Atheism

Keri Ladouceur no longer calls herself an Evangelical Christian.

Like many younger members of this sprawling American religious tradition, she’s left what she says has become a movement mostly defined by aggressive white conservatism and Christian nationalism, the prerogatives of male privilege, and a near obsession with regulating human sexuality.

Brian Dalton reviews the immorality of Mosaic Law and deconstructs the apologetic that says Yahweh didn't reveal his perfect moral code because we weren't ready for it.

Crosspost from !atheism@feddit.de.

An overview of studies which investigate correlations between morality and religious vs. secular / atheist ideologies presented by Phil Zuckerman who is a professor of sociology and secular studies at the Claremont colleges in California, USA.

Summary: Atheists / secular people not only have morals but are even more moral than religious people.

Note: Of course moral is a matter of perspective. In this context we agree that compassion and empathy are our foundations of moral.

Mike Johnson seems to have forgotten he's been elected to public office, not to church leadership. Conflating the two violates our First Amendment right to freedom of conscience.

The latest helpful guidance from Mr. Deity. If like so many of us you hear voices in your head, but aren't sure it's God, this vid's for you.

The agony of Wehner, Gerson, former Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore, and others over the intense loyalty most of their fellow conservative Evangelicals have displayed to Donald Trump, even as his record and rhetoric have grown more heathenish, is understandable. But they shouldn’t be all that surprised. In the mid-20th century’s great battles over fascist and quasi-fascist threats to parliamentary democracy, support for authoritarian and totalitarian leaders of the political right was generally concentrated among religious Christians who had incorporated secular conservative cultural views (especially nationalism and in many cases antisemitism) into their faith.

I've found that mobile users have trouble with the direct link, so here's a link to the comic itself.

In March, West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler canceled a student drag show organized by several campus student clubs including members of the Secular Student Alliance.

In an email to all students, faculty, and staff, President Wendler cited his personal religious beliefs and evoked God and Creator multiple times in his justification for canceling the student event. He also falsely likened drag to blackface, claiming that the art form is misogynistic, divisive, and void of human dignity.

President Wendler’s personal religious beliefs and biblical references have no place in justifying the cancellation of the event. West Texas A&M University is a public institution and the wall of the separation of state and church remains standing.

Last week, Andrew Seidel, a constitutional lawyer and vice president of strategic communications for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, visited West Texas A&M University to give an address to support the students suing President Wendler, demonstrate that drag is not threatening, and detail the dangers of Christian Nationalism.

Andrew explained that drag shouldn’t be a concern for anyone: “Drag is art. Drag is human. Drag is beautiful.” However for religious conservatives, anything that calls into question the gender binary or the conservative Christian idea of what men ought to look like is perceived as a threat – solely because of their religious beliefs.

I've got news for you, crackpot. The rapture already happened and you, the self-righteous, have been left behind with us, the great unbelieving. Let that sink in.

Religious and spiritual experiences are neurologically similar to the euphoria of love and of drug-taking, a team of neuroscientists has concluded.

The team, led by a University of Utah neuroradiologist Jeffrey Anderson, found that in a group of 19 young Mormons, the same reward-based neural systems associated with drug-taking were activated when the individuals were “feeling the spirit”. Specifically, the nucleus accumbens was repeatedly activated, an area of the brain that is key to the circuit of reward and reinforcement. The frontal attentional, linked to attention, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortical loci, associated with decision-making were also activated. Those with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortical loci have been shown to exhibit antisocial behaviour and have their moral judgement impaired.