Choosing a faith

we're degrading the military of a significant rival without risking the lives of any NATO service members you slack jawed yokel.

I think that is the basic problem. He can convince himself that he knows better than anybody else. He can convince himself that we are all controlled by demons.Conspiracy theories are very thorough.

He keeps quoting Jesus, "For ye have the poor always with you...." (Matt. 26:11) He seems to interpret it in a Calvinistic way.

I have no idea what "Calvinistic way" means.

It is the right-wing, christianist pecking order view of society. Phat and many religious people get their self-worth by having someone else they perceive as lower than they are. They take the crap they get from above and pass it on down. As long as they think someone is in some sense lower than they are they have worth. This explains a fair amount of the racism, misogyny, and hate for LGBTQ+ we have in this country.
This also is part of the reason for anti-intellectualism. Phat and the rest of the rubes have allowed themselves to be convinced that intellectuals are a drain on society. That intellectuals are trying to repress the rubes somehow. They are useful idiots for the billionaire class.

I take it to mean that poverty is a moral failure and should be punished.

People do that. We're ALL "dysfunctional" when we enter the world. "Paying our way" is a generational thing - our parents pay for our generation and we pay for our children's generation. Everything isn't about getting a return. Reparations are about paying your bills.Your father was a house-builder, wasn't he? When he was alive, you expected people to pay for the houses he built, didn't you? And after he died, did you not expect the people who owed him to still pay his estate?Why is that a "stupid idea" when it applies to debts owed to the estates of slaves? What return did we get from helping France, Belgium, the Netherlands? (Aside from not having to look in the skies over Denver for Nazi bombers?)

Oh, basic Christianity.

Predestined.

OK, thanks.

I saw a two-story outhouse in Calgary once. So much for the wonderful, magical "transformation" that Christians undergo when they are "saved".

I guess I have a point to make as well. I see secularism as polluting everything. I grew up in a world where it was seen as a positive to attend church and a large percentage of the population attended church even if irregularly. In that world I knew of no one that committed suicide. I knew of no one that died of a drug overdose. There was essentially no one living in streets although I suppose that there like were in large cities. Children still had an age of innocence. People hitch hiked safely all over the place and it wasn't hard to get a ride. After the first couple of days in grade one kids walked to school on their own and we could roam the world on our bikes as long as we wanted, as long as we were home for our next meal. People often left their cars unlocked and often even left the keys in the ignition. They usually didn't lock their house doors. Sure most peoples holidays involved something like a camping trip instead of a Mexican vacation and I can't remember any family having two cars but that was the norm and nobody thought about it, and those things drew families closer together.Sure, we didn't have as easy a life without all the mod cons we have today but people were happier. I actually think that with all the benefits of the internet that it has been a net negative on our communities.Look at our world now. Kids have to be taken to school for their safety. Don't talk to strangers. People and particularly women have to be careful where they go in the city. Suicide rates are high. There is huge number of overdose deaths. There is very little common courtesy left. There is no respect for older generations. Read the papers. It seems that everyday there is a mass killing somewhere or there is another grim news story. Recently in Toronto 8 teenage girls swarmed and beat a homeless man to death.Bottom line is I'll take the world I grew up in, where people went to church for whatever reason, over our easy living, self serving secular world that I live in today. People were more content and happier then. It wasn't perfect by a long shot but it sure was far better than what we have today.

Absolutely. It is incredible what science has been able to uncover and how it has a great self correcting way of working things through. But I make no claims that God can be found through the scientific method. The scientific method is based on repeatable observations or on a past that can be physically examined.What science can't do is tell us what it was that motivates people to do what they do. I was told that you can just aske them but we have no way of confirming their answer nor do I think we can even be sure of our own motivations. We are certainly influenced by the world around us but we have no way of knowing if we are being influenced by God or not. It answers how things exist but not why. If we just consider abiogenesis, the even if science can tell us that it is the result of 2 molecules coming together it will still be about how it happened. We won't know if it was by chance or by a pre-existing intelligence.

Yes, I grew up in that kind of world. But, by the time I reached the age of around 15, I began to notice that many church members did not practice what was preached. That it to say, there was a lot of hypocrisy. A member of my high school class committed suicide. But, back then, suicides were generally hushed up and you wouldn't hear about them. The death would be explained in some other way. I really doubt that the suicide rate has increased since then. That seems about right. But again, such deaths were likely hushed up and explained as having some other cause. Our kids went to school by themselves. We may have walked them to the subway station, but they then took train and bus without us accompanying them. This was in Chicago. Growing up, I was warned not to talk to strangers. Women were warned to be careful. This was in suburbs of Perth (W. Australia), a small town compared to Chicago.I think you are blaming too much on secularism. You are looking at an earlier time with rose colored glasses. You are not allowing for other changes. The newspapers today report what would previously have been hushed up. Today, automobiles are everywhere, while back then people walked a lot. Today people are sitting inside watching TV while back then they were out watching what was happening in their neighborhood.

None of the facts support you. US statistics.
Suicide rate per 100000
1950
13.2
1960
12.5
1970
13.1
2019
13.7
Suicide death rate U.S. 1950-2019 | Statista
US Crime rate has dropped significantly in the last 20 years. Don't believe the RWNJ's
FBI — Table 1So all your claims are false or with huge caveats. It seems the fewer people go to church the better society is. Now if you want to support your claims with evidence instead of anecdotes, I will listen. Then again we all know that will never happen. Hell, you won't even acknowledge this post.