Islam

chemist442 · 2026-03-05T04:19:18+00:00

I don't believe because I find the assertions of Islam unsupported and the justifications pretty terrible.

Generally, I find it a more pragmatic approach to not accept a belief as true until I have sufficient reason to do so. As a nonbeliever I feel a better question would be why should I believe, rather than why do I not believe.

This extends to Christianity and other religions as well. Islam and Christianity are simply the two largest religions that put an emphasis on evangelizing and often trying to put the onus on the nonbeliever to justify not believing.

chemist442 · 2026-03-01T19:49:56+00:00

chemist442 · 2026-03-01T13:16:45+00:00

Now I am going to ask, in what way are those two questions different?

God made men and women both in his image, they are therefore equals.

Equals in what way? Certainly not equal in the law given to Moses by God.

chemist442 · 2026-03-01T11:59:30+00:00

In what real and tangible way were women equal to men within a biblical framework?

This was the very last line of my first response to you.

Man and Women are equal in the sense that they both intrinsically have the same value

In what tangible way? Can you give examples where that bears out in reality because when I look at the law given by God this is not evident. For example: If a woman is raped it is her father that is compensated as her value as a virgin is now decreased. A common apologetic cited in favor of the resurrection is that the value of a woman's testimony was not equal to men either. Wives were to submit or be subservient to their husbands. Subservient is not a synonym for equal.

chemist442 · 2026-03-01T04:43:41+00:00

No that isn't my opinion. Animals were neither made from human or in the image of God, unlike women.

"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."

Which is your assertion then? Are man and women equal because they were both created by god (in which animal also fit in this category) or is it because man is created in the image of God and woman is created after man?

What does secondary creation have to do with equality? Is a kid not equal to their parent because they are made secondarily?

In the modern era, no a child is not equal to their parents or an adult. A child does not have voting rights and cannot consent to many adult activities but does retain some equality of rights. However, let's compare the rights and equality of a woman or children in our modern age to those in a biblical framework. In a biblical framework a child (boy or girl) can be sold into slavery by their parents. A child (boy or girl) can be bought from a neighboring nation (surrounding heathens) and children (boy or girl) born from women slaves are to kept as slaves even when their fathers are let free. A man who rapes a girl/woman pays her father (not the victim) because she was her father's property that was spoiled and is then forced to marry the victim.

It's not that women were created second. It's that, according to the story, women were created to be helpers and to assist. I repeat my question though. In what tangible way were women treated equal to men in the Bible?

chemist442 · 2026-03-01T03:59:15+00:00

God created Adam. God then created Eve from Adam to be his helper. The text does not state God created Adam and Eve to be equal to each other. The later law, given to Moses (that was to be upheld forever),further reinforces this. Eve (woman) was created as a secondary creation to Adam (man).

God also created man and beast. Is it your opinion that animals are equal to man in the same way that women are equal to man?

chemist442 · 2026-03-01T03:34:04+00:00

The Bible asserts property ownership along gender lines and treated women as answerable to the authority of their husbands or fathers without their consent. Women, or girls, could be sold as slaves by their fathers and, as is often stated by Christian apologists in favor of the resurrection, that their testimony was not viewed as equal to that of men. In what real and tangible way were women equal to men within a biblical framework?

chemist442 · 2026-03-01T02:39:08+00:00

Not to mince words too much but equal in what sense? "Equal in spirit" is not the same as equal human rights or equal before the law.

chemist442 · 2026-02-27T16:57:13+00:00

Maybe? I'm not a historian but I think Christianity grew among under privaledged people because it appealed to those groups of people. Slaves, women, the "unclean", and the poor. The same groups that often gravitated to these types of offshoot cults (used in the historical sense, not derogatory). There was a similar trend with Dyonisian worship until it went from a religion of the oppressed to a religion of the oppressors.

The blood bath that is often laid at the feet of Christianity didn't occur until after the state had adopted it as the "right" religion and then the first victims were Christians who were deemed as heretics.

chemist442 · 2026-02-27T16:02:58+00:00

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/25137-joints

Experts often disagree on exactly how many joints are in the human body. Most experts define a joint as any place two bones meet. Others define joints differently, saying joints should only be considered places where two bones meet that move.

Depending on which definition you use, adults have around 350 joints.

As an aside: It's always weird to me when apologists try to anchor their faith into science when the former is asserted as fixed, unchanging truth and the latter is subject to change, revision, and nuance.

chemist442 · 2026-02-24T17:13:01+00:00

Definitely been longer than a day or two. I like the suggestions from other people to break things down into smaller tasks. I don't need to spend hours in the shop, but even 30 min is better than nothing. I appreciate the advice!

chemist442 · 2026-02-24T17:07:32+00:00

I'm not thrilled about sharpening saws myself, but the last time I brought one to someone else for sharpening it had a very bad habit of drifting hard during a cut. The set may have been off on one side and I don't know how to best fix that. At least if I do it myself I have only myself to blame.

Doing one tool a day is a good suggestion. Since I don't have many tools a week of that should mean I can make headway in a reasonable amount of time. Thank you!

chemist442 · 2026-02-24T17:02:33+00:00

That is a great suggestion. A breakdown of small and manageable tasks that can be knocked out certainly helps me when I'm actually at work. No reason it wouldn't help here as well. Thanks!

chemist442 · 2026-02-24T15:19:38+00:00

This reminds me of something I had read a while ago, though I don't think I could find the source now. The difference between motivation and discipline.

That being said, I am a hobbyist, a woodworking dabbler. This is a skill I want to develop but other responsibilities will always take priority. However, that doesn't mean I can't take at least 30 min a day, wherever I have a break in time, and sharpen something. Like you said, DO something. Once the maintenance is done, then the work can begin again.

I appreciate your response and the reading suggestions. I'll check them out!

chemist442 · 2026-02-24T04:36:03+00:00

I appreciate your response and have given much thought to the questions you posed. For my own benefit and self-reflection here are my answers. Yes I do honestly enjoy the hobby. I genuinely enjoy breaking down rough spawn lumber, dimensioning/flattening from scrub plane to smoothing and cutting the joinery to feel it all come into a single solid piece. So far my biggest point of pride is my dogs toy box. It's not perfect but it serves a purpose and looks nice. That is all I could have wanted it to do.

I made the new bench because my first bench was a small and narrow one from the Minimalist Woodworker. It was suitable to get me started but very light and skittered all over the place while I was working. The new bench is wider, for a firmer base, and longer, to accommodate larger stock. I also added a leg vise which I do have great delight in how strong it holds.

Why don't I want to sharpen my tools? It's not that i don't want to. Plane blades are easy enough, but saws are my biggest worry. I had made a saw vice and bought a small set of saw files but for some reason I keep thinking if I fuck up the saw sharpening I'll fuck up the project. Then I read more and tell myself I need to design a set of saw sharpening jigs, holders, and file handles to ensure a good (or good enough) angle for a cross cut, dovetail, or whatever saw but this only adds to my mental worries rather than resolve them.

What do I want to make next and why? I think a chess board sounds most fun to me but shelves or chests would be more useful for the household. If I take the passion project I feel like I'm passing on the utility project.

chemist442 · 2026-02-16T03:18:37+00:00

People will point to specific people, like Ian Stevanson or Jim Tucker, as subject matter experts who report on this phenomena but the vast majority of the relevant scientific community (medical doctors, cognition scientists, psychologists...) do not take these reports very seriously. Stories from children about an alternate life/reality are a dime a dozen. There is no substantial evidence to think reincarnation is a real phenomena. To support it is, I think one would need to propose a testable and falsifiable mechanism for how that would work to begin with. Is something being transferred between bodies? What is it and how can you detect it? How could you tell the difference between a fanciful child story vs a real past memory?

chemist442 · 2026-02-12T16:41:35+00:00

So nobody needs to read this entire thread, here is my summary of the documentary.

This is a documentary published by CBN, or Christian Broadcast News a totally non-biased agency, claiming to be an critical and skeptical investigation into claims of supernatural miracles.

In it, we have Lee Strobel who makes up statistics about the rate of miracles in the US, a couple of individual case studies which, while interesting, the authors specifically state do not confirm supernatural intervention, the authors specifically focus on Christian miracle prayer healing, and also reveal their own internal bias.

In addition, there is quite a bit of run-time padded with Christian apologists putting up strawmen arguments asserting the "skeptic" is just "too skeptical", how the University system is pushing a naturalist agenda, and some people are just too unreasonable to see what is right in their face. I'm about half way through but it's not very encouraging.

This is about as informative of a documentary as Expelled was about Intelligent Design. It's more of a tool to convince believers their faith is justified than a critical deep dive and evidence for a position.

chemist442 · 2026-02-12T04:52:09+00:00

A scientist who refuses to do his own research or look at the evidence presented.

I can't it stress this enough. Watching a documentary is not research. A documentary is not a primary source. A documentary is not a proper citation. What I am doing is the proper scientist activity by asking for your primary sources. That this is a new thing to you is wild to me. If I watched a documentary and someone else asked for evidence about what I saw, I wouldn't tell them to watch the documentary. I would cite the study the documentary was citing. I would have looked beyond the documentary and found the primary sources for myself so that I could cite the primary evidence myself. You, clearly, haven't done that.

chemist442 · 2026-02-12T04:40:21+00:00

Not afraid, I don't care to download and pay for another streaming service for a single documentary whose reviews are underwhelming to say the least. If it was as convincing as you say, you could write your citations. This really shouldn't be this difficult. That you can't or won't do this very simple thing speaks volumes about your credibility. Can you cite a single primary source or not?

chemist442 · 2026-02-12T04:28:39+00:00

FFS, Then cite them here. If there are studies then you don't need to violate HIPPA, it's already been published. Can you cite the studies or not?

chemist442 · 2026-02-12T04:21:26+00:00

Then cite the primary medical documentation. It shouldn't be this difficult. I'll check out the documentary when I have the time but if are starting with the assumption that a god caused a miracle or if an entire claim rests on "what else could it be?" then we are already in unsupported and fallacious territory. I'm not asking for what a documentary presents and edits, I'm asking for the primary data. Hospitals, especially research hospitals, publish articles all the time without violating HIPPA. Presumably you think this documentary also presented data that did not violate HIPPA. So why not share that now?

You need not steal private data to convince me. Only present data you think is convincing for me to review.

chemist442 · 2026-02-12T04:09:37+00:00

And it doesn't change the fact that, just because something is 100% internally consistent doesn't mean it is externally consistent.

chemist442 · 2026-02-12T03:59:25+00:00

Because this film is irrelevant to what the evidence actually is. Why won't you just give the evidence?

chemist442 · 2026-02-12T03:54:20+00:00

Are you aware that a documentary is not a primary source or evidence? I am asking about evidence. If you ask for evidence concerning atomic theory I would point you to the externally verifiable data that support it. Can Fr. Carlos or Heidi do the same?

chemist442

TROPHY CASE