Realistically, the Bible is a compilation of cherry-picked stories ranging from historical fiction to high fantasy, written by dudes who weren't alive at the time, in a language nobody speaks anymore, translated a dozen times, losing important historical and grammatical context each time, with parts added/removed/rewritten at the ruling political and religious leaders' fancy. I want to read the version where a Bethlehem resident wanted to confirm Mary's post-natal virginity by hand, but the pope won't let me.

that's okay, I stole it too

Yeah, and helping feed people wasn't exactly his original motivation for the haber-bosch process either. During the late 19th century empires were running low on natural sources of nitrates for making gun powder, as the British had held a near monopoly of the guano mines in South America and India.

Judging by this, his time as an artillery man for the prussians, his combustion research after he finished the haber process, and his over all obsession with creating weapons of war..... It's pretty safe to assume fertilizer was an afterthought.

You can lean to scientists like Norman Borlaug who saved billions without becoming a merchant of death.

Fossil fuel based fertilizer has also contributed to global inequality - synthetic fertilizer is 3-4 times cheaper in Europe than Africa.

And the cheapness of nitrogen fertilizer has led to massive problems with too much fertilizer ending up in the ocean, sparking algae blooms and subsequent oxygen starvation. Just look at the Baltic Sea.

I meant to say 36 but it was before I had my coffee.

Nah, nights dont count, he was asleep.

"Spilling seed" is a sin... So confirmed that Jesus saw it and thought it was worth forgiving by dying on a cross for.

that was a spelling mistake but I'm gonna keep it as another synonym now lol

I was just trying to figure out where it was located lol

As long as you're equally prepared to be deconverted.

I have argued theists into corners, and at that point they disengage, or begin to pick and choose what parts of what I'm saying they will acknowledge.

The problem for me, is that for me to let you be, I just need to be ok with you believeing in some things that aren't real. As long as your conduct is acceptable and fair, I have no reason to intervene aside from a respect for truth.

Still, all religion is harmful, because belief in the unreal distorts reality, and impacts how you vote and make consequential decisions, affecting humanity as a whole. Individual behaviour is mostly benign, but as institutions religions are wrecking balls rolling through civilisation and history.

Even here you talk about how you wish to convince me by "living by example" as if religion provides something I would want, that I can't have any other way. All it has to offer are lies, and I have refused to believe them. Nothing you can say or do is more convincing to me than whatever a Muslim, Hindu, or the ancient greeks, might say.

But still, to placate your own sense of guilt, you might pray for me. But then, you're not letting me be. You're not accepting the way I've chosen to live life. If you want god to intervene, you've rejected me, and my choice.

This is what "there is no hate like christian love" refers to. You will openly express love, while completely failing to understand that your beliefs reject parts of who some people are. You do not love us. You do not accept us. You feel like you do and you say that you do.

But all thats felt at the other end, is the rejection. The knowledge that someone who is supposed to care about you, deep in their heart, with the fiery passion of religious conviction, believes that something about the way you are, is so deeply wrong, that you deserve literal eternal punishment.

Do you have any idea how deeply that wounds?

This simple reality turns the love you feel and attempt to express for someone, into the most vile, abhorrent, twisted feeling of rejection it is possible to inflict on another. And the more you express it, the more it hurts. Some people kill themselves because of it.

Those of us who maintain friendships with you, simply ignore that part of how you feel. I can't do it. I can't be friends with someone who thinks I'll go to hell for being me. They'll never convert me, and if they are ok with that, I can barely stand being in the same room. And if they do try to convert me, refer back to my second paragraph.

How are you able to love me, and also let me be, even as you genuinely believe that "my journey" ends in eternal suffering? Or how can you expect me, to accept someone who can do that, as a genuinely good person?

And if you’re not dogmatic you can pick and choose the beliefs you learn from friends that work best with your worldview.

I love learning about all the religions - one doesn’t have to believe in them to see their pros and cons.

Being common doesn't make it any less unpleasant

I wouldn't take an eternity of existence under any circumstances for anything. Please just let me fucking die when I'm done.

Well, according to the renowned astrophysicist Belinda Carlisle, heaven is a place on earth.

The earth will eventually be swallowed by the sun.

Living for an eternity means that you will be alive when the earth is swallowed by the sun, you will live in that crushing depth. Until the sun is either swallowed by a black hole, or ripped apart by the ceaseless expansion of spacetime, ultimately ripping your eternal soul with it.

Uhh. Billions of ways? Lol the mythology describes a pretty fucking gruesome way to die. Whipped, beaten, nailed to a cross, stabbed, and left to suffocate.

The Jews that predate Jesus were making bread with yeast (and probably other cultures were too). The holiday Passover is celebrated with matzah, a cracker like flat bread that doesn’t have yeast, because the Jews had to leave Egypt in a hurry and couldn’t bring yeast with them and instead subsisted on matzah.

Telling everyone the reason both your daughters are pregnant with your babies is because they got you drunk, or that girls shouldn't get too huffy if it's their own brother that raped them - also options.

Genesis 19:30-38 and 2 Samuel 13:20-22