Ramaswamy's response to the pansexual women is about as out of touch as one can get.
I wasn't referring to that in particular. I was referring to the big-picture point he made in the whole last 11 minutes of the video. The point was about western civilization, the insidious project to undermine it, and our duty to defend it. That point is foundational to much of our disagreement. It sounds like you stopped watching before he even got to the point.
"The decline of christianity"
Yeah, but that misses the bigger picture. It's not as if people are rejecting Christ and converting to Judaism. Rather it's a secular movement driven by Satan's success at convincing a vast swath of the populace that God is imaginary.
I disagree that the foundation of western civ is solely placed on god.
This is one of those ways in which Wikipedia tends to be secular. It says in the intro that Western civilization is "linked" to Christiandom. That's misleading. Western civilization is Christiandom. The only difference is we don't call it that anymore. But everything that followed from Christiandom is built upon Christiandom as an extension of Christiandom. Though to the article's credit, it does later state that:
[…] Western civilization, which throughout most of its history, has been nearly equivalent to Christian culture.
That's close to accurate. In truth the two are inseparably identical, which is why Satan hates Western civilization, that that in turn is why you've been convinced to believe you want to contribute to the project of undermining Western civilization.
If you're going to look through this, I recommend spending extra time on the section explaining the enlightenment.
I'm not sure exactly what points you're referring to here. Skimming through it, I'm pretty sure I already know all of these details. The only change I'd make is to emphasize God's role in all of these things, and His importance to all of these historical figures.
Sure I can, god, according to your worldview, created a world in which children get cancer.
It is the height of hubris to criticize God. His wisdom is infinite, and if yours was too then you'd understand why certain children are given cancer. It's not for us to try to understand. It's for us to accept in our worship and prayer.
And before you say I think I know better than god, in reality I know better than the humans who made god up.
At some point, immanently I hope, you'll realize how absurdly wrong you are about this. You have demons whispering lies into your ears, and you believe them unquestioningly. I know they make it feel good when you believe them, but they're lying to you.
In the end it wasn't Zeus who causes lightning, it is a build up of a difference in energy between clouds and the ground.
Comparing Zeus to God is far worse than apples and oranges, because at least apples and oranges are both fruits. It's like comparing icebergs to smartphones. They have absolutely nothing whatsoever in common, to the point that it's nonsensical to even try to compare them.
Let's say you were to throw a basketball, and make a basket. Some scientists observe it, and say "That's interesting. Let's figure out what that's all about." So they observe you throwing the basketball. They measure your movements, the wind movements, the ball's PSI, the height of the basket, the material compositions of the ball and basket, just all of it. And then they formulate a theory which postulates how the ball goes through the basket. And then people start to deny that you exist because they have the theory of how the basketball goes through the basket. The whole idea is absolutely ridiculous. God is in control, no matter what your demons tell you.
Not only is that not true [that the most intelligent scientists all believe in God] (because you added the "most intelligent" qualifier), but given that scientific literacy is correlated with atheism, I find it to be rather damning for religion:
First off, it's self-evidently true, as anyone who denies God cannot be said to be very intelligent. I'm trying to word that so as not to offend you, and it's hard. Sorry. My point here is not to insult you, but just to explain my statement about the most intelligent scientists.
Secondly, the scientific disciplines are certainly attractive to atheists who want to devote their lives to pretending that they're disproving God by collecting the evidence of the basketball. So yes, atheists are more likely to become scientists than pastors. We don't need to consult any studies to know that's true.
Go for it! It's pretty easy to play against others nowadays now that there are so many popular chess sites. chess.com and lichess are pretty decent.
Maybe eventually, but not today. I have too much else on my plate. But thank you for letting me know it's easy to play online. That's something I hadn't considered.