Does Covid-19 disprove the existence of God? by captaincrunch

Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.

God Bashing at Its Best by Christopher Hitchens

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Wednesday, May 6, 2020 11:13 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:
This design... you have to say it's kind of "beautiful" in a purely aesthetic way. It's definitely not random. Recent mutations can only be seen as an upgrade from the orginal, as if there is some kind of intelligence directing it.

Can something as destructive toward mankind as this exist in a world with a God?

Sure it could.

Are you even familiar with a book called The Bible?

There's shit that happened in there that makes The Coomph look like a stubbed toe.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Thursday, May 7, 2020 6:31 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:

Can something as destructive toward mankind as this exist in a world with a God?

David Hume in "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion" puts the following words into the mouth of Philo, “Epicurus’s old questions are yet unanswered. Is he [Deity] willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?”

Augustine wrote about the Problem of Evil:
Where does evil come from then, seeing that God, who is good, has created all these things good? - Augustine, Confessions.

I asked how he dealt with the old theological conundrum, the problem of evil. If God loves us, why is life often so painful and unfair? Why do innocent people suffer? Kauffman said his God, if He exists, is the cool, impersonal deity of Spinoza, not the emotionally volatile tyrant of the Old Testament.

For Don Page, a theoretical physicist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, this elegance goes far beyond human actions. Page is both a hard-core Everettian and a committed Christian. Like many modern physicists, he agrees with Everett’s stance that collapsing the wave function is unnecessarily complicated. What’s more, for Page it has a happy side effect: it explains why his God tolerates the existence of evil. “God has values,” he says. “He wants us to enjoy life, but he also wants to create an elegant universe.” To God the importance of elegance comes before that of suffering, which, Page infers, is why bad things happen. “God won’t collapse the wave function to cure people of cancer, or prevent earthquakes or whatever, because that would make the universe much more inelegant.”
For Page, that is an intellectually satisfying solution to the problem of evil. And what’s more, many worlds may even take care of free will. Page doesn’t actually believe we have free will, because he feels we live in a reality in which God determines everything, so it is impossible for humans to act independently. But in the many-worlds interpretation every possible action is actually taken. “It doesn’t mean that it’s fixed that I do one particular course of action. In the multiverse, I’m doing all of them,” says Page.
From the Quantum World by New Scientist

Problem of evil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil

The Problem of Evil: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evil/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, May 7, 2020 7:44 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Why 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’

www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/why-536-was-worst-year-be-alive

Ask medieval historian Michael McCormick what year was the worst to be alive, and he's got an answer: "536." Not 1349, when the Black Death wiped out half of Europe. Not 1918, when the flu killed 50 million to 100 million people, mostly young adults. But 536. In Europe, "It was the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive, if not the worst year," says McCormick, a historian and archaeologist who chairs the Harvard University Initiative for the Science of the Human Past.

A mysterious fog plunged Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia into darkness, day and night—for 18 months. "For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year," wrote Byzantine historian Procopius. Temperatures in the summer of 536 fell 1.5°C to 2.5°C, initiating the coldest decade in the past 2300 years. Snow fell that summer in China; crops failed; people starved. The Irish chronicles record "a failure of bread from the years 536–539." Then, in 541, bubonic plague struck the Roman port of Pelusium, in Egypt. What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse, McCormick says.

Historians have long known that the middle of the sixth century was a dark hour in what used to be called the Dark Ages, but the source of the mysterious clouds has long been a puzzle. Now, an ultraprecise analysis of ice from a Swiss glacier by a team led by McCormick and glaciologist Paul Mayewski at the Climate Change Institute of The University of Maine (UM) in Orono has fingered a culprit. At a workshop at Harvard this week, the team reported that a cataclysmic volcanic eruption in Iceland spewed ash across the Northern Hemisphere early in 536. Two other massive eruptions followed, in 540 and 547. The repeated blows, followed by plague, plunged Europe into economic stagnation that lasted until 640, when another signal in the ice—a spike in airborne lead—marks a resurgence of silver mining, as the team reports in Antiquity this week.

To Kyle Harper, provost and a medieval and Roman historian at The University of Oklahoma in Norman, the detailed log of natural disasters and human pollution frozen into the ice "give us a new kind of record for understanding the concatenation of human and natural causes that led to the fall of the Roman Empire—and the earliest stirrings of this new medieval economy."

More at www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/why-536-was-worst-year-be-alive

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, May 7, 2020 7:49 AM

If everything was great all the time, you would have no reference point and everything would be normal.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Thursday, May 7, 2020 9:42 AM

... stay crunchy...

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:

Can something as destructive toward mankind as this exist in a world with a God?
David Hume in "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion" puts the following words into the mouth of Philo, “Epicurus’s old questions are yet unanswered. Is he [Deity] willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?”

Augustine wrote about the Problem of Evil:
Where does evil come from then, seeing that God, who is good, has created all these things good? - Augustine, Confessions.

I asked how he dealt with the old theological conundrum, the problem of evil. If God loves us, why is life often so painful and unfair? Why do innocent people suffer? Kauffman said his God, if He exists, is the cool, impersonal deity of Spinoza, not the emotionally volatile tyrant of the Old Testament.

For Don Page, a theoretical physicist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, this elegance goes far beyond human actions. Page is both a hard-core Everettian and a committed Christian. Like many modern physicists, he agrees with Everett’s stance that collapsing the wave function is unnecessarily complicated. What’s more, for Page it has a happy side effect: it explains why his God tolerates the existence of evil. “God has values,” he says. “He wants us to enjoy life, but he also wants to create an elegant universe.” To God the importance of elegance comes before that of suffering, which, Page infers, is why bad things happen. “God won’t collapse the wave function to cure people of cancer, or prevent earthquakes or whatever, because that would make the universe much more inelegant.”
For Page, that is an intellectually satisfying solution to the problem of evil. And what’s more, many worlds may even take care of free will. Page doesn’t actually believe we have free will, because he feels we live in a reality in which God determines everything, so it is impossible for humans to act independently. But in the many-worlds interpretation every possible action is actually taken. “It doesn’t mean that it’s fixed that I do one particular course of action. In the multiverse, I’m doing all of them,” says Page.
From the Quantum World by New Scientist

Problem of evil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil

The Problem of Evil: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evil/

If you are interested in Multiverse plot lines you should consider watching Devs on Hulu (may be elsewhere).

I can't make these work at the same time:

"God won’t collapse the wave function to cure people of cancer, or prevent earthquakes or whatever, because that would make the universe much more inelegant.”

and

"God has values"

Unless you go to they are totally selfish values, and we're here just for his/her/its amusement.

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Thursday, May 7, 2020 10:21 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

God?

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

#WEARAMASK

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Thursday, May 7, 2020 5:35 PM

He's just throwing around some Democrat Atheist tripe.

Of course The Coomph can't disprove the existence of God. What a stupid question.

Nothing is going to either prove or disprove the existence of God. Nothing that we discover or theorize is ever going to be mutually exclusive to the concept of God.

You either believe or you don't believe. It's a personal decision.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Thursday, May 7, 2020 10:49 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

ARGUMENT FROM MULTIPLICITY (V) (recursive internet edition)
(1) There exists a web page ( www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/GodProof.htm )
(2) That page has hundreds of purported proofs of the existence of God.
(3) They can't all be wrong.
(4) Therefore, God exists.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, May 7, 2020 11:20 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Quote:
SECOND:
ARGUMENT FROM MULTIPLICITY (V) (recursive internet edition)
(1) There exists a web page ( www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/GodProof.htm )
(2) That page has hundreds of purported proofs of the existence of God.
(3) They can't all be wrong.
(4) Therefore, God exists.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Well ... ahem ! ... that argument works equally badly the other way around.

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Thursday, May 7, 2020 11:45 PM

Yup.

You can't prove or disprove God.

And Atheists are just as annoying as Jehovah's Witnesses when they preach their religion.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Friday, May 8, 2020 12:59 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

You can't prove or disprove God.

You can run calculations and get an answer to as many digits accuracy as you have energy to do the work.

3.5.3 The Argument from Evil: A Quantitative Result
This approach generates a result that enables one not just to conclude that it is more likely than not that God does not exist, but also to assign an upper bound to the probability that God exists. The upper bound, moreover, is surely very low indeed. Accordingly, n must be extremely large, and thus the probability that there is an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect person, i.e. God, must be very low indeed.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evil/#IndLogEviArgEvi

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, May 8, 2020 1:43 AM

MAGONSDAUGHTER

It never ceases to amaze me how people come up with such convoluted plots regarding god

I might even add ‘Deus Ex Machina

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Friday, May 8, 2020 4:27 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

You can't prove or disprove God.
You can run calculations and get an answer to as many digits accuracy as you have energy to do the work.

3.5.3 The Argument from Evil: A Quantitative Result
This approach generates a result that enables one not just to conclude that it is more likely than not that God does not exist, but also to assign an upper bound to the probability that God exists. The upper bound, moreover, is surely very low indeed. Accordingly, n must be extremely large, and thus the probability that there is an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect person, i.e. God, must be very low indeed.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evil/#IndLogEviArgEvi

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

lol

Stupid monkeys... we used to think the earth was flat and that the sun revolved around it too.

It's pretty cute when some of us think that they've got everything figured out.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Friday, May 8, 2020 4:50 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

RIP Mr Hitchens.

I'm at the point that for those who believe, nothing will shake their ' faith '. Not aliens, not dinosaurs, not man made China viruses.

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Friday, May 8, 2020 6:33 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

lol

Stupid monkeys... we used to think the earth was flat and that the sun revolved around it too.

It's pretty cute when some of us think that they've got everything figured out.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

The philosophical argument is that there are states of affairs such that it is likely that, all things considered, it would be morally very wrong for an omnipotent and omniscient person, i.e. God, to allow those states of affairs to exist. What the philosophers are arguing is that God can't be all three simultaneously: 1) omnipotent and 2) omniscient and 3) moral at the same time. But if God is missing two or even three of the above attributes, that is a different problem, one where God isn't actually a God, but more like a Thor, the comic book and movie character existing only in your imagination and the Disney Channel.

A number of philosophers have gone on to claim that in order to be justified in asserting that there are evils in the world that establish that it is unlikely that God exists, one would first have to examine all of the traditional arguments for the existence of God, and show that none of them is sound. Almost none of them provides any support for the hypothesis that there is an omnipotent and omniscient being who is also morally perfect.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evil/#AppPosEviForExiGod

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, May 8, 2020 10:06 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

lol

Stupid monkeys... we used to think the earth was flat and that the sun revolved around it too.

It's pretty cute when some of us think that they've got everything figured out.

Do Right, Be Right. :)
The philosophical argument is that there are states of affairs such that it is likely that, all things considered, it would be morally very wrong for an omnipotent and omniscient person, i.e. God, to allow those states of affairs to exist. What the philosophers are arguing is that God can't be all three simultaneously: 1) omnipotent and 2) omniscient and 3) moral at the same time. But if God is missing two or even three of the above attributes, that is a different problem, one where God isn't actually a God, but more like a Thor, the comic book and movie character existing only in your imagination and the Disney Channel.

Old Testament "God" was a brutal son of a bitch.

Have you ever read Job? It's actually the only book in the Bible that I struggled through after hearing about it (I find reading the Bible to be an even more painful experience than trying to plod through Lovecraft).

What God allowed Satan to do to Job and his family for no reason more than to prove a point seemed pretty fucking petty in my eyes.

My mind will likely never be made up on whether or not there is a God before I die. But I have no illusions that he's some sort of 100% moral being that makes the right decision all of the time.

Even if he were, how do you translate that to a planet full of 7.5 BILLION people, all with their own individual and conflicting interests?

You can't sit and complain now that there wasn't enough given on the planet for everyone. The fact that we've put this many people on the planet over time was our own doing, with or without a God. "Free Will". If God were a micro-manager to the degree that you seem to be suggesting he should be, we never would have gone over a billion people.

The God I believe might exist just turned on the lights, gave us a great place to live if we were up to the challenge, washed his hands of it and said "try not to fuck it all up".

He also knew that we were destined to fuck it all up eventually.

Quote:
A number of philosophers have gone on to claim that in order to be justified in asserting that there are evils in the world that establish that it is unlikely that God exists, one would first have to examine all of the traditional arguments for the existence of God, and show that none of them is sound. Almost none of them provides any support for the hypothesis that there is an omnipotent and omniscient being who is also morally perfect.

Once again, this goes to an earlier statement of mine on the thread...

If everything were great all of the time we would have no reference point and everything would just be normal.

I think that both as individuals and as societies we've just lost our sense of Balance.

We probably could all use a little Taoism in our lives, whether or not we believe in any Gods.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Friday, May 8, 2020 12:17 PM

... stay crunchy...

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Are you even familiar with a book called The Bible?
There's shit that happened in there that makes The Coomph look like a stubbed toe.

Figures PizzaGate brain would compare parting the red sea with a virus. Keep swinging, genius. You can't compare a work of science fiction with real life. Other than for contrasts and differences.

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Saturday, May 9, 2020 7:15 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

I think that both as individuals and as societies we've just lost our sense of Balance.

We probably could all use a little Taoism in our lives, whether or not we believe in any Gods.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

Taoism does not have a God in the way that the Abrahamic religions do. There is no omnipotent being beyond the cosmos, who created and controls the universe. In Taoism the universe springs from the Tao, and the Tao impersonally guides things on their way. But the Tao itself is not God, nor is it a god, nor is it worshipped by Taoists.
www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/taoism/beliefs/gods.shtml

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, May 9, 2020 8:36 AM

Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.

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Saturday, May 9, 2020 8:50 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.

There's far more to it than just that, and I suspect you see. It's the belief that they know better and we, the dumb masses, need to blindly listen, follow, and even obey them, because, as you so clearly put it, they're dedicated, educated and professional.

" People don't like to be meddled with. We tell them what to do, what to think, don't run, don't walk. We're in their homes and in their heads and we haven't the right. We're meddlesome." - River Tam.

I know anything, I know this: they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten, they'll swing back to the belief that they can make people ... better. And I do not hold to that.

So no more running. I aim to misbehave. " - Mal Reynolds.

And isn't that pretty much how things are playing out now ? It's as they've always been. You get a few folks, a group of people, a class that believes it's better than, above everyone else, and then instead of trying to make their case, explaining it to everyone, they just go out and DO stuff... legal or not, because they KNOW better.

Sorry, but that's not how this works. Not in a free society.

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Sunday, May 10, 2020 7:50 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

A cartoon defends God versus Covid-19:

Man: “Lord, why do bad things happen to good people?”

God: “Come on, Man. I do like three killer tsunamis per year at most, and then otherwise things are basically solid. I am allll powerful, alllll knowing, and allllllmost good. Like *this* close. It's practically a rounding error.”
www.smbc-comics.com/comic/theodicy

The philosopher Leibniz defends God versus Covid-19:

There are two main species of the problem of evil that Leibniz addresses. The first, “the underachiever problem,” is raised by a critic who would argue that the existence of evil in our world indicates that God cannot be as knowledgeable, powerful, or good as traditional monotheists have claimed. The second, “the holiness problem,” is raised by the critic who would argue that God's intimate causal entanglements with the world make God the cause of evil. God is thereby implicated in evil to the detriment of his holiness.

Consideration of any present-day introductory textbook of philosophy reveals that the problem of evil in contemporary philosophy is standardly regarded as an argument for atheism. The atheist contends that God and evil are incompatible, and given that evil clearly exists, God cannot exist. Some philosophers, conceding that the claimed incompatibility in the foregoing argument is too strong, contend, nevertheless, that even if the existence of God and the existence of evil should prove to be compatible, the existence (or duration, or amount, or pervasiveness) of evil provides us at the very least with compelling circumstantial evidence that God does not exist.

Framed in this way, the “atheistic problem of evil” invites certain sorts of responses. In particular, it invites the theist to explain how a being that is omniscient, omnibenevolent, and omnipotent can allow evil to exist. Present-day responses to the problem of evil therefore focus largely on presenting “theodicies,” that is, reasons why a perfect being does or might permit evil of the sort (or duration, or amount, or distribution) that we find in our world to exist.

When we consider, however, the works of medieval philosophers who address the problem of evil, the “atheistic problem” is not to be found. Since these figures believed that the arguments of natural theology demonstrated the existence of God, the problem that evil presented for them was different from that engaged by present-day philosophers. In present-day terminology, medieval philosophers did not engage the “evidential” problem of evil: rather, they engaged the “aporetic” problem of evil, in order to try to resolve the apparent logical incompatibility between God's attributes and the existence of evil. [On the distinction between these problems, see Adams and Adams (1990), pp. 1–3.] The problem, therefore, was taken to be that of explaining the compatibility of the existence of evil with divine moral purity or holiness.
More at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz-evil/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, May 10, 2020 2:28 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

There are a many things over which we have no control - earthquakes/ volcanoes/ supervolcanoes, asteroids, a changing (strengthening/ weakening/ shifting) of the earth's magnetic field, EMPs, solar activity ... an ultimate death ... and so on.

But we have complete control over our numbers, our resource use, and our pollution. That and our wars and our poverty.

We are the sole cause of nearly all of our own misery. Blaming god puts solutions out of our hands, and so out of our reach. It's worse than pointless. It makes us helpless and our condition permanent, when instead we could solve our plagues.

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Sunday, May 10, 2020 7:53 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:

We are the sole cause of nearly all of our own misery. Blaming god puts solutions out of our hands, and so out of our reach. It's worse than pointless. It makes us helpless and our condition permanent, when instead we could solve our plagues.

"Why Do Some Prayers Go Unanswered?" God knows better than we do whether granting certain requests is in our best interests. Jehovah always responds for our good, in harmony with his loving purposes recorded in the Bible.
www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/wp20090101/why-do-some-prayers-go-unan
swered/

See also "What Are Two Reasons Why God Rejects Some Prayers?"
www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/when-god-does-not-listen/

In other words, if Covid-19 gets you, you deserved it and if it doesn't, thank God.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, May 10, 2020 8:13 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Of all the churches to all the gods in all the religions out of all the aeons, JW walks into your life.

Here's some conundrums - if god(s) is(are) unknowable - why does every(all) religion(s) claim to know exactly what god(s) want(s) us to do? Why do they all claim to be the one and only and demand exclusive fealty? And why are they all different?

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Sunday, May 10, 2020 8:23 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Your chance of eternal salvation lies here:

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Sunday, May 10, 2020 8:41 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Of all the churches to all the gods in all the religions out of all the aeons, JW walks into your life.

Here's some conundrums - if god(s) is(are) unknowable - why does every(all) religion(s) claim to know exactly what god(s) want(s) us to do? Why do they all claim to be the one and only and demand exclusive fealty? And why are they all different?

David Koresh, Marshall Applewhite, Jim Jones, Jim Bakker, etc. made too many big promises when they were designing and operating their religions/businesses. It didn't go well for them. More successful religious leaders don't make too specific promises, instead remain vague about God's plan and thus avoid bankruptcy, jail, suicide, and messy divorce.

Jim Bakker is being sued over Covid-19: "This week’s complaint was filed in rural Stone County because that's where Jim Bakker's national show is recorded. The claims came from a guest on Bakker's show, saying a product he's selling is proven to work on other strains of coronavirus, and could work on the one we're all fighting now. Nixon is defending Bakker saying this lawsuit isn't about medicine, but rather about freedom of religion, speech, and Bakker's deeply held Christian beliefs."
www.ky3.com/content/news/Televangelist-Jim-Bakker-sues-Missouri-Attorn
ey-General-570217421.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, May 10, 2020 9:09 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

All religions promise 'salvation', because, as they claim, they've been specially chose to understand the mind of god(s) - but which they also claim is unknowable...

...

Yeah. The flimsiness is that obvious.

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Sunday, May 10, 2020 9:11 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Your chance of eternal salvation lies in believing the message from here:

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Monday, May 11, 2020 1:21 AM

WISHIMAY

Does Covid-19 disprove the existence of God?

Not any more than any other reason for ME, but religious folk should at least be asking what kind of tweaked god they have that this planet is covered in misery.

We watched The Book of Eli this evening...the irony that he teaches Mila Kunis how to pray when they are already IN a horrifying post-apocalyptic world...

utter insanity

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Monday, May 11, 2020 7:52 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Are you even familiar with a book called The Bible?
There's shit that happened in there that makes The Coomph look like a stubbed toe.

Figures PizzaGate brain would compare parting the red sea with a virus. Keep swinging, genius. You can't compare a work of science fiction with real life. Other than for contrasts and differences.

Are you mental?

Even an ignorant moron like yourself surely has heard of the Noah's Arc story. When The Coomph kills 99.99% of everybody and every animal on the planet except for 2 of each, get back to me.

Job was great read too. When Satan goaded God into killing his most devout worshipers' entire family after destroying his livelihood just to prove that it's when a man has everything taken away from him that his faith is the strongest.

You should probably understand at least the basic fundamentals of a God that you are trashing before you open your mouth. The Coomph doesn't have shit on other crap God pulled in the Bible.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Monday, May 11, 2020 7:53 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

I think that both as individuals and as societies we've just lost our sense of Balance.

We probably could all use a little Taoism in our lives, whether or not we believe in any Gods.

Do Right, Be Right. :)
Taoism does not have a God in the way that the Abrahamic religions do. There is no omnipotent being beyond the cosmos, who created and controls the universe. In Taoism the universe springs from the Tao, and the Tao impersonally guides things on their way. But the Tao itself is not God, nor is it a god, nor is it worshipped by Taoists.
www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/taoism/beliefs/gods.shtml

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Why are you writing that as if I don't know what Taoism is?

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Monday, May 11, 2020 8:21 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

You should probably understand at least the basic fundamentals of a God that you are trashing before you open your mouth. The Coomph doesn't have shit on other crap God pulled in the Bible.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

Missing the point about atrocities in the Bible: In debates with atheists, Christians often fail to engage with the complexities of the Bible.

Ann Widdecombe, Member of Parliament and a conservative Roman Catholic, extolled the virtues of the Mosaic law, while at the same time lamenting our moral descent from the lofty heights of Sinai. But it does not take long for the Mosaic law to unravel as an unimpeachable guide to modern ethics, especially given the fact that Moses can, without evident irony, remind the Hebrews in one breath not to kill (Deuteronomy 5), and in the other command his people to lay waste to Canaan, sparing no man, woman, child, or animal (Deuteronomy 7).

Such difficulties in the Bible — particularly the Old Testament — are often ignored by Christians such as Miss Widdecombe, but easily exploited by those who see religion as a hindrance to human morality. They can therefore result in an unsettling impasse for many believers.

Many biblical morality tales are “appalling”. Militant atheists often attack this area of biblical morality, and Christians struggle to answer them. It is hard to argue in favour of genocide as Moses does.

YET THIS apparent conundrum stems from a simplistic, overly literalistic approach to the biblical text, an approach that Christians, particularly those with a more conservative faith, need to move away from if they are to engage detractors in a satisfactory manner. One must read the Bible as its writers intended, with an awareness that we are not reading normative ethical treatises as we would see them today, but nationalistic histories and ritual codes.

For example, while tradition holds that Moses was the author of the first five books of the Bible, biblical scholars have long detected a later human hand in the Pentateuch’s composition. Deuteronomy and the conquest narratives of Joshua and Judges almost certainly belong to the so-called “Deuteronomic history”, an account intentionally written by Israelite theologians to promote the nationalistic view that the Israelites’ claim to the land has divine approval.

That these theologians engaged in hyperbole is attested by evidence on the ground: the book of Joshua seems to suggest a genocidal annihilation of the Canaanites, but it is clear from archaeology and even from later biblical books that the Canaanites never went away. Thus the tale is accurate as theological narrative, but not necessarily as pure historical fact.

Likewise, context is important in understanding the intent of the biblical text. For example, the harsh punishments meted out to Moses’s own people must be understood in the context of Near Eastern covenant codes: just as the king made covenants with his vassal people, so God made a covenant with Israel. In both situations, the breaking of such covenants was always met with severe punishment, a point the text uses to highlight the seriousness of God’s relationship with his people.

EVEN SO, we need not think that such violence is troubling only to our modern moral sensibilities. There is much evidence to suggest that later Israelites and Jews, while still heralding Moses as a national hero, were not always keen on his methods.

The book of Jonah is a prime example. Having been rescued from the whale and after finally preaching to Nineveh, Jonah impatiently awaits the destruction of the heathen city, only to be reminded by God that his love and mercy transcend national boundaries: “Should I not be even more concerned about Nineveh, this enormous city? There are more than 120,000 people in it who do not know right from wrong” (Jonah 9.11).

The message here seems to be that the Ninevites, because they do not know God, are also not accountable to him. This was not something that ever seemed to bother Moses and Joshua about the Canaanites. The Jonah narrative thus seems to be a deliberate moral counterweight to the earlier stories of God’s arbitrary vengeance. The author of Jonah would have known the old theology, and explicitly chose to reject it.

More at www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2010/9-july/comment/missing-the-point-a
bout-atrocities-in-the-bible

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, May 11, 2020 8:25 AM

... stay crunchy...

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Are you even familiar with a book called The Bible?
There's shit that happened in there that makes The Coomph look like a stubbed toe.

Figures PizzaGate brain would compare parting the red sea with a virus. Keep swinging, genius. You can't compare a work of science fiction with real life. Other than for contrasts and differences.

Are you mental?

Even an ignorant moron like yourself surely has heard of the Noah's Arc story. When The Coomph kills 99.99% of everybody and every animal on the planet except for 2 of each, get back to me.

Job was great read too. When Satan goaded God into killing his most devout worshipers' entire family after destroying his livelihood just to prove that it's when a man has everything taken away from him that his faith is the strongest.
You should probably understand at least the basic fundamentals of a God that you are trashing before you open your mouth. The Coomph doesn't have shit on other crap God pulled in the Bible.

What, you believe those really happened? Like I said... science fiction v real life... people who believed Pizzagate would believe the Bible was real.

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Monday, May 11, 2020 8:35 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

I think that both as individuals and as societies we've just lost our sense of Balance.

We probably could all use a little Taoism in our lives, whether or not we believe in any Gods.

Do Right, Be Right. :)
Taoism does not have a God in the way that the Abrahamic religions do. There is no omnipotent being beyond the cosmos, who created and controls the universe. In Taoism the universe springs from the Tao, and the Tao impersonally guides things on their way. But the Tao itself is not God, nor is it a god, nor is it worshipped by Taoists.
www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/taoism/beliefs/gods.shtml

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Why are you writing that as if I don't know what Taoism is?

Do Right, Be Right. :)

To be perfectly clear, there are religions without a perfect, all powerful God answering prayers (including prayers for exemption from Covid-19) in exchange for worship by believers. Taoism doesn't run a business of protection from disease in exchange for worshiping Tao. On the other hand, Jim Bakker, who spent time in jail for defrauding worshipers, does run such a business loosely connected to Christianity.
www.ky3.com/content/news/Televangelist-Jim-Bakker-sues-Missouri-Attorn
ey-General-570217421.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, May 11, 2020 10:29 AM

Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.

Richard Dawkins - "What are the five best reasons why there is no god"

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Monday, May 11, 2020 11:03 AM

Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.

Neil deGrasse Tyson on God

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Monday, May 11, 2020 11:35 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Why is anyone still discussing this?

I think SIX said it best: Nobody can prove, or disprove, the existence of God, especially not the judeo-xtian kind.

If "god" was a provable, then "god" would be a subject of scientific study, able to be invoked in a lab and repeatedly demonstrated. The more that science has displacd the old gods and goddesses... the god of thunder, the rain goddess, the god of disease, the goddess of fertility, the god of the hunt, the corn god ... "god" has become a progressively abstract and unreachable idea.

*****

It's my view that gods and goddesses are expressions of people's attempts to control, or at least explain, the uncontrollable, and that they reflect the society in which they were created.

When people lived in matrilineal tribes small tribes, immediately subject to the forces of nature, their goddesses and gods were all about nature: fertility, the success of the hunt, thunder, and rain. (And clearly their visions of punishment were based on their location: for the Norse, it was a frozen hell, for the mideastern religions it was eternal fire.) As they settled into warring settlements the gods became a warring, bickering clan (think Greek gods). Once centralized authority (or the concept of it) was reached, monotheism came about.

There is, in moderm thinking, only one uncontrollable force left to face now, and that is us. So OUR god ...at least, the one we appeal to ... involves justice.

The eastern POV, commonly referred to as "religion", somtimes lacks gods. IMHO that's what separates religion from philosophy and ethics.

Interestingly, I read one of those pop-up articles about the recent insertion of "good" and "bad" into fairy tales. Now we have movies all about SJW superheroes.

AGAIN, IMHO, our goddesses and gods, our heroes and heroines, our superheroes and superheroines, are all about OUR needs which are derived from OUR societies..

----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

#WEARAMASK

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Monday, May 11, 2020 11:42 AM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

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Monday, May 11, 2020 11:55 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:

There are a many things over which we have no control - earthquakes/ volcanoes/ supervolcanoes, asteroids, a changing (strengthening/ weakening/ shifting) of the earth's magnetic field, EMPs, solar activity ... an ultimate death ... and so on.

And altho we can't control them, we no longer need gods to explain them: tectonic forces, objects in space, molten core magnetics, solar mass ejections, germ theory of diseases, reduced telomeres ... we believe there is a scientific explanation for everything. Except us.

Quote:
But we have complete control over our numbers, our resource use, and our pollution. That and our wars and our poverty.

And those are the things we have not yet been able to control: Ourselves.

We have not yet reached an understanding of people and (especially) societies: How and why societies behave in ultimately self-destructive ways. The stone heads of Rapa Nui (Easter Island). The Old Ones remains of Chaco Canyon.

Quote:
We are the sole cause of nearly all of our own misery. Blaming god puts solutions out of our hands, and so out of our reach. It's worse than pointless. It makes us helpless and our condition permanent, when instead we could solve our plagues.

And we are STILL putting solution out of reach. Our western economy, and society, is mesmerized by dystopian post-acpocalyptic visions and equally impossible superhero salvation.

It's as if, having dug a trench of thought/way of life, we can no longer imagine anything but total destruction or fanstastical salvation.

If I were to work backwards from our gods those in power (our "gods" amost always protect the power elite), I would say that the elite have seeded the idea of fantasy heroes in our minds, simply to put solutions out of reach. Because the alternative (if you believe Hollywood) is dystopia.

Yanno, everyone is convinced that happiness and ease are due them. Few people know that work and worry are a part of everyday life and that they are the only path to problem-solving. Life isn't like TV ... problems don't get solved in an hour, there if foten no "one" resolution, and there are no heroes to rescue us from ourselves. I could go on and on how our mass media has misled at least the last three generations of Americans on what life is and how to make it better, and which has derailed us from solving some VERY OBVIOUS problems with the way we are doing things. But that's a thread for another day.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

#WEARAMASK

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Monday, May 11, 2020 12:34 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Why is anyone still discussing this?

I think SIX said it best: Nobody can prove, or disprove, the existence of God, especially not the judeo-xtian kind.

If "god" was a provable, then "god" would be a subject of scientific study, able to be invoked in a lab and repeatedly demonstrated. The more that science has displaced the old gods and goddesses... the god of thunder, the rain goddess, the god of disease, the goddess of fertility, the god of the hunt, the corn god ... "god" has become a progressively abstract and unreachable idea.

It is a pretty weak and worthless religion that doesn't pair God with The Afterlife. If you prove there is an eternal afterlife (resurrection/reincarnation/souls-of-the-dead-in-heaven/or whatever) then you are 99.9% of the way to proving God exists. What if there are no signs/evidence/traces of that promised afterlife? Surely there will something detectable? But if there is no traces of the 100 billion people who already died in the last 50,000 years, then God is in big, big trouble when half of the promise of religion (Afterlife) doesn't exist.
www.prb.org/howmanypeoplehaveeverlivedonearth/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, May 11, 2020 2:10 PM

Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.

Stephen Fry on God

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Tuesday, May 12, 2020 1:25 AM

WISHIMAY

Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:

But we have complete control over our numbers, our resource use, and our pollution. That and our wars and our poverty.

Um...Do YOU have complete control over your mental disorder?? Yeah, right...

Pretending "we" can do anything straight and logically and sound would imply that EVERYONE has control of self, and that isn't even remotely true or feasible.

We're immobilized by a little virus, let alone the catalog of thousands of mental insufficiencies that exist.

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Tuesday, May 12, 2020 2:54 AM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Meh, it's not the people at the bottom that're driving this crazy-train.

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Tuesday, May 12, 2020 7:48 AM

... stay crunchy...

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
He's just throwing around some Democrat Atheist tripe.

The existence of God depends on your party? TSSYP Not a Democrat btw. Keep on being wrong.

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Of course The Coomph can't disprove the existence of God. What a stupid question.

My bad. I should have said, Christian God.

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
You either believe or you don't believe. It's a personal decision.

I think you accidentally hit on something that I believe in.

If all you need is a God concept you agree with and believe in, then yes for you, God as a belief system is real. If God is just an individual state of mind, the zen and mental health from just having belief in something that is calming or gives you strength - not unlike Book to Mal - as kind of meditation, "God" could exist for anyone. No matter what. BUT, if you go with the God that gave his only son route... that kind of action that exists as part of the shared physical world... sorry, eh, not so much.

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Tuesday, May 12, 2020 8:17 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
You either believe or you don't believe. It's a personal decision.

I think you accidentally hit on something that I believe in.
If all you need is a God concept you agree with and believe in, then yes for you, God as a belief system is real. If God is just an individual state of mind, the zen and mental health from just having belief in something that is calming or gives you strength - not unlike Book to Mal - as kind of meditation, "God" could exist for anyone. No matter what. BUT, if you go with the God that gave his only son route... that kind of action that exists as part of the shared physical world... sorry, eh, not so much.

Religion is a shared experience. If there are atheists who are deliberately negating the reality of your religious convictions, it can ruin your experience. An example of that dynamic that is not about religion: there was a Virtual IndyCar race where real-life IndyCar drivers were competing. Every driver was respecting the reality until one driver, a disbeliever/troll, deliberately broke the shared illusion, ruining the experience that this was real. The race they cared about no longer mattered. It becomes a silly game.
https://slate.com/technology/2020/05/indycar-virtual-race-controversy-
crash-norris-pagenaud-ferrucci-askew.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, May 12, 2020 11:35 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The Bible disproves the existence of a loving and kind God. From 2 Kings 6:

Famine in Besieged Samaria

24 Some time later, Ben-Hadad king of Aram mobilized his entire army and marched up and laid siege to Samaria. 25 There was a great famine in the city; the siege lasted so long that a donkey’s head sold for eighty shekels[a] of silver, and a quarter of a cab(b) of seed pods[c] for five shekels.[d]

26 As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried to him, “Help me, my lord the king!”

27 The king replied, “If the Lord does not help you, where can I get help for you? From the threshing floor? From the winepress?” 28 Then he asked her, “What’s the matter?”

She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him today, and tomorrow we’ll eat my son.’ 29 So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I said to her, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him,’ but she had hidden him.”

From biblegateway https://bit.ly/3dGZkJY

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, May 12, 2020 12:49 PM

I kill … I wound … I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh. Deuteronomy 32.39-42

T

Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.

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Tuesday, May 12, 2020 2:03 PM