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My favorite part of this thread is the conceit of the one guy coming in here and crowing, "See, I told you Javy Baez sucks! I was right and all you stupid sabers were WRONG!!" When nothing that's happening with him is inconsistent with anything any of us who have experience watching Javy over the years has said.

I'm not debating what I think the essence of God is, basically because I'm not particularly interested in the topic. If God does exist, I don't think it's possible for us to know his nature since, unless you believe certain people are specially-appointed agents of his, he never reveals himself to us. So I gotta swing the discussion back around to its beginning and reiterate the simple essence of my point: if God doesn't know what's going to happen in the future, he's not omniscient. If God has a plan but Man can put it asunder, he's not omnipotent. And if God is omniscient and omnipotent but gives Man free will, he has no plan. But if God is omniscient and omnipotent, and he has a plan in which he knows everything that's going to happen before it happens from now until the end of time, then prayer is pointless, because nothing we ask for is going to change his plan.

You may not have read my original post in which I said, in so many words, that I don't believe at all that TV shows and movies are inspiring these shooters in the first place. You appear to be arguing against a point I did not make.

If God allows Man to set His plan back, then he’s not omnipotent.

Also many a critical thinker freeing themselves from the restrictions of superstitious assumptions.

Also correct. Both-and.

He absolutely knows that the delay cost lives. He’s backtracking because politically, saying what he did was unfavorable to the all-rights-belong-to-gun-owners crowd, because going in sooner would have removed the benefit of the doubt from the shooter, and there will be a next time cops will have to give the benefit of the doubt to another armed mania… er, patriot.

You’re right, Hollywood didn’t make the culture, but Hollywood does reflects the culture. Hollywood also validates the culture, and they contribute to ossifying the culture when they reflect it in their stories by culminating it with such positive outcomes. When it comes to Hollywood and our history to explain how we’ve arrived where we are politically with guns, it’s not a case of either-or. It’s a case of both-and.

Isn’t the idea of punishing the whole group for the actions of an individual intended to inspire the group to wield their own brand of justice against the individual, out of sight and earshot of the authority figure? Not necessarily by pummeling them in their beds with bars of soap wrapped in hand towels, but still trying to divide the individuals in the group into factions so they can be conquered and controlled?

The more I think about this, the more I’m coming around to the idea that TV shows and movies from Hollywood are partly to blame for this present state of political affairs regarding guns. Not because I believe TV shows and movies are inspiring these shooters in the first place. I don’t believe that at all. Millions of people, including kids, watch these shows, and yet we don’t have millions of mass shooters going around causing deadly mayhem. As common as mass shootings are in the news, it’s still a few hundred or so per year, making it essentially a one in a million circumstance in a country of 330 million people with access to 400 million guns. I do believe, though, that it’s a problem how TV shows and movies make shootouts look so easy and manageable, where the cops always win the encounter and always within just a couple of minutes, the shooters always end up dying or apprehended, and the cops go unscathed, or at least are wounded only mildly in a way that preserves their pretty model faces for their next agency headshot. When people imagine police engaging armed criminals, it is the sanitized TV show and movie scenes they are playing in their heads, and not the chaotic, messy, bloody, deadly encounters that actually do occur (when cops actually engage, that is), since hardly anyone has ever seen a shootout live and in person. That’s the part where millions of people watch these TV shows and movies, and while only a few hundred people perpetrate mass shootings each year, millions more people come away with the idea that when there is a mass shooting in a public place, the cops will swoop in and save the day—just like they see on the screen. That’s part of what I think is behind the political call for more police at schools and more guns in schools, and in fact all other public spaces. People weaned on these shows and movies think the shootouts are all very manageable, going all the way back to the days of the movie western. We can’t legally stop Hollywood from making such shows and movies, and we can’t legally make them change the way they portray such scenes, since millions of people thrill to the sight of shootouts that seem dangerous for a minute until the good guys inevitably prevail, as required by emotionally-soft American audiences, and giving audiences exactly what they want is good business. So that’s probably not changing. But I bet that if Hollywood somehow showed less of this, or portrayed it in a way that showed how messy and chaotic and dangerous and deadly shootouts really are, even to the good guys with guns, people wouldn’t be as adamant, or blasé, about the idea that America should have even more guns being wielded in public spaces.

Good lord, what kind of shit are you into so deep that you have to be heavily-armed to confront people intent on coming into your home and murdering you and your family??

This is the first time I remember getting no yellow boxes before solving it in as many as four tries. Wordle 343 4/6 🟩⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟩⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

I’m glad we are working to repel the Russians, but I can’t shake this feeling that somehow arming Ukraine is going to boomerang back on us, like arming the mujahideen did. Not in the exact same way, of course, just in general. Hope I’m wrong. I don’t know. Stupid feelings.

If God is omnipotent and omniscient but chooses not to intervene, then there is no God's plan.

When you put it like this, it really does highlight the utter stupidity of the Tigers' tanking strategy.

FWIW, over the last two weeks, Schoop is slashing .250/.306/.477 for a wRC+ of 126, which places him in the 62nd percentile of all hitters since May 13.

And after you read that book, read "The Trial of Henry Kissinger" by Christopher Hitchens, which presents Kissinger's involvement in a series of alleged war crimes in Vietnam, Bangladesh, Chile, Cyprus and East Timor.

Well, technically, if someone believes that God controls every little thing that happens in the universe and that he makes every decision about what's going to happen, big and small, as part of God's plan, then they could be forgiven for saying God wanted their mother raped, since in their mind, that's part of God's plan. Once you've pulled on that thread, though, then you would have to admit the futility and pointlessness of praying to God for anything, since he has a plan that's already pre-ordained, and so, what, you think he's gonna change his plan for you just because you ask him dear God please let the Tigers win tonight?

Normally I might say here that there's a lot of projection at work, but then, I don't think Trump is much of a trader, so ... 🤷‍♂️

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Wanna go one step further? Stipulate that the FGOP actually wants these acts to occur because it strengthens their pro-gun position by highlighting how liberals want to take everyone's guns away in response, which increases interest in the NRA, which increases gun sales, which increases lobby payoffs.

God bless the Onion.

While I believe that ordinary everyday people who believe in god and satan, good and evil, etc., generally come by their beliefs honestly because they have nothing more at stake than their souls, I also believe that people with power who also profess these same beliefs may or may not have come by them honestly, but in all cases understand that it's good business for them, whether electorally, financially, or other. In this case, if you're a politician who gets a lot of money from the gun lobby, dismissing mass shooters as being driven only by evil, and by nothing else, seems like a sure way to deflect scrutiny away from your own policy decisions and onto "Satan" where it belongs. That will keep more guns flowing throughout the country, because after all, if you believe in evil as an active, powerful supernatural force, then you know you can't stop evil from happening in the first place, but you can stop people overcome by evil afterwards with a good guy's guns. Or so I've heard.

That's what police reports are really intended to do: tell as much truth as they can afford to, with the underlying goal of covering their ass and deflecting blame or responsibility for anything that went wrong, and massaging the message as needed to achieve that. At its core, the police report is an exercise in establishing favorable narrative, much of it driven by FOP considerations to protect what they see as their members' rights. I'm not saying anything like "all police reports are a pack of lies." That statement on its face is not true. I'm sure they occupy a spectrum that includes telling the actual unvarnished truth about whatever happened. What I am saying is that we've learned so much about how some police reports have doctored the truth or even flat out lied about what really happened, I believe we should never trust a police report prima facie as being the unimpeachable truth.