u/Slight_Turnip_3292

This afternoon we were coming down Beauty Creek road and encountered a couple of guys that had their targets pinned to the large beautiful cedar trees and were blasting away. Anyone who has driven up that road know the tranquil beauty (hence the name) and old growth cedars that line the creek. I don't know if it was out of ignorance or sheer willful maliciousness.

Didn't know who to call to report this and I wasn't about to stop and talk to obviously clueless guys with semi-automatics. Really sad. Maybe the Forest Service needs to put up signs but certain things people should just know out of common sense.

Why would an infallible deity choose to transmit its "Word" through the fallible, unreliable medium of human production?

I am tired of the endless, vague theological debates that lead nowhere decisive. Instead, I’ve started applying simple, common-sense inquiry to the foundational claims of religion. The very concept of the existence of "Holy Scripture" is one of these. Here are couple reasons I think it is absurd that God would inspire a Holy Scripture and there are probably more.

1. The Medium: If an omnipotent God can physically write with His own finger (as described in the Old Testament), why would He rely on fallible, fickle humans to draft, redact, edit, and organize His message? It seems comical that a Supreme Being would choose such a prone-to-error process and leave Its true Holy Scripture to exist among all the other alleged counterfeits with nothing to distinguish it above a crowded field.
2. Accessibility: Written language is a relatively modern and historically elite skill. For the vast majority of human history, the overwhelming majority of people were illiterate. Why would a God choose a medium that was fundamentally inaccessible to the people He was allegedly trying to reach? And then there is the problem of translation. God alleged confounded people by creating language barriers but this very barrier was and is now a major impediment to dissemination of the alleged "Word".
3. Lack of Authentication: Modern legal/financial transactions utilize integrity features to ensure authenticity and prevent corruption (ie Non-repudiation). Yet, these "divine" texts contain zero markers of their origin or systems of check summing the text and the collection of the whole.

It is bizarre that a God would leave His most important message vulnerable to the guile, stupidity, and deceit of humans without providing a form of divine authentication and non-repudiation.

If God wanted His message to be clear and preserved, He clearly has the capability to do so - yet the evidence we have looks exactly like a product of human invention.

I have a rather large yard but the best place for a sauna is on my property line with about 5 ft of setback. I really want to use a wood stove as I have an endless supply of wood. It will be a small sauna for 2 to 3 people.

Question how much smoke does a wood fired sauna produce? I really don't want to piss off my neighbor.

This lines up well with his worldview. He just needs to have a feeling something is wrong, he doesn't need evidence to form a belief. Evidence is not an important feature of their ideology.

If indeed there is something diabolical why can't the evangelicals just call in some prayers and angels and neutralize it? Why does the satan guy win all the time and the Christians can't seem to do anything about it. Must be frustrating.

And if it is something big, diabolical and upstream wouldn't that mean there should be even more evidence?

What an embarrassment to have a weak minded and gullible person like Mike in political office. We all know he is just trying to please his idol.

Plantinga’s Free Will Defense posits that a world containing free will is superior to one without. He emphasizing that the capacity for free willed moral action is a supreme good and God has to risk moral evil in order to achieve that higher valued objective of free chosen moral good actions.

If we accept this premise as true moral autonomy would be achieved by the absence of divine coercion such as the promises of extrinsic motivations of rewards or threats of punishments. It is common place to hear theist claim that without God "all things are permitted" and sometimes even admit that if there wasn't a god they would be raping and pillaging. That is they are constrained only because of future consequences.

Non-believers demonstrate the highest form of free moral agency as their actions are uncorrupted by these future reward or punishment. In essence, non-believers have access to a higher virtue than believers.

By choosing "good for goodness' sake" without the expectation of celestial recompense, we can conclude that those who act independently of religious incentive are, by Plantinga’s own standards, the most aligned with the value of free moral choice and thus would be favored by God.

Living in a predominantly Christian culture, I have been exposed to apologetic works like "The Case for Christ" or "Evidence That Demands a Verdict." These books often rely on historical oddities or weak circumstantial arguments - such as the claim that ancient authors wouldn't have used women as witnesses or that the apostles wouldn't have died for a lie. And even sometimes employ false logical fallacies or vague philosophical arguments.

Similarly, I encounter arguments from Islamic apologists who claim the Quran is too perfect to be of human origin. Not as familiar with the Islamic arguments but they fall in to the same category.

This leads me to a fundamental question I like to ask before engaging with any proselytizers: Why is there so little evidence that His followers are forced to rely on these strained, rehearsed arguments?

If an omnipotent and omniscient God truly existed, His presence should be as self-evident and undeniable as the existence of the sun. The fact that His existence is a matter of intense, centuries-long debate rather than objective, universal knowledge strongly suggests to me that these religious claims are NOT rooted in reality. In addition, there is the fact that religion are constrained strongly by culture which suggests indoctrination is far more influential than any objective evidence.

In a way I think apologist and proselytizers refute what they claim by their own actions and intentions.

As a taxpayer we are all harmed by the unconstitutional decision by the DOJ to create a untracked fund that will be administered by group of political operatives. The power of the purse is controlled by Congress.

Since taxpayers have legal standing is it possible to sue the DOJ or the Executive for this blatant action and stop it?