SatanLucy

I mean, that's what happens when it's all about money.

Ads are gonna always seek to mislead viewers into thinking that product is better than it actually is.

You forgot and they all followed Taoism.

No, that's just me.

Perhaps everyone in your family led a sedentary life, ate a poor diet and smoked.

Mostly, yes.

Hence thousands of years of different denominations going to war. You have to infer using context, but it's probabilistic, not deterministic.

I guess. There was a time when I was Christian and practiced Sola scriptura. However, I quickly realized that my interpretation of Bible was making me evil, and I simply couldn't justify anymore believing in that. Tho maybe some other interpretations are better than mine. It's just not something I would bother with anymore.

even without all of the modern access to criticism, I think much of the Bible was widely interpreted non-literally

I mean, non-literal interpretations raise issues. Who decides when something in the Bible is non-literal?

Someone might interpret Jesus's advice to poke own eyes out as "non-literal", someone else might interpret it as literal. There is really no telling which is right, because how would we know what Jesus meant by that? We can't ask him, and Bible doesn't explain it either.

All relatively easy to say for now.

Yeah, but no one is really living forever. Even if you try and live perfectly healthy, you are still gonna die. Plus, everyone in my family died from cancer. Why would I be exception?

I suppose that makes me a dumb atheist with 3 kids.

3 million dollars lost btw

This isn't really a modern argument. Atheists are generally agnostic, so it's not like they have more evidence for their position today than they did before; their argument is just that Christians don't have sufficient evidence, and I don't see how this would be a bigger challenge today than in the Roman Empire

It is bigger challenge today because today, conditions are different. People are different, smarter, differently educated. In past, education wasn't really something popular.

If conditions were same as they were before, Christianity wouldn't be facing a decline. We would have same world as before, but we don't.

My original premise was simply that without persecution or some type of forcing it on people, Christianity is never gonna be an interesting religion.

Even Roman Empire had to use force to spread Christianity and eradicate polytheism. Maybe Constantine didn't use force, but later government did, and Constantine himself was actually using a lot of pressure on population to push Christianity. Economical pressure at a time when average person has monthly income of 100$ is a big deal.

Under Constantine, Christianity was neither persecuted nor forced upon people, and it spread pretty rapidly.

Constantine was government spreading the religion and basically being it's sponsor. Also, outlawing other religions happened pretty quickly in Roman Empire.

Another factor is that at that time, Christianity was a new religion and most people were illiterate.

Today, Christianity is much older religion and I don't think there are illiterate people anymore. Anyone can easily read the Bible.

Also, debates are much more common now, and atheists are destroying Christians in debates virtually everywhere.

I don't even need to say that we are yet to even prove existence of intelligent creator, let alone Christian version of him.

It's easy to conclude that something created us. However, saying it was "Christian God" is a huge leap of faith which atheists dismiss easily.

Which usually stems from a general lack of purpose. Atheism brings solace in a world with no purpose.

It's not really a lack of purpose. It's just a lack of purpose of reproduction.

There are still other purposes to base actions on, such as getting drunk.

Remember that it costs $1 million to raise a kid now.

Atheists are smart for not reproducing.

It's more like people naturally choose atheism to justify not reproducing.

There are wide number of options to justify not reproducing, one of most popular being "And why should I reproduce?".

That should be mandatory by law.

That may be true in the short term, but Christians have an annoyingly persistent tendency to outbreed people with fewer reasons to procreate.

Depends on the rate of rise of atheism. It wouldn't really matter what Christian birth rates are if 60% of their kids become atheists. They will always breed more atheists than Christians.

Shinto died pretty quickly in Japan once atheism became popular.

Now same is happening to Christianity across Europe.

Religions like Christianity only survive when there are wars or persecutions.

When everything is peaceful and nice, people forget dude on a stick very quickly.

It's sort of like "there are no atheists on a falling plane" but reversed into "there are no theists when everything is nice and lovely".

I wonder if Satan's current plan is to convert world to atheism, and then move from atheism to Satanism.

I mean it started off illegal in the Roman Empire. And even after Constantine, new denominations grew despite being persecuted.

Persecution was helping them identify as victims and it gave meaning to their life.

In modern world where Christianity is neither persecuted nor forced upon people, it becomes a terribly uninteresting religion of worshipping dude on a stick.

Roman lions were not enough, how do you top that? Pitbulls?

No, it's enough for Christianity to not be enforced on people, and more and more atheists arise among Christians.

Could be why Christianity is in decline in the world.

Rise of atheism is truly unstoppable, because in the world where sin equals fun, Christianity equals boredom. Christianity is only interesting when you are forced to be Christian or when you are being persecuted for it. When left on its own, it's probably one of most absurd boring religions you could have.

Christianity was created through government forcing it on people. Of course they want that again.

It was shown historically that when Christianity is not forced on people, it starts disappearing.

I hope you are right, because these temperatures are becoming unbearable. If you are wrong, I am afraid we are gonna literally have hell on Earth, and be forced to move to Arctic.

That's because we've been sniffing Europe's butt for the past 140 years

I don't know why it is, but being a woman is not a privilege in USA. Irrelevant of if it's politics, government, wealth, or being a victim of crime.

There was even a time in US history when women couldn't vote

So you accept Taoism cannot save you from Cancer

Are you familiar with 4 forms of Taoism when dealing with desire? Person who doesn't care about outcomes is unaffected by outcomes

And the human rolls up dried leaves, burns them and deliberately inhales addictive and damaging compounds...Such is superiority.

I dont care about my life expectancy, because I am taoist. Person can either think or not think, and one of those is guaranteed to happen after death. But as taoist, I am fine with both. Maybe not thinking is even better. Fear of death is rooted in desire of being alive. So fear is rooted in desire. As taoist, I have no desires, so I have no fear, and thus no fear of death. In fact, there is a small chance that after death, I reincarnate as a divine serpent who swallows the Sun. But until then, I want to live my life doing what is fun. Long life without fun is same as being dead, so I prefer to do differently and have life of entertainment until I die from cancer and assume divine form of tao.

There are still people in USA who support Trump.

So despite the fact that Trump is a rapist, convinced felon, stole from charity, did genocide in Palestine, pathological liar, pervert, guy who admitted on video to dating married women and also wanting to date his daughter, found in Epstein files, was friends with Epstein, Putin, Kim Jong Un, wanted to abolish NATO, annex Canada and Greenland, give Ukraine to Putin, committed war crimes and illegal invasions...

Despite all of this...

There are about 40% of Americans in USA who approve of Trump.

So the question is, what does Trump need to do to lose support of those 40% of Americans?

Because I think he committed every crime there is. Can you think of any crime which Trump didn't commit?

Trump said he could shoot someone and he still wouldn't lose any voters. It's probably the only true claim he ever said. Well, that and "I love the poorly educated".

I like astrology better than astronomy, but it is amazing that a woman becomes top in some science in USA. Usually women don't succeed well in USA.

Oh global warming is real. At this point, those who deny it probably live in some very cold area. At some days, I begin thinking that heat will kill me.

I'm in the coalition.

Good. I will see if coalition gains more members, but any number is beneficial because it guarantees more votes for free speech on this site. I think for start, we might need about 2 or 3 more members to ensure more protection for free speech in future.

Also, if anyone wants to debate on why free speech is important, I can debate them. I dont really think I am losing any debate on importance of free speech on a debate site.

I agree with many of your views on free speech, but I'm not sure how a coalition will help.

Coalition helps because I noticed those against free speech tend to be loudest, while those supporting free speech tend to go silent.

Everyone gets a vote anyway, and with the way the questions are structured, the median voter is going to be represented.

This coalition works in two ways:

It reminds people to vote in favor of free speech, in case they forget or can't bother.

It is a defensive alliance. Maybe someone values their own free speech but won't bother to protect another's.

This coalition is a mutually beneficial alliance. It guarantees that everyone in it protects speech of everyone else. So if someone values their own free speech and wants to protect it, they can enter this coalition, to increase chances of their own speech being protected while protecting others as well.

Otherwise, those who value their own free speech but don't care to protect another's, might not be voting to protect them or voting at all.

There's not really a danger of vote-splitting or an advantage of forming "parties." If your goal is just to encourage people to support free speech, just making arguments along those lines is probably more productive than playing politics.

I plan to do politics and make arguments. I think this alliance is beneficial, because it is anyway necessary for anyone who values own free speech to enter this form of alliance to increase own protection.

I'm in the coalition. Restrict Mod power to voting moderation. Other than that, abolish the COC

The coalition is about voting in support of free speech on all trials.

Mods are gonna do whatever they want, but this coalition is about countering anti-free speech trials.

If you support free speech, you can enter this coalition.

Since it has become obvious to me that once more, free speech on this site is under attack, two conclusions came to mind:

One, the attacks on free speech will continue, it wont stop at this.

two, response must be formed to counter these attacks, if free speech is to be protected at all

this is why I propose to form "Star Of Free Speech" Coalition.

It is very obvious that politics is a game of numbers, and if we are divided, our numbers are lower.

For this reason, everyone who supports free speech must unite to increase our numbers against the rising fist of censorship!

the Coalition uses "One for all, all for one" approach as the most viable political strategy.

In other words, when free speech of one is under attack, everyone comes to defend it.

Do you believe in free speech?

If not, you can close this page and read something else.

But if yes, then would you defend the free speech of people you disagree with, people you maybe even hate?

If yes, Star Of Free Speech Coalition is perfect for you!

We dont believe in rights only for those we like. We believe in rights for even those we hate.

Because we live by the principle of honor and grace, and such principle commands us to respect even those we dislike.

We do not pick and choose who gets to have free speech and who not. For us, everyone has free speech, and no one gets to decide that someone else shouldnt have right to talk.

In this way, we avoid all subjectivity. Our principle isnt based on our opinion. We can have opinion that someone is wrong, but that opinion wont make us take away his free speech.

We can even hate someone, but that wont make us take away his rights.

It is not up to us to choose who has rights and who doesnt. We merely seek to prevent decisions to take away rights of others, for if rights are taken away for subjective reasons, then any right is in danger.

All the oppressed, the banned, and the censored people of DebateCraft need to unite and defend each other.

Its the only way we win.

today, they put Remy on trial. Who will it be tomorrow? You? Me?

"they put Remy on trial, and I said nothing for them.

they put Debby on trial, and I said nothing for them either.

then they put me on trial, and there was no one to say anything for me."

I say let not this quote become our reality.

Oppressed people of DebateCraft, unite and defeat your oppressors!

Where ever the oppressor attacks, we must defend. And where ever they defend, we must attack.

Let the "Art of War" lead our strategy: Army divided is army defeated.

Army united is army at its full power.

Let us not divide but unite, so our power isnt diminished. Let us not be isolated, but form a mighty union!