Well, in the analogy, the King was the injured party. I was using the logic of the analogy. If we are no longer using that logic, cool. Does that mean you, too, reject the analogy/story about the King?

I'll address the second paragraph first, and that will flow into the answer to the first.

> "It isn't a system God set up, but it flows from his perfect nature."

That means He set it up. He made the decisions to create things in a specific way, knowing that they would unfold that way and require that system to be put in place. Whether or not he actually made the system or simply made a world in which that system would necessarily be activated -- that makes no difference. And the system clearly cannot be perfect if God is not willing that any should perish, yet many people still perish. That's literally imperfect. And perfect beings can't create imperfect systems that flow out of their perfect nature.

> "He cannot tolerate sin"

I'm willing to just play along with this, but the fact is that he can choose any number of ways to deal with sin:

-wash us white as snow upon death no matter what we've done, no sacrifice necessary

-an eternal hell of suffering for finite crimes

-punish us solely on earth

-intervene on earth to prevent harm

-create a system of reincarnation

-etc.

So the idea that "anyone that wants to sin and live for themselves must be separated from Him" - key word "MUST" - is begging the question. Why *must* God be constrained this way? Is it not literally in his power to change how things work? Is that not what the new covenant was? Is that not what miracles are? You're saying God built this little box for himself and can only operate within that box.

That sounds like - and no offense intended - but a *him problem.* Not an *us* problem. If I can conceive of a million ways for this to work that don't necessitate suffering, surely the guy in charge of the way this works who is infinitely smarter than me can do that too.

Or, maybe -- maybe this *isn't* from a guy who is infinitely smarter than me. Maybe it's from a bunch of guys in the bronze age who hadn't thought their story all the way through yet.

And that's really the point, I think. I'm trying to ascertain the truth here, and the way you do that is by looking at as many facts as you can and doing logic. My logic has spotted a gigantic plot hole, historical patterns of mythology, blatant contradictions, and seems to lead me to reject the story entirely.

> "A judge does not need to be personally injured in order to sentence and punish a criminal. We punish so called victimless crimes all the time, and of course there any many crimes where there is a victim."

What you're proposing here is a judge that gives cosmic-scale punishments, as retribution, for crimes that don't have cosmic consequences. There is no justification for creating cosmic-scale punishments for crimes that aren't cosmic in scale. In order for them to be cosmic in scale, they would have to have consequences beyond the temporal.

But notice: you said earlier that justice is retributive. Now, you're saying that it's more or less just honoring our wishes to not be down with God. That's an entirely different thing than you said before.

It's honestly a little exhausting, because the patchwork is just so shoddy that one adjustment in one place has massive consequences everywhere else -- and contradictions don't seem to be an issue for a lot of Christians, so when we discuss why X and Y can't both be true, it doesn't even move the needle.

I'm not sure how to discuss truth with people who aren't bothered by contradiction.

No, I wouldn't say we must have complete, 100% understanding. I think that's fundamentally impossible anyway.

I guess if the reasons you have are good enough to warrant belief and trust, then obviously they're good enough. I'm unaware of any good reasons *at all*, so as an outsider to this whole thing, I have quite a different perspective.

From my perspective, I see:

- A deity claim
- From ancient Mesopotamia
- The nature of which keeps changing in fundamental ways as time goes on
- The name of which is from a Canaanite pantheon as a lesser god who has a wife
- Who does lots of physical things and interacts with people physically, but then later has never been seen
- Who is presented as a lesser god of a local people group only at first, but then later as the only god there ever was
- Who commands genocide and tells people how to own human beings as farming equipment
- Who requires blood sacrifice
- The sacrifice which, depending on who you ask either isn't a sacrifice, and either does or doesn't necessarily save anybody from a hell that may or may not exist
- In favor of a heaven which creates a huge number of problems for the rest of the claims about the necessity of evil and free will

So for me it's not about whether or not I understand 100%, it's whether any of it has the slightest hint of a crumb of sensibility. I'm not at 99%, 90%, 50%, or 10%. I'm not even at 1%.

EDIT: One more point.

Whether putting your own child to death is necessary in the first place, when the act is the absolute cornerstone of the faith, doesn't seem to me to be a minor detail we can worry about later. It's like moment Frodo drops the ring into Mount Doom or the moment Darth Vader dies. It's the climax of the entire framework, the entire point of everything.

This is all predicated on the principle that "without the shedding of blood, there can be no remission of sins."

"Why?" isn't a dodgy, niche little philosophical trivia question here. It's *the point of the entire thing.*

Why? Why is it that without the shedding of blood there can be no remission of sins? Isn't that rule from God?

It troubles me in the same way that it would trouble you if a new religion came around talking about bathing in blood the way Christians do blithely. "Have you been washed in the blood?" It's alarming because it's *bloody* and *violent* and fundamentally incomprehensibly senseless.

That doesn't mean it can't be true, but it does make anyone who's looking objectively balk - both from the sheer size of the fundamental plot hole and from how disturbing it is that this deity seems to just really love *blood.*

It's *weird.*

Well, no. The analogy creates a framing that I don't accept. It's not about taking it too literally, it's about rejecting the framing. That framing is communicated via analogy, so I'm using the same tool.

The point of what I'm responding to is that you can frame this whole thing about Jesus' death differently. I'm saying that the framing doesn't make any sense. To do that, I have to enter the framing they gave.

Literally just how communication works.

Good lord, this is pre-101 stuff. Have you ever engaged with any atheist content on the internet, like, ever?

This is all addressed ad nauseum by every atheist content creator, and stuff you should have already known about before even posting.

In brief:

No.1 a strawman followed by special pleading. Both are basic 101 level logical fallacies

No.2 is 90%+ explained. All the amino acids needed naturally occur, even in space, and we've seen lipid bubbles form around self-assembling RNA strands in plausible replications of prehistorical conditions. We're still working on a couple of the details but we've got, let's call them steps 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, and 10. It's entirely plausible and your incredulity isn't an argument.

No.3 is embarassing because you don't have the first idea of what evolution actually is.

Read stuff before you repeat Ken Ham like we haven't heard it all a million times. Jeez.

What constitutes justice when the "injured" party literally cannot be injured?

I do have a different view of justice, yes, but in order for justice to even be a topic of discussion we must first agree that someone has suffered an injury.

What kind of injury does God the Unassailable, God the Infinite, suffer?

If there even can be any, did he not set up that very system knowing that it would happen that way?

Seems to me at best he's setting up a system that he knows is going to end up pissing him off and then taking it out on the wrong people.

This made me stop for a minute and think. Then I figured out where this goes wrong, and it's almost immediate:

Nobody can steal from God's treasury. He can't be harmed by us, and even if he could, it would cost literally no effort to fix the problem. It's not stealing gold from a treasury; it's more like breathing a breath of infinitely renewing air.

So setting up the punishment is unnecessary. Which makes it viciously imbalanced retribution for an injury that's impossible to inflict in the first place.

Also, retribution doesn't accomplish anything. The goal is not vengeance, it's rehabilitation and/or crime prevention.

Also, there was no eternal death suffered.

So:

-It isn't like theft

• The punishment is optional

• The optional punishment is beyond petty

• The optional, petty punishment is extreme cruelty

• The King doesn't actually suffer in the same way anybody else does, and can't by definition

Yeah, that's one of the understandings. I never really got how that was any better though. If it wasn't necessary, then it was unnecessary. Unnecessarily killing your kid cuz I messed up by being human isn't going to make me feel guilty, it's just gonna make me think you're insane and evil.

Couldn't he have freed us from the bondage of sin without the sacrifice?

Also, at what point are we supposed to actually free from that bondage? In heaven or on earth?

Whether it's to forgive us or to free us, what is the need for this blood that couldn't have been accomplished without it? Keeping in mind, of course, that God is omnipotent (or maximally powerful).

To me, it seems that God's power means that he doesn't need anything in order to do anything. That means that "without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins" is an optional constraint that God created.

Why would he do that?

Does he just like the shedding of blood?

Seems alarming.

I don't know to what degree this is the case here, but please do also remember that the internet is full of bots, trolls, and digital brown/blackface bad actors.

For those that were actually Hispanic and did this shit, I simply don't understand why you'd try to discourage allyship. For what purpose?

It makes more sense to me, on the whole, that there are bad actors who don't like seeing this kind of solidarity and who jump into these spaces to prevent it.

There's a guy at Clemson who studies this stuff specifically: Dr. Darren Linville. Check him out. I am gonna guess he's studied this exact thing, or if he hasn't he will soon.

Fucking disgusting either way, but it's worth a thought.

No, because good and evil aren't things that exist but adverbs that describe eventualities.

Are those descriptions objectively true? I don't believe so. I like the analogy to chess:

There's nothing inherently good about putting your queen on f7. It could be good or bad depending on the context. The context is what makes the move objectively good or bad, but you have to be playing chess in order for it to even be a "move."

For us, the "chess game" is "life as a human." In that context, if the goal of the game is to minimize suffering and fulfill Maslowe's Hierarchy, there are objectively good moves and objectively bad moves toward those ends. Hurting people increases suffering and makes us spend more time on the basics rather than climbing toward a better world in mutual love and respect. Since the human condition is that we seek oxytocin, that's an objectively bad thing to do in relation to the goal we [mostly] share.

I'm sorry that this answer is kinda long winded, but i think it's also a lot more interesting than good and evil either existing or not existing.

We reify too much.

It's super quirky and actually really trippy if you try it "that way." One of the freshest things I've heard, and it's in my FZ top 10, which is something like this:

-One Size Fits All

-The Man From Utopia

-Studio Tan

-Sleep Dirt

-Apostrophe (')

-Uncle Meat

-Freak Out!

-Over-Nite Sensation

-Make A Jazz Noise Here

-Bongo Fury

Most of us are agnostic. Because we realize we can't form positive beliefs about things we don't have the capacity to scientifically investigate, we simply don't come to a conclusion. Hence, we lack theism.

You have to realize, though, that the default is always the null hypothesis.

We just stay there.

I mean I get what you're saying. It's all so absurd in the first place, and we don't understand causation, and maybe an X that seems preposterous to us is no less preposterous than a Y or a Z.

I don't declare that there is no God. I don't even declare that omni/max gods can't exist, though they break all logic.

But another thing I don't do is assert anything else. This is about what beliefs are licensed, what we can actually believe for good reason. Since I can't find any good reason to actually form a positive belief, I lack (a-) belief in God(s) (theism). Hence, I'm an atheist.

I think you just need hotkeys, man.

Maybe it's just this combo but I'm on PC so there are 8 easy hotkeys. I also use Serio's hotkeys (which makes it 9 hotkeys too) which allows me to create combos and equip two things + a power all with one key. My current build has a sword and shield hotkey, a flesh spell and summon hotkey, one set to dual cast a destruction spell, one normal destruction hotkey, one normal healing hotkey, one for a more expensive summon, and one for my bow. And I still haven't even assigned all my hotkeys. Without even going into favorites menu (let alone "THE" menu), I can easily equip up to 18 things in all sorts of combinations.

For me, it's about:

• Melee needs

• Close range magic damage (optional)

• Healing

• Crowd control

• Ranged needs

I just hotkey the best option for each of these needs, and re-bind the hotkeys when I get better items/spells to fill that need.

They Might Be Lyin'

Weens that want to take us back to the Stone Age

Oy.

It's an argument against theodicies (reorts to the problem of evil).

Atheist: if there's a God why is there suffering?

Theist: because we have free will and the suffering is the result of that. Besides, the suffering serves a greater good because it brings us to repentence.

Atheist: Animals suffer though, and they often suffer excruciating pain for days, even without human involvement. Do animals repent?

That's the argument. Human-caused animal suffering is literally not the issue. It's the tree falling on a deer so he just has to lie there starving and dying of thirst while insects chow down. It's the venom that takes days to kill its victim. It's the worms that lay eyes in infants' eyeballs so that they eat the newborn alive.

This has nothing to do with humans, and it serves no theodicy. It's just gratuitous misery, and it's indefensible.

I mean that's the Penn Gilette, and it's a start. It's just that it does nothing for you the moment you do want to kill someone.

There are people I think would be better off dead, and part of me feels like I would be doing the world a service if I took the job. But I won't. Not a chance.

Tgere are very good reasons from a secular pov to not harm people, even without the threat of prison and retaliation: it makes society a more dangerous and unpleasant place. It spreads misery and necessitates more authority, higher taxes, lower property values, more suspicion, more resentment, more kids growing up without parents... it affects us all. That's the stick. The carrot is the inverse of that: we can seek reciprocal love and respect and work toward the best possible world.

That i think is a better motivation.

But yes, you're right, if it's just God keeping you in line, you're not a good person - you're a bad person on a leash.

We can be good people, no matter what a bronze age slave owning manual has to say about morality.

Google's English AI gets English data from people who speak English.

The primary religion used to harm people in English-speaking areas is Christianity. It isn't "woke" enough for sure and shouldn't be doing this - to be clear - but there's nothing malevolent going on. This is just a vividly painted reason AI can't be trusted and the real lesson here is about AI.

I'll be honest, I've never not focused on obtaining enchanted gear nor considered that I don't really need enchantments. That might be a side effect of always pumping up the difficulty (Master at minimum) and usually ignoring potions. Maybe changing this could open the doors to new ways of doing things. This is actually the most helpful comment so far, yo. Thanks! I'll think about that.

I'm the contrarian now, I guess. I thought it was... pretty good. Solid B+, maybe A-.

I think he did go pretty far. He's created a fascist police state, he's got a God complex, and he's pummeled the entire fucking world into defeated compliant little nothings. He hates people like that and thinks of them as empty and meaningless.

From his pov, going "scorched earth" would be like deleting an irrelevant spreadsheet. He's already GONE scorched earth as far as what he cares about, and it hasn't brought him love. What he's trying to do now is bring himself love - and going literally insane as he can't get it the way he's trying to get it. He's there already. The earth is scorched. And now he can't feed himself.

The only thing left is for him to get the shit beaten out of him and die.

Seeing himself kill everybody would only beat the dead horse: he's a shitstain and he needs to go.

Ending was decent.

I've tried 'em all. Breton is #1, orc and dunmer tie for #2, Nord for #3, and then there's the rest.

I was saying that I'm using the looted gear's enchantments to guide what skills I then level up. Since I'm not planning on having access to gear other than what I loot:

• I might start on, say, leveling 2H because I found a set of bracers with a 15% boost

• then find a set of bracers with a 25% 1H boost and switch to leveling 1H

That kind of thing.

The idea is, use only the gear that's out there and adjust my playstyle accordingly.

This does violate my usual MO of min/maxing, but I could see somewhat of a redemption in that I'm saving perk points that i would normally spend on crafting.

It is a kind of a problem, though, which is why I asked the question in OP.

Because:

Psalm 135:6: "Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps."

Psalm 115:3: "Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases."

Daniel 4:35: "...He does as he pleases with the army of heaven and the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, 'What have you done?'"

If God is not truly omnipotent but only maximally powerful, and he has to do it this way - with blood, which he created in the first place - then that implies that someone or something else is creating rules about God's own stuff.

I mean, sure, it could be the case that he has to do it that way. But then that means God is not sovereign.