Saying “maybe people are the problem” is reductive and unhelpful. But I agree with you broadly, religion is just a system or a tool, it can be used for good or evil.

To judge if religion is a good system or a bad one, we can use a cost benefit analysis. This is what we have been attempting to do in this thread.

But when it comes to sensitive subjects like religion, many people have a tendency to avoid, overlook, and deny the associated costs.

Anti-science, misogyny, etc may be bad independently of religion, but they aren’t independent of religion. Religion is a source of these problems.

You can imagine a hypothetical religion that is simply a “social club” or whatever, but here in the real world religion comes with baggage.

Religion is why my cousin’s children have never seen a doctor in their life. Religion is why my gay friend in high school tried to kill himself. Religious indoctrination has led to lifelong shame and trauma in many of my friends.

And this was just from a “moderate” sect of Christianity- the millions living under fundamentalist religion have it even worse.

What you said is all true, but you are ignoring the negative aspects of religion.

Religious influence, both on their followers and on government, is anti-science, misogynistic, and anti-LGBT.

Religions are funded like pyramid schemes, with the most desperate and vulnerable as their victims.

Religious indoctrination is child abuse.

Someone please bribe the Supreme Court with a free ocean submersible ride

Yes the problem with “whataboutism” is that it can be used to dismiss any claims of double standards without further examination.

For example, here in the US we punish black murderers more harshly and more often than we do white murderers. If a black murderer tries to point out this double standard, their claims would accurately be dismissed as “whataboutism”. But when you view the system as a whole, then you can see that systemic racism is undeniable.

I’m on the fence if this type of lawsuit is actually in the interest of justice.

But one thing definitely irks me, this is the type of justice that is only doled out to enemies of the US.

Let me know when Palestinian Americans win a lawsuit against the US and Israel after an American-made, Israeli-fired bomb kills their entire family.

Simple terms… like “SJW”?

I guess “vote blue no matter who” only applies when you’re punching left…

In an ideal world, Hitchen’s Razor would be applied whenever a politician speaks and whenever an advertisement plays.

Unfortunately for us, human psychology makes us all vulnerable.

The problem is that the Trump and Biden camps set the rules at this debate.

The moderators were not allowed to live fact check, nor could they cut the candidate’s mic during their allotted time.

This means that the responsibility of countering Trump’s lies fell completely on Biden. There are so many lies, it would be a difficult task for any person.

But Biden signed up for this, and he failed spectacularly. None of Trump’s bullshit was effectively countered.

I think its only a RBG situation if Biden dies soon.

It’s more of a Diane Feinstein situation, where everyone can see the dementia progressing, but everyone around them has a vested interest in keeping the status quo.

Arredondo was taken into custody at the Uvalde County Jail Thursday afternoon, where family members and parents of several victims of the shooting gathered.

Finally, some good fucking news.

If we “all agree” and do a moonshot construction plan we could have electricity in 8 years. This is a fantasy, tho.

Best case scenario in the real world is operational in 12 years.

In the capitalist hellscape here in the US, a reasonable expectation would be 18-20 years.

20 years also happens to be the lifespan of our wind turbines. In 20 years, all of the currently running wind turbine blades will be in a landfill and new ones will need to be manufactured to replace them.

No reasonable person is suggesting nuclear as a short-term option. It’s a long term investment.

Are solar and wind really “clean” energy? Everyone in this thread seems to ignore the costs of these methods.

Every modern wind turbine requires 60 gallons of highly synthetic oil to function, and it needs to be changed every 6 months. That’s a lot of fossil fuel use.

Lithium mining for batteries is extremely destructive to the environment.

Production of solar panels burns lots of fuel and produces many heavy metals. Just like with nuclear waste, improper disposal of these toxic elements can be devastating to the environment.

Of course, solar and wind are a big improvement over coal and natural gas. I dont want the perfect to be the enemy of the good, I just want to be realistic about the downfalls of these methods.

I believe, with our current technology, that nuclear is our cleanest and greenest option.

Accurate representation of US veterans.

Why is this news and upvoted now? They have been running these disclaimers for a long time.

I believe they started running disclaimers after Fox, Dominion reach $787M settlement over election claims which happened last April.

But that explanation is lost to time.

One translation I read suggested a probable explanation.

Rasputin’s phone advice was the same as many modern quacks: keep the patient away from modern medicine and doctors.

So the hemophiliac prince was no longer given his normal cocktail of drugs, which probably included a new medicine for the time: aspirin.

Stop giving a blood thinner to a hemophiliac and his condition (temporarily) improved. The best explanation for the people at the time was “magic”.

Yes your quote really drives home my point. They wrote the debate qualifications specifically so that rfkjr wouldnt make the cut.

From what I understand, he will probably qualify for the ballot in all 50 states. Since this debate is happening unusually early, his ballot access has not been certified yet.

I dont feel strongly about rfk, it’s probably better for America that he is not on that stage. But this is just one more example of how our two political parties operate in a corrupt, anti-democratic way. They have no principles nor morals, its power politics all the way down.

Rfkjr is literally crazy, yes, but it’s hard to deny the fact that the debate qualification rules were written specifically to exclude him.

The fact that theres 175k convictions in a smaller state is rather shocking.

Think about all that effort by judges, DAs, police, corrections, etc. All of these people, paid by taxpayers, could have been tasked with doing something beneficial to society. Instead they participated in a counterproductive, racist, braindead prohibition scheme. What a waste.