jbensan

"mostly zigbee?" not sure what you mean there. But ESPHome can be controlled directly without HA. You should read the website, specifically the sections on "Networking" and "Management and Monitoring".

If you are starting at zero there is a big learning curve, but if you're into it, it is a lot of fun.

I naively thought this would be about moon tractors.

I was hoping for a link to the full text.

I agree with your logic. Believing something made the world doesn't necessarily mean one religion reveals that something. In the journey of my life experiences I have found a compelling case in the Bible and Jesus. I understand that it sounds strange (incomprehensible?) to others with different experiences. But the best I can say it in short form, logic opens the door for belief, beauty guides me through that door. By "beauty" I mean that aesthetic sense of rightness. The same feeling that makes me know a painting is good is the same feeling that makes me feel that the story of revelation, fall, redemption presented in the Christian religion is True.

What I can't understand is atheists who balk at the possibility of any kind of god, but happily entertain the notion that we are in a simulation. What exactly would be the difference in a created reality and a simulated reality?

I started to write out this really long elaborate explanation that had very clever metaphors and illustrations including comparisons between religious language and computer science. But the longer it got the longer it needed to be. One explanation begs another so to speak. So I guess what you really need is a believing friend that you trust, so you can discuss it at length. Since I can't be that for you, let me think of one tiny example to give a glimpse of how someone like me thinks.

"In the beginning God created the Heavens and the earth..."

I don't share beliefs with Ken Ham, but what I see the Bible claiming about creation is that it was directed by an intelligent being (or beings, the number is vague in this text). Seven days? Sure. What does the word "day" even mean when there's no sun yet? In that case it means however long it took for the miracles described to happen. There were no words for time dilation or quantum mechanics or background radiation then. I'm assuming there will be more concepts concerning the beginning of time and the nature of the universe that we currently don't have a word for. The people who first wrote down that story weren't stupid. They weren't intentionally writing down contradictions. They knew there was no such thing as a day without the sun. They were describing a miraculous progression of creation. It wasn't science (even such as it then existed) it was religious narrative. The goal is not to get a reader's assent to the facts of the details but to point to a creator with power and purpose.

Your second question could be asked of any human I think. How much of this do you really actually believe is real or important? How often do you act on what you say you believe? I suppose it seems more scandalous for religious leaders because of the nature of their claims, but at the end of the day we're all just people.

Your third question is fascinating to me too. It is fun to read really good authors and historians explain their theories on this, but unfortunately it's all guesswork. The question is good though, because I feel like most people make broad assumptions about the sincerity of other times (and other cultures and religions for that matter). You've even done it to a degree by assuming what was important to the Greeks. Which Greeks? They were at one time a collection of city-states with competing interests. They were at another time an empire lead by a Macedonian. There are so many different peoples and times that we tend to wrap up and summarize as "Ancient Greeks".

I'll end by saying, I got to where I am (faith) by continuing to doubt. I tried to ditch my faith at different times, but I kept having nagging belief I couldn't get rid of. That part I still haven't figured out how to explain.