Last thursday (February 8th, 2024) the patience of people still hopeful for Brazil's future as a viable community were rekindled.
As expected for quite a while now, the former personal aide of fascistic former President Jair Messias Bolsonaro, Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid, made good on his...
Here in Brazil most people are presumed to be Protestants (of some variety) if they talk very often of god, Catholics if they talk often but otherwise show no obvious indicators, and there is a sizeable contingent of adherents to Umbanda and Candomblé that sometimes have trouble with intolerance...
Recent thread activity reminds me of what seems to me to be a common mistake on matters of religion, belief and faith.
(Disclaimer: I won't pinpoint the specific threads, both because they are fairly typical of common trends and because what interests me may not be their core subject matter.)...
How often have you heard of Ignosticism?
Do you feel that it is a sufficiently clear stance?
How useful do you feel it to be, and for which purpose?
Do you expect it to become less or better known in the future? Why?
A recent exchange led me to revisit an ancient realization: while it is customary to talk of "believers" in some creeds, belief proper is often optional and very circunstantial.
It seems to me that in practice what we see (most often and most emphatically in the Abrahamics) is rarely an...
@Jayhawker Soule and @Koldo may want to take a look at this thread.
So. Brazil. The place where I have lived for pretty much all of my life. One of apparently many that are at odds with themselves and express that conflict through their political system.
Currently, that dilemma is most...
Regarding the internal consensual understandings of what a given religious, quasi-religious or pseudo-religious group is, what it does, and what it is supposed to be and to do:
Do you perceive course correction mechanisms as important? Welcome? Necessary? Central? Optional? Of marginal...
There is a recent article about David Ickle's books that I have been reading and which at one point discusses the Sabbateans.
Pickin’ Up Truth Vibrations, Part 5: Renegade Without a Cause
Reading about that lampshaded to me how different a role religious communities had just a very few...
This thread attempts to compile a representative sample of the various takes on the meaning of the word "worship", with an emphasis on practical questions such as whether it is possible for people to be worshipping something without realizing it; whether it is possible to determine what is a...
The Pencilsword: On a plate
I wonder... does anyone who reads this comic somehow conclude from it that everyone has equal opportunities?
Myself, I think that it is an excellent presentation of why inequality of opportunities is both very real and very destructive.
I have come to the conclusion that, if religion is to last for a few more centuries, it will have to learn to deemphasize the concept of deity to a degree that current Christians and Muslims will have a very hard time dealing with.
Fortunately, we will have a few generations passing by, making...
There is a school of thought that thinks of ethics as obedience to rules. It is more formally called deontology, and somewhat popular among the Abrahamic Faiths.
Deontological ethics - Wikipedia
Competing views attribute significance to the consequences of the actions as opposed to just the...
Allow me to propose a little exercise of gauging worldviews and understandings of the word "Religion".
Please picture in your mind an ideal yet achievable world. One where religion is consistently expressed in its very best forms with the most auspicious of all conceivable results.
What are...
A few recent threads put me thinking about how often people end up weaponizing their own beliefs and their own inability to deal with disagreements and challenges to their views.
There is a saying attributed to Oprah:
"Don't back down just to keep the peace. Standing up for your belief builds...
I find myself contemplating the ideas of compromise and confrontation, and the trappings that come with each, mostly on the fields of political ideologies and religious beliefs.
I have no doubt that most everyone wants to think of ourselves as fairly reasonable people, and it would most unusual...
I have recently written an answer elsewhere for a question about why some people insist on attempting to declare atheism a "religion".
Sometimes writing such a reply enables me to put things together. This time, I realized that far as I am concerned it is just weird to expect someone to...
From another thread, where I unfortunately can not post:
Deities (in this case, the Hindu Devas) are powerful symbols of certain ideals or doctrines.
It is not only possible for an atheist to make constructive use of them (at least if the misconception that we actually believe in their...
(@shane may want to jump in)
A quick primer:
Very recently, ACA, the Atheist Community of Austin, expressed its disapproval of a video in Stephen Woodford's YouTube channel "Rationality Rules" due to presumed transphobic content.
This seems to be a good summary, from a source with good...