Sunday School

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Gallup: Global Religiosity declines while Atheism rises.

Barna: Nearly 40% of Gen Z women identify as atheist.

PRRI: 95% of Christian Nationalists say believing in their imaginary God is important to being truly American.

Study explains global rise in atheism and shows that atheists now outnumber theists in the UK.

The Anglican Church has “gotten away from basic morals and principles” because it is religious and so has low standards.

Sen. John Barrasso targets American Atheists in bizarre smear of “No Kings” protests.

It’s a big escalation from “silent time” or “optional reflection” if teachers are leading prayers that reference Jesus. You can’t treat “Christians” as one monolith on this issue because tradition, race, age, and political affiliation all matter.

The nonreligious might not be as spiritual as was assumed which helps counter the narrative that the non-religious need some form of spirituality (whatever that is). I know hundreds of atheists and not one has ever mentioned being ‘spiritual’.

In Africa, atheists can face bias even at the point of death from religious sheep. Even in Western democracies, non-religious people may face institutional bias.

FFRF filed a lawsuit on behalf of an atheist who was blocked from being a poll worker because he refused to swear “so help me God.”

The SSA takes aim at Christian ‘privilege,’ partners with Satanic Temple.

Atheist group in Kerala argues no evidence to prove genocide in Gaza.

World of Woo:  Legitimizing quackery.

Environment: Climate skepticism isn’t really about the climate.

A new conspiracy theory is floated at the HSS.

The terms “philosophical exemption” or “religious exemption” is marketing spin for anti-scientific obstinacy. Jenner’s dairy maids showed more empirical wisdom with a handful of cows than some modern parents armed with smartphones and social media conspiracy channels.

JWST detects building blocks of life in ice outside the Milky Way.

Are we in the Solitude Zone of the Universe?

Long Reads:

Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat.

How voices from a forgotten archive of Nazi horrors are reshaping perceptions of the Holocaust.

Why Epstein draws more outrage than the Catholic Church.

The Middle East will not improve.

What it’s like to live in the world’s smartest cities for 2025.

Sunday Book Club:  How to build a memory palace (Read this book too).

Some photographs taken last week. Some weather photos from are the world.

While you are waiting for the kettle to boil……

Coffee Break Videos:  ICE got doxed.  The War on Science. In conversation with Sam Harris.

 

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Have a great week!

If the “Pro-Palestine” demonstrations and outrage were really about humanitarian concerns, they would still be out on the streets for Sudan, Congo, Yemen, and a dozen other places where civilians are dying by the thousands but without the cameras rolling.

The “colonizer” label collapses under even basic historical scrutiny. Jews didn’t show up from Europe to colonize a foreign land. They returned to their ancestral homeland, where Jewish presence had been continuous for over 3,000 years. The British, Ottomans, Romans were the colonizers. Israel was built by people coming home, many of whom were refugees from Arab and European persecution, not imperialists expanding a mother empire.

If anything, Israel is the de-colonization of the Jewish people. It is the re-establishment of self-rule after millennia under foreign powers. But the activist crowd loves to flatten everything into “white oppressor vs brown victim” because it fits their emotional script.

Ask any of them to name the colonizing power Israel supposedly serves, and you’ll get silence or a word salad about “Western imperialism.” They can’t explain it, because it’s not about facts — it’s about a narrative that feels righteous, not one that holds up to evidence.

The protests were not about universal human rights or ending suffering. They were about politics, identity, and a convenient villain. Israel fits neatly into a Western moral narrative of “colonizer versus victim,” while Sudan doesn’t. There’s no easy ideological high ground when both sides are African and there’s no simple Western scapegoat to blame. Sudan’s civil war has killed far more civilians than Gaza ever has, but there are no marches, no flags on Instagram stories, no campus sit-ins. Their silence proves it was never about universal human rights or ending suffering. Their silence says it all.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Reg,

World of Woo: Legitimizing quackery.

This has been going on for decades longer than MAGA/MAHA has been around, and to the tune of $Billions of Taxdollars. These agencies should have been DOGE-ed before there was a DOGE.

National Center for Complimentary and Integrative Health
https://www.nccih.nih.gov/

WHO Global Traditional Medicine Centre
https://www.who.int/teams/who-global-traditional-medicine-centre/overview

[StregaModerator]

Thanks, Reg 🙂

[jakelafortParticipant]

Reg,

You are the last one for whom i would have expected such a betrayal.

Please tell the truth.

Sudan, Congo, Yemen and the dozen others do not count because of cultural relativism. Were those “crimes” as you suggest actually crimes? Or do the cultural norms excuse the putative perpetrators and the resultant victimless crimes?

Colonizer label is apropos. Those White Ashkenazi Jews who comprise the population of Israel simply stole the land and even if it is true that strictly speaking the historicity is not one traditionally aligned with colonialism Jews have nefarious and unseen plans. And because panarabism is an abiding ethos multiple Arab nations came to the defense of the indigenous Palestinians in 1948. Panarabism governed as it is by an Islamic and Arabic cultural imperatives would not see an injustice suffered at the hands of the European White colonial settlers. Thus they aided in a failed and tragic attempt to help their brethren be restored as the rightful owners.

The silence you see as proof of a failure to act on humanist principles is not as it appears. You see culturally Israelis are more advanced and must be held to account whereas Sudan and other as Trump might say, shithole countries are backwards and exempt from western standards. Muslims genociding, apartheiding, colonizing, torturing and other disgustingthingsing is culturally relative. Once a Jew/Israeli is involved the scrutiny must be magnified 1000 fold and the victimhood of the genocide must be pitied in equal measures.

Please don’t tell them it is not a genocide. Historically low civilian to combatant ratios and blah blah blah. It may be true that Israelis are inefficient or even incompetent at genocide but the babies, the women, the children! The activists are orgasmic while the genocide is perpetrated.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

The nonreligious might not be as spiritual as was assumed which helps counter the narrative that the non-religious need some form of spirituality (whatever that is). I know hundreds of atheists and not one has ever mentioned being ‘spiritual’.

If nearly half of the nonreligious report high life satisfaction, the belief that faith is the only path to fulfillment becomes harder to defend.

I think this is really interesting.  The religious and non-religious don’t share a belief in God or the divine or even spirituality, as self-defined.  But if they have similar life satisfaction, they must share faith, because without faith, as in, hope for the future, life is shit.

In what does a non-religious person place their faith – where do they find their source of hope?  Obviously it’s something.  I’ve always maintained that the evolved biological force that makes bones heal, or makes people look twice before crossing the road, etc., is the same thing that Jesus was trying to bang on about.  He just didn’t know about it explicitly, so he made up all kinds of poetry to try and express it.

The idea is that if you look after yourself, like looking after a flower in your garden, then you will grow strong and healthy of your own accord, to a biologically programmed extent (i.e., maximal).

[jakelafortParticipant]

Simon,

Don’t you think some terminal and or times up and finish line fast approaching folks feel the value of their lives or appreciation for the past and gratitude for their lives?

You’ve changed the definition of faith.

Ya know that soldier who is cold and in pain danger at every moment and yet finds a moment to smoke a butt and feel the glow of life? That same guy in a quotidian mindless job at break smoking a butt might think….this sucks man. Rat on a fucking wheel. Get me off this imaginary apparatus.

In other words there are ways of achieving life satisfaction that are mutually exclusive. Supersize the moment to moment joy of it all without a promise of utopia or a funzalow. Be in this moment. You are almost there.

Your Jesus stuff is creative.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Simon, I think you are trying to rescue the word “faith” by redefining it. You are taking a specifically religious term that means believing in something without sufficient evidence and trying to stretch it until it becomes a synonym for “hope” or “general trust in life.” It sounds warm but it is sleight of hand. People can have high life satisfaction without believing in gods because they do not need to outsource meaning. They can have purpose rooted in reality: family, human progress, curiosity, art, love, shared intelligence, all the things we actually know exist. None of those things require pretending that invisible beings are secretly pulling the strings.

If you want to call that “faith,” fine, but then the word loses the very thing that distinguishes religion from everything else. My confidence that the sun will rise tomorrow is based on repeated observation of a rotating planet. That is not faith. My willingness to cross a road cautiously comes from experience and learning, not from believing a god will save me. (Inductive reasoning as our old friend Davis would say).

Your last point about a flower growing strong is true in its own lane. Healthy organisms tend to repair and grow. That reality is grounded in genetics, selection pressures, and biochemistry. No divine intervention (or divine invention) is required.

We atheists have a perfectly good word for secular confidence in the future: Hope. It comes from evidence of what humans have achieved and what we can improve. Calling it “faith” is a way to smuggle religion back into the conversation through a linguistic side door. Faith needs gods. Hope does not. It needs reasons.

Life has intrinsic value simply because you are a sentient, thinking organism who experiences the world. You don’t need a celestial permission slip for that. You don’t need a deity to validate your existence. You get to decide what matters, what’s worth protecting, and what you dedicate your short time on this planet toward. You can decide what gives your life meaning.

Atheism is the more mature position to hold. Recognizing our own mortality compels us to look our own extinction in the eye without flinching. That is not a child’s task. Religion tends to anesthetize death. It says the story isn’t over, the real world comes later, this life is just an audition. That’s comforting for the less mature thinker. The atheist has no such luxury. You get one run. No retakes. No “ultimate justice” waiting offstage. No magical reunion with everyone you’ve ever loved. You understand that the people you care about are temporary and you act accordingly. You understand that what you do matters precisely because there are no cosmic do-overs.

So yes, as Jake says, “live in the moment”. Make you relationships counts. Use your time intentionally. Don’t delay joy or happiness for some future rewards in another life. Leave the place better that you found it. The price of this reality is stark honesty. The reward is genuine freedom.

[jakelafortParticipant]

A plus Reg.

On a par with the best passages of Bertrand Russell and similar authors.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Thank you for your kind words Jake. I happen to be thinking in this line of thought all week…..from the piece I wrote for the previous week’s Sunday School post. We atheists should spend more of our time enjoying the fruits of freethinking.  Just Think Atheist and be in the Zone. 🙂

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

Simon, I think you are trying to rescue the word “faith” by redefining it. You are taking a specifically religious term that means believing in something without sufficient evidence and trying to stretch it until it becomes a synonym for “hope” or “general trust in life.” It sounds warm but it is sleight of hand.

I think that in the religious context it has that dual meaning of both “believing in nonsense” and “faith in life”.  The faith in life aspect is one of the points where religion and science overlap, since it is genetically programmed through evolution and natural selection for us to have the superpower to regenerate after injury (for one example).  So, if that’s what Christians, through the example of Jesus, go nuts over, then religious faith isn’t all nonsense.  That must explain the majority of their sticking power over 2000 years.

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

My confidence that the sun will rise tomorrow is based on repeated observation of a rotating planet. That is not faith.

It’s still faith.  Just well-founded faith.

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

People can have high life satisfaction without believing in gods because they do not need to outsource meaning. They can have purpose rooted in reality: family, human progress, curiosity, art, love, shared intelligence, all the things we actually know exist. None of those things require pretending that invisible beings are secretly pulling the strings.

Yes, these are the kinds of things that non-religious people have faith/hope in.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Simon, you are still redefining “faith” to make it appear intellectually respectable. You are using the religious version, which explicitly praises belief without evidence, and you are stretching it to also mean rational expectations grounded in observation. That doesn’t create unity between religion and science. In a debate it confuses the points being made.

“Faith in life” as you call it is not the same as religious faith. The ability of living organisms to repair themselves or avoid danger is biological instinct shaped by evolution. You don’t need Jesus, Yahweh, Thor, or any supernatural claim to explain wound healing. The entire process is molecular biology, but the interpretation is where religion inserts its poetry.

It is my understanding that the Sun will rise tomorrow. It does not require any faith on my behalf. I do not set an alarm for 4:am to pray to the Creator of the Universe to roll the Sun out again. I do not believe it will rise tomorrow based on “well-founded faith.” Rather, I have an expectation, based on evidence (inductive reasoning), that it will rise. Confidence in a well-supported scientific conclusion is not faith. Faith does not graduate into “good faith” simply by piggybacking on science.

There’s also the issue of the word “belief.” Theists often claim atheists “have beliefs too” as if that puts religious faith and justified conclusions on equal footing. The problem is that “belief” does two entirely different jobs in English. In religion, belief is accepting something as true without sufficient evidence, sometimes even against evidence. In science and everyday reasoning, belief means “I accept this because the evidence points that way, and I will change my mind if better evidence appears.” One is fixed. The other is provisional. One protects itself from criticism. The other depends on criticism. Using the same word for both only creates confusion. If you want to talk about justified beliefs, call them that. Faith shouldn’t get to hide inside honest language.

If every justified belief is re-labelled “faith,” then the term loses any ability to distinguish belief with evidence from belief without evidence. This is a tactic used by religious apologists so they can claim “atheists have beliefs and use faith too in holding them”. Religious faith only survives by making that leap and insisting it is virtuous. Science does not ask for that leap. It rejects it. That is how rational inquiry works. There’s no psychological need to prop up the conclusion with faith.

As for sticking power over 2,000 years: longevity does not validate ideas. Astrology has stuck around longer than Christianity. So have acupuncture and monarchy. Tradition is not a truth-testing tool.

You end by saying non-religious people put their “faith/hope” in family, progress, curiosity, and so on. There is a fundamental category error there. Hope is an attitude toward the future. Faith is belief in truth-claims.

If we ever want a clear conversation, we should stop pretending that the word “faith” can do two opposite jobs simultaneously. When belief is supported by evidence, we have better words: knowledge, a reasonable expectation, an inference, trust, hope…

In brief (not like me to be!), Faith only enters the picture when evidence leaves. Those who rely on faith smuggle their standards into the conversation and pretend they’re doing the same work as evidence. Faith is a commitment to a conclusion. Science is a commitment to the method.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Jake,

Ya know that soldier who is cold and in pain danger at every moment and yet finds a moment to smoke a butt and feel the glow of life? That same guy in a quotidian mindless job at break smoking a butt might think….this sucks man. Rat on a fucking wheel. Get me off this imaginary apparatus.

In other words there are ways of achieving life satisfaction that are mutually exclusive. Supersize the moment to moment joy of it all without a promise of utopia or a funzalow. Be in this moment. You are almost there.

Your Jesus stuff is creative.

While consenting adults certainly have the right to smoke, smoking as a life-fulfilling act is as imaginary and creative as Jesus. Not the best example to make your point.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Simon,

All this proves is that words can have multiple meanings, another thing that doesn’t require religion.

[jakelafortParticipant]

Depositing carlinesque brain scat just like that DJ.

The butt is not the significant factor Enco. Rather it is the juxtaposition of smoking under different circumstances and the world of difference in feeling. Optimism regarding the future is not the sine qua non to valhalla that Simon says.

You think there will be elections? Pope, you are citsimitpo!

Faith? The way it is extolled, the way its victims are perceived as virtuous is pukeworthy. If i had to choose one word that is inimical to betterment of civilization gotta go with faith. I am not limiting it to religious faith. Same for the secular religions.

I keep thinking how important it is for Israel to have a massive counterpropaganda campaign. Not only for the sake of jews the world over and Israel but as a means of altering the trajectory. Wtf am i going on about?

It is nearly universal to posit free will as the causative agent in human affairs. This individual, that group chooses to be blank. It is so wrong headed and contrary to history/human nature and yet it is the dominant and underlying assumption nearly everywhere. In reality there are only a small minority who are not swept into the rivers of belief. And that reality is ultra important since beliefs drive affiliations and behavior. Beliefs put reason to bed and in a coma.

Thus an opportunity for the masses who have fallen in belief and identifying with palestinianism. Some of those lovers are or fancy themselves highly intelligent. Expose the actual history, the mythology, the inversions, the deliberate smear campaigns, the etiology of palestinianism and Jew hatred, the lefty’s who are leading the river and their obvious appeals to emotion, fallacies, non sequiturs…

Some hopefully significant number might in the aftermath realize how stupid they actually are. And in that realization approach issues in a more intelligent manner. And further make the assumption that if i, Joe Dirt, have been so badly tricked by such base garbage how can i expect the masses to resist the influence of blank? Thus it is humans as a species are acted upon and we need better ways of training and inculcating.

Ultimately it means seeing human affairs as they are. Begin to ameliorate the horrible islamic/arabic culture and the moronic lefty’s who encourage its continued existence and it is fixation on ending israel and killing jews. Begin to see all humans as being more alike than dissimilar. Stop the stupid lefty bullshit that is identity politics. Oppressor/oppressed racist BS. No way humanitarian concerns can be addressed with things as they stand. Ya see injustice you oppose it. You see the source of injustice you criticize the living befuck out of it. etc.

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