#secular humanists

[theexodvs]

Terminology as a cultic marketing tactic

Oftentimes, cults and cultic movements will use flowery names for themselves in order to silence criticism. For example, the concept of neurodiversity, the existence of more than one distinct neurotypes among humans, is real. But a particular movement that promotes pseudoscience has taken the name "neurodiversity" for themselves. In this way, they can insist that any criticism of the movement is a denial of the concept. It is an offensive tactic, as a casual observer would likely not take the time to do the research and realize that the movement and concept are two entirely different things.

Other examples include:

Humanism: Since it has "human" in the name, humanists will paint their critics as misanthropic.

Men's rights: Since the movement has "men" and "rights" in the name, MRAs will paint their critics as haters of men (including male critics), or haters of rights. The same applies to men's liberation.

Transgenderism/trans rights: Since the movement has "transgender" in the name, transgenderists and TRAs will paint their critics as "hateful" towards trans people.

All Lives Matter: Since the movement has "all lives" in the name, its adherents will paint their critics as being misanthropic or apathetic towards people's lives, for much the same reason as humanists.

[jesusinstilettos]

“Oh I’m just not the creative ty-“

Wrong, all humans are inherently creative in some way when their needs are met and they are given the leisure time to pursue hobbies. It came free with your being a social species wired by evolution to love doing stuff with your hands. Don’t define art through a consumerist lens where it’s only worth existing if it’s something someone would buy. Connect with your inner monkey, create to create and let it just be.

[weirdmageddon]

i posted this on twitter also but it’s still eating at me. i’m so fucking embarrassed to be jewish rn. i dont want to be associated with this ongoing bullshit from israel. why do we need our own state. theyre just making every jew across the globe look bad in general even though many of us are conflicted about zionism and the legitimacy of israel as a state

people have hated jews throughout history for no fuckin reason but now israel exists but now its like. GIVING people reasons to hate us as a group. note that i DON’T conflate zionism with jewishness, but a lot of people in the world don’t know the difference because theyre uninformed and been dripfed cultural antisemitic tropes their whole life and that’s the scary part is them falsely putting two and two together. like what the fuck israel stop youre just putting fuel on the fire for people around the world to hate an entire group of historically persecuted people if youre being this shitty with your insane colonialism and apartheid like……I Want No Fuckin Part Of This. you’re spelling our own doom. you cant just swoop in and go “mine now” and then oppress the people you took land from under a regime without my blood boiling at the injustice no matter WHO you are. even if my lineage is tied to you. so when news outlets support israel it doesn’t feel like they have the best interest of jews as a people in mind. it’s in the interest of a zionist ethnostate and whatever that christian zionism belief is about the jewish people returning to the holy land as prerequisite for the second coming of jesus. its not like they care about us as a dispersed ethnocultural group, it’s all for that religious narrative that a bunch of people in the US are backing.

saying you want all jews to die is antisemitic. beating someone up because they’re jewish and no other reason without knowing their views is antisemitic. criticizing human rights violations perpetrated by israel and the belief that one group deserves more rights another is not antisemitic. and the fact that israel has the ability to pull that antisemitism card in response to criticisms of the violations they commit because their state is the “jewish homeland” drives me fucking insane. take fucking accountability for your actions. and yes, there do exist full-on anti-jewish groups in the middle east that go beyond hatred of israel’s policies and existence as a state and i’m tired of people pretending there aren’t in fear of appearing to seem like they support the state of israel. on the other side of things many people overestimate this by fearmongering and saying EVERY arab is out to get jews worldwide, telling people like me “they want YOU dead”. this is not the belief every person in the middle east and it really rubs me the wrong way that people group millions of individuals into all-encompassing lumps like this. many people there do understand nuance of this political situation.

even if i have that “right of return” by israeli law or whatever, i don’t feel obliged to it; it does not register as fair. why do i have a “right of return” when i’ve never even been there in the first place while palestinians who have homes there can’t return to them? what’s the basis for that? substituting objective reality with an imaginary reality? i don’t think like that. i can hypothetically come and go whenever i please but palestinians are severely limited in mobility? what makes me more entitled to that land than the people who lived there for centuries? nothing that comes from natural law thats for sure. it’s all artificial and inflated.

but at the same time i also dont want to be the target of antisemitism and caught in the fray just for being ethnically jewish. once people start calling for the genocide of entire groups we’ve got issues (and you better believe this absolutely applies to the palestinian victims in gaza too), because people who dissent to the violence perpetrated by the loudest are caught in there with the people who are perpetrating the violence. lack of nuance. people conflating israel and its zionist apartheid policies with jewish ethnicity and culture worldwide. other people conflating being terrorist anti-jew with muslims worldwide (like that 6-year old palestinian-american boy that was just stabbed to death in chicago). scary times man. but as a jew i can’t just opt out of this if it’s how i was born as. i don’t have control over that. but i can control what i think and what my beliefs are

[stormofdefiance]

I wanted to share some wee thoughts about Ratio’s E6 art & why I believe it is a symbolic parallel to Michelangelo’s David. This speaks to both Ratio’s humanist beliefs and possible future plot points.

Ratio’s E6 is Vincit Omnia Veritas or Truth Conquers All. I’ve heard it claimed (although I have no idea if it’s explicitly stated anywhere?) that the character’s E6 art represents them at their innermost core, an honest and deeply vulnerable shard of themselves. Evoking David here is an interesting choice; the biblical figure who, using nothing but a stone and sling, took down the tyrannical Goliath. The parallel is perhaps as simple as this: Ratio views himself - and by extension the truth - as the underdog, someone never accepted into the Genius society, forever to be kept from Nous and THEIR gaze, but nonetheless will, in the end, prove himself the final victor. Truth will topple the seemingly unconquerable, whatever that might be.

But I also think Michelangelo’s David is a specifically interesting parallel to draw on from a historical perspective. Ratio is pretty much the textbook definition of a renaissance man - he is a philosopher, a scholar, interested in medicine and science and the vast array of human achievement. He speaks in Latin (the language of education during the renaissance in Europe that allowed the transmission of information without having to rely on translation) while heavily styling himself on Ancient Greek symbols and drawing from Greek philosophy (often seen at the time as more ‘sophisticated’ and interested in ‘wisdom’ than the contemporary ‘militaristic’ Romans).

Michelangelo’s David was the first colossal marble statue to be carved since antiquity, and it came to be a symbol of the renaissance itself. This is interesting to me for Ratio and what I believe are his humanist beliefs. Humanism was an ideal that propagated during the renaissance that championed the belief that man had beauty, dignity and worth that deserved as much respect and adoration as any deity. Keep in mind this philosophy was emerging following the Middle Ages and at a time where religious institutions across Europe held exorbitant and sometimes absolute power. David as a statue is an ode to the sublime beauty of the human body, completely unashamed and uninhibited in his gigantic nakedness (Doctor! You’re huge!) retaliating against the idea that prominent idea at the time that man’s body is inherently sinful. The humanists sought to recenter humanity, and David became a symbol of man’s independence against the seemingly unconquerable might of the Church.

Consider how Ratio centres humanity in his Simulated Universe project, how he values every life, how interested he is in constant self-improvement. How this symbol - of not just the renaissance but of the re-centring of humanity itself - becomes an echo of an effigy fixed in the centre of his soul.

Ratio has never - as far as I’m aware? - stated or hinted at any desire to overthrow the Aeons or even disparage or rubbish them, but it is clear to me that he believes in the strength man can draw on despite them, through sheer force of intelligence and clever planning and fiercely independent thought, the weak can ultimately overcome, or at least stand shoulder to shoulder with, the strong. Perhaps this will become a more pertinent plot point in the future - who knows? - but this was fun to chew through nonetheless 🫶

[andromeda3116]

gah now i'm getting On My Shit about the discworld again and like i've said what i want to say about the witches and the watch but there's also small gods like i will never be over small gods i finished it and i was like... has this... has this healed some of my religious trauma?

if you've never read it, the plot is thus: on the disc, gods get their power from belief. therefore, the more believers a god has, the more powerful they are. and so, there is this god -- om -- who has risen in power, who has a country devoted to His worship, which hunts down and slaughters heretics and infidels, to whom people pray multiple times a day and make pilgrimages to His holy city, which has a huge citadel and huge structure of a complex religion devoted to his worship. and, on a whim, He comes down one day to see how things are going.

and discovers that he has no power.

that, in this country of millions who profess to worship Him with all their hearts, there is only one person left who actually believes in Him.

and there's a lot of meat there, and a lot more plot to delve into, but the core theme ends up boiling down to this:

can you forgive your god for how they failed you?

and do they deserve that forgiveness? how can they earn that forgiveness?

because ultimately, the forgiveness that the messianic archetype is embodying is not that of the god's grace, but of the people's -- to forgive their god his absence. to give their god another chance to be their god.

and whether or not you, in the end, can forgive, it gives you the language to realize that this is what you were asking for with your last prayers. whether or not you can ever go back, whether or not there have been other reasons since that have convinced you further, it gives you the language to accept that your god failed you. and it is not your fault.

this book speaks loudest, perhaps, to those of us who left our church with grief, not with anger. with hurt betrayal, not with the fires of defiance.

it didn't change my lack of religious belief, but it helped me conceptualize my feelings about the church, the things that went deeper than intellectual arguments. about that sense of betrayal, that hurt, that twisted-up knot within me that it had built, and it gave me the mirror within which i could see that i had been failed by my beliefs. it wasn't that i hadn't believed enough, it was that my belief had been betrayed by the absence of an answer.

there have been other reasons since then that have cemented my atheism, but small gods made me stop hating the church i used to love, because it made me recognize why i hated it so much and said "you're not wrong, it didn't have to be this way. you were betrayed and you were failed and you can let it go, now."

[chicagosfinest2021]

First of all, no one "turns" into an atheist; it is literally our natural state when we come into this world. There's no more such a thing as a "Christian baby" or a "Muslim baby" than there is a "Marxist baby" or a "Socialist baby".

I was raised Christian and received religious instruction growing up but I never considered myself a Christian; like a lot of people I just did what I was told because I was too young to know better. But I'm telling you NOTHING gave me the clarity to disassociate with ALL religions for good like actually studying it in college (Comparative World Religions, Women in Religion and a semester of Islam respectfully).

But changing your worldviews and personal beliefs based off of new, verifiable information is something that should be *celebrated* and encouraged. It does not make you a bad person or a "sinner". And to realize that it *is* actually possible (and necessary) to be good without god is one of the most self-emancipating conclusions one can come to IMO.

If your religion/beliefs insists that you don't exercise critical thinking skills and tells you to reject new ideas and facts. . .what does that say about the institution of religion itself?

She was that close to almost getting it.

[booksandwitchery]

The Intersection of Magic, Science, and Psychology

As a rule I like to go back and look at my first grimoire periodically (I'm a baby witch, so I'm only on my second right now) and flip through it. It's great because there are always things I've forgotten, or changed my mind about, etc.

Today I decided to go back and flip through, and I read something that I don't even remember writing. It is a synthesis of things I read from NaturalPagan.org and an article called "What Is Manifestation? Science-Based Ways to Manifest":

I. Research on growth mindset by Carol Dweck shows conclusively that believing you can do something makes it more likely that you can successfully do that thing. This means that the mere belief that you can do something contributes to the manifestation of your desires.

II. The observable effectiveness of visualization has been well-documented by scientists; visualization works and has a profound effect on performance, health and success. This impact is measurable--it isn't a solely subjective opinion. Visualization also activates regions of the brain responsible for creative, intuitive, and holistic thinking. Mental imagery impacts many cognitive processes in the brain, such as motor control, attention, perception, planning, memory, etc.

III. Studies by psychologists have revealed intriguing results about the effects that rituals have on people's thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Rituals (secular or otherwise) contribute to better execution of tasks, reduced anxiety, and heightened ability to experience positive emotions.

Ergo, my sweet friends: this is why witchcraft works.

[bilaudad]

will prob never stop losing my mind that it was after meeting Jesus that Crowley changed his name

[semiotomatics]

created a humanism emoji to match the other religious symbol emojis, in case you even care

[utilitycaster]

Your post about the religious issue and the separation between audience/cast/characters hit on something important, I think. I was really annoyed about the discussion on thursday but I think I developed a negative reaction to the general matter because of the "discourse" and some opinions in the fandom. And that's definitely something I have to untangle. But I also feel a disconnect to the ingame discussion. And of course, that's probably got to do with how the players engage with this vs how I perceive it. But I do not understand how people that haven't really had anything to do with religion just go "yeah, no, why not screw the gods" so consistently. And I don't know if I missed something important about the world, the context, the discussion, or if that is just something going against my personal tastes and the campaign just focusing on a subject matter (rebellion against gods instead of against religious institutions) that I won't enjoy as much. I mean....did I miss anything about that? Because at this point I'm really not sure anymore.

See, I get it because we're rehashing some elements of the Team Wildemount half of the party split, and as we've all mentioned the fandom discourse is being brought up again. That said, I think a lot of people are overstating the way the PCs feel about the gods because it's not as all in as, say, Pike or Caduceus (and because people are refusing to take FCG's explorations of faith seriously, and the various dumb complications the fandom discourse has always had are still presence). Like...even FRIDA was both phrasing it as a temporary sleep rather than a permanent death and it came out not long after that FRIDA was very obviously projecting their own anger at their own situation onto the gods, and that Deanna had been taking the position of defending the gods. I've seen multiple people say Deanna is anti-god when in fact she's extremely pro-god, but she has complicated feelings and she's overwhelmingly works over faith which is very difficult for people from a faith over works background to grasp.

Similarly, I don't see Deni$e, Bor'Dor, and Prism as particularly anti-god so much as apathetic and not thinking this through. Like, they strike me as how apolitical people in the real world often act. People will often say "the government never did anything for me" but most of them are not actually, when it comes down to it, radical anarchists who openly support tearing down the system; they're just complaining. Like, Deni$e has no love for Ludinus either, and all three of those characters are mostly invested in just getting home and not being involved, and "screw the gods" is just a thing to say rather than an actual philosophical position. It's very stupid when fans are like "what did the GODS ever do for the characters" since they have the benefit of distance, and should have some passing familiarity with theological/philosophical discussions of free will, but it's completely understandable when characters do it.

Honestly what I find more interesting, personally, is that the party was so suspicious of what was going on that they accidentally got press-ganged into the rebellion whereas they could have just gone to the inn for the night and felt things out more subtly. And to be clear I don't think this is a bad thing, nor do I think this was railroaded (party made a series of decisions that led to what happened) but I'm way more invested right now in the story unfolding about the forms of extremism and power and poorly handled activism/community relations. The gods are honestly a backdrop.

[oldinterneticons]

[jesusinstilettos]

When I am on my couch crocheting 225 granny squares to make a blanket and my partner is next to me coding a video game he is making for hours at a time I remember we are really no different than our ancestors. Just funny monkeys in love with using tools and making stuff! Using our hands! Just like our ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago, I’m just like them fr.

[pierz]

i've been exploring my personal spiritual beliefs a bit recently and just realized that i'm quite possibly the scariest imaginable thing to the southern baptists in my area — not only a godless heathen (atheist) but a WITCH (pagan)

[avalonauggie]

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Vivienne Dragon Age and Max Black Sails, they could never make me hate you

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Jeff Arnold

Published: Apr 4, 2024

Before U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman “came out” as a secular humanist, those closest to the California congressman warned separating himself from the rest of Capitol Hill could produce disastrous results.

Yet, Huffman, D-C.A., remains part of a super minority of U.S. politicians who remain uncommitted to a specific faith group.

Among the 118th Congress, 88% of Congress identifies as Christian at a time when almost 30% of Americans are characterized as “religious nones,” according to a 2023 Pew Research poll. Only Huffman and Arizona independent Kyrsten Sinema check the box of religiously unattached or unbelieving — making up 0.2% of the 535-member lawmaking body.

Many candidates and lawmakers alike are leery to identify as anything but Christian, Huffman says, fearing political backlash. He says it makes him the only legislator “the only one dumb enough” to become what he refers to as a “religious oddity.”

“That really puts me in a league of my own,” Huffman told NewsNation.

To believe or not to believe

Huffman was once devoutly Mormon and even a member of the denomination’s priesthood.

But after checking the Humanist box, the Democrat says he is among a quietly growing number of politicians who are uncomfortable with being forced into a religious box, which he finds limiting while the majority of his congressional colleagues represent a Christian category that has several denominational sectors.

New Jersey state Sen. Andrew Zwicker has stepped out even further.

Zwicker considers himself a “multi-generational atheist” who jokes he has been in more churches, temples, synagogues, and other houses of worship since he was elected than ever before.

Yet, his standing as a non-believer and blue state representative has not cost him in ways it might in more conservative parts of the country.

“It’s not about what I believe or don’t believe in,” Zwicker told NewsNation. “It’s more about, we are a country of … all faiths and the freedom to have any faith or no faith at all.”

Huffman initially had concerns about how voters would react to what he jokingly refers to as his “leap of faith.”

A 2020 Gallup poll of voters showed that 40% said they would not vote for an atheist for president, which ranked as one of the largest percentages among several categories. It only trailed “socialists” — of which 55% of voters indicated they would not support.

But in a progressive district, Huffman captured 72% of the vote in the California primary election this March. He faces Republican Chris Coulombe in November.

Does being a believer equate to trust?

Azhar Majeed, the director of government affairs for the Center For Inquiry, told NewsNation that politicians who identify as persons of faith have become co-mingled with being a decent person who will do the right thing and choosing to classify as an unbeliever can often be met with negativity.

“The question, I think in many voters’ minds is, ‘Is this a trustworthy person? Is this somebody who will do the right thing and have my interests in mind as a voter?'” Majeed said.

In the 1970s, Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority carried a significant Washington influence. In the 1980s, one of President Ronald Reagan’s most important speeches came before religious broadcasters.

NewsNation political contributor George Will says in 2024, however, the political tide has turned in matters of faith.

Will, a self-identified atheist who “doesn’t make a deal of it,” says that among the most important questions to be asked is whether a political candidate cares about potential constituents.

“Very few people, it seems to me, say (a candidate) is unchurched, therefore, he’s ungodly, and therefore, he’s untrustworthy, unworthy, and disagreeable,” Will said. “I don’t think many people reason like that anymore.”

Yet, for many politicians, identifying as Christian means that “you’re not offending very many people and you’re pleasing a lot more people.”

Sinema, Congress’ other 0.2 percenter, was raised Mormon. But since leaving that faith group, she has stopped short of considering herself an atheist. When she was sworn into office, she did so by holding a bound copy of the U.S. Constitution rather than the Bible.

A spokesman told CBS News that Sinema’s choice had more to do with her fondness for the Constitution rather than a defiant act of non-belief.  Sinema’s office did not respond to NewsNation’s interview request.

Huffman, the card-carrying Humanist, technically considers himself an atheist.

Humanists believe in “good without God” and base their beliefs on science and rationality, Huffman said. They also are committed to a moral obligation to those around them as human beings and do not subscribe to incentives for an afterlife or a penalty toward hell.

Atheism, meanwhile, is not an affirmative belief there is no god, but instead, a rejection of the assertion that there are gods, according to the website for American Atheists.

Huffman agrees that there is still a clear stigma linked to the word which he calls an “incomplete label” that prioritizes atheists don’t believe rather than what they’re for.”

While Zwicker isn’t shy about his atheism, he says he doesn’t lead with it either, avoiding a trap that some conventional wisdom suggests may exist, experts say.

“It kind of becomes low-hanging fruit,” Majeed said. “I just think it becomes a line of attack that you are opening yourself up to.”

A growing population

In 2007, only 16% of Americans did not identify with religion while 78% considered themselves Christian, Pew reported.

By 2023, 28% identified as religiously unaffiliated. Among that group, 17% were atheists, 20% were agnostics, and 63% said they believed in “nothing in particular.”

Shortly after coming out, Huffman co-founded the Congressional Free Thought Caucus along with Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin in 2017. The group started with just four members but has since grown to 23, Huffman said.

Despite the group’s growth, Huffman says that politicians tend to lag behind what is “happening in the real world.”

With more Americans choosing to lose their religion, Will and Majeed insist lawmakers will eventually do the same as they are a governmental institution that is representative and broadly reflects the contours of the country.

“Progress has been slow and it’s not necessarily going to be a 1-for-1 change,” Majeed said. “But with each succeeding generation, you’re going to have a higher percentage of Americans who are religiously unaffiliated. I don’t think that’s going to go in the other direction any time soon.”

[ashtonderoy]

I went to the Belleville Ontario anti-Genocide protest. #FreePalestine

Written by Ashton Deroy In the midst of a Genocide in Israel which USA continues to support almost unconditionally. For the benefit of weapons manufacturers I attended an Anti-Genocide Protest in Belleville Ontario 4/28/2024 at 2:00PM on Bell Blvd . This is what was said during the Protest. ‘Unfortunately we ask that you not take pictures of us personally. Only are message. As Anti-Genocide…