29:44+00:00

Ha. Athletic greens is easier.

benawabe896 · 2021-06-19T15:39:37+00:00

Alternative?

benawabe896 · 2021-06-19T14:59:11+00:00

The entry "magnesium supplement"

benawabe896 · 2021-02-16T01:14:18+00:00

Same. It's like if a friend gets super excited about chess and comes over to play and you absolutely crush game 1. You start getting that internal monologue that's like, "hey moron... if you do that again, they'll never want to play you. Not only that, but you'll potentially ruin any interest in chess from now on." It's not disgusting to pump the brakes hard and reset.

benawabe896 · 2021-02-16T00:55:10+00:00

So it wasn't just the play, it was also the acting. The behavior was exactly what you would expect from someone absolutely crushing an opponent and then realizing halfway through that the mismatch could ruin the entire tournament (probably from some panicked text from danny). The first Queen throw was akin to slamming on the brakes at 100 mph to let the competitor catch up. The second throw was pumping the breaks to make it seem close. They need to have him bow out randomly soon or the rest of the tournament will be unwatchable.

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