AnonymousActuary
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User ID: 2163
AnonymousActuary
7d ago
honestly even from a completely materialistic worldview, the idea that spending some time every day focusing on things you are grateful for, letting go of things you are worried about, and thinking about things you want to have happen could have positive impacts doesn't seem far-fetched.
EDIT: probably should add for the sake of debate I have also had (less dramatic than OP) experiences of immediate and hard-to-explain things happening after prayer on multiple occasions. Not impossible to explain, but felt quite meaningful at the time to me.
AnonymousActuary
8d ago
Then if we're clearly going to make it to the stop sign well before anyone else, it's best just to blow through. Otherwise, the driver is going to be waiting far longer if we come to a complete stop.
This is just a general rule for no one obeying traffic laws if they think it will inconvenience themselves or others a bit?
AnonymousActuary
8d ago
If anyone satisfyingly resolves the problem of evil in a forum post they are clearly misusing their talents.
I also will not solve the problem of evil for you here either. There are lots of books you could read by smarter people than me if that is what you are searching for (including books of the Bible), though it seems like you are just hoping bringing up the problem of evil will somehow magically turn someone atheist again like they've never thought about it in their life?
AnonymousActuary
8d ago
insert Norman Rockwell Meme gray vinyl plank is awesome actually
Won't stain or scratch and easy to clean up any spills or messes no matter what the kiddos throw at it. And if I miss some mess it doesn't immediately show up with flashing lights like it might on something brighter.
Unfortunately, Mannington moved from China to Vietnam or vice versa a few years back and the product went to shit.
AnonymousActuary
8d ago
I honestly can't tell if this is some kind of gotcha or you are trying to make some profound point that is whooshing right over me haha
AnonymousActuary
9d ago
I don't understand why you think someone could believe that prayer sometimes works and not also believe that plate tectonics exists?
AnonymousActuary
9d ago
The Obama-era democrats passed the ACA, got annihilated in basically every election other than POTUS '12 for quite a while, but the ACA still stands.
AnonymousActuary
11d ago
I think the argument would be that the deficit will eventually trigger some sort of economic death spiral that would be very unpleasant. So if your party can be reasonable, it might postpone said death spiral a few more years.
AnonymousActuary
11d ago
because the cost of social security benefits and the cost of medical spending are growing at two very different rates.
AnonymousActuary
12d ago
social security honestly has never seemed to be as big of an issue. Certainly the demographic slowdown is a bit concerning for anything like this, but you can tweak the ages of eligibility and uncap the payroll tax and you have pretty much fixed it.
Medicare/Medicaid/health spending in general....much thornier problem.
AnonymousActuary
12d ago
One more comment - not sure if you can read the Atlantic, but always thought this story by Ezra Klein's wife (Annie Lowrey) to be a fascinating one (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/pregnancy-birth-complication-abortion-life-of-mother/671006/).
It's basically about her harrowing experience with pregnancy through truly truly terrible itching (among other things). She relates this horror story she went through...then get about halfway through the story and relates how she still decided (and followed through on) having another kid.
AnonymousActuary
12d ago
Yeah I think it's hard to look at society writ large right now in the US (or Korea...) and think that increased parental attention is doing a lot of good for the median family (or even the 85th or 95th percentile family). I'm sure there's some Bryan Caplan's out there who are giving their kids a lot of good experiences but in general I think self sufficiency and learning how to entertain yourself without parental impact is generally quite good. I think you have good reasons to be wary, but I also think worrying about impact on your kids from a 4th is not it (kids like having little siblings too!)
AnonymousActuary
12d ago
My wife and I are expecting our third within a matter of weeks. For us part of it was just the joy of larger families and the new sibling relationships you get with each one. I sorta think of it like the formula for an undirected complete graph - with 2 people you have one relationship. With 3, you now have 3 (parents with each other, each parent with child). You have 3 kids right now, so you have 10 edges, adding one more kid will increase that by 50% to 15!
Maybe this is a weird way to think about it, but I feel like families I knew that had 4 kids always had the most fun family dynamics. You don't have the natural rivalries of two, the self-centeredness of one, or the ganging up that can occur with 3.
I don't think your other concerns are trivial though.
AnonymousActuary
12d ago
Not sure your views on Genesis, but the pain of labor is literally taken in Christianity to be a consequence of evil entering the world.
AnonymousActuary
15d ago
Roe v Wade is repealed and it is left up to the states, Obergefell passes, and federal dictate is declared.
This is an easy distinction to notice, not sure why it is being missed.
AnonymousActuary
15d ago
the problem is a status quo where what the conservative wing of the forum sees as an imposition on constitutional rights continues, and the forum one would go for redress of those wrongs continually punts on fixing this despite multiple electoral victories having led to it being comprised of justices whom one would've thought would think it important to rule on this.
AnonymousActuary
1mo ago
ChatGPT suggests this: https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/patrick-collison/.com
AnonymousActuary
1mo ago
capital gains taxes are bad actually so this is fine.
Alternatively, they still have to pay sales taxes on what they buy.
AnonymousActuary
1mo ago
he won only insofar as he was immediately targeted for other lawsuits on similar grounds. Yay.
AnonymousActuary
1mo ago
I think the general script that I see among the more conservative/traditional people in my life is you meet someone in college and marry them shortly thereafter, with varying degrees of whether you sleep with them before marriage (but your lifetime body count is much more likely to be 1).
This puts extra non-academic pressure on college, and most of this happened pre-COVID, so not sure how easy it is now.
I was raised in a conservative family, did not partake in sex, drugs, or alcohol in high school and feel like my life turned out pretty awesomely.
AnonymousActuary
1mo ago
This is ignoring the massive confounding variable which is social media and the post 2014 culture (much more engagement with politics, for instance)
AnonymousActuary
2mo ago
replaced my nightly twitter doom scroll with anki decks for geography, presidents and amendments a few months back. Highly recommend.
AnonymousActuary
2mo ago
Dagger and the Coin
I think "why is this bad thing happening to me" sorta a diet-problem of evil is an extremely common thing for people to think about? But yes, I doubt the median Christian has read the Bible through even once. I remember when I was ~10 talking to a Sunday school leader and mentioning I was starting my 3rd time through reading a chapter a day and he was shocked. I was like "wait doesn't everyone do this?" haha.
And the Bible as a whole definitely addresses it frequently - think the Tower of Siloam story, the story of the cripple ("who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?") or like, the entire book of Job. I don't think the answers that come out are ones that are going to intuitively solve the problem for someone who doesn't already believe, but it is certainly considered.
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