True! It's just another of the many ways that evil is counterproductive to its own interests.
Helping groups of humans that bigots don't like would literally result in less humans that bigots don't like in the world.
But they can't help the wrong humans! Oh no! They have to hurt those humans! And so they leave those humans in the socioeconomic conditions that maintain exponential population growth indefinitely
In a broad sense this is inaccurate - war has been around as long as humans, and yet we were on an exponential population growth curve until the demographic transitions started.
Over the last century we as a species have significantly reduced child mortality, improved education, infrastructure, overall quality of life, and established reproductive health initiatives that supply condoms and sex education!
These advancements cause the local mortality rate to plummet. Then the following generation gets to reproductive age but has much less offspring, and the reproductive rate falls farther than the mortality rate did.
This is called the "demographic transition" and has occurred across dramatically different cultures, environments, and economies.
This is not universal or inevitable across the globe but the impact is so significant that global population as a whole is currently heading towards a plateau!
Therefore condoms, reproductive healthcare, and distributed economic growth are more effective at reducing population growth than bombs and bullets.
Developing a nation is literally more cost-efficient than destroying it. For the species. Not for the people selling the bombs.
As much as theists would claim that their morals were handed down from divinity, ultimately an athiest would understand those morals to be originally handed down from humans, and therefore humanistic.
Doesn't mean they're good morals of course, especially when corrupted by motives of power, but bad morals can be handed down by secular sources as well. The point being that theistic origins do not necessarily mean the morals themselves are flawed.
In any case, fundamentally the ethics of AA's 12 steps are technically theistic in origin and nomenclature but humanistic in nature, in that they appear to really dig down into the psychology of humans in a way that deviates significantly from their christian roots.
According to Mercadante, however, the AA concept of powerlessness over alcohol departs significantly from Oxford Group belief. In AA, the bondage of an addictive disease cannot be cured, and the Oxford Group stressed the possibility of complete victory over sin.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Alcoholics_Anonymous
The original christian prayer group believed that through God, addiction could be cured. AA has maintained from the beginning that addiction cannot be cured - a recovering alcoholic is and always will be a recovering alcoholic. Faith in God alone will not deliver salvation because addiction is not sin, it is illness, and should be treated by more than just prayer.
It could be more complex than that. It could be an average number of vampires preying on an evolutionary disadvantage - hospitality. Vampires cannot cross a threshold uninvited, but Italians are famous for welcoming everyone and their mothers to dinner. It was a recipe for disaster until they found the holy bulb.
Ever wonder why Italy has crosses in every home? Why the Vatican formed there? Could it have been a long and storied history of the rise and fall of romans and religions? No. Vampires.
It was more obvious when they all had big bellies, but have you ever noticed that the Pope sitting in his white outfit and hat looks like unpeeled garlic?
Personally, I think both theories can be true. It is hard to corroborate dates for our records. Immortal bodies that burn away in sunlight pose some archaeological challenges.
But consider this:
What if Italy had a significantly higher number of vampires than normal? Before they learned the secrets of Allium, and faith, and a big wooden spoon always close at hand.
Only one grandmother remembers the past. Cross on the mantel. Big wooden spoon. Garlic in the sauce. One big dinner, every week. Everyone's invited.
Coming soon to a theater near you:
Nonna: No Blood Before Supper
They want to use military planes because they can hide the cost of this program in the "whoops it's too big to audit" defense budget. The cost of civilian contractors would be publically disclosed.
This person's outright sadistic blindness or trolling aside, anyone reading this comment with good faith and not immediately having an aneurysm should remember that the once and current president once said, and I quote:
I like taking guns away early. Take the guns first, go through due process second.
I don't believe I have treated you with hostility, but please forgive me if I have.
But I must ask - does "not voting" discredit the illusion of democracy? To who? How?
Do you think there is a meaningful number of people who currently believe the statement "American democracy is working" but would cease to believe that when faced with voter turnout statistics?
Not voting is absolutely both a symptom and a cause. How do you think we got here, if not by voting for the people who won the elections for the past century, and by not voting for the people who lost the elections?
Voting won’t fix the ruin that is the neo liberal project and the debt its forced us into.
Again, almost everyone knows that. For most "radicalized" people that are actually doing things, voting is openly acknowledged as a stalling tactic designed to give us more time to do what must be done for real change.
What exactly will not voting do? Who will face the consequences of not voting? Who will be helped? Who will be harmed? Do you honestly think the wealthy will be harmed by you not voting?
I never said that, nor did I ever think that. But you have made clear that this discussion is unwanted, and I will respect that and say no more on it. Farewell.
Did you? To me? Where?
That's very interesting. Do you know where I could learn more about that decision? I tried searching but its 2025 and any phrases I could think of just returned websites offering nearly identical collections of flag emojis...