You seriously misread that if you think it’s about Christmas trees in anything but maybe an abstract way. It’s about wooden idols. Who tf is chiseling their Christmas trees into shapes? I thought maybe this would be about Asherah poles or something at least kind of similar but this is a pretty obvious passage about idolatry.

Let’s put it like this- Skyrim is as old now as Final Fantasy VII was when it came out. If you had asked me then if Final Fantasy VII was an old game when Skyrim came out, I’d have said yeah.

$15 a month is a lot of money for poor people. Minimum wage at 40 hours a week is only $1160 a month. If rent is $700 a month (and that’s cheaper than any apartment I’ve seen lately that only leaves $460 for everything else. Sure the rec center is nice but is it worth spending 3-6% of your post-housing expenses on?

Lmao OP just described a public pool. I’ve never been to one that wasn’t like this and I grew up in a town that’s like 90% white. Turns out race doesn’t have anything to do with it

It’s more complicated than that since I do believe God exists but in a way that is incomprehensible to humans, and, according to all evidence, doesn’t “intervene” with the universe. I say “intervene” because God, as classically described, is simultaneously incapable of intervening and incapable of not intervening. If we define God as “an omnipotent being”(which, for the record, I do not), then He is necessarily also all knowing and exists outside of the limitations of time and space. Such a being would be perfectly optimized as well, and so it would be impossible for anything to occur without its express permission and cause. Therefore, under classical theism, it seems impossible for God to say, answer prayers, because this would imply that He could possibly change His mind or that what was happening wasn’t already what He wants to begin with.

Eh. I could care less about downvotes and I understand that the idea of practicing Christianity for reasons beyond personal faith in it is going to be controversial to Christians and atheists alike. If someone made a chill Atheist/agnostic “church” where there was singing and discussions on moral philosophy, and a community of people devoted to helping each other and their community I’d probably be doing that but as it stands religion is the only game in town for such things and I think that it’s good to do something like this. Plus I don’t know, it’s kind of cool to be a part of rituals people have been doing for thousands of years.

It’s complicated but I used to be essentially atheist but now believe that there is something one might as well call “God” after studying philosophy. Essentially everything has a cause and something must be at the end of that chain, and we might as well call that “God.” I also practice Christianity because I feel that it is good to have the community and structure that a religion can provide but I don’t think that “God” necessarily exists in the way Christianity typically presents it.