Ahaha, that’s very true Scandinavia is a mysterious place.

Yeah the comment on Cleopatra is just laughable on the face of it haha, I didn’t even think it was worth addressing.

Glad you’re stepping away there’s no point getting worked up on this. I normally wouldn’t have engaged to this degree myself, but I found that particular rebuttal to Tacitus to be so damn funny that I couldn’t not.

I suspect they’re genuine, I feel I’ve been this person in the past. Sometimes it’s hard to learn to reevaluate and be wrong about things, and religion is a pretty stigmatising issue that can leave you with a lot of unresolved and misguided anger. It’s unfortunate, but human.

The claim about Tacitus not writing on Jesus comes from one “source” in the pop culture section. That source is a fictional character in a novel (one who’s obviously portrayed as highly biased on this issue, ironically…) it gets even more embarassing when you look up what that novel is about…

There’s also this which mentions that his writings on Jesus are pretty much agreed to be authentic. The Roman empire was indeed very good at keeping records, that’s why Tacitus is considered such a reliable source…

You’re making a lot of claims about the motivations of people, with no actual evidence to show for it, and using that to dismiss them as sources. This is painfully ironic. Not everything is a Catholic conspiracy, it’s okay for the world to be nuanced.

There are non-biblical sources

No there aren’t, you just believe the bible

???

Either way, I appreciate you providing those, it’s a fascinating topic. Frankly even if Jesus was just some guy running around deceiving people into thinking he was the Messiah, he had some good lessons and that’s gotta count for something.

This is something widely accepted by secular historians, it’s widely accepted by atheists too.

Occam’s razor does not work like that. It would actually suggest that Jesus did exist, given that it requires a single person to have existed instead of requiring a mountain of very valid evidence to be a conspiracy while a whole group people, who’s entire profession revolves around determining the trustworthiness of such evidence, to suddenly all be very bad at their job on this one specific issue etc.

Well again, it doesn’t actually matter to me. I’m not trying to have a debate, I’m just saying that’s what I’ve heard and I tend to trust experts on their own fields. You can make up your own mind about what you believe, makes no difference to me.

I don’t think it’s really that big of a deal if he was a real person or not, it doesn’t say anything about the validity of religion one way or the other. Plus I don’t think it’s really that far fetched that someone could have amassed a bunch of followers and birthed a new religion. It still happens in the modern world.

Edit: I read how you’ve responded to everyone else. Take a break friend, people are just having a discussion with you, disagreing isn’t an attack.

It’s fine if you personally think the evidence isn’t reliable, but calling everyone delusional and shouting down frankly well supported arguments as fake with no way to back it up all while refusing to read and engage with them isn’t a good look. If you can legitimately explain why people are wrong, I’m sure they would appreciate the discussion and potentially learning something.

If you can’t, then I’d suggest reflecting on why this is so upsetting to you. Believe me I absolutely understand what it’s like to hate religion and to be filled with an intense desire to want it to all be wrong and evil, but that shouldn’t affect how you treat people.

I’m no expert whatsoever, because frankly it makes no difference to me, but last I heard it was accepted that Jesus the person existed.

It’s hard to find trustworthy sources when I’m being lazy and so many people are trying push very biased views, but this is something, I guess. There’s also a Wikipedia article about it, but I’m tired and it’s dry.

I deleted one once because I complained about someone by name, hoping someone else would have experience with them and could offer better advice.

I think it would have been relatively easy for them to find that post, which I didn’t want to risk given that they could cause me harm by denying their services. It wouldn’t have been hard to work out who I was given the context I provided.

The possums even more so I’d say, especially in the cities.

I’m actually not sure I’ve ever seen a wild platypus, and I haven’t seen a wombat since I was very young, but I don’t think I’ve ever lived in an area with them. Kangaroos were everywhere growing up in the bush though, in the backyard, school car park, sharp bend around a dark corner…

Snakes on a plane, you take a drink every time there’s a snake on a plane. (I can’t remember where I’m stealing this from)

Yup, getting skills is just worthwhile pain. It’s been hard trying to convince some of the younger tech interested people I know to put in the effort instead of going down the AI route, but I know exactly where that’ll lead them. You don’t get good at this stuff by succeeding, it’s the endless failure.

I’m doubtful it’ll be any worse than a century dominated by the US, they’re all doing the same evil shit.

When I say the basics, I mean understanding logic and reasoning and what constitutes scientific evidence. Much of it is word association at best, the example that comes to mind is the claim that the pillars of creation prove that creationism is true.

In one example in my copy of the Qur’an, they point to a journalist using the word smoke to discuss the state of the early universe as proof that the Qur’an predicted modern cosmology because heaven was smoke before Allah commanded it to exist. It’s an unproven claim, they’ve just drawn a vague connection and decided that counts as evidence.

Trans nonby software dev who dated a furry artist, my disdain for AI knows no limits.

I use Nobara, btw. (Is Arch good I’ve never looked into it)

You know how you get COVID from being in the same room as someone who sneezes on you or something? It’s that.

Non locality is when you get COVID from someone the next state over.

Can’t say I’m aware of any examples of our modern scientific understanding being present in a religious text. I did a painfully in depth bible study class in highschool and we sometimes discussed that a lot of old testament (and thus the Torah) is very very old and likely comes from people doing their best to understand their world and merging it with myth over the ages. That’s probably the closest you’ll get, depending on what you consider “science.”

One other possibility is that stories like the flood could essentially be “recordings” of historical events. Someone correct me, it’s been yonks since I read into it, but as I recall there are a number of different flood stories that come from the same region (ancient Mesopotamia? if we’re talking Judaism), so it’s entirely possible that it’s based on a real one, perhaps even multiple.

I got a free copy of the Qur’an last year and it’s packed with stuff like this, it’s kinda annoying because I just wanted to understand the actual text. It’s all the same stuff I’ve seen Christian creationists talk about, obviously false if you understand the basics but it’ll probably deceive lots of people who don’t.

One of the most accurate and successful theories in physics contains the single worst prediction and isn’t mathematically rigorous at all.

Doing calculations with it feels like doing vibes based maths, and you spend a lot of time doing things like: “oops divided by zero guess I’ll cancel it out by multiplying by zero” and it works.

Going through the comment history tells a pretty clear story, what a twat

I’ve been running from my problems by immersing myself in tech, I’m not sure if that makes me like it more or less but I’ve gotten very very good at what I do.

Last night I set up an event ticketing service so friends can come to an event I’m hosting without me having to schedule them or manage capacity. Then I cried myself to sleep. -2

But I also get to set up stuff for my collectives to use, like nextcloud and wordpress and it’s awesome to be able to turn a grassroots bunch of ratbags into a semi-professional looking bunch of ratbags. +10

I used to fry a pan of frozen veggies with salt and thyme, but these days I’m often lucky enough to be able to get a lot of rescued food for free.