I did more research and I found out it actually isn’t standard where I live now, I am misremembering probably because I haven’t had many interactions with police here. This is a somewhat standard practice in major cities though which would explain why I was familiar with it. I will admit copaganda probably reinforced that though, most media I’ve seen does depict 2 officers. But whatever, I’m always happy to learn a new reason to hate cops.

No, I am thinking of what I have seen in real life. In my area there is almost always 2 cops per vehicle. I was unaware this was not standard.

I haven’t seen that before. I guess they really are just using a laptop and driving at the same time.

I don’t want to be the guy defending cops, but there is usually more than one officer in a squad car. There is no rule against a passenger being distracted.

Well I don’t know what that is but my educated guess is 3.5

There’s a small town in Missouri I visited named Versailles and its pronounced ver-sails.

I had that problem with half life, but they supposedly fixed it in the 25th anniversary update.

I don’t have a strongly held belief regarding the existence of any gods.

The strongly held belief I’m referring to isn’t a belief in a god or lack thereof, its a belief that religion is a net negative for society.

I’m surprised you’re not aware of this.

To say I’m not aware of this is again to argue in bad faith. I have mentioned myself that religious indoctrination of course still exists, and is a problem.

As for the assessment of benefits, there’s a great deal of research into what people do with their lives and why.

Yes there is research into how religion affects society, but it isn’t very useful for this purpose for multiple reasons. There is no instance of a society without religion, so the difference between a religious and non-religious society can’t be studied. There can be no consensus on what is beneficial and what isn’t, as morality itself isn’t objective.

There is not and there never will be definitive evidence as to whether or not religion is beneficial for society.

There is nothing to suggest we need religion for any of the benefits that religious people say they obtain from it,

There is also nothing to suggest the opposite, because this can’t really be determined. You would have to so create a set of all the benefits religious people claim to get, which in and of itself would be a monumental task. Then, you would have to demonstrate that nonreligious people can achieve all of the exact same benefits.

This is why I’ve come to the conclusion that this argument is pointless, and neither of us know anything beyond our personal experience.

I stand by what I said and painting it as absolutes is arguing in bad faith.

This I agree with. Looking back, you were more careful than I thought you were to specify you were not talking in absolutes.

I will however double down that you are still making a fundamental assumption that your option is the correct one, and you make it more clear by arguing that all benefits of religion are possible without religion. If all benefits of religion can be attained without risking the detriment, then religion is the worse option by far.

However, thinking of this made me realize I’m just making the opposite assumption. Just like you, I’ve constructed a strongly held belief about religion based on my life experiences, which are entirely anecdotal and effectively meaningless.

How would you even get evidence that most people are manipulated into becoming religious? How would you get evidence that most people don’t? How would you get evidence that religion does or doesn’t benefit people? How would you even define benefit in the first place?

This argument is meaningless.

That makes more sense to me. Although, I would contend that people in real life can also just put on a role to varying degrees of success depending on the exact circumstances. Presumably when you said “personally” though, you meant people you already knew well enough to verify their claims to some extent.

Maybe you’re right, that sounds possible. I would think if that’s their intention they wouldn’t have written that “everyone” is everything, and would instead say “someone” or something to that effect. At that point I’m probably just overanalyzing though.

They are drawing that distinction for a reason. They literally said everyone is everything on the internet. I don’t how else you could possibly read that.

What about the internet makes this easier to lie about? I could tell you the same thing to your face and you still couldn’t fact check it.

Your understanding of their reasoning comes from a fundamental assumption that your choice is the correct choice for every person. They willingly made the wrong decision, therefore they must have been manipulated into doing so.

Many people do just become religious without outside influence. On a large scale, every society will create its own version of religion without fail. Clearly, they have something to gain psychologically by doing so.

While religious indoctrination obviously exists and obviously is a problem, it doesn’t discount the actual benefits that religion seems to have, and by extension the reasoning with which some people become religious.

We all do.

When I said “start”, it was in reference to the process of changing your religious identity, not your life as a whole.

Never personally met an atheist that had found religion or heard about one

Well congratulations, now you have. It isn’t quite as rare as you might think.

The fact that some people start as atheists and later become religious demonstrates there has to be more reasons than just that.

Its a common thing that farmers do. It helps them prepare the field after a harvest to use it again.

I’m not sure why they use a subscription model instead of simply asking for donations.

I really wouldn’t describe a few years as astronomical. And that’s how long it takes to actually learn a language. You might delete the app a few months into it and switch to other methods if you were actually progressing quickly. The longer you stay on the app, the better chance they have of tricking you into spending money on it. I’m definitely not the first person to notice this. People have been talking about it for years.

I would also recommend getting a textbook and using a flash card program like anki to memorize words. Apps like that have an incentive to keep you from ever getting good enough at the language that you might stop using the app. They can be a good tool but they won’t get you where you want to be on their own, especially not in a time efficient manner.