You must log in or register to comment.
America as a whole needs to ensure following secular ideals for its public policies and laws.
I don’t mind people using religion in their personal lives for whatever reason, but it does seem like there’s a delusion driven community level effect that leaks out from temples, churches, mosques etc. It seems most of these people “mean well” but they don’t realize how much unintentional harm they’re doing. The Satanic temple type people adding fuel to the fire of religious zealots are making things worse.
In general, I hope it becomes taboo and outlawed to base rules or laws around mythology-based scripture. Where is this social movement? I get fuck cars and all, but secular humanism is seriously needed as a mainstream social movement everywhere, locally and globally.
your yearly PSA on the TST and COS:
some clarification here. The satanic temple, or the TST as it’s known is actually really based, while it is “satanic” that’s mostly a funny haha thing, the majority of it is mostly based around being a religion that isn’t awful. I.E. being nice to people, because you should do that.
A lot of flak they’ve gotten is for things like putting a satanic club into a school (that school had a bible study club) and various other shenanigans, notably the one satan con thing they had, where people protested, but inside it was pretty chill. It’s performance art and statement pieces primarily, which are perfectly apt, i feel. Freedom of religion and all. It seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Anyway, the point i came here to make was that the TST is the good one, and the church of satan, or COS, is the less based one, for instance, they believe that consuming blue cheese makes you gay. That’s like the religion religion one. Nobody likes that one.
Thanks for the clarification. Tbh, I just don’t like anything that markets itself as a religion
as a staunch believer in many a thing related to freedom, this is always something that irks me whenever it crops up. So i make this a habit from time to time.
That’s totally fair though, TST is kind of like the modern anti-religion. it’s only considered a religion because it would need to be in order to be an anti-religion. Personally that’s why i really like it, it’s primary purpose is respecting people, and it’s secondary purpose is to make a statement in regards to religion. Which i think is productive.
Maybe that’s just because i enjoy sociology and this is particularly involved in that sphere. But it is what is.
As a quasi-religious person I do agree that public policy and moral imperatives should have a secular basis. For example, when people look back at this point in history they’re going to see a particularly nasty stain in the way that 99% of the human population is responsible for a sort of perpetual holocaust of many other species of animal, all for nothing more than a little gluttonous sensory pleasure. That kind of morality is easily argued on a secular basis for all the substantial harms those lifestyles cause, and the sheer amount of tangible benefits for choosing a better way.
But secular policy is dangerous if it does not also support religious plurality. When one or two belief systems dominate, they invariably oppress smaller groups. Diversity of belief is a natural buffer against that.
That said, a religion does not necessarily need to base its exegesis on interpretation of arbitrarily chosen writings. One of the best things religious groups can do for themselves now days, if they want to adapt to the times and survive into the future, is embrace the scientific method in their own ways. Evolution shows us that the things that aren’t willing to change and adapt die.
The issue is core tenants of basically all major religions are incompatible with the scientific method.
That’s only true of institutions that are unwilling to change. Every major religion has sub-branches and other variant communities that have entirely different sets of doctrines, some more progressive than others.
