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The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

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Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#411

Post by BJones12 »

vel0city wrote: post #395
BJones12 wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But he continued to lie about it until recently From what I've heard, he has disclosed actions years, possibly decades, ago but did not mention that involvement of a minor. I expect this is because a lawyer, or possibly anyone with a quarter of a brain, gave the same advice to him as they would any other human - shut your mouth. Is that a wrong? > And now he's suing the church for millions of dollars for some retir…

Continuing to lie and hide these things is wrong. Telling a few people and pressuring them to lie on your behalf doesn't make the lie better. It's incredible you're arguing otherwise and really points to your character. And while it might be sound legal advice to shut your mouth, it's not necessarily the moral thing to do. And yes, I think it's wrong pastors are paid millions of dollars, and that he's suing to try an…

> And its asinine to compare counts of attendees to a church as the number of employees at a company.

You did not comprehend my comments, because I did not.

> And while it might be sound legal advice to shut your mouth, it's not necessarily the moral thing to do.

I hope that you argue that the 5th amendment is immoral when anyone uses it, and not just pastors.

> If the person leading the congregation is making significantly more than the poorest of the congregation there's a real problem.

Ideally a congregation will include all of society, which will include people making zero, so your argument becomes that a pastor making significantly more than zero is immoral.

I would challenge you to find a moral basis for that in the Bible.

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#412

Post by Tijdreiziger »

em-bee wrote: post #244
dangus wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are approximately 10,000 religions in the world. What brain damage do I have to receive in order to believe that I have any realistic statistical chance of picking the right one?

you don't pick one at random. you pick one that makes sense. what makes sense for example is the positive impact a religion has on the world. which religion is doing the most good? that alone will narrow down the selection to a few dozen if that many. besides the good it does, another question could be: what makes sense to you? which religion has the better answers to explain the world in which we live in today? take…

Your arguments are a bit unsatisfying to me, though.

> what makes sense for example is the positive impact a religion has on the world. which religion is doing the most good?

I try to have a positive impact on the world by being vegan and donating to (secular) humanitarian organizations. I struggle to see how believing in a religion would improve on this (although I’m open to a good rebuttal!).

> which religion has the better answers to explain the world in which we live in today?

I think that the secular scientific tradition does better here than religion (even if it isn’t perfect, of course).

> take the issues and questions that matter to you, and then look at the answers and see if they are satisfactory. keep searching until you find the answers you seek.

I did that, and it doesn’t look good for religion, as explained above. And yet, here we are with one of the parent commenters telling us that we should believe in the Bible, lest we burn in hell.

Hence my comment above: what evidence shows this, and if there is no evidence, why should I believe it (or any other religious scripture) over my current ideals?

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#413

Post by tengwar2 »

ivape wrote: post #47
paulryanrogers wrote: post #34

[flagged]

Keep in mind true believers often learn to live with a massive cognitive dissonance This is quite true. Taking away just the moral teachings is not true belief. Revelations is serious business stuff, the apostles watched Christ ascend from Mount Olive, it’s extremely trippy things. True believers are literally believing in wild shit. In fact, if you are true believer, you almost need to keep it hidden because it’s go…

Revelations is problematic if you attempt to take it literally rather than understanding that it makes heavy use of symbolism and other literary devices. That literalism is largely specific to American society - and I don't just mean American Christians here. It's not particularly easy to understand the way that ancient literature works, but even if you don't want to put in the time, it's important to understand that the writers were often quite sophisticated, and worked in different ways from what you are used to.

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#414

Post by Tijdreiziger »

vkou wrote: post #193
Tijdreiziger wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what evidence supports the theory of heaven and hell? I mean, according to the Hindus and Buddhists, we’ll be reincarnated rather than going to heaven/hell. We could read the Bible, or the Qur’ān, or the Vēdas, or the Buddhist scriptures, or any other religious text… but how would we know whether any of them holds truth?

That's the whole point of faith. You're supposed to believe despite evidence.

Why should you believe despite evidence?

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#415

Post by wat10000 »

imchillyb wrote: post #362
wat10000 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s “science doesn’t adequately explain the origins of the universe,” and then there’s “this particular middle eastern tribe had the right answers thousands of years ago.” I can see the former but the latter makes no sense.

How did Israel get the order of operations correct, without science, if no one told them this story? Israel’s creation story gets every step in the right order. How?

You mean the story where God created the earth covered with water, then created light, then created sky to separate the water underneath the sky from the water above the sky (???), then land, then seed-bearing plants on land, then created the sun and the moon and the stars, then created animals? That's... not the right order at all.

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#416

Post by thinkingtoilet »

hatradiowigwam wrote: post #259
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally have no idea what you're talking about. I feel people like you pretend Europe's colonial era didn't exist or the American slave trade didn't exist or the holocaust didn't exist, etc... etc... etc... The only response to the millennia long list of atrocities Christians have committed, often times to other Christians, is the 'no true Scotsman' fallacy.

I think those were evil people doing evil things. Who calls the people who perpetrated these things "Christians"? If I am king, and direct my armies to slaughter another country's people because " cannot be tolerated by us, the Christians"....then I am a liar, and masquerading as something I am not. The people that did these things wanted to do them for one or more reasons, and none of those were because God told the…

Sigh...

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#417

Post by wat10000 »

ivape wrote: post #331
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He revealed himself to them and only them, ignoring the rest of humanity all over the globe. In all the universe he chose just earth for his people, and over all of earth, he just chose a tiny section to reveal himself to. Omniscient and omnipotent but a very human scale for his messaging.

When Michael Jackson does a concert, it’s really only in a few locations. It’s up to the world to spread it. As others have mentioned, he could show up in the sky like Mufasa, but he could also just brain wash you in an instant and fix all of it. Faith is a concept, like so many other concepts. It is a unique creation that has properties, one of them is that it’s not meant to be provable that easily.

"...it’s not meant to be provable that easily."

If ever there were a post-hoc rationalization, this is it.

It's funny how the faithful are generally happy to use any evidence that they think supports the faith, but once it gets too difficult then suddenly it's not supposed to have too much evidence for it.

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#418

Post by tengwar2 »

mrguyorama wrote: post #134
flir wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Even worse, they spend every cent on stupid prepper bullshit like freeze dried rations! Rations will not help you or your family if civilization breaks down. Without a literal army , you are no more powerful than the ones who did nothing to prepare. All rations do is ensure that you starve to death a month later than expected. Even better, those of you that collected guns and ammo as a hobby are about as prepared as…

Picking up on your acre of potatoes: no, you don't need oxen for this. In fact one reason for the importance of potatoes historically is that you can grow them on marginal land with only hand labour. There are various techniques such as the lazybeds used by displaced Highlanders in Scotland, but they don't need oxen. In fact oxen had their heyday before the iron ploughshare, as you needed a team to pull the older wooden plough, and the plough was used for planting grain. Of course these days it is also used for planting potatoes on rich land, but that's not essential.

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#419

Post by dyslexit »

JohnMakin wrote: post #140

I can shed some light on this, maybe - In the year before the 2020 election, a market opened on predictit called "Will Hillary run for president? Yes/No" First this was a reasonable market, but quickly it became obvious she wasn't running (because she repeatedly said she wasn't, there was no campaign created at all, absolutely zero indicators she was running because she wasn't). Predictit allowed a comment section wh…

This is exactly what the article is arguing people are doing when betting on the Jesus thing:

> [Time Value of Money] The Yes people are betting that, later this year, their counterparties (the No betters) will want cash (to bet on other markets), and so will sell out of their No positions at a higher price.

...

> Has this galaxy-brained trade ever gone well? Yes! In late October of last year — a week before the election — Kamala Harris was trading around 0.3% in safe red states like Kentucky, while Donald Trump was trading around 0.3% in safe blue states like Massachusetts. On election day, these prices skyrocketed to about 1.5%, because “No” bettors desperately needed cash to place other bets on the election. Traders who bought “Yes” for 0.3% in late October and sold at 1.5% on election day made a 5x profit!

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#420

Post by brulard »

lazide wrote: post #318
guywithahat wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes you, presumably someone who is not a christian and has never read the bible, know better than billions of christians and the millions of people who've actually read the bible. I'm not religious, but this is a bad take.

I don’t know about you, but I got kicked out of church (well, asked to leave and not come back) after I read the Bible and started to, uh, ask questions. And compare what the pastor was saying vs ‘the word of god’. I personally am 100% sure Jesus would be dead pretty quick if he came back - a lot faster than before, and I doubt it would take 30 pieces of silver either!

He should not come as a mortal anymore. But I agree there would be many judases to do the job.
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