Pretty much. The American public needs to be reminded of what happens when we let corporate power grow unchecked and fall for the lies of demagogues.

We cannot hope to improve as a nation while sitting there huffing our own farts. I, for one, see a chance for this mess to be a catalyst for real change in this country.

All of what you’ve said boils down to “God decides because he is God.” You don’t see any issue with that?

It doesn’t sound the least bit disturbing to you that an all powerful being would actively choose to make people suffer when they are fully capable of not requiring it? The equivalent of a parent who beats the shit out of their child from ages 4 to 5 and then switches to showering them with affection doesn’t sound like anything I’d like to engage with.

The whole “God created you, so that gives him the right to demand your worship” thing is also just plain creepy. If your parent beat and raped you, would you consider them worthy of your love?

Ultimately, I don’t think you have asked this question in good faith. You don’t seem interested at all in fully engaging with the responses people give, and seem more interested in picking specific bits out to latch onto that have (supposedly) easy answers.

So I’ll leave you with an easy answer: you can believe in god and think we are all doomed or whatever, just don’t make the lives of everyone else around you worse by being a dickhead. That’s all Atheists ask of anyone, and I think its a reasonable proposition. As for the whole “this is temporary but heaven is eternal” angle, well, there are ways for people to take shortcuts there and they don’t tend to do that, so clearly something down here is worth experiencing - maybe try to look for those things before wallowing in fear.

We are suffering. Prophecy in revelation shows thing’s will get worse. Putin has the nukes. They’re going to be let off at somepoint.

Then my question is: why were we created? Was it just to experience suffering? Why would a benevolent god decide “yeah, they need to suffer for awhile and then they get to be happy?” And before you comment something about it being necessary for some purpose of being saved or somesuch, again, why would that be necessary? Do we fundamentally lack something that is a needed prerequisite to experience some kind of end goal on God can perceive? If that is so, why not simply create us with that prerequisite, since an all-powerful being would certainly be able to do so?

The “prophecy in revelation” you describe further makes me question the purpose of things. If God is all-powerful, why have the worsening? Are we simply playthings for a bored and capricious divine being to torment so we behave in the afterlife he controls?

For that matter, what right does any being have to my worship and admiration? If I am supposedly created by God, then I was made in such a way as to be capable of demanding a reason for him to be the object of my worship.

So humans are just cruel for the hell of it? Not much more comforting.

I mean, is that so much worse than knowing an all-powerful being that you are ruled by created cruelty? Either god created everything or he didn’t - with the understanding that if there is something he did not create, he is not all powerful.

I think it is much easier to accept that people are both capable of incredible evil and incredible good. Humans are cruel just for the hell of it has an obvious other side: humans are kind just for the hell of it too.

I recall reading about the phenomena of people believing in the “shadowy cabal secretly in control of everything” like the Illuminati because deep down, the idea that something in control, even if evil, was preferable to the knowledge that there was nothing in control - things just happen, almost at random.

I do see a bit of this leaking through what you’ve said here in the uses of “chaos,” “certainty,” and “comfort” in your statements. To be clear, I don’t really care if your faith is what you use to shield yourself from the uncertainty of existence - everyone has their own coping mechanisms - but I figured I’d make note of it.

Now, I do take issue with your other claim - who said there is no hope of things getting better? If it is just down to us to dictate things, we have been presented a problem, and I’m not inclined to believe humanity has run into a whole lot of problems we couldn’t solve. We’ve persisted for thousands of years - I wouldn’t count us out just yet.

Of course, if it is NOT up to us, and it is all dictated by God, then why should we simply give up and assume things will never get better? Is there somewhere God has dictated that it cannot be so? What actual evidence do we have, both theologically and scientifically, that things have no hope of getting better (particularly as much of our advancement flies in the face of such an assertion)?

If God put us here with no plan, then it is up to us to make the world better, and if God put us here with a plan, then it is a question of free will, and I’m inclined to operate under the idea that we possess such a thing, then it is up to us to find out the path to things getting better. As the saying goes: “God helps those who help themselves.”

In short, I can live in this world because I believe it can be made better, without the need for divine intervention, and because I cannot believe that a world filled with so many wonderful things is not worth trying to improve/save.

I’m not super knowledgeable with how it works, but it is essentially a system for seamless jumps between multiple servers “meshing” them together so there is zero noticeable lag time between them. There isn’t a single loading screen going across multiple star systems, which is a pretty significant achievement, especially given how detailed the game itself is.

I’ve never played World of Warcraft or really any MMO, but it is my understanding that there are areas to load into new places (a short black screen on entering a building, a “portal” to another zone, etc.).

It definitely is actually “playable” now, and I’ve had a good amount of fun playing it this year, but it certainly isn’t ready for release or anything.

That said, the network infra they have created is pretty cool: 600+ player servers with relatively little issue, and the goal of 1000 long term is quite a feat of engineering.

They fucked themselves overpromising so much back at the beginning by giving the release dates they did while using like, Unity or something, and now they have the infra/engine to deliver, but nobody trusts them to actually do so.

Yeah…that definitely isn’t a nice thought :(

Never smoked weed or had a drop of alcohol here!

Honestly, your question is somewhat unsettling, as I’m not sure it is exactly healthy to only feel joy while under the influence of chemicals, so that might be something you should ask a medical professional about.

That said, surely you experienced joy as a child before using weed/alcohol at some point in your life, right? I guess in a lot of ways, I still feel that same spark of happiness or excitement I did when I was a kid. The things that sparked it may have changed somewhat, but the same feeling is there.

Yeah…pretty much

It’s no surprise voter apathy is so high in this country