Of all the Christians to put shade on I wouldn’t have thrown Paul in the lot. Paul seemed like a pretty down to earth person from everything I read, he was basically a riches to rags semi militant hobo hippie. Now Peter…

Some of the most Christian acting people I have known were Jews, Muslims, and Atheists.

…Win?

Jokes aside, if you don’t believe in god and end up going to heaven because you were actually a good person that would be a win in my book, but I would imagine the atheist in this event would be eternally upset that they were wrong in their actual premise. Joke is more funny if you ended up in a non-Christian afterlife.

I don’t know, I feel like that’s a bit of a stretch. If god exists, creation is because of them, and early humans and faith are shaped by them, then the concept of a god who purports themselves as objectively good despite subjective proof otherwise doesn’t seem unlikely. The idea that god might not be good in the way we think good should be is relatively modern and prior to the last 100-200 years god was good because everything prior said so. For fucks sake most people couldn’t read and just trusted the guy in robes to tell them what to think.

So yeah, just like me trimming a plant and putting it in rooting hormone 1000 times, I think an all powerful and knowable god could theoretically always inevitably result in Christianity if they wanted, the bar isn’t that high when the majority of the species lifetime is dismally stupid.

Also, your argument is inherently flawed if you think the contrast of a good god must be an evil one. Concepts of good and evil have fluctuated wildly over the centuries, both in location and sentiment. If god made everything and said they are good then at best good to us doesn’t mean the same thing as good means to them and trying to frame the argument in that is meaningless.

At the end of the day you get to decide if you believe in god or not, if you do believe in god you can still decide whether you like “god” and want to follow it; however, making the logical leap that god doesn’t exist because they aren’t good by your definition is fundamentally flawed.

If you’ve never seen it I recommend you watch the movie, “The Man from Earth.” It’s a short “indy-esque” movie and, without too many spoilers, focuses on a man who claims he is a prehistoric man who just never died. In his long life span he says he traveled to India and studied with the Buddah and while returning west began to spread the Buddah’s teachings, in time people began to call him Jesus.

Really interesting movie, lots of great thought experiment stuff, but it does make an interesting point that the literal teachings of Jesus are so different from the old testament teachings that one almost wonders how they could come from the same source.

Also I don’t think it’s even worth examining a flawed deity in the context of Christianity, because it’s clearly something they made up. “Whats that, lord? Go kill the people we don’t like and steal their land and take their virgins as war brides? Well if God says so 🤷”

Well that’s part of the problem, the people in the situation are flawed as well. A biblical reference that comes to mind is First Samuel 15:3 in which god instructs the Israelites to kill all of the Amalekites including men, women, infants, nursing children, ox, sheep, camel, and donkey. In the story Saul actually sins and disobeys god by not killing everything he is instructed to kill as fucked up as that is.

When discussing god with atheists it often comes down to a point similar to this, “God can’t be real because if god existed they wouldn’t allow XYZ.” In reality we have no reason to assume as much.

If there is a god that entity could be flawed and faulty while still being omniscient and omnipotent. We assume that a being with human sentiments and unlimited knowledge would have to be a good being, but that’s not necessarily so. It’s entirely possible that if god exists it views us similarly to how we view ants and simply just doesn’t share the concerns or beliefs we feel are naturally just and fair.

At the end of the day god could be a giant toddler on the playground and while they are unfair and unjust you have the choice of either believing and following (assuming the Christian god) to go to heaven or not believing and following and burning in eternal torment.

This is all just a thought experiment, but the argument that god can’t exist because god isn’t good is inherently a flawed argument (not that you are explicitly making that argument, I’m just extrapolating off of what you posted, ie god might not be a good guy).

And then she dedicated it to Trump

I was wondering about that as well so I looked into the dates. Apparently Obama got the award in October 9, 2009, and some of the first controversial drone strikes under his administration were in March and April of 2009. Dude came out the gate drone striking and the Nobel Committee just ignored it.

Here is Obama’s stated daily schedule in his first year as president. Take it with a grain of salt since it is a self report, but it’s probably not miles away from the truth.

Quick Summary:

• Routinely only got 5-7 hours of sleep
• Woke up 7 am and would straight away exercise for 45 minutes
• Into the office between 8:30-9:00 am
• Work until 6:30 pm
• Dinner and family time until 8:30 pm
• Review briefings and do paperwork until 11:30 pm
• Read in bed for 30 min before going to be at 12:30 am

Maybe Obama is just built differently, I know some people have genetic differences that mean they need less sleep, but that’s a hell of a schedule for your baseline everyday schedule. I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if the White House had a doctor that prescribed/administered some sort of stimulant.

Let me start by saying I’m 100% against fascism, but… we do have a terminology problem. The left overall has a messaging problem, “Oh Black lives matter, so that means White lives don’t?!?” Words do matter, but it’s because they matter that we have a problem. The left seems to ebb and flow on vibes (“Just because we say Black lives matter doesn’t mean other people’s lives don’t”) while the right seems so much more literal, but the subtext is maybe even more implied. For example, they might say “They [people not like us] are taking our jobs,” but what they really mean is that they are taking the jobs we want (office jobs, trade jobs, etc), but we don’t mind them working the jobs we don’t want (basic construction, farm hands, etc), all the while their vibe is wrong and that’s not really happening.

When you call someone or something fascist they probably won’t believe you because fascism equals Nazis which equals antisemitism in most of the common people’s view. I’ll assume that anyone who has found their way to Lemmy probably understands the difference, but at the same time many of this platform don’t seem able to understand that the common person doesn’t know the difference.

There is a big difference between systemic racism vs open bigotry. A bigot is much harder to turn from racism than a person who grew up in systemic racism. It still might take decades to turn someone who is systemically racist, but a bigot will likely take longer. The same applies to a fascist; like a systemic racist they might not understand that they are racist or what racism even is. Education or experience are the two avenues people escape those avenues, but it’s especially hard if you’re doing it alone and if you feel attacked by the terminology.

Fascist = Nazi = Jew hater

“Well, I don’t hate jews, I’m not a Nazi, so I’m not a fascist” -common Fascist

I’ve had plenty of discussions with Conservatives where I took the discussion to a rich vs poor direction or a a personal rights vs governed rights direction and they suddenly become liberals without acknowledging it.

Honestly it’s the same hurdle that the left has had for decades, just because you’re a leftist doesn’t mean you love Stalin and Mao. Messaging is important, one of the most recent persons to break that mold was Bernie Sanders who made it at least semi acceptable to be a Democratic Socialist.

I’m honestly curious how long Trump is gonna make it. Realistically he’s probably running on a bunch of drugs at this point. No shade here, I assume Biden and maybe even Obama were the same. How do you work that much and not sleep? The answer is drugs!

Even if they are “relaxing” the president has a lot of stress, the job physically ages you. Trump being on a golf course is still probably stressing out even if he doesn’t give a shit about the US; whether it’s about how his personal investments will work out or about his personal vendettas the job is stressful.

Trump was also severely stressed while out of office due to the pressures of the lawsuits he was under. With 12 years of stress the man may be 79 currently, but he’s probably way older physically. I don’t see him making it through this term and the only way he’s made it this far is drugs and a good pharmacist.

How anyone can sympathise for him I don’t know

At the end of the day he is a human being, that’s why. I’m not trying to defend the guy, but fundamentally that’s what is supposed to divide the progressives/liberals vs the conservatives. The conservatives don’t care except when it’s their own while the progressives and liberals are supposed to care about all people supposedly.

Well I can, but this is where people will argue what counts as “Europe.” Wikipedia maintains a list specifically titled “List of School Shootings in Europe”.

Using the same metrics as the US number (1999-current) the total number of European school shootings is 88, if not for 2024 the US and Europe would be pretty close between 1999 and 2023 (US 131 vs Europe 84).

For the other statistics the “What is Europe” becomes an even bigger problem and also the way schools are structured in Europe gets fiddly. Europe much more prefers a higher quantity of small schools while the US seems to prefer concentrating more students in less schools. So Europe has ~1.47 million primary education schools and 79k secondary education schools for ~70 million students vs the US with 130k schools for ~50 million students.

So, Europe has 40% more students, ~10x more schools, and ~25% as many school shootings. If we don’t count 2024 then Europe would have 64% as many school shootings as the US. One of the biggest holdups for making the data comparable is adjusting the European number of schools to match US schools or vice versa. If Europe had school distributions similar to the US the EU would have ~182,000 schools (70mil/x=50 mil/130000) and if the US had schools distributed similarly to Europe the US would have ~1.11 million schools (70 mil/1.54 mil=70mil/x).

When the number of schools is adjusted for differences in school structure European students have an annual average chance of a school shooting of 0.00185% (0.00184% not counting 2024) (88 shootings/26 years/182000 adjusted schools) or a 0.03% chance of ever having a school shooting ((1-(1-0.0000185)^12)). The US on the other hand would have an annual average chance of a school shooting 0.01369% (0.00403% not counting 2024) (463 shootings/26 years/130000 actual schools) or about 0.2% chance of ever having a school shooting ((1-(1-0.0001369)^12)).

Before anyone points out that my previous math showed 4% I’ll remind you that that was only using 2024 data, not all 26 years.

So when you actually look and adjust for Europe fundamentally having 10x more schools for 40% more students the incidence of school shootings over the last 26 years haven’t been that different. In the US it is about 7.4x more likely that a school will experience a shooting per year than in Europe, when adjusting the quantity of schools, but the % chance is already so incredibly low it doesn’t really increase the chance that a given student will ever experience a school shooting.

It is worth noting that Europe does have 10x more schools, and so when a school shooting does occur less people are in the school to be exposed to the shooting, but not taking it into account is an apples and oranges comparison.

EDIT: Just to quickly bring it back to my original argument, the difference between Europe and the US isn’t really how often a student will experience a school shooting, but rather the attitudes toward such events. Europe seems to grieve, find justice for those hurt, learn from mistakes, and move on with what works. On the other hand, in the US the parents grieve, someone sues, the school system looks for someone to blame, and the only thing learned is how to avoid a lawsuit.

EDIT 2: Revisited to double check and fix some math and numbers, if I messed something up feel free to let me know.

That’s not the take away you should be getting by any means. Yes, school shootings are more common in the US than the rest of the world, but they are statistically very very rare in the US. The reason why schools in the US react so dramatically for such a rare event is because they are trying to protect themselves from liability and lawsuit, not because they are trying to protect students or help troubled kids.

You don’t seem to have read my post…

A lot of this is overblown really. A few things:

1. The vast majority of school kids in the US will never deal with an active shooter situation.
2. 43% of school shooters in the US are themselves active students
3. Only 20% of school shooting perpetrators had no affiliation to the school, meaning that ~37% of shooters were former students, teachers, or parents.
4. From 1999 - 2023 there were a total of 131 school shootings, but in 2024 alone there were a reported 332 school shootings.
5. These are some terrible numbers, but statistically it’s a rare thing. There are approximately 130,000 K-12 schools in the US and ~75 million students per year. If we assume all schools have the same chance of having a school shooting (they don’t) they would have a 0.2% chance that your school will have a shooting that year or 4% chance that in your k-12 years that you would be at a school shooting.

When people talk about school security in the US they often don’t consider how litigious and risk adverse the US is. You don’t lock doors, build fences, and hire security guards to protect from such a small risk chance, if they actually cared there would be a greater emphasis on mental health. No, they do these things to minimize risk, lower insurance rates, and ward off lawsuits.

The defense writes itself,

“Hey, you can’t sue us for your child’s trauma, we did everything we reasonably could to ensure that a shooter couldn’t get into the school. We built a fence, we locked the doors, we made the kids wear clear plastic book bags, we used a metal detector, we hired a guard, we expelled kids who made threats, and we called the police on people who aren’t allowed to be here. If a kid then sneaks a 3D printed plastic gun on site and traumatizes the students it’s not the school systems fault.”

The US is crazy litigious, especially if a government entity is involved and someone might get a pay day. In my area a high school girl and some similarly aged boys ran away from school while at recess to a forest a mile or two off site. The girl then said she was sexually assaulted by the two boys, called her mom and was picked up and taken to the hospital directly (never came back to the school). The school had reported the girl missing, but only found out about the sexual assault after the mother filed a police report and the police reached out. The school cooperated with the police and reached out to the girl and her mother asking if she was ok or there was anything they could do, but the mother refused to answer their (the schools) phone calls or cooperate with the police. A year later the mother sued the school, the school system, the municipal government, and the police each for several million dollars for allowing her daughter to run away from school and for not protecting her from sexual assault in an offsite location. This lawsuit went on for over a year before the judge dismissed the case.

My only guess would be that the flotilla relaunched faster than anyone thought it would so the writer just updated the article. Looks like they departed Sunday, turned back on Monday, and relaunched within the same day (maybe even just a few hours).

It already turned around due to bad weather

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/aid-flotilla-heading-gaza-returns-barcelona-due-stormy-weather-2025-09-01/

New phone, who dis?