Maturin [any]

Yeah, subsurface helium would probably have been a better example for this

What do you think the first several hundreds of millions of years were like before they had Doritos?

This is the plot of Equilibrium

To be fair, some of them do have a huge supply of lignite (/s except those who are already feverishly mining it)

…and those 2 or 3 years were 35 years ago

“do you know that if everyone was Christian, there would be no more war?”

What a creepy fucking thing to say. Straight up blaming everyone else for the violence inflicted upon them by Christians.

I think you are trying too hard to conflate the colonial/genocidal mindset with monotheism when the evidence doesn’t really support it. Was Ancient Rome not colonial and genocidal? Greece? Egypt? They also had slaves. They conquered everyone they could. The exterminated whole swaths of peoples. They didn’t need monotheism to do that. You could argue that the legacy of those polytheistic societies (specifically Egypt for the ancient Jews, Rome for Christians) laid the groundwork for the same genocidal/colonial mindset. But the main point is that the colonial and genocidal mindset is easier to understand from a class/material analysis than one tied to any specific theology. The monotheist theologies were used as a tool to organize and mobilize populations because that was the easiest tool to grab and it was couched in a language that the populations already spoke, but polytheists and other non-monotheists are just as capable of using their theological tools to do the same. For a more modern example, see for example the relationship between Hindu and Buddhist sides over Sri Lanka. Neither are abrahamic monotheisms, yet the colonial and genocidal tendency and forces are still at work.

I mean, you just did it again. Wasn’t Simon De Montfort a Christian Crusader who persecuted the Jews? You are taking an antisemitic interpretation of “choseness” applied in a Christian framework that was then used to persecute Jews with a “they started it” argument. Which is exactly what the PEZ and MK did when they framed choseness. Rabbinic Judiasm (which is Judaism following the Roman conquest) deems “choseness” to be chosen NOT to control other populations. The Noahite laws, which apply to everyone whether Jewish or not (in the Jewish religion), specifically command the non Jews to create fair governments that the Jews could live under as 1 of 7 requirements. The Jews are “chosen” to follow the more stringent 613 commandments, which include following the laws of the just governments of non-Jews. Just saying that it creates categories of people is not unique to monotheism (or religion - see “America First”). And I don’t think it tracks that creating groups in any context necessarily leads to genocidal intent and practice.

I think you need to be careful with throwing around “choseness” in this way because this is the exact perversion of the Jewish concept of choseness set forth in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Mein Kampf. I’m not trying to let Judaism off the hook for its genuine reactionary and regressive components (particularly with respect to women and non-normative sexuality), but it really muddies the waters when you overlay it with full-throated anti-Jewish projection onto Judaism.

I do, but the culprit is the Christian religion, which is what Zionism is. The fact that they recruited Jewish foot soldiers for their crusades doesn’t give the excuse to parrot Protocols of the Elders of Zion characterizations of the Jewish religion devoid of 2,000 years of historical context. It’s also the reason that the American public supports the genocide, because American culture has been dominated by Christian crusaders whose theology is based on genocidal settler colonialism ever since the so-called Pilgrims (who were themselves Zionists) landed in Massachusetts.

Are you saying that Judaism is an inherently genocidal religion/culture?

Fair. Your way is certainly more epic.

Haven’t you basically done everything needed to escape the solar system by the time you do the burn to turn back again?

don’t even bother counting.

Wish I had know this tip earlier. Got to five thousand something, lost count and had to start over.

Topology nightmare snake #2

Genuine question (and I don’t know if you’ve gone down this rabbit hole) but does “el” in the context of Hebrew names refer to the concept of any god generically or was “el” the name of the one monotheistic god (before being combined with the monotheistic god with the other name) and the “els” in the names of the angels meant to be an attachment to the court of the one god in a similar way to “isra-el” being not another god but a kingdom/people bearing the name of the god it served (of course talking about biblical Israel and not the modern state).