Sunday School

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

This is an important survey on the impact of Christian Nationalism as a threat to American Democracy and Culture. See also the first video at the end of this post. Synopsis of survey here.

Democrats pass resolution condemning ‘white religious nationalism’.

Nikki Haley wants to grow up to be antisemitic and homophobic. I guess it is all part of the plan her god has for her.

The Christian ‘seeker’ movement is out to get us.

An atheist in Georgia challenges the mayor over the violation of citizens Constitutional rights.

As non-belief is normalized, the assumption that human beings have a natural religious instinct no longer makes sense.

The UN tells Ireland to remove all religious discrimination in schools.

Does being religious make you more desirable — or less? She left me for the Bing Chatbot!

Mozambique pastor dies attempting a 40-day Jesus fast.

World of Woo: Apparently this is all very spiritual.

Environment: How a Belgian mayor faced down death threats to make his city’s transport go green.

Meet the man who has added to our understanding of evolution.

It’s not aliens. It’ll probably never be aliens. So, stop. Please just stop.

Embryo risk screening could lower the odds of illnesses ranging from depression to diabetes. Can it be ethically done?

Long Reads: Odes to the glory of living and the dignity of dying in full assent to reality.  Back from extinction: Resurrecting the Tasmanian tiger.  The First Amendment: A Pandora’s Box of religious exceptions.  String theory was supposed to explain all of physics.  What went wrong? Meet the religious crusaders fighting for abortion rights.  Mariupol, destroyed and now being rebuilt by Russia.

Sunday Book Club: Invention and Innovation: A Brief History of Hype and Failure.

Some photographs taken last week.  Some natural world photos.

While you are waiting for the kettle to boil……

Coffee Break Video:  Understanding the threat of white Christian nationalism to American democracy today.  Can Science save us?  Better living through Science – A future with quantum biology.  Answers in Genesis fails AGAIN!

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Have a great week everyone!

“faith allows an evasion of those difficulties which the atheist confronts honestly [while] the believer derives a sense of great superiority from this very cowardice itself”

Simone de Beauvoir (First long read article).

[StregaModerator]

Thanks Reg!!

[NoelParticipant]

Thanks Reg

[UnseenParticipant]

@Reg

Nikki Haley wants to grow up to be antisemitic and homophobic.

Was that phrased well? For starters, I think Ms. Haley IS a grown-up. I think a key word may be missing. LOL

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Reg,

The Christian ‘seeker’ movement is out to get us.

Jesus can’t “get us” because he’d have to first be one of us and actually exist.
😁

[AutumnParticipant]

Unseen wrote:

@Reg Nikki Haley wants to grow up to be antisemitic and homophobic. Was that phrased well? For starters, I think Ms. Haley IS a grown-up. I think a key word may be missing. LOL

It’s a cheeky nod to a quote from the article.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Nikki Haley – “Pastor Hagee, I still say I want to be you when I grow up.”

She said this recently in SC when kicking off her campaign. Yes, she is very pro-Israel but John Hagee is not.

[AutumnParticipant]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

As non-belief is normalized, the assumption that human beings have a natural religious instinct no longer makes sense.

Rather than a propensity for religiosity, I think religion happened to appeal to our tendency toward tribalism, and serve as a crutch to ease the discomfort that arises when our natural curiosity clashes with our inability to get answers on certain topics.

When it comes to finding community, we’re nowhere near as restricted as many of us would have been historically. It’s more difficult for religious congregations to dominate our social sphere.

When it comes to answers, most religious can’t adapt quickly enough to compete with our evolving understanding of the universe and the world around us. While many will position religion, science, and contemporary ethical/ moral values as mutually compatible, the religious element may be increasingly vestigial. Not everyone is interested in the upkeep it takes to reconcile biblical text with contemporary thinking, or to observe their faith in the first place.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Religion has been described as the light that shines in the darkness. It supplied answers to the bigger existential questions in life when we had no better answers.  But now we see religion for what it really is. We understand the psychological reasons why people believe in the gods they believe in. We now understand enough about how the mind works, how indoctrination and group polarisation work, how the human mind is susceptible to double think and the cognitive biases that magical thinking can induce.

The fear of the unknown, like religion, is another ‘instinct’ that no longer makes sense. Religion stands in the darkness, at the edge of what we don’t know. It looks at what we can see in the light and interprets it as if it discovered it. But the discoveries are being made by human reason and logic and objective knowledge garnered from scientific discovery. It is Science, in all of it realms, that brightens and widens the arc of this light and makes the unknown knowable. Religions just give a different interpretation to what it too can now see, thanks to the enlightenment of the last 500 years. It is still claiming to be the source of that light because the religious cannot see that they are standing in the dark spots of ignorance at the edges of the beam.

Here is an old book on atheism and a favorite of mine on the subject. (Save as a pdf). It was written circa 1933 and is free to the public. It is also available as an audio book. If anyone wants it, let me know, and I will dig out the link. I can almost quote it verbatim now! I ‘know’ Hitchens read it and smiled as he turned each page. Read a few pages and you will too.

I think I will again read the first “long read” in today’s post.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Reg,

I believe Deputy Mayor Filip Watteeuw is the first news-worthy person from abroad to earn the newly-revived Dummy moniker:

Far be it for me to support death threats, but him pulling that shit in the U.S. and getting between people and their automobiles would be just one more thing to turn cities into ghost towns.

Yes, find ways to strip Carbon fron exhaust, yes, get the cabbie unions and monopolies out of the way of Über and Lyft, yes even work on that George Jetson air-car, but 18th Century modes of transportation like bikes and trains are not “progressing” to anything but Year Zero.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

I have a car and an e-bike. I almost always use the e-bike for  work and  shopping. It is faster to get around on, much less expensive to run and I never have to hunt for a parking space. I can take in on the train (outside of rush hour) at no extra cost and still get to see work clients. It all about changing attitudes. If it is raining I can get a bus into town. One leaves every 10 minutes between 6AM and 11PM. Then they reduce the service to every 20 minutes. I think public investment in good metro and bus systems is vital to help change attitudes. Capital expenditure on this is a long term investment. My quality of life has greatly improved.

Yes, it will take a lot to change the American mindset. I used to own a 4.4L V8 BMW (smiles per gallon) but I could no longer justify that to myself for any reason. So I traded down. I recently walked over to Publix from my family home in Atlanta. My neighbor pulled into the lot as I was leaving.  As I got back to my house (5 minute walk) he was pulling up in his 6.6L. We both had bought a carton of milk.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Reg,

I think public investment in good metro and bus systems is vital to help change attitudes. Capital expenditure on this is a long term investment.

Investments are voluntarily made and are done with intention of showing a rate of return. Alas, the “investments” in rail and buses fit neither of these descriptions.

It is also noteworthy that the longest financial crisis in the U.S. was not the Great Depression of 1929, but The Panic of 1873, and a big part of the Panic was caused by the Federal Government throwing grant of land confiscated from Native Americans and bad money after good money towards subsidizing trains.

This created the economic bubble in railways and banks rushing in to invest in railways, which bubble then burst with the Credit Mobillier Scandal revealed Union Pacific was taking subsidies with no product to show. This created runs on the banks, bank closures, business closures and unemployment and crime nationwide and internationally in Europe.

Robert Redford’s Sundance series The American West told about The Panic of 1873 and all of it’s side story and aftermath in great detail. Very fascinating lesson in the failings of government tampering with the economy from an unusual source.

[AutumnParticipant]

TheEncogitationer wrote:

Investments are voluntarily made and are done with intention of showing a rate of return. Alas, the “investments” in rail and buses fit neither of these descriptions.

You know, not everyone speaks as if every thought they have is somehow tied to capitalist markets.

That said, the point of public (or semi-public) metro systems is rarely to generate money off transportation itself. It’s to facilitate movement so that people can more freely access the city for work, play, access to services, shopping (etc.). And it’s to alleviate traffic on the roads which also comes with associated costs (traffic delays cost money, increased traffic means increased repairs which means increased costs and, again, increased delays).

Furthermore, it isn’t 1873, and public investment in transportation infrastructure is commonplace, not an ‘unusual source’ of government economic ‘tampering’. Further-furthermore, many of the railroads of the time were constructed and owned by private companies using private investment. Various market woes in Europe and the US led to that precarious financial situation. While I am sure there was some degree of public involvement and regulation too, to reduce it all to “very fascinating lesson in the failings of government tampering with the economy from an unusual source” is nonsense.

 

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Reg wrote – I think public investment in good metro and bus systems is vital to help change attitudes. Capital expenditure on this is a long term investment.

Enco replied – Investments are voluntarily made and are done with intention of showing a rate of return. Alas, the “investments” in rail and buses fit neither of these descriptions.

I am talking about government investment in infrastructure, in this case public transport. It is a win-win for the environment, new long term job creation, improved quality of life for commuting workers, an increase in consumer spending, not just from the new workers but also from people that will use public transport to go shopping. I could continue but please take a look at this pdf. While it is a bit dated the general macroeconomic model is sound and the math can be extrapolated to 2023 figures.

Contracts can be given to private companies to run and manage them on the understanding that they invest in the maintenance of the infrastructure. The government has a good ROI on several fronts and the private investors can earn a good profit by being efficient. The public also wins!

Again, it is mostly about changing people’s mindset and to do that they need viable choices.

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