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11 days agoWait… they’re doing rebate checks? I thought these tariffs were supposed to magically cover the overwhelming budget deficits? And how exactly will they do that when it’s being distributed as free money?
Literally trying to bribe their terrible ideas into being popular, while blowing the deficit out even further. 600$ will finally convince Americans their economy is doing well and isn’t barrelling towards utter catastrophe at mach speeds. Astounding work.
I’ll give two answers to this question, from the perspective of a Christian reading the Old Testament/Torah.
This is interpretative, but if there is a God, he seems big on free will. Why give humanity the option to sin in the garden at all? Why not just reveal himself in the sky each morning? Why even bother creating a universe that can be explained without him? There’s an abundance of easy ways God could make himself irrefutable, and yet in the Bible he makes us “in His image”, and offers us choices like that tree in the garden.
Furthermore, why even create us to sin in the first place? My interpretation of the Torah is that God is big on relationship, and that free will is a key part of that. Just like a human relationship based on a love potion is kinda creepy, and a pale imitation of something real, it seems like God doesn’t want to be irrefutable.
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I think that’s the more relevant answer to your question, but I’ll also give the only example that comes to mind of the Bible seemingly imparting “scientific knowledge”, which is to look at the laws around “cleanliness”. Someone else already mentioned some “unclean” animals, but if you read more, they pretty consistently seem like good advice around bacteria. Some examples of times you need to “purify” (essentially take a bath) that seem like common sense now:
Reading this as a modern person aware of germs, many of these “laws” seem like they would have kept the death rate of faithful Jews a lot lower than their neighbours in that day.