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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: December 19, 2023, 07:59:47 PM »Our democracy is in danger!We have a democracy?
Our current form of government is capitalism.
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Our current form of government is capitalism.
42
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: December 19, 2023, 07:27:49 PM »
Our democracy is in danger!
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Technology & Information / Re: Why does that child have my computer?
« on: August 09, 2023, 10:50:41 PM »
Sounds like a pretty cool child to me, imagine responding to the coolness of your child by reporting them to the ministry of wrongthink.
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Arts & Entertainment / Re: Superhero Movies & Comics General
« on: July 31, 2023, 01:25:53 PM »
I watched Multiverse of Madness, it was okay. They gave Wanda a lot of good backstory and character in Wandavision then just threw all of that away and made her a generic "I am insane because of le dark powers" villain.
The whole movie is about the scarlet witch wanting children. Seems like a pretty easy problem to solve, really, I could help her solve it and I don't even have any superpowers.
The whole movie is about the scarlet witch wanting children. Seems like a pretty easy problem to solve, really, I could help her solve it and I don't even have any superpowers.
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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: President Joe Biden
« on: July 16, 2023, 07:59:12 PM »Wait... what political power did Joe Biden have via his son? The VP of the US has a lot of power and I can't imagine that Hunter inserting himself into a company he's not qualified to operate somehow increased Biden's political power as VP of the USA.
I pointed out his family made enormous amounts of money in positions they weren't qualified to be in. I don't know where you got the "political power increase" thing from, but I suggest you start reading sentences a bit slower or something.
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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: President Joe Biden
« on: July 16, 2023, 04:07:48 PM »Hunter does come across as a bit of a slimeball and for some reason the Republicans eat it up. You know what though? Hunter's not our President! Our President is so unimpeachable they need to attack his family. That they are so unapologetically doing so is the real disgrace.
The entire point of this debacle is that Joe has been using Hunter as a scapegoat and liaison to enact personal corruption. I think you, and everyone else here, knows perfectly well that this isn't just about Hunter. He's not some random man who happens to be connected to Joe Biden. The meme of "I didn't vote for Hunter!" and "you just don't have anything on Joe!" is nonsense. Hunter didn't find himself on the boards of foreign oil and gas companies because of his extensive executive knowledge in how to run oil and gas companies. Joe used his son to personally gain from his political power. Now neither Joe nor his son will face consequences for doing so. This is okay to you because obviously they are not the same person and the idea of them coordinating with each other is utterly impossible.
Sometimes I think the idea of family members interacting with each other is so completely foreign to so many Democrats that they cannot even imagine it...
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Science & Alternative Science / Re: Nuclear Bombs Do Not Exist
« on: July 07, 2023, 12:42:43 PM »Right. Since you have not even provided one Word of evidence for your quackery let alone "proof" (another word that escapes you) I will consider your tirade a win on my part and (may, unless taunted) exit gracefully. Yeah, although I have some coin, spending 10's of million's of dollars on weaponry and battling military red tape on your unlikely edification is not going to happen.
Oh, of course, tens of millions of dollars are being spent on bombs that if we used the entire world will supposedly end. On the other hand, the idea that other people took that money to buy yachts is inconceivable to you. At this point it's just sad. Why do people like you desire so much to be scammed and belittled by your own government?
Bye, bye now.
This is the second time (possibly the third?) you've told me you're going to leave the thread. As I said before, no one will miss you, you've added nothing to the thread and as far as I'm concerned I've been very lenient with how I've responded to your addled nonsense.
This is incorrect in multiple ways. They weren't "remote villages". Hiroshima was in the top 10 largest cities in Japan at the time and:
A top 10 largest city made entirely out of wooden huts? Use your noggin, AATW. Surely you didn't just google the population and think "ah yes this number obviously matches the pictures of Hiroshima".
Again, I'd urge you to look some of the "after" photos. Some of the masonry buildings remain standing but you're acting like they were pristine and only the wooden ones burned. That's simply not true. In fact in this image you can see some of the masonry ones are seriously damaged. That building at the bottom looks like wood actually and is standing, maybe it was protected in some way by another structure.
Masonry buildings are also damaged in firebombing.
Your claim of firebombing makes no sense. How would you deploy enough firebombs to wreak that much damage in one go? The witness testimony clearly describes a single explosion.
They firebombed a remote village, killing the entire population, then had "eye witnesses" describe fantastical nonsense.
That's firebombing, is it?
Yes.
And you surely understand about the half-life of a radiation source?
Do you? You told me earlier that Hiroshima was fine and not radioactive at all after some cleanup. Which truth are we going with now? The more convenient one?
Again, the physics is similar but not identical.
Blowing up an entire village and boiling a large tank of water are not "similar".
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Science & Alternative Science / Re: Nuclear Bombs Do Not Exist
« on: July 07, 2023, 02:34:32 AM »Yes, that is one of your ridiculous claims, and your evidence for it is ... ?
Asking the same question over and over again is rather boring. If you don't intend on providing the evidence I asked for (you can't, because nuclear bombs do not exist), then why bother wasting your time in this thread? I have proven my point quite considerably. Nuclear bombs have not been made, are not currently being made, and will never be made. They do not exist. It's a scam, like religion or Australia.
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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Aliens!
« on: July 06, 2023, 01:17:40 PM »
https://www.reddit.com/r/aliens/comments/14rp7w9/from_the_late_2000s_to_the_mid2010s_i_worked_as_a/
Probably fake but a fun write-up. Did you know birds have a unidirectional respiratory system? I learned that today from this post. So, even if it is mostly fiction, it does seem to have some pretty neat biology facts in it.
Probably fake but a fun write-up. Did you know birds have a unidirectional respiratory system? I learned that today from this post. So, even if it is mostly fiction, it does seem to have some pretty neat biology facts in it.
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Science & Alternative Science / Re: Nuclear Bombs Do Not Exist
« on: July 06, 2023, 12:51:40 PM »That's pretty much my point. So why then would that be part of the evidence you would accept. "They" could show you anything, you wouldn't know what you're looking at.
And then they'd either have to cut to another camera to show the explosion, or there would have to be a long shot of them retreating to a safe distance. Either way it would be easy for you to claim it's not the device you were shown the inside of that exploded. It's just a bizarre criteria you set for the evidence you'd accept. It makes zero sense.
You dismiss the mountain of evidence already available to you and then set a level of evidence you would accept which would be far less compelling than what already exists.
It's not a "mountain of evidence" and I think this thread makes that pretty clear.
It makes me think that masonry is stronger than wood. The three little pigs know that, dude. As for survived the blast easily, have a look at the pictures. Some of the buildings are standing, but they're hardly pristine.
EDIT: I don't think "small wooden villages typically have populations of a quarter of a million people, at least 90,000 of whom died in the explosion. That's quite the fire bombing...
My point is that it's not a coincidence that two remote villages with no military value were targeted for this demonstration of a super-mega-ultra-bomb. They were firebombed in such a way that is was known they would be basically flattened, but the masonry building survived because it doesn't burn. Otherwise, you must be saying that all we need to do to survive a nuclear bomb is to be in a masonry building. Well, no wonder no one uses them, most modern cities are made of concrete! The bomb is useless after all!
https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/peace-and-war/the-manhattan-project
More propaganda.
That isn't what I suggested you provide evidence for.
We agree that Hiroshima happened, right? You've said it was "fire-bombing", but have provided no evidence of that. The best you've come up with is that less strong structures were more easily flattened than stronger ones. But your thesis doesn't work. For that level of destruction to have been conventional explosives there would have had to be thousands of tons of them. How was that dropped on them? It was a single plane which delivered the bomb.
There is witness testimony of it being a single explosion and there was a radiation signature from the bomb. Evidence of all that has been provided.
Remember when you claimed that nuclear bombs have radiation that lasts practically forever but somehow Hiroshima cleaned it all up in just a few months then rebuilt? Comedy at its finest.
It is a feature of the willfully ignorant that they will reject any evidence that goes against their beliefs.
That's what all of you have been doing in this entire thread. You are so inundated with propaganda, so blasted with fictional stories of nonsense, that you'd prefer to believe it. This is always the case with people who have been lied to. It will always be easier for you to stay with the lie than be told it was a lie, because it requires accepting that you were lied to and deceived. To be deceived is to be weak and no one wants accept weakness. Therefore, you'd prefer the fairy tale over reality. This is the same thing that keeps people religious long into their adult years.
This here is 100% pure bunk. Do you realize this proves, beyond any shadow of the tiniest doubt, that you do not understand the slightest thing about where nuclear energy comes from. Yet you still feel qualified to discuss it and taunt me for wanting out of this discussion? It is now obvious why you don't accept any of the evidence presented - because you are not able in any way to see that it is evidence. So, again, no point it having a discussion with you on it. You have just put in writing you don't understand any of it.
Ironic. Let me guess, you, too, incorrectly believe mass can be magically converted into energy? I guess in your mind, when you burn the gasoline in a car, it just goes "poof" and turns into energy.
Maybe you should look up how the bombs are claimed to actually work instead of quoting your favorite pop-sci equations. Here's a hint: even nuclear bomb liars don't claim you can extract all the mass of a nuclear bomb and turn it into energy! Wow! I hope you look it up and feel silly afterwards.
Nobody is asking for that. You have made some monumentally ridiculous claims here. We are asking for evidence for those claims. You have provided exactly none. Which leads us (me, anyway) to think you have none and you were really just speaking out of your extreme lower digestive system anatomy.
No need to be so rude, especially after you said you were going to stop responding, something I personally looked forward to. It's funny how people such as yourself jump straight to insults when I've said none in this entire thread.
Update here: Let's add to this the fact that you are asserting that something that is already accepted as an established fact does not exist. In this case, yes, the onus is squarely on you to provide evidence (beyond a reasonable doubt) that the established fact is wrong. Into other words that nuclear weapons don't exist. The best way to do that is to use your superior knowledge to show they can't exist. Another way would be to provide irrefutable evidence (in the true meaning of "evidence") that all the things that happened that are currently explained by the use of nuclear weapons are better explained by some other means (that's the thing you have not done).
Sorry, gee, I forgot that if a lot of people believe a lie and assert it as fact, it magically becomes true. What a strange world. I guess propaganda really is a form of sorcery!
There is no longer any point in arguing about nuclear weapons. The only evidence you say you will accept is not something anyone here can provide.
No one can provide it because nuclear bombs don't exist. If I asked you for a video on the US president being presented a unicorn as a birthday gift, I suppose you would have similar trouble finding it. Most notably because it didn't happen.
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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Biden is using American taxpayer money to pay off my loans
« on: July 06, 2023, 12:34:12 PM »But more than half of Americans do have one. No one is required to get one but then they end up working low income jobs and you get people like Bishop who might say they don't deserve to have a liveable wage if they didn't want to get a "real job."
The idea that no degree automatically means "low income job" is simply not true. There is some mild correlation with having a degree and making more money, but as I said before, this greatly depends on the degree. You also have high income degrees like medical doctors causing the average to skew over degrees that typically don't result in any improved career prospects.
But it's not just affordability. I would argue that it's more necessary to get a college degree in this country then it is to buy a home as without a college degree you will likely not earn enough to ever be able to afford a home anyway.
Also, more than half of American households have two incomes so generally the burden is shared at least. And there is definitely a difference between starting your adult life in debt and choosing to go into debt because you decided you can buy a home later in your adult life.
And if you say again that you can choose to not get a degree, you are technically correct but I'd refer you back to my first point: No one is required to get one but then they end up working low income jobs and you get people like Bishop who might say they don't deserve to have a liveable wage if they didn't want to get a "real job." So damned if you do and damned if you don't.
As I said before, if it is a debt problem, then it should be equally shared among debts. There's nothing special about education debt. If anything, we are too haphazard about demanding young adults go up to their eyeballs in debt to get a degree that they have a very good chance of not even using for their career. The meme of college being necessary to make more money or have a better life is simply not true. Higher education is not a trade school, we have for too long conflated "got my degree" with "skill certification for better job".
Sounds like a good idea to me. Also, why are we "slinging out free money"? You had to qualify for Biden's student loan forgiveness program: You must earn less than $125,000 a year for individuals, or $250,000 for married couples and/or head of households.
For some definition of "qualifying". At "must make less than $125k per year as an individual or less than 250k as a married household" you're "qualifying" 95% of the country. We've already discussed what it means to give out free money to the wealthy.
Young adults who are debt free contribute more to the economy and would probably be more likely to start a family. But yeah, I'm also all for a general debt forgiveness program. It'd be more of a bandaid then solving any issue but as you pointed out, no one here is qualified or capable of fixing the situation. Shit just sucks.
I personally believe that just paying off debts, no matter what kind of debt, is treating the symptoms and not the disease. It's a form of kicking the can down the road. It's useful as part of a wider solution, but I have as of yet seen zero politicians propose debt forgiveness as part of a wider solution. Instead, they use it as a carrot on a stick to bring out the young voters. Those voters who time and time again prove to be an easily scammed and limitlessly naive bunch because they are always 18-22 years old.
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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Biden is using American taxpayer money to pay off my loans
« on: July 05, 2023, 06:46:59 PM »Ok well you can try to have an imagination and maybe agree that things need to be regulated more. Or just say you think things are going great now and we should continue on without trying to improve anything.
Also, "Economists do know, however, that price controls can be theoretically beneficial when imposed appropriately on a monopolist or monopsonist, and they do tend to work better in imperfectly competitive markets."
https://www.stlouisfed.org/en/publications/regional-economist/2022/mar/why-price-controls-should-stay-history-books#authorbox
A price cap on insulin, for example, was extremely necessary btw and the government finally realized that.
If universities don't fall into that category then fine. Let's just all continue to spend ~120,000 for a degree or whatever it is now. Young adults definitely deserve to enter into the work force with that level of debt in order to get a job that pays maybe $20 an hour.
No, I don't think price capping universities will work, but to that point I don't understand enough about economics to say if they will or won't. Further, if you want serious discussion about solutions to the problem, you'll have to start reading reports from analysts. No one here, including you, is qualified to have a deep and thoughtful discussion about how to "fix" the financial considerations of universities, aside from the general notion that some of us believe it costs "too much".
Further, I would like to make the point that no one is required to get a degree, which is why coincidentally, most people on the planet don't have one. It is purely an optional cost with risks associated with it, just like purchasing anything else. You can make the point that subsidizing education is generally good for the country and economy, but I think this varies by major considerably.
Many people can't even afford to buy houses anymore so maybe let's stop making that comparison because I can't see how that helps the argument.
We're making that comparison because about 40% of Americans have mortgage debt. About 20% have student loan debt. Does it not make more sense to subsidize Americans trying to pay for homes than for education, if your argument is based on affordability?
Fundamentally, if you have a bunch of money to hand out to people, handing it out only to people with student loans should be a low priority. There are plenty of Americans that have greater need of that money than those who took out student loans. If we're worried about people paying off their debts, it should be a broad "pay off your debts" program based on the person's situation at the time. Slinging out free money for specific kinds of debt is not a solution.
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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Biden is using American taxpayer money to pay off my loans
« on: July 05, 2023, 03:25:55 PM »Paradoxically, I believe that if student loans were either more expensive or more difficult to acquire, you'd see college costs coming down.Or we just regulate shit more. Force price caps. Same goes for hospitals that want to charge you $60 for one ibuprofen pill. People will overcharge for as long as they can get away with it.
As far as I understand it, there has never been a single point in history in which a price cap on something worked out in anyone's favor.
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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Biden is using American taxpayer money to pay off my loans
« on: July 05, 2023, 12:58:35 PM »Oh no, it turns out Biden isn't using American taxpayer money to pay off my loans after all. I'll have to pay them back myself, oh the humanity! Responsibility for my own actions? Gross. I perish the thought.Slapping a bunch of 18 year olds with huge debt because college is ludicrously expensive is rather gross. I would rather our taxes go to making us better than other places. But I think a more important goal is to make college/universities not so stupidly expensive and then implement debt programs.
Cars and houses are also ludicrously expensive, yet I don't see anyone rushing to pay off mortgages or car loans. I don't see why student loans are so special (aside from being held by such a small part of the US population).
I'd argue that the government's attempts to "fix" college costs with low interest student loans are actually what drove the costs so ludicrously high in the first place. The ability of students to take out massive loans when they have little concept of the value of money is causing universities to get away with overspending. It's much the same reason that the stimulus money given to individuals and businesses drove inflation sky-high. If you give out what amounts to free money to 18 year olds, then businesses will exist to take it.
Paradoxically, I believe that if student loans were either more expensive or more difficult to acquire, you'd see college costs coming down. The only other way is having the government foot the entire bill, but then we're just putting the burden of over-paying universities on the taxpayer instead of students.
For example: it's not a coincidence that for-profit universities have their tuition set precisely to the maximum pay-out of the GI bill.
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Science & Alternative Science / Re: Nuclear Bombs Do Not Exist
« on: July 05, 2023, 12:38:21 PM »And how would you determine that? How do you know what the inside of a nuclear weapon would look like? Your only source of information for that would be what "they" tell you, and you clearly don't trust "them"?
I don't know what the inside of a nuclear weapon looks like, and neither do you, funny enough! They never actually show what's in there, just funny pictures of plain metal containers with "aliens inside" written on it. Sorry, I mean "nuclear materials inside" with the scary radioactive symbol.
All those things ARE evidence. They'd all be accepted in a court of law as such. How credible you find them is an exercise for the reader.
Gee, I forgot about the physics courts. Remember when they upheld the law of gravity? I still think it's unconstitutional myself, but I guess that's up to the reader!
I'd note you have provided no evidence for your assertion that Hiroshima was "firebombing".
It's hilarious that a small wooden village was "nuked" and the only masonry building in such village survived the "blast" easily while all the wooden ones burned down. Really makes you think.
Do you also think nuclear power stations are fake? It's a similar physics with those.
Why does everyone say this? It's obvious how little physics you understand (bringing up e=mc^2). You should know you can't convert mass to energy in that way.
Further, do you think boiling water is the same thing as blowing up entire villages? Should I put a "weapon of mass destruction" label on my stove? It boils a lot of water!
And Chernobyl! Did it explode? It didn't? It's still there? Woah. It's almost like how nuclear energy works and how your made-up bomb meme works are two totally different things.
As I noted in the aliens thread, it's interesting how now we all walk around with HD cameras in our pockets there hasn't been an explosion of clear pictures of UFOs and bigfoot.
There's no explosion of clear pictures of nuclear bombs, either. Really makes one think. In fact, no one ever explodes nuclear bombs (North Korea supposedly does it underground where you can't see it, what a hilarious coincidence!)
So sure, witness testimony alone may be suspect but it depends what the person is claiming to have witnessed. Certain claims are more credible than others. That's subjective, obviously. But when you combine the witness testimony with the fact that the Hiroshima bomb is on film as are many of the other nuclear tests. Then you have numerous sources outlining the radioactive effects of nuclear bombs and tests. For example
https://www.science.org/content/article/how-atomic-bomb-survivors-have-transformed-our-understanding-radiation-s-impacts
And the fact it's based on well understood and accepted physics. Like most things we can't directly witness we base our opinions on balance of probabilities.
It's based on unproven nonsense, it's "well accepted" because it is irrelevant to physics on whether or not a big bomb exists. It's a geopolitical tool, not a physics problem. There are no peer reviewed papers on building nuclear bombs.
You have provided no evidence for your alternative explanation and your entire argument is one from incredulity.
I don't have to provide evidence of something not existing, how many times must I state that?
Yeah, it's almost like I'm asking for evidence of something that doesn't exist!Personally, I think that it’s far more likely that you know full well that nuclear bombs do exist and you’re just trolling.
You have been warned repeatedly that accusing people of trolling is not a form of content. Either say something meaningful or do not say anything at all. The next time I see you accuse someone of trolling in any thread in any upper forum it's a 3-day ban.
Hilarious! Yeah, like you must believe nuclear weapons are fake without having any evidence for it whatsoever? Okay, I can see how you'd be an expert in doing that.
See, here's the issue and why I assume you'd reject any attempt at proof. There is already ton's of evidence. You just don't trust it. What would ever make any of us think you would trust any further evidence?
Anyway, this thread is going off the rails. From my perspective I'll give you the last word.
The important takeaway is that you found a way to think you're right without supporting your position. Go ahead, run away from the thread. No one will miss you. "wah wah wah you don't like my extra good evidence of explodey pictures!"
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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: President Joe Biden
« on: July 05, 2023, 12:27:08 PM »
Guys, did you know that telling social media companies to censor information is not considered freedom of speech? Biden didn't know that. A federal court had to inform him that such is the case:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/judge-rules-biden-administration-likely-trampled-on-free-speech-on-social-media-29334362
Post your reactions when you realize you can't just ban wrongthink from reality. People who disagree with me shouldn't even be allowed on the internet at all, in my opinion.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/judge-rules-biden-administration-likely-trampled-on-free-speech-on-social-media-29334362
Post your reactions when you realize you can't just ban wrongthink from reality. People who disagree with me shouldn't even be allowed on the internet at all, in my opinion.
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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Biden is using American taxpayer money to pay off my loans
« on: July 05, 2023, 12:24:21 PM »
Oh no, it turns out Biden isn't using American taxpayer money to pay off my loans after all. I'll have to pay them back myself, oh the humanity! Responsibility for my own actions? Gross. I perish the thought.
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Science & Alternative Science / Re: Nuclear Bombs Do Not Exist
« on: June 30, 2023, 12:27:21 PM »I like how, rather than provide the evidence I ask for, you'd prefer to presuppose it will be rejected. This is, of course, because you don't have it, and you're acting defensive about it and rationalizing it as "you wouldn't think it's true anyway!!!"And I like how you ask for evidence that you know full well is impossible to provide and then get all smug when people do try to provide what evidence is possible to provide.
Yeah, it's almost like I'm asking for evidence of something that doesn't exist!
You want to see the "internals of the device". What would that tell you? I wouldn't know what the internals of a nuclear weapon should look like. They could show me anything, how would you or I know that's real?
And then you want to see it detonated. OK. You understand that these blasts are very powerful so that would need to be from some distance away. The person showing the "internals of the device" and the camera would need to get that distance away and from that distance how could you know it's really the device you just saw the internals of that exploded?
I don't think it's "weirdly specific" to require that the inside of the nuclear weapon clearly contains mechanisms that it is proposed to actually have.
This continues to be incorrect no matter how many times you say it. You have been shown a lot of evidence in this thread. You can reject it all of course and call it inadequate, as is your right, but to say we don't have "any evidence" is simply incorrect.
All you've shown is things you believe to be evidence. It's like when a religious fanatic shows me the weight of a corpse changing on death and tells me that's evidence of the soul. To you, it might look normal because you've surrounded yourself with your fellow acolytes. To me, it just makes you look insane.
I actually disagree that religious beliefs are not based at all on evidence. I mean, let's say there was no historic evidence that Jesus even existed. Let's say the Gospels talk about people and places which just never existed. Let's say that there were no known versions of the Gospels before 1900. Then I'd be taking a pretty big leap of faith believing any of the New Testamant stories. But none of that is true. There is extra-Biblical evidence for Jesus existing, the people mentioned are known to have existed and many of the places mentioned still exist. There are copies of fragments of Gospels going back to reasonably close to Jesus' time. So while sure, I've had to take somewhat of a leap of faith it's not a completely blind leap with no evidence to back it up. Many of our beliefs are evidence based, you can't verify everything first hand.
There isn't any historical evidence that Jesus existed... Did you think there was? Did you honestly believe the bible is "historical evidence"? Let's not get sidetracked here. I don't want to delve in multiple of your erroneous beliefs at once. Let's stick to the idea that you think a glowing rock can blow up a city.
I'd suggest it's a lack of rationality to disbelieve all the people who have witnessed at first hand nuclear explosions, dismiss the explosions as caused by conventional explosions - something you have provided no evidence for - and to ignore the radiation signatures of the bombs. As I've said multiple times, your entire argument is one of incredulity.
Just like how people have witnessed first hand aliens, right? What about bigfoot? Are those eye witnesses very reliable as well or would you claim they just weren't sure what they were looking at?