Sunday School

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

How religious is your state?

How some Texas teachers are fighting the Ten Commandments law in classrooms.

I got into a row by suggesting that I suspected most members of ICE were Christian (Christians are not that aggressive, the Christian shouted). Then I read this article.

Quincy statues lawsuit tests separation of church and state.

Bad ethics is at the rotten core of MAHA vaccine policy. It’s so stupid that even Trump hits back against Ladapo.

World of Woo:  You can’t build critical thinkers by rewarding blind acceptance to faith.

Environment:  Better farming through endophytes.

A new era of political violence? (I like the first comment… In a country of 330 million).

Right-wing extremist violence is more frequent and more deadly than left-wing violence.

Antiscience is an existential threat.

Bonkers CDC vaccine meeting ends with vote to keep COVID shot access.

The anatomy of a bad argument using the FLICC framework.

Let’s win the Assisted Dying argument on principle.

AI Chatbots might already be better than humans at debating. But can they be less mysterious than any of the other imaginary gods? Seemingly conscious AI Is coming. An education report calling for ethical AI use contains over 15 fake sources.

What led life to flourish roughly 520 million years ago?

Genetics: How do we inherit traits from our ancestors?

Early humans reached Europe via an Ice Age land bridge from Turkey.

Long Reads:

RFK Jr suffers from pre-existing convictions.

A.I. has gone phishing.

How understanding nothingness might just explain everything.

Sunday Book Club:  5 brilliant books to demystify the brain.

Some photographs taken last week.

While you are waiting for the kettle to boil……

Coffee Break Videos: New Rule: End the Blame Game. Richard Dawkins: Why atheism is winning.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Have a great week!!

“If evidence is the engine of progress, magical thinking is the handbrake left on.” – me.

[StregaModerator]

Thanks Reg!

 

[jakelafortParticipant]

I don’t know man.

Right wing v. left wing violence? If we examine history which is the greater source of it? Can you imagine. Communism? wow. Fascism/nazism? Ultra nationalism? Imerialism? wow

And today we have the lefties shielding Islam from criticism. Incalculable harm including violence is a direct result of that move. Not to mention the continued fuel for Palestinianism and the war on Jews. It is also enabling the far right making that war on Jews mainstream. And then of course swinging the pendulum far right with the stupidity of the left in its mindless immigration policies.

MASA. Make America Safe Again. Ya know that quote, “men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest” Of course ya do. Civilization will not be assured of its future nor individuals of their liberty until humans cease to be human.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

@jakelafort…. I used to have a t-shirt with that quote. I wore it back in the days when blasphemy was a thing in Ireland. It started  lot of rows and arguments….which was my intention 🙂

If you ever want a ‘different’ book to read, then I would recommend this one. I have it somewhere in the house. Reading the first page of the prologue should pique your interest!

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Here is a useful site to verify images…..i.e. fake or taken from elsewhere and re-used.

https://tineye.com/

[Belle RoseParticipant]

I was a little surprised that Mississippi is the number one most religious state considering they are almost always towards the BOTTOM when it comes to things like education, (bad) violent crime (high) and overall wellbeing (very poor) you would think the Christians would have had their shit together (not lol)

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Hours spent on religious indoctrination (especially in schools that emphasize rote memorization of doctrine) are hours not spent on inquiry-based learning, STEM labs, or building critical reasoning skills. When students are trained to accept authority and revelation as the highest form of knowledge, they often carry weaker habits of skepticism, hypothesis testing, and falsifiability, the very foundations of science.

Several studies show that exposure to diverse viewpoints, Socratic questioning, and evidence-based argumentation improves reasoning skills. Religious indoctrination often discourages those practices, especially when it frames doubt as dangerous.

If you fill children’s time with rote acceptance of doctrine, there’s less time for questioning and problem-solving. If you teach that answers, come from authority or revelation, you’re not exercising the muscles needed for critical thinking and falsifiability. If you wall off or dilute parts of biology, physics, or medicine to protect belief systems, you limit exposure to the very subjects most needed for STEM advancement.

Me and tidied up by Chatgpt.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Reg,

Right-wing extremist violence is more frequent and more deadly than left-wing violence.

Annoying, simplistic articles like this tend to have a way of avoiding some of the more obvious examples.

What about all the violence done during the “Summer of Love” for Saint George Floyd in 2020? Or violence associated with protests of the Occupy Movement in 2011? It doesn’t mention any of that. (And this is not a “Whataboutism” Fallacy, since it is not denying or minimalizing any other violence.)

These statistics on terrorism also never count September 11, 2001. That’s like a real-life version of the urban legend about Marion Barry allegedly saying that If you don’t count the murders, Washington, DC is a peaceful City.

And that’s another thing: Left and Right don’t apply to Islamic terrorism except that Islamists think that they are the only ones who are Right and should be the only ones who are Left.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Reg,

Bad ethics is at the rotten core of MAHA vaccine policy. It’s so stupid that even Trump hits back against Ladapo.

To give an update on my earlier situation, I got lucky and was able to get a prescription for a COVID-19 vaccine, completely covered by my insurance, with only the hassle of going to my Primary Care Physician, who fortunately didn’t charge me for the visit.

And according to this article, this hassle with prescription and Doctor visit requirements won’t happen next year, thanks to incompetence among Worm-Brain’s appointees:

Bonkers CDC vaccine meeting ends with vote to keep COVID shot access
A push to require prescriptions for every COVID shot failed in a split vote.

Beth Mole – Sep 19, 2025 5:44 PM |

https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/09/bonkers-cdc-vaccine-meeting-ends-with-vote-to-keep-covid-shot-access/

Oh, and I got bonus Pneumonia and Hepatitis A shots too.

• This reply was modified 4 months, 3 weeks ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Addendum

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Reg,

A new era of political violence? (I like the first comment… In a country of 330 million).

Once again, OnlySky is a lame as The Watchtower.

The alleged shooter…[Redacted]… comes from a white, conservative, gun-loving Mormon family. What’s more, the bizarre messages allegedly inscribed on his bullets showed he wasn’t just any conservative. Together with other evidence from social media, they suggest that he was a Groyper.

The Groypers are a faction of alienated, socially isolated young men who’ve given up on participating on the system. Their ideology is cryptic and confusing, by design. Their argot is a mishmash of memes, obscure pop-culture references, purposely bigoted “edgy” humor, and hateful slurs.

They don’t have a single political goal, but they can best be described as a nihilistic faction of the right. Their only aspiration is to watch the world burn. They exult in chaos—both observing it, and sometimes, causing it themselves.

This adds yet another layer of irony to the situation. If true, it would imply that Kirk was killed by a fellow right-winger for not being right-wing enough.

(On the other hand, newly leaked messages attributed to Robinson’s Discord server suggest he was largely apolitical, neither orthodox right nor orthodox left. This muddies the water about the cause of the Kirk killing, but if it bears out, it would suggest that people’s real views are rarely straightforward.)

All of this would be true only if Nick Fuentes and the Groypers are accepting pro-Trans people as members and only if Fuentes and the Groypers use anti-Fascist slogans and songs on their inscriptions.

And OnlySky is propagating this nonsense a full 6 days after the assassination. They need to do better.

• This reply was modified 4 months, 3 weeks ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Don't know where 'Yi' came from

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

@Enco –  you wrote: I got lucky and was able to get a prescription for a COVID-19 vaccine, completely covered by my insurance, with only the hassle of going to my Primary Care Physician, who fortunately didn’t charge me for the visit. 

You needed a script from a physician to get a COVID-19 vaccine and it cost money? Did booster vaccines also cost money? I recall walking into a Publics (in Atlanta) to get a booster shot which was free. I also got a full vaccine in an open area parking lot elsewhere in Georgia six months before that. Also free.

 

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Left and Right don’t apply to Islamic terrorism except that Islamists think that they are the only ones who are Right and should be the only ones who are Left.

I like that line 🙂

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Reg,

You needed a script from a physician to get a COVID-19 vaccine and it cost money? Did booster vaccines also cost money? I recall walking into a Publics (in Atlanta) to get a booster shot which was free. I also got a full vaccine in an open area parking lot elsewhere in Georgia six months before that. Also free.

Nothing costed me a thing, but under the rules established under RFK JR and his underlings, it could have cost if someone didn’t meet their arbitrary age and health parameters and had no primary care or insurance. CVS Pharmacy was charging $225 per vaccine.

For next year, at least, the requirement for a prescription for a vaccine has been defeated, as per the Ars Technica article. It wasn’t even clear that the CDC even had the authority to make the requirement.

[jakelafortParticipant]

Reg,

I think i read something by Diderot but can’t remember which book. Obviously strongly associated with the enlightenment. If i could go back in time to any historical era i might choose the salon as my 6th choice. And i really can not assure you i wont purchase your recommendation.

As a kid i would recite that entrails quote and some other anti-christian quotes. That one resonated but none more than the sleep of reason. I’d probably have to be pretty fucking high to get a tattoo but if i did that would work for me. I like the painting too and i was persuaded Goy a is ok by me.

I recall a study in which Arab Muslim students were evaluated in critical thinking. Not surprisingly they did not fare well. After taking a course in critical thinking their scores rose markedly. Afterwards they prayed to Alla for forgiveness in having breached the covenant to surrender.

Part of that story is true. And the funny part might be true.

[Author]

Posts