I am a genius, I am just too lazy to put my genius to work.
Let’s face it: anytime anybody dies, Hillary has a hand in it somehow, amirite?
My bold.
Skeptics are a lot more rigid than true believers. I’ve heard atheists defend the idea that there is no God and can’t possibly be a God a lot more vehemently than any Believer ever defended their Beliefs.
Here’s what I believe, and my only evidence is logic.
There is no such thing as “supernatural” v. “natural.” It’s all on a spectrum. Like color. There’s a whole spectrum of frequencies that we call “color.” A segment of that spectrum we can perceive with functioning human eyeballs. Some places on that spectrum our eyes can’t perceive, but we have developed instruments that can see those places. Some animals, insects, etc., can see frequencies that we cannot.
What we call “supernatural” are places along a spectrum of (let’s call it) “reality” that we can’t perceive with our human body/instrument. To say those things/objects/events don’t exist because humans currently can’t perceive them is the height of anthropocentric narrowness. IMHO it’s an amalgam of arrogance, hubris, and cluelessness. Over the years and especially in modern times, humans have developed technology that enables us to perceive things that humans used to think were “supernatural.” There’s more of that ahead but there will always be things we don’t understand and can’t with our limited human instrument.
But it’s all One Thing. Nothing else makes sense.
Plus this.
There is a worldwide conspiracy that involves people whose only purpose in life is to get in front of me and then drive or walk as slowly as possible.
It’s apparent there is a strong correlation between wealth and favorable treatment by courts. Whether in sentencing, arrests, perp-walks, or bail – the connection is obvious.
Due to this, it is my firm belief that judicial corruption is pervasive and substantial. Judges seem to have near total control over sentencing in a trial, so when a rich client gets negligible punishment and favorable treatment, it’s obvious the judge got paid off somehow. Whether quid-pro-quo or a bag of cash in his car – he’s getting something out of the deal.
Except it’s been shown time and time again that that very same base can be turned against someone they loved in a moment. How many hard-core GOP operatives have been declared “RINOs” overnight in the last five years or so?
If they’d convicted him for his second impeachment, they would have had several years to spread the, “We all hate Trump now, look at how corrupt he was, he was probably secretly a Demo-rat this whole time!” propaganda. The idiot voters would have swallowed that whole.
The wealthy don’t necessarily have to payoff people.
Politicians/judges that aren’t bribed fear that crossing a billionaire could lead to retaliation and having their careers/lives destroyed. I think THAT is as big a factor as why the wealthy get away crimes as much as outright bribery.
Indeed, it’s not as blunt as, “I will ruin you and you will be living under a bridge!” These judges are in social circles that includes the billionaires and their allies. Depending on how they got their judgeships, and who decides, and who decides to employ their spouses and kids, the social cohesion factor is quite strong. So, it doesn’t have to be bags of cash, it can just be that so-and-so doesn’t invite them to the annual Christmas shin-dig anymore - and all the knock-on effects of that.
Bearing in mind that in human vision, the Hubble Deep Field image is about the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length.
Are you saying there is no evidence for that?
I agree with the driving part. I’m probably one of the people that gets in front of you and walks slowly, so maybe you’re right on that part 
.
There is now. I’m claiming to be one of those people .
At the risk of (also) veering off topic, I am virtually certain we are the only intelligent life in the cosmos. It’s easy to appeal to the huge numbers of galaxies and stars and building blocks and such and think, “Hey, even if the odds are just 1 in a quadrllion (of a star harboring i.l. at some point in its existence), that would mean 10 trillion civs that have or will exist somewhere!” (10^24 is what the total # of stars in the universe are from a quick Googling)
But even from a strict statistical standpoint NOBODY knows the actual odds, which may in fact be much bleaker than that. The Drake Equation has what 7 factors? But it certainly has HUNDREDS of subfactors, where only one needs to be zero (or very close to zero) for the entire enterprise to go way beyond odds of a mere 1 in 10^13. Hundreds of Great Filters, IOW. We are the result of winning the lottery that many times, in a row. (even if in some cases there was more than one way to win-c.f. a dinosaur civ if the Yucatan meteor never hit)
Plus the anthropic selection bias means we can’t use our existence, as in any of these myriad hurdles that we managed to hop over, as proof of any other civ. Microbial life may be somewhat common, but there will still be innumerable hurdles to cross before a planet can even begin to dream of having a civ on it.
And this is a subject on which I am completely agnostic. I simply don’t know, don’t have any belief one way or the other, and don’t expect ever to find out.
Not the same thing, but I wonder if SHARK TANK is rigged: that we aren’t watching people try to impress a potential investor who might humiliatingly reject them but might fawn over them (a) when agreeing to a deal, (b) and then go about getting them publicity at some point after that televised sales pitch; instead, getting fawned over on primetime TV is the publicity for a deal they already made.
What’d make the publicity even better are the folks who actually pitch something, not knowing how it’ll go, and get entertainingly berated before the audience gets to enjoy watching them leave amidst a swirl of insults; that’d make the occasional success story stand out yet more, because, oh, wow, that product must be amazing! Why, just look at how said pitch is winning over that savvy investor who shot down two other guys!
That last bit — the occasional infomercial sandwiched between for-real attempts at negotiations — would, of course, get presented as both sides having a making-it-up-as-they-go-along interaction that may or may not result in a meeting of the minds; but wouldn’t it look the same if that’s when they’re merely going through the motions of some prearranged call-and-response they’d rehearsed?
I believe there are no gods and there is no magic. But I don’t know what evidence would even look like in support of these beliefs.
I agree with you. And I am reminded of a quote I heard(I forget who said it.):
“Either we are alone in the universe or we are NOT. Both are equally frightening.”
One from the UK: Fracking.
We had test sites drilled - two fairly near us. We had earthquakes - no shit, this in a country which is as close to earthquake-free as you can get. We had something close to public uproar, and a government that decided that, conveniently, fracking wasn’t going to be economically viable, so we can all settle down again, it won’t happen, panic over. Nothing to see here.
And now we have colossal increases in energy prices. A doubling of household bills is a distinct possibility (and was even without current hostilities against Ukraine).
The bastards knew this was coming, all along (hell, maybe even the Ukraine bit). Just let them freeze for a winter or two, and then ask them again if fracking is a good way forwards. We have been had. Made fools of. We will be well and truly fracked after all.
j
Not only is there life out there, but the universe is TEEMING with life.
I believe that God does not exist… because there is no evidence.
I’m on board with 99% of your thoughts @Cervaise, but I come down on the other side of the statistical likelihood of the admittedly overwhelming circumstantial evidence behind your position. Being overwhelmed by the very real impossibility to conceive or even imagine the scope of geological time, and the accumulation of statistically virtually impossible genetic randomness into statistically certain results over that time, is the most common barrier to understanding, and of course denying, evolution.*
Over time I’ve decided I’m more comfortable not being certain than in choosing certainty for peace of mind.
*(I make this comparison metaphorically, only to address scale of comprehension, not to question your understanding or suggest your denial.)
I am absolutely certain that neither God nor any other supernatural phenomena exist.