Crowstep
14hr ago
Literally nothing. I don't even have any notes in my wallet.
What are you keeping it for? In a situation where the electronic banking system goes down for a meaningful amount of time, I'd rather have food stockpiled than cash (although you can of course have both).
Crowstep
16hr ago
I personally pray for God to end wars at least once a week.
And God ignores your prayers, and the prayers of the billions of other Christians who have also prayed for this obviously good thing for centuries. Can you see how, to an outside observer, this might make it seem like you're not actually asking as if someone is listening? God looks down on, say, the mass murder of Christians by ISIS as part of his benevolent plan and doesn't intervene. But apparently he does intervene to help you meet your wife?
I believe that the existence of a supernatural universe (not a specific deity) is pretty obvious based on simple logic.
I also believe in the existence of the Christian God not through logic, but through the personal experiences of a person whom I know very well.
Would I be right to think that the latter came before the former? Because from my experience and reading, people turn to religion for emotional reasons, and then the apologetics come after to see off the logical doubts.
intelligent people who are religious do in fact believe that God exists, that he answers prayers, and that he intervenes in the world. It isn't just compartmentalization and going along with the culture in which one grew up.
My model of it leans less on people going along with what they were raised in (although the statistics show that conversions are basically a rounding error, religions grow through the cradle), and more through motivated reasoning. That's what I mean by compartmentalisation. Applying wildly different standards to God that to the ones you apply to everyday life. I don't think any religious person believes in God in the same way that they believe that things fall down when you drop them or that the sun rises in the morning. But motivated reasoning, applying different standards to religious beliefs than normal beliefs, and positive mood affiliation leads to 'belief in belief'.
Don't you find it a little odd that an organisation that is extremely sure about the existence of God, creation, the resurrection and about how the church is the only source for salvation suddenly starts admitting its own fallability on a topic that might offend modern audiences? I doubt the medieval church was so unsure about something so profoundly fundamental. It smells an awful lot like Mormons getting sudden revalations that e.g. polygamy is no longer okay or that African Americans are now allowed in the priesthood.
I'd also add a thought that comes to me when I read theological discussions, it's all just words, words, words. If hell was real in the same way that the earth's molten core is real, people would look for evidence, run tests and experiments, apply lessons learned from similar fields. There would be a real answer. Instead we get an understanding of existence that is based purely on written and spoken words, and people can come to basically any conclusion they want.
I read somewhere that Stranger Things could only have been set in the 1980s, because the 'kids on bikes having an adventure' only works if the kids are allowed outside. The decline does seem to have happened a bit later than that, but the principle is correct.
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