Understanding Religion's Relationship To Human Social Systems

Today's unfortunate religious meme was posted to a Facebook group called " The Order Of Pen " . In reply. one member expressed confusion;  asking what that meme is even supposed to mean. I then explained what the OP was referring to:  " A religion that says we aught to be so self-loathing that we can hardly wait to be "washed clean", hollowed out, and replaced with some radiant God-stuff. - A "God" who can only love himself but wants to love others. And so he compromises by holding a "guess the true religion" lottery. The winners (according to the grifting cults who invented that whole scam) get replaced with some of himself. So that he can look upon (that) and say "I love you". In reply, a Christian fundamentalist  ( Gavin Knight )  was so instantly triggered that he laugh-emoji'd.  If some entirely-other religion, such as "Wicca", had been implicated instead, we can rest assured Gavin would have either liked my

Earlier in a conversation, I said this: 1. There is no "The Bible". Such a book does not exist. There are "bibles". But those many versions often disagree with each other on important issues. In reply, some guy said this: "... all are titled The Bible, from Biblos ( The Book)" -- Here, I set out to clarify  what I think should have been obvious  about my meaning: "The". is a word deigned to reserve exclusivity.  It would be like 100 different startup companies  each marketing a book called "The Cookie Bible". Everyone one of them slaps stickers on the side of their book that promise: "The Cookie God's one true recipe! For The One True Cookie!". Reading from those various rival books, countless cookie-factory startups  have been cranking out so-called "exclusive truth"-cookies;  like there's no tomorrow .  Every one of those companies did their own research, to gather clues about how an iron age guru made his

  "Red flag" doesn't mean someone's guilty of something. It just just means they've given cause to worry. In some cases, a person's faith works out GREAT for everyone whom their theism impacts. But usually (really, in most cases) it does not. I understand that (libertarian) Free Will is an illusion. And I realize most "personal (Abrahamic) God" theists lack the awareness it takes to really track their true impact on other lives. So then all we can really do is make as broad spectrum of real education available, help build healthy societies, and hope whoever has a harmful religious narrative matures into a healthier form of spirituality. Typically, an "atheist" will denounce the entire concept of "spirituality" as childish and toxic nonsense. But that's not where I'm currently 'at' about it. I think spirituality can be a legitimate domain of exploration, discovery, and growth. It's just usually not. And whenev

I wish I'd slept enough last night; so that I wasn't about to be sloppy about this. I shudder to think of all the typos I'm going to discover in this blog after I get some sleep. But I want to get my thoughts out, before I forget about this. Many moons ago, my mind was made pregnant; with the seeds of ideas and values I'd not yet considered. But the fathers of these new ideas abided by CONSENT. And that was the very first thing I noticed that was so strikingly different than the father's of the Christian dogmas that had once been so invasively seeded into the vulnerable mind of my youth. My mind was properly romanced. From there, love and wisdom flourished. Here and now, they push their way out; into a world that isn't ready for them. Too late. It's time. And yes, I realize this pregnancy had changed me. But I'm at peace with it. I didn't even really want to talk about yours. But you won't shut the fuck up about how only yours

[ link to discussion ] @FuddlyDud     Part 1: A) "So you can absolutely infer Michael's mental state?" -- Identifying a case of Dunning-Kruger is not the same as: "inferring (the) mental state" of the person committing the error; except to the extent: Dunning-Kruger describes a specific kind of mental mistake. Your objection would only be reasonable if you could effectively argue that it's always unfair to identify a case of Dunning-Kruger. Until then, I'll just make a mental note: "Some random apologist-for-apologists on the interwebz doesn't like it when a group of qualified scholars describe what is (by definition) a case of Dunning-Kruger and then someone from their audience (in this case: me) agrees.". --------------------------------------- Part 1 B) "You are assuming the amount he has studied, assuming the amount he knows," -- Nope. Not at all. I simply agreed with a panel of qualified scholars that Mike