10A

So you just don't question whether or not god is good or evil, have I understood correctly?

Nobody has the rightful authority to question the word of God. I quoted a verse from the Bible to you. We accept God's word without question because we are His humble servants. It would be arrogant to suppose we have permission to question His word, and it would be evil for us to desire to question His word. When you are presented with a Bible quote, you accept it as true and holy. When a demon tells you to question it, or claims that it's false, you repent and ask Jesus to shield you from this demonic temptation. In the end, we must always conclude that the word of God is correct.

Like I said earlier, whichever way you mean, nobody is whispering anything in my ears.

And yet you continue to demonstrate clear evidence to the contrary. If you're not plagued by demons then show me your embrace of God.

But to the best of my ability to understand, this is not something I am wrong about.

You put understanding before faith. That's backwards. I assure you, this is something you are wrong about.

We have pretty strong evidence to suggest that dark matter exists.

True, but we have a thousand times more evidence to confirm that God exists. Evidence to which you are blind.

[Re: "Is it intelligent to want to be happy?"] Sure, but lying to yourself will never make you happy. You're asking me to lie to myself.

If (A) I was asking you to lie to yourself, and (B) lying to yourself will never make you happy, then (C) actively religious people cannot be happier than irreligious people.

This is basic logic: A ∧ B ∴ C

And yet (C) is demonstrably false, an assertion which I substantiated with hard data. And that was just one survey. Survey after survey repeatedly demonstrates that actively religious people are far happier.

I'll reply to some of the various other things you wrote, but this is the heart of our discussion. The crux, if you will. Your perspective is that you're too smart to believe in God, and you refuse to acknowledge that God blesses His faithful believers with happiness. You believe that intelligent people choose unhappiness despite the obvious fact that it would be rather unwise to intentionally choose unhappiness, by virtue of the very definition of happiness. The only possible explanation for your insistent rejection of God is your unknowing loyalty to Satan, who has successfully convinced you that not even he exists.

As a result there are industries that are zero sum games, with an overall tendency to move towards zero sum.

The economy is fundamentally not a zero sum game. It cannot be, under any circumstances. I'm done arguing this point, as I'm not an economist or a game theorist, and you're not either.

[Re: "The cost of business loss is equivalent to gained experience." Not when your house or car is collateral. Not when it is the only thing paying your rent and keeping food on the table.

Sure it is. We can lose all of our material possessions, and all of our food, while we retain all of the wealth in the world through our faith in God. I advise you to study Matthew 6:24-34, but even though that's only ten verses, for brevity I'll only quote one here:

Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

We were talking about homesteading, which absolutely has a limit.

I was not talking only about homesteading. I speak of all of us who walk upon the earth.

Then why do we have an army? If the government has no responsibility to protect us, then we could easily save hundreds of billions of dollars of tax payer money by disbanding all armed forces.

The government has a responsibility to protect our nation as an institution; not to protect us each individually.

I don't care about how it sounds, it is the truth.

Except it's not. You frequently come across as confidently incorrect.

[Re: "Businesses have tight budgets."] Only because they budget boat loads of money for executives and shareholders.

Do you have any awareness that 99.9% of businesses in the US are small businesses? Literally 99.9%. (Source) Normal businesses are far closer to my example of making pottery out of clay from your backyard than they are to giant multinational corporations. But all companies, no matter the size, are normally somewhat strapped for cash, because they need to reinvest profits to grow.

Please start a business. The only reason you have not to is if you're afraid of realizing that your entire economic theory is bunk.

[Re: "But freedom of religion is not freedom from religion."] You can't have one without the other.

Then how did we always have one without the other until recent times? You're free to join any church you'd like, regardless of affiliation, provided that you worship the Lord our God. That's our freedom of religion. If you deny God, you embrace Satan, and until fairly recently that would have meant you'd be locked away in a mental asylum.

And the states you are comparing are inherently a bad comparison because the state of a light bulb is in no way representative of serving, which is an active action.

You're so fixated on this. If you insist, yes, a light-bulb "serves" its master, where its master is its owner who flips the light-switch on and off. But you're really missing the point here.

We have two possible states, in which we cling to God or Satan. There is no third option. Satan will insist that neither he nor God exists, and you can choose to believe that lie at your eternal peril.

You know what I meant. The evidence for free will is lacking, therefore I do not believe it exists.

The evidence is within you every time you choose to reject God. Indeed every time you type a character in reply to me, you evidence free will.

That doesn't answer my question. How do you know that god doesn't want humans to solve climate change on our own? "Just pray for an answer" doesn't tell me anything about the methodology of how you came to your current conclusion of "no".

Did god personally tell you that the answer was no? Is it just a feeling you have? Was it some "sign"?

The entire premise requires us to arrogantly suppose we could possibly control the whole planet, which is contrary to everything God tells us.

Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.

James 4:10

Those aren't just a bunch of archaic random words; they're instructions for how we are to live. And they are entirely applicable to the climate agenda. When we are humble, we put our trust in God, not ourselves.

You've got your parties backward, but thank you.

Funny, that image link is 404 Not Found.

I'd love to see an option made available for magazines saying, "Voters must be members", and perhaps "Hide content from /all".

This is part of a larger discussion on moderator pruning.

I think it'd help to start emailing notifications if they're not checked within a certain period of time.

I am criticizing a fictional, human made character. As a result of being human made, there is no such infinite wisdom.

Imagine for once that you are completely wrong about this belief of yours. Yes, it's the height of hubris. If we know nothing else, we know at very least that our Creator lives.

How have you determined that you aren't worshiping an evil god if you haven't questioned god? How do you know that it isn't the case that both god and satan are evil?

Psalm 100:5:

For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.

To choose just one of many possible answers.

Nobody is whispering anything in my ears, metephorically or literally, whichever way you mean. And I question everything before I believe it.

I mean literally. You may look at your shoulder, expecting to see no demon, while maybe picturing the cutesy BSD mascot, and sure enough you don't see one sitting on your shoulder. "See?" you reassure yourself, "no demon." You then recall that you've never seen the BSD mascot running around anywhere IRL, and conclude that demons must not exist.

How sure are you that you do a good job questioning everything before you believe it? Is it possible that you've made an error?

Demons do not look like cutesy cartoon characters, and indeed they're not visible to the human eye (at least not to mine). As with all extant spiritual entities, we can know they exist despite our inability to see them.

Are you just as quick to deny that dark matter exists?

That's not true. [Re: "it's self-evidently true, as anyone who denies God cannot be said to be very intelligent."]

You said you were willing to question your beliefs, so I urge you to question this. I think it underlies the rift between us.

You want to see yourself as a reasonably intelligent person, and you want to cling to a state of mind which you believe to be shared by other intelligent people.

But I ask you, are you so sure that it's intelligent to reject God? Consider the following:

According to Pew, actively religious people tend to be far happier. Is it intelligent to want to be happy? Could this effect possibly be a quantitative measurement of God's blessings? And is it intelligent to want to be happy?

Again, I ask you: is it intelligent to want to be happy?

As a result of all of this, this industry is a zero sum game.

I doubt any economists would agree with this. Even with declining demand, the addition of every grain of rice is a contribution to the economy.

One is the cost of startup the other is the cost of loss.

The cost of business loss is equivalent to gained experience. Let's say you extract clay from your backyard and use it to make pottery, which you then sell at your local market. Startup cost is $0, as you hand-made your own kiln and your own cart to transport your pottery.

You have a few sales, but not many. When you see people walk away from your table without buying anything, you stop them to ask them why. Several of them tell you that your products are all too small for their taste.

So you close down your shop, head back home, and get to work rebuilding your kiln to be ten times larger. Two months later you open up a brand new shop, based on your gained experience, and now your pottery sells like wildfire.

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

You seem to misunderstand that phrase. It is commonly used to express the limitations of government provision. But I was talking about God's provision, and there's no limitation to that.

It is the business of the government to protect the people, and greedy corporations who pay poverty wages is one such thing that we need protection from.

Where did you get that idea? Nowhere in our Constitution does it say that government is supposed to protect the people.

Every time you imply that corporations are "greedy", you sound out of touch and inexperienced. Please start your own company. You will learn so much about the real world. It doesn't need to be anything fancy. Sell an old book on ebay. You will learn so much.

These companies absolutely have the money to pay

You make it so clear that you've never run a business and hired anyone. You're completely out of touch. Businesses have tight budgets. Sell that old book on ebay, and grow your nascent business enough that you want to hire someone to help you out. You will quickly learn that you can afford very little to hire someone, yet you're overburdened with work so you need to hire someone as cheap as possible.

The 1st amedment explicitly states otherwise, that our government shall not enforce religion.

I don't want the Senate to declare that the Pope has legal authority over Americans any more than you do.

But freedom of religion is not freedom from religion. In America, we have the former. Not the latter.

You are either with God or against God. The US is one nation under God.

And a light bulb doesn't serve anybody which makes it a bad comparison.

It's a good comparison because I'm trying to make a point about possible states. When you reject God, you embrace Satan, because there are only two possible states. Just like a light-bulb.

Just know going forward I don't really see free will as something that makes sense.

You don't need to understand something in order to accept that it's true, or that it exists.

Did you ever think that maybe god wants us to fix the problem? Have you considered that you might be going against god's will when you say we should do nothing to prevent further damage to the environment/god's creation? It seems pretty straightforward to me that if god exists and created us and this planet, that such a god would want us to take good care of the planet.

Once you accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, and you live in a state of perpetual prayer, you will know what God wants from you personally. You will learn that His will often goes against your own, and that it sometimes makes no sense to you.