disillusioned

I'm open-minded with respect to the existence of unicorns. Just give me a reason to think they exist, and I'll consider it. Give me actual evidence, and I'll be persuaded. That is what having an open mind means. It doesn't mean don't make your mind up; it means be willing to change your mind given sufficient evidence.

This is ducking the question. "Do we have free will?" is not a question that can be answered by saying "it depends how you see it". Either how I see it is my choice, or it isn't. If I can choose how I see it, then I do have free will, since in choosing how I see it I would be exercising free will. On the other hand, if I can't, then I may or may not have free will (ie, I may have free will whether I like it or not, or I just may just simply not have it). So, can we choose how to perceive our power to act at our own discretion? This is just another way of putting LF's question, which is to say, what you offered was a non-answer. Please try again.

You brought it up...

Aside from all of this purported drama, people do tend to come and go from time to time. Just the nature of the interwebs. Yes, some long-timers have been quiet of late. Maybe they'll come back, maybe they won't. In either case, it isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened, and it won't be the last. I have enjoyed the recent increase in civility, for what it's worth.

Welcome Tricia! I've also found that I can't quite conform to any particular "path"; not because I think they are all the same thing viewed through different lenses, but because I think that they are antithetical to each other, and there is equally as much (read: no) evidence for all of them. This seems to me to be very problematic. For myself, I'm making damn sure that my kids are raised apart from Christianity, mainly because I find the Christian "foundation" utterly abhorrent. But then, my wife is not a Christian, so that makes things easier. Welcome again. I hope you find what you're looking for.

Dude's been dead for a while. Call me crazy, but I generally try to keep my house corpse-free.

Second the IDGAF response. Bonus points if you can get to a place where you actually give zero fucks. It takes time, but you can get there.

Right. And with climate change at least there is a potential imptus to drive social change. With Google, there's no real reason to want to make a change. How could we improve on what we already have? Even if we could, it would be damn hard to actually do it.

It seems to me that, as @TABA alluded to, the "normal" rules of free market capitalism are outdated. The world, and markets, have evolved, but the rules aren't keeping up. This is a problem. We should probably try to fix it. But then there's an even bigger problem: how can it be fixed? Any critique of capitalism, at least here in north America, seems to be demonized from the outset. But set that aside. This is clearly an international problem. We're in a position now where no one country can tell Google what to do. So who can fix it? I just don't see an answer.

Yes, this is true. The extent to which Google has monopolized the web is disturbing. I'm not sure how this can be fixed, though.

I don't see this as a bad thing. It's just a thing. Youtube is a platform owned by Google. They are perfectly entitled to decide what they do and do not want to publish, and under what conditions. This isn't really censorship. It's the essence of free-market capitalism. If you don't like it, and you want to see some cutting edge flat-earth wackadoo, the internet's a big place. It would be silly to get mad at Walmart for not selling pickled rats. Even if there was a market for them. Walmart doesn't have to sell anything. And YouTube doesn't have to host anything. I understand that having to sign in due to age restrictions is annoying. It's a bit like getting carded when buying beer. But c'est la vie.

Ontological and transcendental arguments for God are slightly different, but both are stupid. The Ontological argument basically says "Imagine a God who exists. Therefore, God exists!" It's an argument grounded in the definition of God. The Transcendental argument basically says "Logic (and, in some formulations, morality) is a real, potent, objective universal, and, as such, requires a source. The source is God." It's an argument grounded in the definition of logic. Both are stupid, but for somewhat different reasons.

That Last Week Tonight episode was pure gold. There's alot of good stuff on that show, imo. But that one was next level.

This happened to me as well. I tried writing a detailed, intellectually honest defense of the faith, and found that I couldn't. And here we are. Welcome!

Oh, it makes sense. The thing is, though, that the term "fundamentalist" is not only used to refer to members of the "Christian Fundamentalist" movement you describe. In particular, fundamentalism is present in many different religions (and elsewhere). The term really just means that certain basic tenets ("fundamentals") have been identified, and are adhered to literally and dogmatically. It's this kind of usage that I was referring to. The "Christian Fundamentalist" movement is a type of this, but it isn't the only type.