The low birth rates are a concern because they need the bodies to generate revenue so they can take care of old people who will lean on government services.

Why should you care about population decline? Fewer people are good for the climate, but the economic consequences are severe. In the 1960s, there were six people of working age for every retired person. Today, the ratio is three-to-one. By 2035, it will be two-to-one.

Some say we must learn to curb our obsession with growth, to become less consumer-obsessed, to learn to manage with a smaller population. That sounds very attractive. But who will buy the stuff you sell? Who will pay for your healthcare and pension when you get old?

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/birthrates-declining-globally-why-matters/

Ok, so what does that have to do with your question…

What age group tends to be the biggest voting bloc, the most xenophobic, the most nationalistic…? Old people. Get those foreign people off my lawn, keep those foreign drug dealers, thieves, and layabouts out of my country.

Then there’s exploitation of foreign labor to undercut wages and work rules of citizens of the country the labor is being imported into.

I’m sure there’s more, but basically it’s a hefty dose of xeonphobia and nationalism along with groups not wanting to literally lose jobs to someone who will do it for a lot less.

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/biden-trump-first-presidential-debate-2024-election/card/biden-has-a-cold-campaign-source-4pXKzKo0k7L8n1keQlTo

I can’t unpaywall the article. The assumption he’d take some kind of meds is my own.

TBH because of his physical presentation at the debate. Yeah, it’s short-sighted, but welcome to the public thought process. Whatever is churned thru the latest 15 minute media cycle seems to be what they believe.

Doesn’t matter if he had a cold and was dosed up on NyQuil or whatever; his voice was weak, he stumbled over making coherent sentence multiple times, and he just had a blank, open-mouthed stare when between questions. I’ve had shitty colds and been drugged up with cold meds and I know that feel of being sore, exhausted, hoarse, and disconnected. You just want to go have a lie-down, not a public debate against a raging, insulting, narcissistic asshole. But it takes someone willing to understand all that and give Biden the benefit of the doubt.

There are far too many that start from the “old” part and just attribute everything possible to that which they find disagreeable.

If you watch the Canadian version it didn’t have a laugh track. IMO a much better presentation of the show.

Every religion apart from Christianity dies without lies

Quoted for posterity.

There it is. Your true colors.

I guess religion and atheism are on equal footing, then.

“Me when I lie”?

Go talk to the wiki I got that from if you want to argue with someone else about whether something is true or not.

That’s not what I said.

However, like Arthurian Legend, it doesn’t mean some guy like Jesus didn’t exist, or an aggregate of characters weren’t assembled to be him on story.

That’s what I said.

I used Arthur as a fellow mythology, along with a conditional “or” he could be an aggregate character.

The moment of resurrection itself is not described in any of the gospels, but all four contain passages in which Jesus is portrayed as predicting his death and resurrection, or contain allusions that “the reader will understand”. The New Testament writings do not contain any descriptions of a resurrection but rather accounts of an empty tomb.

So therefore I stand by the premise that changes have been made, and what existed in 100 is not what we have today.

You’ll have to forgive me if I bow out. I do not share your beliefs, nor am I willing to continue to argue over religious texts that are self-referencing to constitute proof.

And they get pretty obvious in big subs like /cars and /gaming. So many posting opinions like car magazines or gaming reviews do - point out nit-picky negatives that are relatively inconsequential to the product, softball other criticism, but give an overall decent review. Heaven help you if you actually voice an opinion critical of the object, because you’re allowed to have that opinion as an individual, that doesn’t toe the line and you get instant downvotes.

See, now you’re moving the goalposts. You made a sweeping statement that Christianity is as-is compared to the first century CE. Yet here you are breaking it down and excluding things.

Let’s just face it, you don’t mean Christianity as a whole is same as 2kyr ago. It isn’t. They held on to some facets of it, got rid of others, but kept the main themes like resurrection and the like. Heck, there are even some that suggest the resurrection story was added centuries later.

Nonetheless they are different. And you skipped past the whole “little is known” part, not to mention all the parts that got tossed out along the way.

You said:

An interesting thing about what we have now in Christianity though is that it basically spawned as-is in the first century

The article says:

Little is fully known of Christianity in its first 150 years; sources are few.

So you’re making a huge, sweeping statement that Christianity as we know it today is based on something…we don’t know much about? There are 6 major Christian denominations, not to mention hundreds of smaller ones. Which one is the “as-is” one? The one that is exactly “as-is” from CE 100?

You mean besides a couple dudes running around telling us to be cool to each other?

You didn’t even read the wiki entry, did you.

I think “as-is” is a bit of a stretch.

No.

There’s lots of ambiguous information. There is no firsthand, historically agreed upon data that supports his existence in the form we know him today. In other words, there was no magical guy doing magical things.

There is no Roman record of “nailed 3 prisoners to the posts today; Bill, Roger, and Jesus the magic guy who was a pain in the ass.”

However, like Arthurian Legend, it doesn’t mean some guy like Jesus didn’t exist, or an aggregate of characters weren’t assembled to be him on story. Arthur was possibly just a chieftain of a group who fought a couple of hefty battles and made a name for himself, but he ended up being an almost magical figure with wizards and witches in the story and - guess what, he will “rise again” from the dead when needed. And no, rising from the dead isn’t owned by Christian religious figures, Osiris of Egypt did it, Dionysius of the Greek Pantheon among many others. So maybe some dude, who probably wasn’t named Jesus, caused a stir and got a few people to take note. That grew over hundreds and even thousands of years to what we have now.

Want to know why King Arthur isn’t a competitor to Jesus? He a) doesn’t offer the opportunity to control people in this life for the hope of an afterlife, b) he isn’t profitable.

I know lots of people that own corgis. I don’t know anyone that owns a dinosaur. Guess that means corgis are more popular?

Well shit. Gotta find a new one then.

Really? I use PIA all the time and haven’t had any issues with normal internet usage including reddit. Wirst I get is google making me check a captcha box once in a while.

Having had water in a somewhat arid country that pretty much did “toilet to tap” after treatment let me tell you that the smell is hard to get rid of. Your water still smells like shit. And drinking it was a gamble of you were going to get sick or not. All the local markets sold bottled water by the flat tray. Even the locals knew not to drink the tap water.

They might soon just do that with some help.

The world’s first clinical trial of a drug designed to regenerate human teeth is slated to start in a few months, following promising results from animal studies. If successful, the revolutionary treatment could be available commercially by 2030

I’m sure it will only be $10,000 per tooth.