So reality is limited to your personal experience. Convenient.

@jeshuey wadr that would be missing the point though, even if it might be entirely true, as i guess is now being debated. Is there even such a thing as "objective reality?" idk

@jeshuey i mean srsly something like our present pop, 7 billion ppl, have all died, most of them quite horribly! Oh, the humanity! Whatever will we do!
lol

Economically you are certainly right, healthwise too. But Hitch was talking of natural threats, of which Covid is one, as well as the long term prospects of all species including our own.

I might argue that one chooses/creates “metrics” based on one’s values, which are judged as valid based on ... what? Tradition? Taste? Consensus?

@The-Krzyz my reply to that would be that pretty much any metric you could formulate can be quantified. I used to refer to morality.com for these, but they seem to have recently gone religious, so im a bit at sea there at the moment, but the metrics i recall were pretty much consensus-based, or so it seemed to me? Anyway, to avoid bias, you could identify your metric beforehand, and then go look for data on it. The ones that spring to mind were like violent crime, famine, standard of living (hmm) but like that.

my main takeaway was that subjective experience does not = objective experience, but id like to point out here that believers are all pretty much universally moaning about life here/now, waiting for Jesus to take them away, etc, and the pov strikes me as...um, Gnostic, at the very least?

i mean you gotta admit "massive cosmological churning and destruction" is pretty subjective too eh? Completely gnossis; based upon facts that we have discovered, and not real-world daily experience?

@jeshuey covid, as a threat? hmm. aren't viruses a good thing, remove weak genes from the pool, etc? Why am i not feeling threatened, when i guess everyone else is? i guess im insane or something lol

Strange ways Willow, he works in strange ways....

I'm thinking you need to reread the quote more carefully.

random selection can't be the plan?

you know manna is called what is it? right

if "existence" infers "objective evidence" as most definitions state then i would def say we already have proof that Yah mos def does not "exist?"

from your pov, maybe, but then who has not expressed hate for a parent? Wouldnt it be better to admit that you are just mad at Yah, and go from there?

@bbyrd009 Why should I be mad at a mythological creature?

The idea of sadistic gods is more credible to me than the moralizing loser many claim to “worship.”

@starwatcher-al hmm, wouldnt that be "creator?" And "mythology" to me is where all of our truth was stored until just very recently, so the definition has changed i guess
like they all do

anyway, indeed, why? Yet i repeatedly encounter this emotion around "atheists," anger at a Creator they don't believe exists? Which hey im pissed at Yah too lol, don't get me wrong; but bc gnossis, or iow a faulty perspective based upon some "knowledge" or other

@The-Krzyz ah well ppl say all kinda stuff huh? But i submit that that is not Yah anyway, as the Bible plainly delineates, ...and I create evil; I, YHWH, do all these things so prolly more like Pax or some other god, one of the Catholic ones i guess?

The Bible pretty plainly outlines how the religious are the deceived ones, btw

anyway, i love how ppl who don't believe a Creator exists, and cannot point to any Creator engendered "sadisms," can simultaneously be so adamantly angry. We seek scapegoats, basically, over self-examination. So i would accuse yall of making god in your own image too, just a diff image, no offense

"then he/she is..."
the quintessential gnostic declaration eh

@bbyrd009 Can’t say that, when I think about religion or any gods, that the bible or it’s characters are my reference point.

@The-Krzyz well, i can't think of any reason why they should, if those don't speak to you, but i would say that there is a Legend in there that few are able to even read, that has nothing whatever to do with what we now call religion. Imo if you are sure that you get a Bible verse, you are almost surely wrong.
small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it
contrast with "When we all get to heaven"
my point being that believers are the absolute last people one should be going to for Bible wisdom, and there are even verses to that effect, the heir is under servants while he is a child, and no better than a slave, even though he is the lord of it all etc

then please note how all of Yah's "worshippers" were basically annihilated in the NT lol, and understand what you are telling ppl, if you will

suffering is a central theme in Buddhism too i guess; why do we suffer, iyo? I watched a YT by some Italian scientist/philosopher on that, hafta dig it up maybe...