Sunday School

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

FFRF sues Trump administration over taxpayer funding of religious America 250 events.

Canada’s religious revival that never came to be. The study shows that cultural religious identity can persist long after active religious participation declines.

Does secularization represent increasing rationality, or can it simply involve replacing organized religious beliefs with personalized supernatural ones? A secular society must defend the freedom of people to reject religion while equally defending believers against violence and discrimination.

Restrictions on government endorsement of religion are not restrictions on individual religious expression. Is religious liberty the freedom to practice your religion, or the power to make other people live according to it?

World of Woo: Feng Shui.

Environment:  Some climate tipping points are being studied far more than others.

Florida’s new science standards downplay evolution and climate change.

“What a terrible thing to do. What a horribly unethical and cruel thing to do.”

At least only about one in four Americans trusts health information from Kennedy.

This story about Catholics, Demons and UFO’s is deliciously absurd.

Did Magic Mushrooms make us religious? You are not in Huxley’s hallway; you are in your own house.

The moral bankruptcy of livestreaming an execution.

Philosophical contemplation can be worthwhile even when its ambitions remain unfulfilled but can philosophy become more scientific without confusing logical certainty with empirical truth? (following up on last week’s conversation). (See also second video).

Eventually, some of the apes started asking why there was a universe at all. Not because the universe needed an explanation, but because some of its inhabitants became capable of wanting one.

Sunday Book Club: Between Fixed and Fickle: Why our Moral Views keep changing.

Some photographs taken last week. Wildlife Photographer of the Year.

While you are waiting for the kettle to boil.

Coffee Break Videos: Bad Faith 2026: Christian Nationalism in Power. AI will end Philosophy? The illiteracy crisis has a religion problem. “AI could lead to the collective dementia of humankind,“ says Yuval Noah Harari. NAZA: Exposing the ugly truth.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Have a great week! The first video Bad Faith 2026 is very good. Christian Persecution in America is the intolerable injustice of Christians being subjected to the same rules as everybody else.

Atheism, n. The refusal to surrender one’s sense of humor to an imaginary audience.

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg:

The illiteracy crisis has a religion problem

All very true, but most children in the U.S. still attend State schools, so the crises of illiteracy, aliteracy, illnumeracy, anumeracy, and lack of critical thinking skills rest with the State as well as with Religion and the merging of both.

Our Teacher’s Unions the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) have also made reform difficult if not impossible.

No fraction of U.S. Citizens would accept any of Bobby Brainworm’s prognoses, nor would they chant “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free!” without knowing their location or history, nor would they play lottery or games of chance except maybe for charity, not do countless other dumb things–if schools properly taught literacy and numeracy, how to use primary sources, and how to think critically.

Whenever nut-cutting time comes for the U.S.A., both preachers and teachers are going to be pointing fingers at each other in front of a very fatigued, indifferent audience giving them both the thumbs down from behind their pads and smartphones and online courses, or while doing hands-on training.

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg:

AI could lead to the collective dementia of humankind, says Yuval Noah Harari.”

Is he saying we’re not collectively demented now? This I’ll have to watch tonight!

[TheEncogitationer]

Fellow Unbelievers:

I just finished watching Yuval Noah Harari. Whether we are all collectively demented or becoming that way from AI, Mr. Harari is one of the few who are the least troubled by our collective dementia.

Basically, he looks at AI the way Ben Franklin looked at the Montgolfier Brothers hot-air balloon. While others who beheld the balloon asked what purpose it served, Ben Franklin answered a question with a question: “What use is a new-born baby?”

I share that view about AI and I hope we humans assure that AI is “carefully taught” in a way that is consistent with our enlightenment, life, freedom, flourishing, and all good things.

I’ve noticed AI has got better with artistic portrayals of humans. They have got better with hands and limbs. They no longer portray us as simply all-smiley Ghiblis but now show a full range of human emotions.

Also. I’m thinking maybe the all-smiley Ghiblis I saw at work were a creation of my company’s instructions to AI. Sort of like the exuberance-via-remote-control-electro-shock portrayed on The Ren and Stimpy Show with the “Happy Happy Joy Joy!” Song by Stinky Wheezleteats:

My own antidote to rage, hate, and doom-scrolling are Forums like this. Forums are the only form of “social media” I use and this Forum is among the best. I learn and enjoy much even where I don’t agree with everyone and everything.

I dropped out of Facebook after a week early in its history. I seen early that little good could come from it and it would be a life-devouring monster. Same with Twitter.

Reddit, Rumble, Telegram, Bluesky, and TikTok all sounded unwelcoming from the descriptions and samplings of their content.

My only use of YouTube is as a thoughtful viewer. The comments sections are hit-or-miss on how constructive and thoughtful they are.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Looney Tunes are also great humorous antidotes to awful memes and practices in both online and 4D culture.

As long as AI continues to improve and work to make our lives better and is guided by people like Yuval Noah Harari, change to the AI Age may be good. Still watching cautiously.

[Simon Paynton]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

can philosophy become more scientific without confusing logical certainty with empirical truth?

That’s an interesting way of looking at it.  Michael Tomasello, for example, is someone who does a lot of philosophy referring to a lot of experimental results.  That’s why I trust his ideas enough to give them the time of day and try to understand them – I know they’re closely anchored in careful dissections of reality.

At the same time, because reality has the property of being logical, then the right facts lend themselves to doing philosophy (probably depending on the subject area).  In other words, empirical accuracy makes the ideas fit together with other known facts, since the ideas are supposed to be a model of reality, and reality is constructed a certain way that philosophy is supposed to uncover.

[TheEncogitationer]

Fellow Unbelievers:

One of the homes of The Enlightenment is still in flames and getting worse.

Analysis-France’s unrest lays bare ‘slow agony’ of Macron’s twilight months
By Michel Rose
Mon, October 19, 2026 at 9:25 AM EDT
4 min read
Add Yahoo as a preferred
https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/analysis-frances-unrest-lays-bare-132025623.html

Rioting started domestically, but is now including Palesitianists and Jewish Synogogues and businesses have been destroyed.

No matter who prevails after this, whether Far Right Fascist/Neo-Nazis, Even-Further Left Communists, Islamists, or Deus Vult Christians, France will not be fit for human flourishing.

[jakelafort]

Scene description:

Three members of Muslim Brotherhood are breaking bread and regaling each other with tales of their recent exploits.

Achmed says “Yeah so i heard how you two were part of the gang rape of the infidel’s wife and the slaughter of the infidel. And you took his two daughters as slaves. What i want to know is whether you ate the infidel after you butchered him.

Mohammed responds: “I was too grossed out by the prospect of sloppy seventy sevens to fuck that whore bitch. If i stick to the straight and narrow i am told i have a shot to be married off to the daughter with the big titties Allah Willing. Mashallah. Oh yea but we did not partake of the cannibalism of the infidel as we had eaten at McDonalds right beforehand, two happy meals, but on my word he smelled so good that i was tempted to have a taste. They are fighting, the higher ups over whether it violates our holy laws to add spices to the feast.”

I really do recommend this podcast. Only 47 minutes and the woman sure seems to know of what she speaks.

[TheEncogitationer]

Fellow Unbelievers:

Well, The Orange Emperor and his blushing blindered advisers sure didn’t think about this possibility!🙄:

Iran issues chilling threat to cut ‘all the world’s internet’
World War 3 tensions are ramping up to alarming levels.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/2258640/iran-cut-worlds-internet-strait-of-hormuz

Nor did Elon Musk think of this and offer to expand his Starlink™ as an alternative to ancient cable technology, all the while Muskie blows up shit on his launch pads and begats more children into what could be a Hellscape.🙄

Nor evidently did all the AIs and their creators think of this. *A-Huk!* ‘Can’t have SkyNet and it’s Terminators take over without Internet connection!🙄

The use of cables connecting the Internet amazed me 15 years ago as much as it does today! If only Governments and Billionaires had as much sense as Dollars! 🙄

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

I’ll check the video after work, assuming it’s no actual World’s Most Dangerous Game cooking show. Right now, I’m in a NSFW spot.

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

Damn! That was a very informative video about The Muslim Brotherhood!

I knew about the names Hassan Al-Bana, Sayyid Qtub, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, and their ties with Nazism and Adolf Hitler, but I did not not know that the origin of the Muslim Brotherhood was from Kaiser Wilhelm II.

So this means that the Muslim Brotherhood at their beginning were useful idiots of Colonizer-Settlers, then when the Kaisers and Hitler and the Nazis were no longer in power, the Muslim Brotherhood became Colonizer-Settlers themselves. The lady-haters doth protest too much about Israel being Colonizer-settlers, methinks!

Nor did I know that the Muslim Brotherhood studied the structures and strategies of Joseph Stalin and the Sicilian Mafia.

That means the Muslim Brotherhood could play the theme to The Sopranos on the speakers of the Mineret at the Mosque, with just a few changes in the lyrics😁:

“Woke up this morning,
got a Crescent Moon in your eyes!
So sad, S’Allah-Damn, S’Allah-Damn shame about it!”
😎🌙

I’d have to see the lyrics to “The Internationale” to compose a Muslim Brotherhood version, but I’m sure it’s a doable ditty to march off to Jihad by!

And the advocacy of cannibalism by the Muslim Brotherhood is definitely a new one on me! I guess cutting off heads and hands and opposable thumbs wasn’t enough.

I suppose also that saying the Shahadah, abluting and praying toward Mecca 5 times a day, attending Mosque weekly on Friday when weekend specials begin in grocery stores and restaurants, paying Zakat to the many poor of the Islamic World, and saving up to make the Hajj to Mecca all takes up valuable time and resources needed for raising and processing crops and livestock. And the sawm or fasting during Ramadan is tough, so they gotta eat something to break the fast…Yeech!

In the end, Theocracy, Fascism. Nazism, and Socialism/Communism all just blur together in the eyes of the Orwellian face stomped by a boot forever!

[Simon Paynton]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

can philosophy become more scientific without confusing logical certainty with empirical truth?

I would not go near AI to help me with philosophy, beyond a Google search result.  But if people do want to use it, I can see uses for it – checking reasoning, for example.

I think there should be two tasks, done by separate people: producing philosophy, without AI (because AI rots your brain); and specifically checking the philosophy using AI (if they have to) as an intellectual skill in itself.

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

Since members of the Muslim Brotherhood think us Kuffir are game to be hunted and eaten, we Kuffir should be so dangerous that we are not worth hunting and eating:

What Happens When Jews Don’t Fight
Central Synagogue showed us that if we outsource our security, we will only invite more attacks
by
Liel Leibovitz
August 17, 2026
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/what-happens-when-jews-dont-fight

For more articles on this subject, just put “Gun” into the Tablet Magazine search engine. These nice little Jewish boys aren’t ready to go to a gas chamber without a fight, much less be Jihadi food!

• This reply was modified 3 weeks, 4 days ago by TheEncogitationer. Reason: Reversing a tag

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg:

“What a terrible thing to do. What a horribly unethical and cruel thing to do.”

I had posted this story last week, but it is important enough to repeat.

Africa is a proving ground/dumping ground for all the worst things from oppressive religions and ideologies.

I just heard this story below last night coming home from work (Warning– Descriptions of disturbing violent content involving children and families):

Kenya cult leader who told parents to starve children guilty of 191 murders | BBC News

I had read another story on the cult that digging for remains actually had to be paused because morgues were getting overloaded! So there may be more victims! Just damn!

South Africa, the nation whose International Criminal Court dares accuse Israel of Apartheid and genocide, had a President Thabo Mbeke who denied that HIV caused AIDS. He thought that vitamins from limes, beetroot, and sweet potatoes could cure AIDS and he banned proven Anti-Retroviral drugs. Mbeke was egged on by HIV/AIDS denialists from the West and 300,000 South Africans senselessly died because of his coerced pseudoscience.

Zimbabwe’s Marxist dictator Robert Mugabe imprisoned Gay men and Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni imposed life imprisonment and up to death for homosexuality and both were encouraged by Fundamentalist Christians in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Red China is practicing a new form of Colonialism in Africa via it’s Belt And Road Initiative, which promises all kinds on infrastructure and industrial enterprises to poor countries in exchange for loading them with unsupportable debt. Then, when the debts aren’t paid, Red China seizes them enterprises back along with the land, which usually has Rare Earth Minerals.

“The place where mankind was born is so neglected and torn apart!”–The Isley Brothers.

[TheEncogitationer]

Fellow Unbelievers:

I seriously don’t know what to make of this story. I’m not laughing over it, even granting the premise that playing “Yakety Sax” on the soundtrack makes every video funny.

He could have had an epiphany of Enlightenment had he lived.

Or he could have been yet another molester priest or another Mother Teresa who got divine jollies out of people’s suffering or another practitioner of exorcism on epileptics.

One thing’s for sure: Intelligent Design had no place in the construction of this Church…nor in the Universe where the Church is found.

Priest killed after crucifix falls on him during livestreamed Mass
James Powel
USA TODAY
Oct. 19, 2026, 11:17 p.m. ET
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2026/10/19/ecuador-priest-killed-falling-crucifix/92338860007/

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