Humans evolved in extreme scarcity. At least some members of the group would have to be biologically programmed to store fat extremely efficiently. Especially in cold climes, a slow metabolism would be a lifesaver in famine. Whereas groups in hotter climes needed more individuals who could throw off heat more efficiently, so there were advantages to a faster metabolism.

Then these groups got mixed up and moved all around the globe, so which kind of metabolism you get is a genetic lottery.

Added to these factors is the massive availability of super-rich food, designed to super-stimulate basic instinctual drives. Also we have the invention of labor-saving technology, which each year renders the expenditure of calories less necessary. Then, as we are coming to find, each person is in a symbiotic relationship with their intestinal bacteria, and they too stimulate appetite - some types much more than others.

So, of course the confluence of genetics, technology and symbiosis means that some people never worry about looking fat and some struggle with their weight their whole lives. The last thing it means is that thin people are good at something fat people are bad at.

Yeah, well, your assessment of how you have been "treated" is still just your mind. People with very strong beliefs employ extremely strong confirmation bias in these assessments. You could be wrong.


That is why it is important to actually check the reality of what you are claiming.

For example, there is nothing you can examine in reality which even mildly suggests that ritual animal sacrifice serves any kind of supernatural purpose. All that exists is people saying it does.

People can say anything. If it can't be confirmed in any way, it's usually nothing to worry about.

It does not qualify as either knowing or truth if it is just talk. Both knowledge and truth require verifiable correspondence to reality.

Since your talk seems to be completely unhinged from reality, is devaluing reason and enabling a blood cult, I would say there are at least grounds for objection.

Actually, no. Both parties claim that any man can make it rich, but the Democrats claim that a few people being rich and everyone else being poor is not enough. The Democrats believe that a society which works for the rich also has to work for the middle class, or there is no economy for anyone to get rich in.

"The government" is the people of America working together, using the tool of social organization our founders invented, to create a society in which businesses large and small can function on a foundation of public infrascructure. From the streets, to the courts, to the grid, to a healthy and educated workforce, all the pieces needed for markets to exist are arranged by our collective action.

That is not "the government" in the way of "business," that is Americans working together to make sure there is a safe place for people to do business.

That would be evil.

It is decided by people who are dealing with situations and evaluating them.

Assessments of good and ill can be derived from an evaluation of well-being vs. harm and suffering. "Evil" is usually reserved for situations with extreme harm and suffering.

I would assess that a "jealous god" punishing a human for "worshipping another god" would be evil. There is nothing inherently harmful about "worshipping" per se which makes it good when you do it to Yahweh and bad when you do it to Vishnu or Ahura Mazda or The Unnamed One. Particulary if the punishment is, as many Christians claim, eternity in the Bad Afterlife. The punishment would far outweigh the harmless "crime" of thinking something different, and would cause harm and suffering extreme enough to qualify as evil.


Luckily, there is no evidence that any gods punish anyone for anything.


Unfortunately, people often punish other people for worshipping different gods. This is because, long ago, it was very important to maintain distinct tribal identities, as I explained to Seventeen.

But, people have improved a lot on this score over the centuries, particularly in the last two. I think as we expand our in-group to include more and more people, it becomes less necessary to create artificial distinctions between in- and out-group.

People who kill and torture millions of other people qualify as evil because they cause great harm and suffering. Did you forget the rubric already? Well-being = good, harm and suffering = ill, great harm and suffering = evil.

Some brains and some systems get skewed.

No, it is an evaluation of well-being vs. suffering. Sometimes the majority gets it wrong, but as we progress, people have found ways to create more well-being and less harm and suffering. It is a process of error correction. The moral arc of history bends toward justice, as Martin Luther King Jr. would say.

This is not an example of a god being mad. This is an example of a person saying a god was mad. People say this because, especially in those days, tribal units were very competitive with each other, and it was important to have very distinct markers on the tribes to separate "us" from "them."

One important marker of who is "us" and who is "them" is what gods are favored. People of the day said (and wrote) that their God was mad to scare people away from considering other gods, or any ideas of other people, and to cement loyalty to the group's own gods and leaders.


There is nothing to examine or observe about gods to figure out if they are ever mad or what gets them mad. It's just a lot of talk. People say the gods are mad all the time to advance their own agenda. Like evangelists a few years ago who claimed God was mad about gays so He destroyed New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina, or a few years later claimed that God was mad about legalized weed and so He destroyed Boulder with floods.

There is nothing to examine or observe to indicate that those events were, or could be, caused by gods, angry or otherwise. They appear to be a confluence of meteorological effects, not least of which is human-caused global warming.

If you understand how people work, you can understand why they say things about gods.

I enjoy speaking with you too.

Sure, if you like shouting bullshit. Jesus lived 2000 years ago, if at all. You are imagining a fairy godfather that is living with you now but it isn't anything real.

I don't "believe in the Buddha." Buddha is not a magical figure. He was an ordinary human being just like you and me, who happened to figure out a good trick to make things work. He lived 2500 years ago - if at all.

But even if the Buddha story is not true, even if the good trick was figured out by someone else, it still works. You don't have to believe this, you can test it out yourself. So there is nothing to believe.


To answer your inquiry, I was introduced to Buddhism by my husband, an incredible human being who totally has his life together, has the patience of a saint and treats me like a queen. I asked him how he was so great, and he explained a bit of the system he uses, which includes some Buddhism. I started using it too and became likewise great.

Yes, but you have to know the difference between truth and lies before you can use it to set yourself free. The difference is that truth can be verified.

Of course you get an instant repsonse when you just ask yourself. You answer for god immediately. Unfortunately, when you do the voice, god only says what you want to hear.

We are this.

There is no evidence that gods exist. There is no evidence that gods do anything. There is nothing to examine about gods to determine what, if anything, they do. All claims about gods are the work of human imaginations with nothing to go on.

A long time ago everybody made up stories to explain why food rotted, why the weather changed, and why bad (or good) things happened. Your religion is an ancient made up story too, just like the ones about Zeus and Thor and The Great Spirit. It's not different from other myths.

If you examine actual reality you will find a wonderland far more beautiful and amazing than the primitive people who made up your myth could have ever fathomed. We have thousands of years of discovery and learning to inform us. We now understand why food rots, why the weather changes and why a lot of things happen. We can now tell true stories about how things are and how they work.

You can tell this understanding is true because it can be verified, because it cures and prevents disease, and because it makes incredible things, like the screen you are staring at right now.

This is what "feasible" means - that it really works.