Could we stop having this meta-debate about what a person who is not either of us meant, and instead could you comment on the substance of my post?

For someone who bitches all over this thread about people strawmanning their position, this is a pretty fucking great reply.

Hint: one can be pissed about people throwing around the not-based-in-legal-reality term “intellectual property.” One can be pissed about people using it as part of a strategy to purposely confuse the public into thinking that copyright infringement is the same as theft, a strategy which has apparently worked mightily well on you. One can be all of those things, and yet still feel that copyright infringement is wrong and no one should be entitled to “literally everything someone else creates.”

What you posted was a textbook definition of a straw man.

Sorry if my post was confusing. The first point was referring to cables for iPhones before the latest iPhone 15 models — previously, you’d get a cable that was standard USB-C on one end, and Lightning (the proprietary connector) on the other. You could use those cables along with any standard USB-C charging brick to charge the phone. My point was that the charging brick does not need to be proprietary, and the proprietary part (the cable) was included with the phone.

All iPhone 15 models use completely standard USB-C and come with a C to C cable in the box.

You said Arch can do “literally anything” that any other distro could do, and I’m trying to point out that by having to issue imperative command(s) to set Nix up on Arch, you’ve already conceded that the entire state of the system is not able to be declared in a config file, which is one of the features of NixOS. So there is at least one thing that NixOS can do that Arch can’t. I imagine there are other examples (and not only when comparing with NixOS). So again I ask, can you please refrain from hyperbole?

You can of course believe whatever you want, but please don't tell me what I believe, because you're clearly confused.

I will make this as clear as I can: I absolutely do not make the claim that there is no god. For each of the positive claims for a particular god that I've heard, I don't believe the claims meet their burden of proof. Think of it like a jury in a courtroom: for each god claim I've heard presented, thus far I have found that deity "not guilty" of existing. This is not at all the same as asserting that no gods exist.

There are plenty of specific gods that are claimed to exist (Zeus, for example) where I do assert that particular god doesn't exist. But there are other god claims (a deistic god, for example) where I don't feel the proposition presented is falsifiable. For that reason, while I do not believe those claims meet their burden of proof, I also feel I cannot honestly assert that the deity doesn't exist.

The presence of even one deity in the "unfalsifiable" category, IMHO, prevents me from making the claim "no gods exist." But I am still an atheist, because I hold no theistic beliefs.

Hope this makes sense.

I was trying to disengage peacefully, and I honestly didn’t intend to insult you or declare myself “winner” of anything. But now you’re being dishonest, so you’re blocked. Again, have a good one.

No one has advanced any sort of ontological argument that would hold for a deity, either.

Regardless, thank you for being honest and admitting that you believe what you believe because of feelings and nothing more. I find it hard to have discussions with people who don’t care about the actual truth of what they believe, so I’m gonna disengage here. Have a good one.

We don’t have to get into it, but neither of the options you just gave is the same as “universe from nothing,” which is what you said initially.

I think you’re implying that the claim “the matter and energy that comprise the universe has always existed” is a bad position. If I’m correct on that, why do you feel that way? I feel that it is the claim that best comports with our current understanding of the cosmos.

OK, so it sounds like you're freely admitting that there is currently no test, evidence, measurement, or other way that you can show the truth of your claims.

Edit: Also, I don't think I've ever seen what you're talking about regarding seeing a spirit's effect in people's lives, and I definitely haven't felt it myself.

Therefore, I claim that while I believe you are being honest and genuinely think you feel a spirit, it doesn't actually exist, and instead you have been indoctrinated into a cult (which you freely admit you were born into), and that indoctrination has programmed you to believe things that don't actually exist. I'd like to find a way to determine which of us is correct. How do we do that?

Also, your god vs. universe that started existing out of nothing (which isn't a thing) argument is a false dichotomy.

Also,

Fairies, however, don’t add anything to the discussion and can therefore be dismissed out of hand.

For a given proposition, I don't think it makes any sense to use "does it add anything to the discussion" as a criterion for dismissing it. The OP is asking about other claims of supernatural entities, which are simliar to gods at least in terms of their supernatural qualities. You don't just get to dismiss them. So, rephrasing the OP's question: given that you have the same amount of direct evidence for the existence of deities and unicorns, why do you believe in one but not the other?

Please point to a scientific hypothesis or theory that claims that the universe "started existing out of nothing."

What is your Spirit? Can you describe its properties and offer some evidence to show the rest of us that it exists? How do you know you received an answer to your prayers? How might someone else replicate this experience?