None of the things by themselves fully justify “belief” in a religion yet many people claim they are without a true belief in the entire system. It’s the problem with such a vague question. By a narrower definition very few people attending a place of worship are true believers. Someone can believe in god, but not really believe in the rules, and still say they are “religious”. Someone can believe in the rules, but not god, and say the same. I think if you are practicing the religion to some extent then you have a right to call yourself religious if that’s how you view yourself regardless of your true beliefs on god, rules, etc. Cultural impact matters more than we give it credit for.

Another big reason is reason number 4

4. Gives a sense of community and cultural connection that other things don’t quite provide.

I’ve met a not so inconsequential amount of people in my life that when pressed admitted, they don’t believe in god, don’t believe in the moral teachings, but attend a place of worship because they think there is no replacement for the interwoven community and cultural connection their place of worship provides. Many people simply like the community connection of their root culture. This is especially true in minority groups (black church, synagogue).

Getting caught up with semantics arguments seems like a waste of energy. Because, genocide or not, for many people impacted by any war with disproportionate power imbalance, it sure as fuck is as horrific as a genocide regardless of how one defines it. (I’m not necessarily criticizing the use of the word by some, I just think many activists get bogged down in defending the use word rather than addressing the horror.)

Any regular person putting significant cash in individual stocks instead of index funds is just gambling. All US broad market index funds beat inflation over every 10 year period since index funds have existed.

Transportation pales in comparison to heating and cooling homes and businesses. The single greatest thing we can do to reduce climate change from a policy standpoint involves reducing that. From work at home, to multi family zoning, to converting business skyscrapers into living space, to increasing efficiency and fossil fuels from energy production. And all that does a lot to improve transportation environmental costs as well.

Under your simplified system a person making 55k brings in less than someone making 49k. Which disincentives getting a raise at that salary range. There is a reason that currently we only tax money over the brackets set.

Progressive taxation isn’t really the problem here though, our low tax on investment profit is. We should also probably enforce a 2% wealth tax on anyone making over a billion dollars.

They are just trolling, they are looking for the argument for arguments sake. Look through their post and comment history. Report, down vote, and block, then move on.

Plenty of states it’s much higher, in Minnesota the rate is set by the state according to patient need. It’s not unheard of to pay $15k a month as $14k month is the average cost per resident.

“They constantly attack the right” if you view reporting what they have learned from investigation as an attack on the right, you should really asses what you think journalism’s role is. Should they report belief as truth, or truth as truth? “Only have liberal guests on” this is an obvious lie, and makes me question whether you ever actually listen to NPR or if you just have severe confirmation bias and view ANY liberal or Democrat on as proof of no conservatives even when they have both on at the same time… I hear conservatives on there pretty regularly.

What is true is that slightly more of the guests are Democrats than Republicans, but NPR has been very honest about how difficult it has been to get Republicans on their channel. They might ask 12 Republican senators to come on before one agrees meanwhile the first Democrat they ask agrees. With the decades long effort by the right to delegitimize any news that isn’t their tightly controlled propaganda machine, is this a surprise?

I don’t think it’s proof of bias to just attempt to report the investigative results of their work and have one party be anti-truth and then claim bias. Real news channels have an obligation to report reality irregardless of one parties unsubstantiated belief in anti-science, anti-fact, and anti-democracy demagoguery.

With that said, their is no such thing as unbiased news as humans are all biased. At least channels like NPR attempt to be unbiased, unlike the hundreds of propaganda rags all over this country.

When the NBA sells a jersey with Curry’s name on it, Curry gets a cut of the profit. When the WNBA sells a Breanna Stewart jersey she gets $0. This isn’t complicated, they are obviously getting fucked over if you’ve read anything about how the business actually runs.

You can have fun doing all sorts of things without doing them in excess. If you’re preoccupied with doing something in excess while missing other opportunities, that is truly boring…

If the recipe calls for tofu (and you are not vegan), use Paneer, almost always an improvement.

Let’s say an extremist faction of Mexico, that had power and was integrated into the government came north and captured 240 people and killed another 1200. How do you think the US would respond? Would many in this country or other countries call our inevitable outsized retaliation genocide? If you don’t say no you’re a liar. One has to recognize the geopolitical lense people view Israel from and the desperate need for some to propagandize Israel as genocidal. That doesn’t make it true, and neither does desperately repeating it as often as possible. If anything it weakens your argument because it makes you seem like a clown to any serious person.

The Likud in Israel needs Hamas as much as Hamas needs the Likud. They both derive all of their power from a protracted conflict. There is no incentive to culturally and ethnically destroy the Palestinian people, because the day that happens is the day the Likud cease to exist. Netanyahu has shown over his political career that opportunism and power are his only driving forces, not cultural homogeneity and genocide. If you’re going to make an argument that it’s genocide you need to back it with coherent thought beyond, “but innocent people are dying”. If that’s your metric then all wars are genocide and the word looses all meaning.

What Israel is doing is awful, but it’s not genocide.

Upvoted because they are all good points. But I would say, that even these pure juice blends are absolutely concentrating the sugar, and probably using the sweetest varieties they can find. I would put money on it. I’ve pressed juice myself and it is never as sweet as what they sell you in the store, not even remotely close. The store juice is magnitudes more sweet because they are liars and frauds, full stop. Either way, we should all be watering it down. Unless you’re desensitizing your taste of sugar by eating pixy stix every day, most juices are too sweet anyway.

Everyone has been on this tangent for years, this isn’t exactly news. I think it’s worth noting that the problem isn’t really this simple. They concentrate the juice and pump it full of “juice” that is really just sugar. If you actually buy real pressed 100% blueberry juice, for example, instead of apple sugar flavored with blueberries, the sugar content is lower. And because you would never actually want to drink 100% blueberry juice because it wouldn’t taste how you are expecting, you would water it down. Suddenly you have a glass of juice with 5 grams of sugar instead of 30 grams and you are fine. Additionally, no matter the type of juice, it is nearly always over concentrated because they are trying to boost the sugar content. People should really be watering down any kind of store bought juice.

No one is actually drinking “100% juice”, they are drinking a product that resembles the fruit of juice. These companies are not squeezing juice into a bottle, they are concentrating fruit sugars and adding them back into water. The problem is just as much with false advertising as anything. I’m not saying freshly squeezed juice is healthy, but it as sure as shit healthier than the fraud they are selling on the shelves. As with everything, the problem is money. Companies know they will sell more if they say it’s juice and then pump it full of extra concentrated fruit sugar.

Edit: I wish more companies sold actual 100% real pressed fruit juice, I would buy it and water it down with soda water. I also wish they were more honest with their labeling about what they are actually doing. Not everything needs to be flawlessly healthy, but we could take steps in the right direction. You should only be able to label something as 100% juice if it actually is squeezed out of the fruit and put in the bottle with no interference and additional processing.

One of your polls is from 2012, wtf… You’re pulling these out of your ass.

No one replies to your moronic comments hoping to change your mind, it’s for anyone else who is impressionable that might find some twisted logic in your confused hogwash.

One side has a leader with 30% of the vote and the other side hasn’t voted for 20 years…

You’re basically saying you’re “moral purity” is more important than the people who will be directly impacted by a trump presidency. When trump decides to, or more accurately motivate others to, “purify” this country of it’s queers, Jews, and brown people my wife and I will have people like you to thank, who’s moral purity was somehow more important than my life. Your decision isn’t moral, it’s evil.

Words matter, war and genocide are 2 different things. I know it’s in vogue to call it genocide right now, but killing 0.4% of a population is not remotely genocide. It’s certainly a one sided retaliatory war that is grotesque and shouldn’t be happening. But if Isreal fails there is a chance millions of Jews die, again, we’re talking 22,000 vs millions. I suspect that is the impossible situation foreign policy analysts have to weigh when deciding what to do next.