W.H.O. (are you), WHO WHO

[SuburbanFarmer]

The idea that "we need god because..." kinda overlooks the basic fundamental concept of God.
The existence of God, conceptually or in reality, relies 0% upon human need.
That whole "I AM" thing?
Eh, forget it. You heathens never entered a Church in your lives.

That's really only the Judeo-Christian God. Pagan gods required sacrifices for their sustenance.

ummm.... yeah, better read up on that one.

[Montegriffo]

It's like Smitty's quote about never getting in the universe's panties that someone had as their sig.

I was wrong

I take it back

Deus ex machina

Damn, don't say that. It was one of the deepest things you ever said.

[Xenophon]

The idea that "we need god because..." kinda overlooks the basic fundamental concept of God.
The existence of God, conceptually or in reality, relies 0% upon human need.
That whole "I AM" thing?
Eh, forget it. You heathens never entered a Church in your lives.

That's really only the Judeo-Christian God. Pagan gods required sacrifices for their sustenance.

ummm.... yeah, better read up on that one.

Enlighten me.

[Smitty-48]

It's like Smitty's quote about never getting in the universe's panties that someone had as their sig.

I was wrong

I take it back

Deus ex machina

Damn, don't say that. It was one of the deepest things you ever said.

But it was wrong, I was wrong, it was snark, and now I am sorry for it

[DBTrek]

The idea that "we need god because..." kinda overlooks the basic fundamental concept of God.
The existence of God, conceptually or in reality, relies 0% upon human need.
That whole "I AM" thing?
Eh, forget it. You heathens never entered a Church in your lives.

That's really only the Judeo-Christian God. Pagan gods required sacrifices for their sustenance.

True.
But they also existed outside of human need.
If you walked up to Zeus and told him he only existed because humans can't intellectually conceive of the cosmos he'd lightning bolt your ass for sure. Then he'd probably turn into a creature and impregnate your wife.

The whole concept is based on this idea that the creators exist independent of the opinions, needs, or insecurities of the creations.

(And as others have mentioned, Judeo-Christian God also required sacrifices, see the whole Old and New Testament)

[SuburbanFarmer]

That's really only the Judeo-Christian God. Pagan gods required sacrifices for their sustenance.

ummm.... yeah, better read up on that one.

Enlighten me.

Tons of animal sacrifice in the Old Testament - even to the point that God did some smiting if it wasn't good enough.
Also, Abraham was asked to knife his kid, and almost did it, to please God...

[Speaker to Animals]

And to lay my cards on the table.. I think I actually have had this since late Jan or early Feb. I have basically been sick for three months. So have quite a lot of people I know (and friends of friends across North Carolina). Lots of people got extremely ill and never tested positive for influenza, beginning late last Summer. ...Ask Glory of Greece who talked to me on the phone throughout that time. I really have been sick for that long. It's not likely influenza because the other people who have legit health care that caught the same illness tested negative for it.

Hope you recover soon, man. That sounds shitty.
My little girl had three solid days of 103 fever in Boulder City, NV just before the outbreak started making waves. Other symptoms too . . . but she bounced back quick. I still wonder if she got it, but figure not ... since no one else in the family went down.

Either way, get well soon.

I think right now it is just the itchiness that lingers in my lungs. I have not had the random fevers in over a month. Nor was it really that bad. It was just weird AF. I never had a flu like that and neither did anybody else who had it.

Here is another interesting way of looking at it.. Our influenza season was almost twice as bad as previous seasons. But when I looked at the UK data for this flu season, they didn't see anything particularly worse. Wouldn't you expect our influenza seasonal data to be about the same?

This is the scenario that has me curious: what if the virus leaked from UNC first (or just hitchiked over here from Wuhan long before it went epidemic there). Our unfluenza deaths and hospitalizations were up almost 100% here. It was a really bad flu season before we ever heard a damned thing about coronaviruses. By Nov we had several deaths from viral pneumonia in my community, but they were healthy young adults and one child. What if type A just wasn't nearly as bad as type B and type C? That could explain the weird statistics we see around the world, and even here in the US. For instance, we know type A is most common in the Western United States. Deaths are definitely a problem there, but it's nothing like New York which, last I checked, was actually type B imported from Europe.

If this is true, the government is now playing a dangerous game because there is no fucking way they can keep that hidden. The antibodies are in the blood supply dating back pretty far, for instance. We should be able to test older blood donations to look for antibodies that predated the epidemic in Wuhan, which would corroborate what the genomic data seems to indicate.

In any case, if we are going to start talking shit about the Wuhan Institute of Virology, prepare yourselves for that sword to cut both ways -- because UNC collaborated in that research and was testing that virus here too.

[Xenophon]

The idea that "we need god because..." kinda overlooks the basic fundamental concept of God.
The existence of God, conceptually or in reality, relies 0% upon human need.
That whole "I AM" thing?
Eh, forget it. You heathens never entered a Church in your lives.

That's really only the Judeo-Christian God. Pagan gods required sacrifices for their sustenance.

True.
But they also existed outside of human need.
If you walked up to Zeus and told him he only existed because humans can't intellectually conceive of the cosmos he'd lightning bolt your ass for sure. Then he'd probably turn into a creature and impregnate your wife.

The whole concept is based on this idea that the creators exist independent of the opinions, needs, or insecurities of the creations.

(And as others have mentioned, Judeo-Christian God also required sacrifices, see the whole Old and New Testament)

He didn't require sacrifices. Blood sacrifices in the Old Testament were required by worshipers of YHWH in order to make up for the sins of the nation, so they could become holy. God gave them the option.

[heydaralon]

The idea that "we need god because..." kinda overlooks the basic fundamental concept of God.
The existence of God, conceptually or in reality, relies 0% upon human need.
That whole "I AM" thing?
Eh, forget it. You heathens never entered a Church in your lives.

The funny thing is, liberalism (not the snotty progressivism we see on twitter today) is fundamentally based on a Christian myth. Locke and his peers all said since we are created by god that is what gives us our value and makes us equal. They felt that you couldn't committ suicide or sell yourself into slavery because your life was not your own. The men who laid the foundations for Western civilization over the last 300 years were not always Christians, but they took their ideas from Christianity either wittingly or unwittingly. The Modern world good or bad is a legacy of Christianity.

What is weird is that most atheists that are prominent in our culture are extremely liberal. They act like disbelief in God automatically leads to pro choice, economic egalitarianism, and big govt and that this is self evident. That is kind of weird. Herbert Spencer is the guy who coined the phrase "survival of the fittest" not Darwin. He wrote his major shit a few decades after Darwin published Origin. His view was pure cut throat capitalism. Only the fittest economic people survive. And he used Darwin to justify it. Now we have Progressives using atheism to justify social programs of every kind and claiming determinism. They don't have enough self awareness to understand where their ideas came from. They are worshipping a warped version of Jesus. In their version, Jesus is the Goernment, and Salvation comes by giving the state all the power over our decisions. Society would just be saved if it put its trust in the Godvernment. Marxism is also a twisted version of Christianity. As is secular humanism.

They hate Christianity, but the old version of it was far less intrusive and grotesque than the modern version they cooked up.

[DrYouth]

One can argue that the whole Judeo Christian tradition was a move away from human sacrifice, then animal sacrifice... and left us with the concept of Jesus' sacrifice... and finally with the last western move... towards secularism and forget sacrifice at all.

There has been something lost along the way I suspect... but still happy we have moved on from human sacrifice... no real need to go back to that.