I stand corrected on that. I think at viability that the unborn shouldn’t be killed fwiw.
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This thread is all over the place now, so here’s my off-topic answer.
I’ve been a “soft” atheist since I was a teenager, meaning that I see no compelling evidence for a Christian god, Thor, or take-your-pick of deity. That’s different than being certain that no god exists, and also different from saying “I don’t know”, aka agnosticism. My atheism was simply the absence of belief, nothing more and nothing less.
When I was your age I was rather firm in my belief that no compelling evidence for God exists. As I get older my “faith” in atheism gets rattled more and more. This is mostly due to realizing that so much of what I learned becoming a confirmed Catholic is true regardless of whether you believe in God or not. This is also due to my personal experience when I behave in a way that a good Catholic would. Even though I’m not embracing the faith, God’s light seems to shine upon me when I act like a good Catholic, absent the most important part of actually having faith in Catholicism.
As an atheist I can come up with other terms for what I mean by “God’s light”, but I can’t escape the connection between my behavior and the positive, fulfilling outcomes that seem to coincide with acting like a good Catholic. That connection and the wonder of scientific discovery continues to pull me back towards believing that the theists are on to something that I don’t fully grasp, and neither do the theists. Science still hasn’t filled all of the gaps, so we’re left with the means devised by flawed human beings like you and I.
Even if the clergy don’t quite nail down what God is to my satisfaction, the timeless truths, timeless wisdom and timeless framework for personal conduct and the expectations we place on each other is becoming increasingly apparent to me. The flip side of that is observing the increasing trend of bad outcomes that can be rationally connected to the abandonment of traditional values imparted by religion. At a certain point the outcomes speak for themselves, and I’m not looking at atheistic outcomes favorably today in 2022.
In conclusion, even if I don’t quite buy all of the theological arguments, the real-world reveals truths of its own.
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I gave my comments to you a little more consideration. As I think back on the events, if I hadn’t been invited to the home of a Sunday School member to listen to the out of town preacher teach the Bible like no one I had heard before, I would very most likely would never have ventured into the depths that are in the Bible. And I would have been, at best, a casual Christian in name only. Or maybe back to atheist/agnostic.
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You’d be surprised (or maybe not) how many proclaimed christians don’t even know what Christ taught.
Not even remotely surprised. Some don’t know and some don’t seem to care. If you lived where I have and you had a strong desire to hear the n word or f*g your first thought wouldn’t be well I’m going to have to see if this town has any agnostics.
I also will maintain that it seemed as if Christ talked about being good to the poor when I was growing up but I’ve never found a group more likely to talk shit on poor than them either.
Why? Why do you care what they think?
Everyone has double standards… and half of the time people don’t really mean what they say. e.g shooting people by the border with a sniper rifle. Do you think they’d actually pull the trigger if the gun was handed to them in such a circumstance?
People are venting… out of frustration over the perceived grievances they have with society. Most wouldn’t actually go as far as to actually beat, maim or murder those they have grievances with.
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This was HYSTERICAL to me when I first saw it, and still is
Everyone goes to hell, except the mormons… “you picked the wrong religion” 
Satan being a homosexual in a relationship with Saddam Hussein was also a hilarious touch
Hell I don’t know. Why not? Why do we care what anyone on this forum thinks or in general? The overwhelming vast majority of the stuff on here has no real impact on our lives. Why lose your shit over a transgender person who won a junior high track contest or something? We’ll scream and holler about it on here though. We had threads upon threads of gay marriage for a time. I’m not sure we even had an openly gay person in them that I could remember. And yet we all screamed and hollered then as well. We ended up all being ok. But damned if we didn’t all type like it was the end of the world.
Why ask other people why they are believers or not? I mean it’s pretty inconsequential what I say to a believer on this forum. But it’s also inconsequential what they say to me. Doesn’t mean we don’t talk about it or discuss it. How many people on here have ever held political office or are running? Doesn’t mean it’s not enjoyable to discuss these topics.
But you’re right everyone has double standards to an extent. But you can’t pretend like hypocrisy doesn’t bother you. Of course it does it bothers everyone. If someone on here preached non stop about how horrific steroids are and then it came out that they were using them we would all (rightly) call them out on their bullshit. We wouldn’t say “well why do we care anyways.”
And of course it’s not like the guy went to the border and killed people that day or something. But that’s not really the point is it?
This really should be in the other forum BUT,
The thing most have a tough time grappling with in Christianity is that we are all sinners. That doesn’t make it okay to sin. Nor should it minimize the gravity of what sin is. I’m Catholic and I have some sins under my belt. Things I am not proud of. It doesn’t make you a hypocrite to sin, it makes you a hypocrite to continue to sin or to act like what your doing isn’t a sin, when you know damn well it is. Jesus said, “Go and sin no more.” That’s about as succinct as it gets.
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I wouldn’t.
Analogy. A heroin addict knows a hell of a lot more about heroin and the consequences that go with it as opposed to your local D.A.R.E counsellor. I’d rather be lectured at or scared straight by the heroin addict (or reformed addict) as opposed to someone who hardly has any idea as to what heroin actually is.
That doesn’t seem like the same thing to me though? To me it would be more like if your dare counselor constantly told you heroin was awful during class and then you walked outside and he was shooting up.
Not necessarily
If you knew steroids were bad for you, but still took them while discouraging others not to. It’s not necessarily hypocritical. If you virtue signal and pretend you are holier than thou for abstaining from steroids but you’re Simeon Panda then you are a hypocrite.
A smoker will typically tell you not to smoke. They know first hand smoking kills. Doesn’t make them a hypocrite for telling you not to smoke
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I believe the distinction @H_factor is making is that “his” steroid user is condemning the use of steroids leaving people to assume that he is not using steroids.
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States that allow for late-term abortions with no state-imposed thresholds are Alaska, Colorado, District of Columbia, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, and Vermont.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/what-states-allow-late-term-abortion
That’s correct.
I used to live in that dump.
That’s good enough to use lethal force in self defense.
“an atheist, a vegan and a crossfitter enter a bar - the question is which one tells you first?”
For this reason, im not atheist; i simply don’t belive in a higher power outside of humanity.
Do I ever question my beliefs? No, but sometimes I wish I believed in something… it just seems so simple to push existential questions onto some unknown entity that will bear the burden for you. I’m jealous of it tbh.
I think he meant that they allow abortion to protect the mother’s “mental health.”
I should mention that there are very few states as libertarian as New Hampshire… I lived there for most of my young life. Every time I see it in the news (which isn’t frequently, mind you), it’s about a policy that is dead-center of the road and rarely limits the rights of the individual.
For reference, New Hampshire has less-restrictive gun laws than Texas. They also only pay their State Representatives $1 yearly to reinforce that they are a servant of the public, and not there to get rich and famous.
It’s easy not to need a big government when you don’t have big cities 
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