ALiteralCabbage

I'm not being funny but if it's impacting you this much you must be earning a significantly above average wage, no?

I've been paying off my (plan 1) loan for 17 years near enough and it hardly makes a dent in my payslip.

They don't support Putin. They just hate the US and NATO. Enemies of enemies and all that.

If you want to buy stocks to support European development there's much better options!

I'll start with the easiest one! They're members of an independent church which is a member of the Evangelical Alliance in the UK. My dad's background is Anglican, and my mum's is Baptist. They're both pretty okay with individual differences (as long as it's a protestant one!), so they're open to minor differences in belief - you can basically write these down to different interpretations of the scriptures. They are okay with discussing these differences.They were okay when I was a member of a Quaker congregation, but they don't really get Catholicism - they see some stuff as idolatrous but they're not anti catholic.

Their reconciliation of the 'holes'; this one is trickier. The fact that it's difficult to pin down a historical Jesus (when we know about other people factually from the same era) is just sort of glossed over. Regarding the possibility of metaphysical stuff they're actually pretty chill with admitting that there's things we don't know, in part because of things like dark matter, or the development of a knowledge of atomic particles etc - for them I think it's more a case of "we can't prove it yet" rather than "it can't be proved". They love science because for them it's a proof of the elegance of creation; they believe that evolution, for example, is perfectly in line with a creator God - for them God is the spark at the beginnig of everything. A good summary of their attitude to the holes is:

Science is full of stuff that seems counterintuitive to "rational thought" (ie. Virtual particles etc) so why is that any weirder than an irrational belief in a God whose existence you can't prove?

Lastly, I've never outright told them I don't believe. Partially because where I stand fluctuates daily, but mostly because my life is enough of a tell - I have lived out of wedlock with my partner for the best part of 10 years, I drink to excess, don't attend church, etc., and I have spoken to my sister (who I know will talk to my parents) about not being a Christian in any practical sense. They know I'm a good person and for them I guess it's not problematic (and they're not "fire and brimstone" types so I don't know if they're worried for my eternal soul or not but they're content seeing me happy and being true to my conscience I guess!

I'd be curious to learn more about this if you're willing to share.

What aspects are interesting to you particularly? I'd be happy to give you an insight!

Both my parents are physicists (my dad got his PhD, my mother taught Physics her whole working life) and my grandfathers (also practicing Christians) were both scientists; my paternal grandfather was a research scientist working with radio telescopes who had some pretty hot takes on life.

Looks good!

Yeah, I mean Wikipedia is a great place to stark looking at biblical criticism/historiography as well, which I guess is kind of ironic.

I'd love to know what his "proofs" are for his belief, and if there's an element of the Pascal's wager type thinking at all. I come from a family of scientists who are also Christian so I'm fully aware of the way people are able to hand-wave away the things that don't mesh with their worldview.

The denomination hopping eased me out of faith too - I went from evangelical to Anglican, to Society of Friends, to being totally unengaged. If I was going to go back I'd still stick the the quakers to be honest - at least they know the value of shutting up!

“The Bible withstands scrutiny, which was a great surprise to me. I thought it couldn’t. I was wrong.”

This surprises me - it's certainly not been my experience that it does (and definitely from a historians perspective).

It would be interesting to hear him talk about this with someone who isn't a "mocking skeptic".

I wonder if his conversion will stick.

Those look great! The pricing is pretty complete too compared to comparable models from bigger competitors (with worse repairability).

I have a bunch of nice Dutch stuff already - time to add one more I guess?

OSM cycling maps, .gpx files, and a usb cable remain the best way to plan routes!

I hate the industry around cycling. It's predatory, exclusionary, and just fucked, in general.

Nice to see that labour are called that because they're the party of forcing us into labour, rather representing Labour.

It's been a race to the bottom since they dropped Clause 5, and even that was pretty light handed.

I was being facetious