Alex Strait @AlexTheStrait

@LarsTheBadMan Suffering comes *with* freedom. The universe was designed to freely self organize and it did. Billions of years later we exist and are *free* to contribute to the suffering we identify or mitigate it. The point isn't suffering it's the freedom that it inherently comes along with.

From what I've read the commerce wasn't the problem because it was naturally a good time and place to do business because there were many converging people in their pilgrimages. The services rendered were also necessary. The problem was that they were unnecessarily marking up. Think of like when you go to the movies or like when you go to a theme park and they purposely jack up the price of water cuz they know you're trapped. It was that kind of thing and that is what sent Jesus into a rage because the people were being taken advantage of, not that there was simply commerce happening near the temple. That was normal in the vicinity, though doing it right in the Court of the Gentiles (the space meant to be a house of prayer for all nations) was also part of the problem. But I think the whip came out because of how they were exploiting the people and reaping major profits. That in particular *really* made him angry.

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You sound just like an empiricist arguing against God. It's the same accusation they levy against believers: "where's the evidence? You just have vibes and feelings." Just like them, you fail to factor in the broader context. You just take each point in a vacuum and refuse to see the picture that putting all the pieces together clearly paint. You don't give people the credit they deserve and you minimize the power of human intuition. When an event as fishy as the murder of Kirk happens in a country known for running false flags and extravagant lies on its own people how can you blame the citizenry for following their gut instincts, looking deeper and forming a belief?

@darwintojesus I think it's a matter of quantity and a desire to bring extra awareness to the issue. When you chart all suffering in Earth's history human suffering is just a tiny sliver of that pie. But yet many focus on humans which can diminish our awareness that the animals have it bad too.

I had the same moment as O'Conner years back while watching the Atheist Experience. The hosts were demanding evidence of God for the bajillionth time and I thought something like, "how can evidence be the standard if all evidence requires evaluation in quality?" So, at the end of the day, we have to use something beyond the concept of evidence to determine whether or not a piece of data counts as good evidence. Eventually I came here on X (it was Twitter back then) and started reading and participating in the debate instead of just listening to one side. That's when I was introduced more fully to the problems that atheists face and it became obvious to me that they are grossly mistaken in principle that if something doesn't have empirical evidence that it cannot be a worthwhile idea.

@LarsTheBadMan So it's objectively true that there's no objective morality? Can you demonstrate this?

No, its that randomness is a prerequisite. Like how you can't have a card game with a stacked deck. Any playing of that game has the illusion of choice. But if no one knows the outcome then choices can take place. The moment you introduce determinism the game breaks. So that's an example of something that is both random and designed. In computer science the only way to get a true random number is to tap into the physical world in some way. If you just use software you have a closed system that is not *truly* random. That's called a psuedorandom system which is "good enough" for something like a video game, but if you need to secure a bank you have to use a real randomizer to achieve security you can actually trust not to be cracked. And that requires tapping into reality at some point during the process. So even with our best software systems we cannot reproduce the random effects latent in reality with something as commonplace as light refraction or a static charge. To me that's the hallmark of a truly divine design. The ability to have actual randomness that no one, not even the Creator can predict. So to me it's very expected to see something like evolution being the medium for life in the universe. It's not the way I would do it (id make a world where lolly pops aren't bad for you and humans aren't flammable from the very beginning), but I can definitely wrap my head around the concept. That seems to be the way it is.

Vestigial never meant useless, it means a structure kept from an ancestor after it lost its original job. The study you're citing calls them repurposed hindlimb pelvises. A pelvis that anchors muscle but holds up no legs is the point, not the rebuttal. It doesn't prove evolution, but it's a valid and sound argument that whales evolved from a different species on land which serves as a great example of good evidence for macroevolution. It's not absurd as your post seemed to portray it. That's my point. As far as my deism goes I like to use the example of a deck of cards. The in practice implementation is random, but that's by design. Deliberately stacking the deck is generally considered cheating in card games because the randomization is required for the system to work. Who wants to play against a stacked deck? The point is that it's an example of something that is both random and designed. The cards are meticulously designed, but the shuffle is random and the cards are designed to be shuffled. So with respect to the universe and reality itself the laws can be designed, but the implementation of those laws can be random and may even have to be. So I don't see a contradiction between evolution, natural selection (which includes random fitness) and belief in a Creator.

You picked the best example against yourself. Whales have vestigial pelvic bones with nothing attached to them. Whale embryos grow hindlimb buds and then reabsorb them. And cetacean DNA nests inside the even-toed ungulates, closest relative the hippo, which is what you get from molecular data with the fossils sealed in a box. That's *three* independent lines, gathered by people who couldn't coordinate their answers and they all landed on the same relationship. Any one alone would be weak. It's when they're all together that makes the argument. Also, mutation is random with respect to fitness. Selection isn't random at all. Collapsing those two is what makes it sound absurd.

@_Ochiedike Can there be roughly equal evidence for mutually exclusive propositions?

It would cause no *immediate* suffering to any conscious creature, but it would be contributing to the normalization of an act that does. So I'm not sure it's the best example because you could argue that normalization could manifest in reality. But I get what you're saying. We can come up with scenarios where there's no threat to anyone ever and still be wrong. I think a better example would spying. Let's say that the government has surveillance systems we don't know about and never will. No one is being hurt and never will so is it wrong for the government to surveil us without our consent? They could even use the data to catch murderers sex traffickers and child abusers. Does that make it okay?

When people say "trans X is a biological X," they aren't saying there's no difference between men and women. They're rejecting gametes as the sole determinant and treating sex instead as a cluster of axes: chromosomes, gonads, hormones, receptor sensitivity, anatomy, secondary characteristics, neural correlates, identity. Not a spectrum exactly (I got that wrong), since most of those axes are themselves bimodal. More like a bundle that usually travels together but can come apart. Under that model you can be male on some axes and female on others, and there's no single axis that automatically overrides the rest. That's why they think "biological" is fair game. The claim isn't that a trans woman is female in every respect, it's that some of her measurable biology is female-typical, and that counts for something. The claim is strongest for someone on long-term hormones, where hormonal, metabolic, and secondary-characteristic markers actually shift; it's much thinner before that, resting mainly on identity and contested neuroanatomy. I get that this is an active debate and certainly not settled science. But I reject the idea that this constitutes an attack on language itself or that it robs the words of meaning. It seems to me to just be the natural evolution of language as we discover more nuance in human biology and development. Especially when we also factor in the lived experiences of trans people throughout history.

No, you responded to the gamete claim, but you used your own words "trans women are biological women." Just FYI: if you wish to be taken seriously you should pay more attention to the words *you* type. Remember proper language is important that's your value. Typically, when someone says, "trans women are biological women" they are not claiming that someone with sperm gametes can get pregnant. But yet that's what's in *your* mind when hear and the words "trans women are biological women." That's because you have been knocking over that straw man for so long it's second nature to you. But that doesn't make it any less errant. What people are talking about when they say things like that is that sex, as a biological reality, *is* on a spectrum. This is to be expected because *all* of biology is stochastic. You are always going to have variation so the idea of anything in biology being a true black and white binary is counter to the fundamental nature of biological systems. Our species is still evolving *as we speak*. But what bad faith detractors (regrettably even some prominent biologists) do is take this nuanced position based on observable facts from biology, neuroscience, genetics and the social sciences and warp it into a reductive trope and then knock it over and claim victory. This is the play from the playbook I've seen run time an time again. So, do you have anything substantial in yours or just the cookie cutter stuff you've shown so far?

@aUSUualsuspect @JohnnyTani3 "People with sperm gametes can get pregnant" isn't a prominent position, what are you talking about? That's the straw man I am pointing out and you are just keep knocking it down.

@JohnnyTani3 The problem isn't that we're taking hard facts and making them ambiguous, but that the argument in question is not represented by "people with sperm gametes can get pregnant." So forcing that point doesn't progress the debate because we're still left with how to define "male".

@aUSUualsuspect @JohnnyTani3 That's a minority position that you're inflating the relevance of. The goal I've always seen is mostly centered on inclusion in culture as a legitimate extant category of healthy human development.

@aUSUualsuspect @JohnnyTani3 Words don't require unambiguous black and white definitions to provide meaningful communication. For example what is a species?