Sorry double post

This isn't because porn inherently makes people less religious. 

This is because of the conflict between what people naturally do and what they believe. 

Your article talks a lot about how religious people are more likely to have issue with their own sexual behavior. If you like porn, but you believe that God hates it. How do you resolve that? Maybe you pray to God to make you stop, but what happens if you still struggle. In a lot of instances people resolve that internal conflict by coming to the conclusion that God doesn't exist.  Other people come to other conclusions.

I don't think you know what evidence is because neither of these two examples count as evidence, more like a Catholic Church being desperate, these examples can be easily explained by a simple combination of mathematical odds, the brilliant work of the medical professionals and potential of the human body to recover from horrific injuries, diseases, etc, in rare cases.

For odds, how many people at any one time are praying to specific "saints"? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? At some point, one of them is bound to "pray" at the same time as having a family member recover, that is called pure mathematical coincidence, the odds are there to allow the possibility of one hit happening. Now imagine how many people have prayed to Carlo and their family members or friends have still died or not recovered? Hundreds? Thousands? A 1000 to 1 chance is still a 1 chance of happening, it is not proof of a God, but simple maths.

For the woman, she suffered a bleeding on the brain after crashing during a cycling accident, the surgeons operated on her, 6 days after surgery her mother prayed to Carlo, but no she did not "suddenly recover" she apparently woke up on that day, the 6th day after surgery, the next day she recovered use of her upper limbs and partial speech recovery, a further 10 days later she was discharged from the ICU (so again, not a sudden recovery) and it does not say where she then went (discharge from the ICU does not mean discharge from hospital). 16 days post surgery showed that the surgery was a success and the bleed on her brain had resolved itself. After that she spent a week in physical therapy also.

So combine all of that and we have.

• She was discharged from the ICU 10 days after the prayer / 16 days after the emergency surgery.
• Bleed on her brain resolved itself 10 days after the prayer / 16 days after the emergency surgery.
• At minimum in total to "recover" (unknown just how much she has recovered) = 17 days after the prayer / 23 days after emergency surgery.  

This woman had a low chance of survival but low does not mean impossible, she was the *1* when we say "1 in 1000"

As for the pancreatic case, the mother claimed she had been prayed for her son for years, so what, God ignored her for all those years until she prayed to some random dead kid? Because in both of these cases, this kid never met either of these people, they simply prayed to him, so the dude is even more hacked than Jesus Christ himself who had people trekking miles to have him heal them, Lol.

And also the kid was killed at 15 by God via Acute promyelocytic leukaemia, I suppose we should thank God for striking the kid down with a horrific disease all so he can apparently cure two people out of billions. It started with an inflammation of his throat, he was diagnosed with parotitis, his condition worsened, he had blood in his urine, he later was too weak to leave bed, he was then diagnosed with leukaemia, he was put on a ventilator, finally falling into a coma, undergoing blood cleansing treatment after a haemorrhage and then he passed away, thanks God!

He seemed like a nice kid and it's sad he went out so awfully, I'm happy religion helped him find comfort in his final moments, but the Catholic Church is using him as a tool for PR, I mean shit he has even been dubbed "the first gamer saint" it's an attempt to appeal to a younger audience by the Catholic Church. What saved the woman above was the amazing doctors and her body, not God.

Lol kids have far more access to porn nowadays than porn magazines in the 70s.


The rise of social media is the better correlation to falling marriage rates, selfishness, becoming disconnected from each other. That has little to do with hedonism. That 'peaked' in the 60s ;) It does have everything to do with Capitalism preying on dopamine addiction.

Narrowing the definition of hedonism to addictive destructive practices, like in the articles you link, is disingenuous.
People seek pleasure in many things, including work, building a legacy, doing charity work, practicing religion. 

"and the avoidance of pain" is part of the definition of hedonism. The avoidance of negative effects of overindulgence and addiction are part of that.
The opposite of hedonism is depression.


But sure destructive pleasure seeking and dopamine addiction are real problems. Yet porn and hedonism aren't to blame for that. 

Pet peeve of mine is when religious people say "God saved my..."" and just blatantly ignore the incredible hard work of doctors and nurses

A lot of your posts are very filled with biases.

It feels to me like you're trying to contort the world around your beliefs, rather than using the world to justify your beliefs.  Like how flat earthers ignore evidence that contradicts their beliefs, or they reinterpret 

Objectively why is using an iPad hedonistic? 

Playing games gives people gratification. So I guess I should take my kids out of the church playground.

The pancakes at the church breakfast are gratifying, I guess I should stop eating. 

A lot of people get gratification about religion, maybe I should take my kids out of church. It's too hedonistic.  

Alright, so with the caveat that I am a chemist and so this is by no means my field:

Doesn't religiosity being the independent variable mean that increases or decreases in religiosity impact porn use rather than the other way around as you are suggesting? That the two are correlated is probably relatively uncontroversial but which one leads to which sounds like what you are citing goes against your conclusions. 

A link for my understanding: https://soc.utah.edu/sociology3112/basics.php

"One way to think of variables is in terms of being either independent or dependent. In the social sciences, independent variables are typically thought of as being the cause, and dependent variables are often seen as being the effect."

Just to toss my two cents in here. I don't think it's about rational people and irrational people I think it's about rational reasoning and faith reasoning. For example Fransic Collins doesn't cite reason for why he became religious, he talks about a waterfall he saw. So while religious people can obviously use rationality like science, their religious believes are not made the same way their scientific conclusions are. 

I don't believe that Science and Religion are necessarily in opposition. 

A lot of religious people are motivated to disagree with science, and I think that's concerning. There have historically been plenty of scientific religious people - a couple of easy examples Isaac Newton, Lemaître. For some religious people, science was about understanding God's creation - they didn't let their beliefs get in the way of what they discovered. I think some people may have to compartmentalize the two to a greater extent.

But I think it's very problematic, similar to flat earthers, if you have to ignore or build the evidence around your beliefs rather than looking at what the evidence actually says. I think that is a big source of harm in the world. 

Like if you believe guns are very safe, it can cause you to act more recklessly - which puts people in danger. Not all beliefs are dangerous if they're wrong, but plenty of beliefs are.  

On the issue of believing science if some of it ends up being wrong, let me build a hypothetical. 

Let's say you have been messaging back and forth with 10 friends, every day this year. You find out that one of those friends actually passed away 6 months ago - you were actually texting a bot trying to learn about you. 

Does this mean that the other 9 friends must also be bots? (Say this is like finding 10% of your scientific findings are false.) 

What conclusion is the most rational outcome here? I don't think the rational conclusion here is to be like "science was wrong here, so it must always be wrong."

The great thing about scientific principles is that they're intentionally correctable - it gives us a process to gather better evidence, and come to better conclusions. So I'm going to approach my other 9 friends, I'm going to ask them some questions and see if I can give them a test to see if they're a real person or a bot. 

I think the rational response isn't to assume that the other 9 must also be bots, but rather look at the best evidence that we currently for each of them. 

Depends, for example is Birthright the tool or has it become an ideological driving force?

And this oversight is selective, also influenced by religion and institutionalized racism as well as Aipac (another tool or ideological driving force?)
https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/how-a-canada-based-zionist-charity-funds-illegal-settlements-in-west-bank-17839505

In official records, Mizrachi Canada has been listed as a charity organisation since 1979.

But it was only in 2022, after activists exerted pressure for more information, that it disclosed that some of the recipients of its funds in Israel were organisations like Regavim, a radical pro-settler group that is forcibly taking over Palestinian lands.

The CRA has yet to take any action against Mizrachi Canada, which faces multiple allegations including violation of the Income Tax Act, the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, and going against official Canadian policy.


Of course the Zionist colonial settler project is using religion more for colonial purposes than the other way around. It's foremost a political movement and a perversion of Judaism. But it embraces the terrorist fanatics to push the colonial agenda forward nonetheless.