Then why did you bring up utilities

Mkay but food isn’t a utility, and neither are cigarettes/cigars/vapes/etc, so I don’t really understand what you’re getting at here

Where’s your line between “keeping the government out of your personal choices” vs. “regulations that keep us safe”? Like, I’m sure you’re ok with regulations that keep poisons like lead, arsenic, etc. out of consumable goods, right?

I kinda agree with the other commenter that said all drugs should be legalized, but also, I’ve had close personal experiences with how addictive and harmful nicotine is, so I can also understand why it would be the target of bans.

middle aged people

associated with the elderly

Oof, right in my middle-aged bones

You must be a professional at missing the point, because you’re very good at it

Do you generalize everything this way, or is it just dogs that you’re moronic about

I don’t know what 180 they are supposed to do

Missionary to reverse cowgirl

Does kidnapping and murdering American citizens count as domestic terrorism, or do you only care about the oh so fragile sanctity of Christmas

I spy King Triton with angel wings in the sky above him

IDK, that sounds like a fun twist to me

You could maybe get a mechanical engineering degree, but CNC machining is pretty specialized, so a college curriculum might not be all that relevant. There are apprenticeship programs for that kind of thing though

All

Kinda getting into cutting off your nose to spite your face territory though, no? Like, if I take a free tool created by a fascist, then use it to fight against fascism, aren’t I now hurting the fascist’s cause? I fail to see how that’s helping them succeed, at least at being a fascist, which I think we can agree is the more important attribute to care about here.

Either way, it’s still belief.

K, it just seems like you’re dug in at this point. Let me leave you with this. If we had different words for “scientific belief” vs. “religious belief”, I don’t think you’d be trying to make this same point.

If you can’t see how problematic it is for a state to dictate what people can’t believe, that’s a you problem, not a me problem.

No, I get that. Religious freedom is a founding principle of my country, the government has no place telling people what they can and can’t believe. But in our world of reality, that concept has nothing to do with science, is my whole point.

Some religions are specifically about the mystery of the unknown. It sounds like you’re approaching this with a very narrow view of what a religion is. We tend to call that a bias.

Cool, how many people believe in religions like that? How many people believe in religions that follow the scientific method? Yes, I’m most familiar with how Abrahamic religions work because that’s what I grew up around, and that’s the kind of religion that over half the planet participates in. Call that bias if you want, none of that changes the fact that no religion relies on the scientific method, critical and rational thought, and evidence the way science does.

I don’t really feel a need to address anything else you said because, like I said earlier, I agree that freedom of religious expression is important. What I don’t agree with is your attempt to conflate “belief in religion” with “belief in science”.

That doesn’t change the fact that until it had been demonstrably proven, it was still within the realm of belief rather than fact.

Again, in science, the “realm of belief” is something different than the “realm of belief” for religion. If you can’t acknowledge that, I can’t assume you’re approaching this conversation in good faith.

I’m sure the first people to conceive of the idea of a god had reasons for believing too. The stars in the night sky, the light in the eyes of their first child… How do you explain those things before you understand atoms and molecules and photons?

So, that’s actually the difference I’m talking about. In science, when you come across something you don’t know the answer to, the first thing you say is “huh, I don’t know the answer to that”. You don’t claim you know the answer to those questions until you actually know the answer. But by using rational, critical thought, evidence, and carrying out the scientific method, you figure out those answers, piece by piece. In religion, when you come across something you don’t know the answer to, the first thing you do is make up an answer based on unprovable, unobservable supernatural forces, and then that’s basically the end of it. Is the difference clear yet?

Isaac Newton had reasons to believe in his model of physics. And for many years, they were the best explanations for the way things behave the way they do. Until it wasn’t.

Right, he “believed” in his model because of evidence, observation, rational and critical thought, and the scientific method. His model was superseded when we were able to make better observations, and saw unexpected things in certain cases that didn’t match his predictions. That clued us in that his model wasn’t quite right, and there must be a piece missing. People went looking for that piece and found relativity, which has proven to be an even more accurate model than Newton’s.

Now that we know about general relativity, does that change the fact that Newtonian physics were science?

Of course not, and the fact that you’re even asking shows you have a deeply flawed understanding of science (or are not engaging honestly). Religion is largely constant. Science is very much not. Religion is constant because it fabricates the answers and then stops. Science changes because it leaves room to say “I don’t know”, and has well-defined mechanisms for filling those gaps with good, rational answers, as well as improving upon or even replacing those answers when we learn better. In that way, the “belief” in religion is nothing like the “belief” in science.

None of this matters, really. At least it’s not pertinent to the subject. Because no matter how you look at it, it doesn’t justify forcing your worldview and beliefs on others. And that’s what this whole conversation has been about.

It may not be directly pertinent to the main point, but it does absolutely matter. Understanding the differences between religion and science is paramount if you’re going to argue about them, and I hope this has given you (and anyone else who reads it) some food for thought.

Someone believed in the Higgs Boson before it was proven.

Because there was evidence of its existence, in the form of occasional (but detectable) interactions between particles that produced unexpected results. No one thought the Higgs Boson existed until there was a scientific reason for its existence. If this is what you’re referring to as “belief in science”, then we’re dealing with multiple definitions of the word “belief”, because that’s nowhere close to how it works in religion.

And I’m saying that that’s a pretty meaningless observation to make, unless you’re trying to defend voter suppression.

So you think voter suppression is ok, as long as it applies equally to everyone?

It’s the only rational position lol. There are like 40,000 different denominations of Christianity, telling any one of them that their version of “wrong” is worse than sisyphusian.

I mean, yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. It’s not hard at all to be enlightened enough to think religion and government have no business mixing lmao