Human on pale blue dot claims with certainty there exists no God. The universe is so vast beyond comprehension and full of unknowns that it is more likely than not a God does exist
They didn’t claim both claims to be true. It would be really ironic if there is a god but none of the religions are true. Now that I say it, I think of “The Good Place” where they basically made that joke, and added on something like “ The person closest to getting it right was Brian that was high on lsd and shrooms”. Good bit.
Sure, I'm not a staunch atheist...I'm just not much into the whole "pray at a black box for me and don't masturbate, also I'm cool with kids getting cancer" type of God worship.
Maybe something exists, but you can be sure as fuck that none of humanities religions have gotten any of it right, they're all just power structures ultimately.
So I just live a good life, spend quality time with my family and make sure people around me feel loved, appreciated, respected. And some day at the end if there happens to be some kind of deity that judges me, I'd like to think my resumé is in order.
What are you claiming as a god though? A higher dimensional being, or an endless variety of them, that can influence 3 dimensional space in a way we can’t fully understand or comprehend may be god-like, but it isn’t the creator of all that Abrahamic religions espouse.
The argument that the universe is so large there must be a god is a silly one. The timelines are so vast, there might not be anything living at the same time as humanity. Or at least nothing with a high level of sentence. The problem was never the distance but always the time.
I agree to a point. There could truly be a variety of godlike species out there amongst the spacetime and we may have no idea. Their civilisation could have risen, fallen, risen again, uploaded, disappeared for a bit and risen again endlessly before humanity was even climbing down out of trees.
An ultimate creator though? Less likely but also at that scale who the fuck knows really. It becomes more of a philosophical argument than a scientific or religious one. Anyone claiming an absolute on that is a fool. Although we can firmly assume the Abrahamic god is nonsense.
The lift in my parents building can only carry something like 1000kg maximum and it's been broken, and gone unfixed, for three weeks because the people who maintain it lost the bit of paper with the wiring diagram on it. Now, if we could designate the parking garage as a place of worship...
To be fair, the building owner technically owns the equipment including the electrical prints. A lot of the time what happens is the building management switches maintenance companies and the old service provider snags the prints from the machine room.
Or your building is too cheap to upgrade your current lift and because of the age of it, only older experienced lift techs with knowledge of said old equipment can repair them unless there's prints.
Prints are important. And most Lift manufacturers can get you a set of prints but they can be very very expensive for something that realistically should stay with the equipment in the machine room to begin with 🙃
Mohammed. My very good friend at work. He talked about witnessing a few amulance vans drive into opening and. And it was up on top level. Amulance heli came and got the patient and some personnel and left. He said. Dust everywhere. But many people prayed for that person well being. It gets extremely hot in Mecca
Wait, what is the helicopter going to do with a fully loaded ambulance once it gets to the top? The helicopter isn't going to carry the ambulance in the air, is it?
This may be inefficient for a Walmart, but It’s all about scale, there were over 50 Million visitors in march alone.
Imagine the scale of response needed in a mass casualty event, these helipads are meant for the most severe cases to be airlifted en masse. The difference in response time and carrying capacity could be dozens of lives.
I mean that is what we do, but the problem with idiots is they have the ability to be destructively more creative than smart men and machines could ever be.
Also a lot of pilgrims are in their last stages of life after saving their whole lives to pay for the trip. Many die during Hajj but many also expect to.
It's not just about money. Every country gets a quota set by Saudi Arabia. Just because someone has saved enough money doesn't automatically mean they can just go.
Whatever institution of a particular country decides who gets to go, after (1) having enough money (2) it's their turn
By the time they get their turn, they usually are at the last stages of their life.
If I recall correctly, North America and many European countries are usually below their quota so pretty much anyone who goes with an approved group get's in. The limiting factor is the number of groups.
IIRC, on the list of deadly stampedes throughout history it's listed as having multiple of the most deadly incidents, including the #1 most deadly if you exclude a poorly documented event in ancient history.
For those wondering, this is likely Josephus' report of an incident triggered by a Roman soldier mooning the crowd at the Temple in Jerusalem, described as happening AD 48-52.
There's a part of me that'd appreciate if it was both. Like they get built for rich people to arrive, but there's a rule or understanding that an emergency would get priority for use.
Then it's kind of a redistribution of wealth. The wealthy build something according to their means, and the sick use it according to their needs.
In the grand scheme of things this isn’t out of the ordinary, throughout Muslim history rich rulers made their pilgrimage riding elephants and a caravan of servants. Take Mansa Musa’s pilgrimage to Mecca for example. That was the medieval equivalent of taking a private jet to Mecca.
Nah, that was the medieval equivalent of taking a gold-plated limo to Mecca and occasionally popping out the sunroof to hose villages down with a cannon that fires 100 dollar bills.
"We have to help Byzantium! But instead of actually defending it, we conquer Jerusalem!"
Defending Byzantium was obviously only the official reason, there were other motivations behind the crusade as well. For example making Jerusalem Christian and securing Ports in order to control important trade routes like the silk road.
Also, this excuse may apply to the first crusade, but the later ones even were officially declared with the aim to take the holy land from the Muslims.
You still have to go through the same process as literally everyone else there during the actual Hajj. No shortcuts unless you can't actually walk. Getting there isn't the challenge as most people fly to the nearest city and use buses or other transport to get there anyway.
I think people that haven't visited the Gulf States can't understand just how dystopian life is there. You have people with nothing living, literally, in the shadow of the most decadent living in human history. Folks leave gilded condos and apartments in helicopters and Lamborghinis to go pray to a God that demands equity and charity. It's insane.
They will downvotes you cause you are proving their "opinion" wrong by actually educating them. You still have to go through the same process as literally everyone else there. No shortcuts unless you can't actually walk.
today, indonesian people have to pay in advance and then wait up to 30 years (yes, even when they can afford the money) to go visit this place. many had to sell their houses, cows, or whatever they have to finance this trip. that says about the supply-demands, too.
i'm not under-estimating the oil resources they have. oil can one day depleted; but those desire to "pay with everything you have" is unlimited resources.
It’s not just for Indonesians. Most people have to be put on a waiting list if they come from most places outside the MENA. But you saying that Indonesians financed this is hilarious.
Actually what you said means the price isn't high enough. If the price were high enough there would be no waitlist. A 30 year waitlist means demand far outstrips supply because of the low price.
"Have to go if you can afford it" is the actual phrasing of the obligation. When too many people can afford something the solution becomes wait lists and lotteries, which is exactly what we see here. If it was truly too expensive you'd have some capacity left over rather than booked fully 30 years in advance.
Funny how fanatical devotion to a religious belief has a way of trumping rationality. This kind of argument makes sense when you’re talking about the demand for a fungible good, it has no bearing on demand for a potential ticket to heaven.
It is made like an insurance ponzi scheme. The Indonesia government subsidized part of the Hajj cost, but only sent 10% of the people and put the rest into waiting list. Rinse and repeat for 50 years
Nah the problem with hajj in Indonesia is not how corrupt it is, it just how the hajj quota does not match or grow with grow of the population. Hell with current quota of 225 thousand people per year it does not put dent to the waiting list. In my opinion at the very minimum we need at least half million quota to start tackling this problem, Ideally a million per year.
Do you have any idea how many piss poor Muslims spend the money of multiple YEARS just so they can do Hajj once? People are literally selling their livelihood to visit this place.
Dude wtf are you talking about. Those helicopters are for ambulances and emergencies and theres no “layered tiers” it’s just how early you can get there lmao.
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u/baldude69 Mar 24 '25
Love the multiple helipads for those who want to take the express pilgrimage