Religion

[Crazed_Insanity]

Its not like we are talking about New Zealand being the dominant power.

Christchurch is only in name only, with only 38% of the population being Christians. Amongst those who actually believe Christ can really help them in this world is probably also a minority of that 38%. NZers are reaping the benefits of their Christian ancestors. They probably had laid a good foundation for them.

Had NZ remained faithful and maintained their Zeal for Christ, my ‘hypothesis’ is that they could very well be like prime of Great Britain… and be a world dominant nation… being in the ‘Middle of the Earth’…

Anyway, I think you just have a biased against Christianity. Can we ignore Christianity for now and try to formulate our own hypothesis?

How does a nation become a 1st world nation? What are the main gradients necessary? Why couldn’t the Chinese and Indians achieve that with such huge population and large land mass?

[Crazed_Insanity]

BLAH BLAH - your opinion is worth 0.
If you want to quit your job and actually go research this (not just google, but actually get involved) then come back and have something worth saying.

This is a bigger issue - its people who have negligible knowledge and experience doubting expert opinion.
Not sure if its mistrust of authority (both govt and scientific) or a misguided confidence in their own opinion.

You continually give the "but its not certain" as some validation for your opinion (or you accepting some other non-expert opinion).
Its your right to do so, but why??
We have experts who put time and effort in, then people like you ignore them. And its certainly not for scientific or evidence based reasons. You ignore them due to wanting to believe something else is true. You want to believe there is a cover up. Thats it. Not "Ive seen the evidence", its just your gut vs experts.

I don’t want to continue to derail the pandemic thread, so moving this here.

1st off, I’d concede experts are almost always more right than me. I don’t have a need to always feel that I’m better than the expert.

But you have to admit once trust is compromised, average people will find it more difficult to believe Boeing 737 Max plane is safe… given that Boeing had great successes in the past and FAA totally approved it! Look at how safe air travel is! How many flights each day… 2 crashes out of that many is almost nothing right? Why not just trust Boeing and FAA know what they’re doing even if we couldn’t find the black boxes? Leave the planes alone leave the CEO alone?

Even experts can screw up and be compromised, right? Even churches!

When Pope was corrupted, it led the western world into the dark ages. When Boeing was corrupted, planes fall off the skies. Blind trust given to these huge systems will result in huge failures.

I’m not making the claim that I can interpret the Bible better than the pope. I’m not making the claim that I’m better than experts! I’m not even saying that my opinion is 100% right! I could definitely be wrong. Same with the gospel. I have faith in Christ, but do I have solid evidences of existence of Jesus? No. So naturally I could be wrong about existence of Jesus, but I don’t think following the teaching of Jesus would harm me or others. I may not be totally evidence based, but I do base it on whether if this is good or bad for me and for this world.

You might say it’s stupid Christians like you who’d take away abortion rights! That’s harmful! Well yeah, but not all Christians share the same exact ’opinions’. I believe God still want us to have free will though. Decisions should not be handed down just to the states, but should be further down to individual level.

I personally don’t mind average non-expert opinions because that’s kind of ‘free speech’ that I like. It shouldn’t be that none experts should just shut up. You yourself have experienced that there can be experts of distance galaxies who couldn’t figure out why we can’t see full moon during day time! Not to mention experts could be compromised in various ways. Remember it took a sub-average kid to point out to all the smart people that emperor has no cloths!

Anyway, point is, as I talk about the gospel, people don’t have to believe it or even listen to it if they don’t want to. Likewise, if I hear things new to me or things I don’t like, it’d be up to me to censor them myself, not the ‘system’. Nobody can shove any ‘speech’ down my throat. It’s up to me to swallow whatever I want. Thats the kind of free society I like to live in. People are free to talk, free to ignore, free to worship or not, free to choose how they want to live their lives. No need for a human Pope or Supreme System Expert telling me what I should do or not do.