>> If science doesn't deny the possibility of a creator, why are you insisting that there is no creator

I'm really not, I'm just saying there's no scientific evidence for it, and a lot of contradictory scientific evidence against it. In that situation it makes no logical sense to insist on believing something contrary (i.e. creationism) to all the well-researched evidence, especially when there's also no actual evidence that the thing itself (i.e. a creator) even exists.

>> And how are you so certain that, in contrast to every observation of science ever, that the universe had no initial cause?

Please quote your sources. As far as I am aware, there is not even one (credible) scientific observation, let alone your claimed "every observation ever", that shows that the universe must have had a creator.

"Initial cause" is a pretty vague statement. Firstly we have no proof of what caused the big bang, Some quantum or other effect could easily be an initial cause of the big bang, without any sense of a creator or other intelligence behind it.

>> Those hijackers did *NOT* represent Islam. They represented terrorists who dressed themselves in an Islamic mantle. ..yet if you ask them, they totally believe they represent Islam, and the others not waging religious war are not true muslims. You can't deny there are hadiths and edicts in the quran that direct muslims to kill unbelievers, and that the quran itself says to take all passages in the quran literally.

This is one of the most dangerous problems with religion, beleivers can do anything in the name of faith, no matter how barbaric, and feel justified and guilt-free because they believe they are doing the "right" thing by god.

>> If God does indeed exist, you don't get to pick what he expects of Humanity, if anything. You don't get to pick whether He is relevant or not.

I'm not picking what he expects. I said if one exists it's making itself irrelvant to humanity (by its own choice) as there's not even any actual evidence that he exists, let alone any clearly attributable actions.

>> You can't both say that "you don't know" if God exists, and that "religion is a fairy tale."
Sure you can. Religion and God are two entirely different things. Religion is created by humans, but god (assuming you believe in both god and creationism) literally couldn't have been, as if we created him that would mean he couldn't have created us. There are over 4000 different religions in the world, even assuming one is actually right, that means 3999 are fairy tales.
It's only religion that claims to have some link to god. I'm not seeing any evidence for god at all, let alone one directly claiming that any human religion happens to have got it right.

Pumped hydro energy storage needs mountains and rivers, we have quite a lot of those and also pumped hydro powerplants over here in the Alps, but then you need also a ton of water for it, which california obviously does not have, a quite interesting concept would be to have something like gravity towers which you could use as battery system, but on the other hand you have batteries also!
Going green never really was a problem of production, panels are cheap, it always was a problem of how to store the excess energy to have it when you need it!

Well you cannot shut off base load and there are times when solar cannot deliver and batteries cannot backup enough (aka every night for instance) you can achieve night self sufficiency in private residental homes via batteries which are big enough, but most people who have PVs do not have them!

California is a special case with tons of sun days each year. Btw I live in Austria which has way less sunny days, but by adding a battery to my PV panels on the rooftop I have full energy autarky around 8 months per year, I imaging california or most of it can reach 11 months with such a setup!

Today, I found a text file on my computer. It was a response to a ZDNet article back in 2016 or some such. My computer remembered every word I wrote; I'd forgotten I made the post at all.

Today, I entered my time sheet at work for the different on-site appointments I made last week. I'd forgotten one of them already. My phone kept a GPS log that knew exactly where I was and was able to ensure completeness.

The human brain is incredible in may ways...but computers do things human brains cannot...and unless we're willing to put up with the shortcomings of the human brain in our computing equipment, we'll likely need more than 27 watts to make it happen.

Musical.ly was tiny when they acquired it. They got the vast majority of their userbase organically.

A bunch of stuff about it was really amateurish. The valgrind errors, using the same account for multiple parts of the attack, using sockpuppets who had no presence outside shilling for "JiaTan". I'd expect better from any competent government agency.

>> When people initiate wars in the name of God, they are lying. It's that simple.

Good! glad you agree! That immediately invalidates at least all major religions then, as at some point in time all religions through their leaders have instigated or supported one or more wars.

I guess we need to decouple God from religion. I am quite happy to believe in the possibility that a God exists, however without actual evidence the question remains open. If one does exist at all then it's so remote/ineffective as to leave no actual evidence of itself, so is making itself effectively irrelevant.

Religion is man-made, there is no more proof that it's messages came from one or more gods than there is that it was all made up by someone wanting power and control. In fact there is a lot of historical evidence that aspects of at least Christianity, Islam and Judaism have been created for exactly that reason.

So there really is strong evidence for how evil religion at least can and has been, yet despite that, it's sheep-like adherents still turn a blind eye.

> That logic relies on the concept that things don't happen by themselves. Ever.

Yes they do, all the time, at least at the quantum level.

> Therefor, a creator is required because things exist.
Things can and do exist without a sentient creator.

> That to me is more logical than to say that things exist because of...nothing.
I urge you to go read up on quantum physics.

No need; the increasing percentages of unskippable ads will destroy it eventually, regardless of other factors.

You deceive yourself when you suggest that science doesn't require faith.
Science explicitly doesn't require faith. The dictionary definition of faith is a firm belief in something for which there is no proof. Science requires the exact opposite: evidence.

>> The faith part is when you say, in the name of science, that there is no creator.

Again, that isn't what science is actually saying.
It's saying there is no evidence for a creator. It's not denying the possibility, just like it is not denying the possibility of fairies.

> You are claiming that religion is destructive and evil, and that is also not true.

You have to be kidding right?
Just off the top of my head: 9/11, the crusades, nearly all the terrorism in the world, the recent massacres between Jews and Muslims, wars between Sunni and Shia, suppression of women, suppression of free speech, religiously-justified racism...

> You take at their word, anyone who does evil in the name of religion,

Do you really not see yourself doing exactly the same thing too? Do you really not see the evil behind even having a mechanism that allows someone to blame god for their own actions?

> You have *still* avoided conceding that the Salvation Army does good, and that they do it out of their sincere religious beliefs. They aren't the only ones.

Sorry I thought I already made it clear that I agreed that the Salvation army do good deeds. But then what about the many non-religious charities? Religion is clearly not a requirement to do good deeds, so claiming any credit of doing good deeds on having a religious belief is a falsehood. That said, I do agree that good deeds are done in the name of religion. I'm just not convinced that you can equate feeding and clothing a few druggies and bums to all the serious evil that's also been and is being done in the name of religion globally.