Your assumption that I have an agenda is hilarious. I’m merely dfiscussing this from another user: “In throwing away God, Society threw away life itself.” A discussion far more interesting so far than the one you generated by derailing this derailment for no reason but to virtue-signal. Report or go away lmao.
Lol yeah, they did bring politics into the game. So it’s seems like a valid conversation as a video game topic.
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And this is the reason you had to bring politics?
No. Theology is pointless since imaginary friends aren’t real. Which one of more than seven thousands gods created by humanity over its history you discuss doesn’t matter. Other than their cultural appearance, that is. And maybe inspiration to great artists, sculptors, architects, and such.
Whilst I was merely ranting about forum giving me the business, which on itself has the same meaning as discussion about bald monkeys doing weird things because they believe a grandpa on a cloud is going to punish them.
@82888150 So, I decided to take a look at suicide rates by country, and religious sentiment by country. I’m not an expert analyst and I’m not going to claim my sources are reliable, but I can’t see much correlation between religious sentiment and suicide rates. The US are surpisingly high on the suicide list tho.
One thing tho: Africa ranks the highest in terms of religious sentiment by far, and it also seems to be the continent that has the highest suicide rate, sadly. But Europe is the second continent by suicide rate, witha low religious sentiment shrugs
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I never questioned that, and you’re pretty insistent on that fact. So, why do you have strong ethics? What are they based on? What’s the underlying guiding philosophy? Is it codified somewhere, or based on some sort of intuition?
Who, exactly, are you debating? I never said that, either. If you need a straw man, go find one. If you want to discuss points I’ve made, I’m game.
I’ll save you the time. It’s horrid. 
But if you’re a glutton, I’ll send you my copy. Free. LOL. I spent about 10 years re-reading it last year. 
You brought up religion and irreligious people a couple of times. People have blamed many nasty things on both over the years - specifically wars and genocides. It’s really a nonsensical way to look at things.
Were wars waged in the name of gods? Absolutely.
We’re genocides attempted in the name of evolution based eugenics? Absolutely.
That doesn’t mean Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism or others mandate, endorse or even forgive that behavior (intentionally leaving one major religion off of my list).
It also doesn’t mean that evolution leads to Genocide.
It means power hungry madmen misused these things to excuse their quests for power. Virtually every war was actually waged for resources, power, or the narcissistic whims of men with a god complex. Even the stupid crusades were waged to garner favor (power) from the Pope or just to stroke the ego of an idiot king.
The go-to attack on faith is often to bring up war. It’s almost a knee-jerk reaction for some. I no more believe Putin is in Ukraine on behalf of his god than I believe Hitler invaded Poland to kill non-aryans. They waged war for the same reasons… Power. They just wrapped their evil in the trappings that suited their egos and lunacy.
War is a distraction to the theist/atheist debate, though. I’m not interested in any of that.
Your world view is the lens through which you view all things. I was militant atheist for a long time. I don’t doubt I could do a better job promoting the atheist/secular/evolution argument than the vast majority of society.
I’m pretty good at it.
When I run across a pretender to a faith, sometimes I still do. For A Christian to eviscerate another Christian’s supposed faith is a brutal thing. It’s necessary from time to time.
I don’t do that with non-believers. They obviously have far more faith than I do.
Like I said, I was in that camp for a long time…
It explained little. It gave no guidance that was good. It left me wanting. Sounds like perhaps you’re having similar luck.
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Clebardman like this in-game chat too, I logged in after the update to find the chat live with players in my garage, I see this fellow talking about controversial stuff with others between wishing Howlin was online at the time. I spent the next minute finding the options to mute the chat and erase it lol
I think War of Empires be a better suite for some people
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Simple - The golden Rule
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule
My personal favorite version is:
And it harm none, do as tho will
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Y’know, I’m gonna do some old tricks:
Get your corn here! Get it while it’s hot! Step right up!
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A lot of people would argue that empathy and cooperation are the real reasons humans have been so successful as a species.
I know it’s more popular to credit our competitive side, but I don’t think there’s much evidence for that viewpoint. It just makes people feel better about the extreme inequality in our world if we can tell ourselves that it’s somehow deserved and good.
Humans aren’t very hardy, and we often live in climates that can easily kill us if we don’t work together.
So basically my point is that being nice to each other is an evolutionary advantage that we’re often in denial about.
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Ahh… that’s the WHAT. I’m looking for the WHY.
Have you ever looked into the theories about alcohol production and the development of societies? There are those who believe that without the ability to numb our brains a bit, we’d never be able to cooperate the way we do.
It’s a hilarious but… by golly… completely fathomable proposition. 
Well, I’m with Jesus, and I don’t give a half a schit what other people think about it. It’s not up for debate. This isn’t the place, you aren’t the people, and I for one, don’t care what other people believe or how they run their homes. I’m not an evangelist, but if you want to get baptized, I can do that, and then I’ll be happy to discuss my religion in a more appropriate setting (there certainly is one). Otherwise, your beliefs are your business, and none of mine. I don’t discipline other people’s kids.
I’m not likely to take a lot of arbitrary schit from other people about my religion though, and I think this discussion is crossing some lines. It seems pretty inappropriate.
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So long as folks are still being amicable while disagreeing, I think it’s great.
Now that the troll is apparently permanently banned, actual conversations seem plausible here.
OK then…well, my religious beliefs prevent me from “debating” religion (this isn’t really a “debate” it’s more like a crap shoot with some guy with an axe to grind, IMO) with people outside the covenant, and teaches me that it’s a exercise in futility, isn’t following rank, and isn’t likely to be a profitable discussion, but rather a dangerous one, ripe to bloom calamity, and is just asking for trouble…well, I actually didn’t listen and learned the hard way.
Lol, haven’t heard that one (and I can think of a few societies that kind of fell apart after alcohol was introduced).
I know there are some theories that magic mushrooms may have helped early humans develop language, which seems plausible but unlikely.
Okay… rabbit hole incoming…
If you really wanna have magic mushroom research fun, look into the history of Santa Clause and shrooms. Hilarious stuff that was apparently verbally communicated over the generations but seems a little lost, now.
The grand theory goes that Santa is somewhat derived from a Northern/Eastern European & Russian tradition. The pieces of the puzzle don’t all match perfectly, and my memory of it is fading, but it’s fun nonetheless.
Flying reindeer, elves, gifts, pine trees in the house… all seem to have the same origin.
What I remember is that a shaman would visit people on or around the Winter Solstice giving gifts. Of these gifts would be shooms. People would eat the shrooms & start trippin’.
If you wanna dig into it, look into vintage Christmas Cards. Many - as late as the 1950s - had red capped shrooms in them (and tea - another hilarious bit of trivia).
I can believe that.
Personally, I think big government is the common thread in all of our major calamities. Little government seems to suck often too, like street-gangs, Biker-Clubs, and even churches (I’ll take the hit), universities, and football hooligans, for example. I’ve never been comfortable with any kind of “group-think.” I grew up around “good’ol boys” and thought it all sucked. It’s creepy AF, IMO.
The only routinely and genuinely honest institutions I have ever seen in my personal experience, have most often been Martial Arts Dojos. I’ve saw a screwed up one once, but generally, those have all been very well disciplined and kind people. You get jerks everywhere, but I thought a-holes were found the least common there.
Again… sometimes I just quote people so we (including me) can re-read certain parts.
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Ya, sometimes I’m not really aware of my opinions until I write them down. It’s a process. I get it, I think.
My core beliefs are immutable, like most people’s, but I don’t mind changing my opinions. Some of them suck and I like it when they change, but I can’t always do it by myself, I guess. So, I might argue with the Monkey or somebody about things to test the strength of those convictions, or to leverage myself into a different perspective.
Poking people in their creed is mostly just dangerous and mean, I think. I’ve never done it with good intentions in mind, myself. And, I don’t suspect other people have good intentions when they do it either.
I might do something like that in the future (I’ve done it in the past), so you can take this post as my admission that I knew it was a bad idea before I did it, but I did it anyway. All the people are phcked up, IMO. Not just all the “other” people.
I suppose there is a brand of people who derive joy from other’s grief sort of habitually, like a drug. I don’t really understand that. That’s pretty broken, I think, and I’m not qualified to address it. I’m more prone to shoot first and…well, that’s mostly it. I don’t feel obliged to figure it out for people like that, and I’m a little broken too. Sometimes “FU” is all I’ve got.
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