Today’s decision in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton is a direct blow to the free speech rights of adults. This ruling allows states to enact onerous age-verification rules that will block adults from accessing lawful speech, curtail their ability to be anonymous, and jeopardize their data security and privacy.
You can blame whoever you want, but the real blame comes down to one simple thing.
Religion.
The true cancer of society. The ultimate grift and control. The ultimate lie that turned millions into monsters. I hope that when soceity resets itself that all religion is abolished or at least a real law that restricts all religions from public services. Apparently, the separation of church and state is a smoke screen in today’s society.
Unfortunately, the phenomenon of social dogma that gives rise to religion has an evolutionary advantage. It’s how you get a bunch of people to focus on a common ends without spending too much time and energy being critical of the means. Humans who rally unquestioningly behind some percieved commonality get stuff done, regardless of how ethical it is. It’s why the Catholic church is immune to “cancel culture”. If any other modern institution had a documented history of figureheads systematically abusing children, they would be finished. But if everyone involved can say “that’s just the actions of a few evil individuals, they don’t represent my faith,” then they’ve achieved social immunity.
I honestly believe that until we see a belief system that emphasizes human dignity over corporate profits, we will continue our race to the bottom of capitalism. This isn’t something a democracy “reasons” its way out of, because falsifiable beliefs based in reason will always lose some argument (by design).
I think the Japanese religion of Shinto is pretty close to a best case scenario for a religion. It’s actually really fascinating. At its core is a belief that a spirit or godlike entity inhabits every single thing, living or inanimate, so you should treat everything with the respect of a divine being. But what you wouldn’t expect is, most people don’t literally believe these gods exist, they just see that practicing the religion makes their society better. In the west, we have a huge number of “non-practicing religious” people, but in Japan there is a huge number of “shinto-practicing non-religious” people. Combined with the fact that it (somehow) doesn’t have any figurehead trying to coopt it, it’s basically exclusively a net win for their society.
Btw abolishing religion is also be the quickest way to convince a bunch of people to start/join a religion.
While I hear you and mostly agree, “abolishing” religion will not have the intended effect.
Example: Much of Japan was atheist or basically non-religious before christians came along. Fast forward a couple hundred years, once christianity was legally banned in Japan, it just created a fuckton of martyrs and actually galvanized the remaining christians, who’ve persisted to today.
Probably the only/most effective way to stamp out religion is education—plain and simple. Education and creating a secular culture is the way to go imho.
Gov’ts stood against the mixing of church and state for years, so blaming religion alone neglects the whole story.
In reality it was politicians and gov’t pandering to the Moral Majority and Tea Party that set America on this particular road to hell.
The Tea Party was an astroturf’d campaign cooked up by the Koch brothers to realign conservative ideology with oligarchy under the guise of “originalist” patriotism. A very successful farce.
Much like the “right to life”, “Moral Majority” (which is a useful misnomer for Christian Conservative minority), and the rest of American Conservatism. Effective smoke and mirrors. All of it.
Hear, hear. Give me myth. Give me legend. Leave your theology at the door, though. I love me an ancient tale.
To be fair, though, popular myths are what led us here.
Ancient Aliens is the perfect gateway to anti-science, which gave us figures like RFK Jr who now has the power to fuck all the progress we’ve made in the hundreds of years since vaccines.
Creationism is now being taught in public schools, which undermines centuries of science. Public science is being dismantled, all for their rapture fantasies.
They’re not hiding climate science because they disagree, but because they think it’s a sign of the apocalypse and a good thing, so they don’t want people to fight it.
They’ve said this out loud, many times. It’s all on video. Again, Pikachu face.
Could you link one of those videos, or some names or something so I can find them myself?
Anything from the Discovery Institute or the stuff aimed at kids by PragerU is usually a good start. Materials by Creation Ministries or any of the christian textbook companies is good, too.
I don’t have specific video links, but like I said, it doesn’t matter much. If you search for ‘christian curriculum’ or ‘christian textbook’ you’ll see many various examples.
Too much drama for something natural for humans, that humans evolve anew when it’s taken from them.
You can’t live without religion, you’ll just invent a new one.
Kinda how Christianity took over Mediterranean when the plethora of old cults turned into something like attractions in a park, and for mystery religions it was just another mystery religion, but easier to access.
Or how Soviet ideology was quite similar to a religion (the magical part was concentrated in the “dialectical materialism” and “scientific communism” things), and when people stopped believing into that, hundreds of sects and superstitious beliefs start popping like mushrooms after a rain.
Clearly some of us can. But as a whole we do seem to crave finding purpose behind random events.