Yeah I get that there isn’t much direct evidence of Jesus. But when you say “Saul had his own thing going on, which wasn’t entirely popular” aren’t you referring to his persecution of Christians?

I thought my question was pretty simple: if Jesus didn’t exist, where did the early Christians (that Saul was persecuting) come from?

We have letters from Paul, because he sent them to other Christian communities. Where did those communities come from?

My question was in regard to the part of the comment:

{The Birth of Jesus} …if it happened at all, which is up for debate…

I’m always intrigued by this sort of hypothesis, can you recommend a good link to an alternative explanation for the early church?

Like I get that early Christians worked in a lot (LOT) of existing mythology to make Christianity palatable/ relatable to various local groups. But where could the early Christians have come from if not a Jesus like figure?

Another way of thinking about it is betting your entire bankroll for 99.9…% certainty that you will win $1.

Say you go into the casino with $1000.

Bet:

$1 lose.
$3 lose.
$9 lose.
$27 lose.
$81 lose.
$243 lose.
$729 oh wait you can't bet that much, you only have $457 left. Dang, do you bet $457 or find another $272? 

Bet $457 and you win $914! Congrats you're now only down $86!
Or maybe you lost and are down $1000.

Or maybe you scrounged up $272 so you could keep playing
Bet 729 and lose. Now you're down $1272.
Or
Bet 729 and you win 1458. Pay back the $272 you borrowed from your buddy, you're still up $186. 
You just bet $729 dollars for a %50 chance of winning $186.

But what are the chances of getting 6 or 7 losses in a row? 1 in 64, or 128 respectively, actually worse because roulette wheels aren’t 50/50, they’re 18/19 (18 wins and 19 losses in 37 plays on average) or worse. So losing 6 times in a row will happen 1 in 54 plays, 7 losses is 1 in 106.

Google says roulette wheels spin 55 times per hour so with your strategy you will lose your bank roll in about one hour assuming your starting bet is 0.1% of your bank roll.

What happened to your kids?

I was thoroughly impressed by Technology Connections exploration of the Sunbeam automatic beyond belief toaster. Bought one cheap off Craigslist a while ago and added a ground wire. Works great.

I also picked up an IBM selectric pretty cheap, mostly works.

I’m not the one you were replying to and haven’t read the comments you referenced but couldn’t let this stand unchallenged:

It’s not censorship when they’re removing posts by both sides.

Yes it is censorship, it could be censorship with reduced bias, it might even be appropriate censorship. But it is literally censorship to censor speech.

I’m a feminist and not a Freemason. I wasn’t convinced that Freemasonry is misogynistic simply because it excludes women. Ie: I think there are valid reasons to have some gender separated spaces. My understanding is that Freemasonry is a practice intended to ‘improve’ men (whatever that means to them). I think that’s possibly a valid reason for maintaining a gendered space.

However; in preparing to write this comment I learned that Masonry’s sister organization (The Order of the Eastern Star), which is open to both men and women, is subordinate to the Masonic lodge. This does strike me as misogynistic.

I’m open to reading thoughtful comments by Masons or more knowledgeable feminists.

I think the idea of it being an alternative power structure is part of it, but their reasoning is that Freemasonry is Deist/Rationalist which is incompatible with the Catholic position that revelation is a source of truth. Anything that elevates Freemasonry inherently undermines Catholic dogma.

Catholics and Masons are welcome to weigh in though, I’m not either.

Um, ACKSHUALLY In this scene of the Simpsons (S13E04) Smithers is horrified by the dancers. It’s NOT that he’s struggling to resist looking at them.

Are we meant to believe that you find Star Trek memes horrifying? I hope someone got fired for that gaffe.

Worst. Meme. Ever.

I did a quick Google 95% of households have a car in America. That’s “almost all” but a lot of those households presumably have one car but multiple drivers, the fractions is not easy to determine. So I can’t decide if your claim is true or not.

I agree with you that the person you were responding to is not at all in touch with reality though.

Thanks, yeah when I spoke to my neighbour I got the impression that they do have something like that set up. But I’ll try to get them to understand the importance of making it difficult to reverse or work around.

Yes

Bribery has to be for something specific.

Garnering favor with those close to or in power doesn’t need an explicit predefined goal. Just because he wasn’t holding public office at the time doesn’t mean he didn’t have any political power, or that it was somehow unlikely that he’d ever hold a public office again.

I agree, but it’s not bribery of Joe Biden if someone gives a gift to his son.

What do you allege Joe Biden or his family was bribed to do while Joe Biden was a private citizen?

Yeah sorry I guess it’s not clear.

N is neighbour G is gambler

N lives in G’s house.

10 000 km from the pole to the equator?

I think it would be a huge amount of work to get something more accurate than my guess.

I don’t know, if America sends us all back into the stone age with nukes I think I’ll also agree to use the imperial system.

I’ve heard of this book which you may find interesting

Get around to it.

I don’t think it’s relevant to the creation of the wind. Just its direction.