So, we have religious communities that alienate and vilify benign and vulnerable sections of society being replaced with the nebulous communities that intentionally act to protect and include the most vulnerable. But we lament the change?
I’m not lamenting anything. Finding new ways to solve problems the religious only superficially address is progress. It doesn’t have to look like it did before, and it should not.
Religious leaders cling to the delusion these young people will come to their senses, find Jesus, and come rushing back to church. A few might, most won't. I know of very few people who ever returned to organized religion after abandoning it.
Makes perfect sense to me. Gen Z have spent their whole lives getting fucked over by overtly religious asshats taking away their bodily autonomy, vilifying them and their LGBTQ peers, wrecking the economy, trashing the environment, and blaming them (y'know, when they're not 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 blaming Millennials instead) for all the world's problems- which they had no hand in causing because they weren't even born yet when the relevant decisions were being made- and all the while, those same overtly religious asshats extol the virtues of their goddything and how wonderful Da Lawd has been to 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮. Boomers and elder Gen X-ers might as well have put up a flashing neon sign proclaiming "𝑹𝑬𝑳𝑰𝑮𝑰𝑶𝑵 𝑴𝑨𝑲𝑬𝑺 𝒀𝑶𝑼 𝑨 𝑺𝑯𝑰𝑻𝑻𝒀 𝑷𝑬𝑹𝑺𝑶𝑵" in giant bold lettering.
Frankly, I'd be surprised if 𝘢𝘵 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘵 another quarter aren't nones as well, and just can't be as vocal about it because their families and communities are largely composed of overtly religious asshats. You can only kick down at and browbeat the youth so much before they realize the grownups in their lives are full of shit and just do their own thing instead.
"[Gen Z] began high (non-religious) and yet the numbers are still going up. As [the older generations] appear to be leveling off, there’s no telling how much higher the Gen Z non-religious numbers will get."
The leveling off of the older generations is simply because people tend to make big decisions and big changes before they reach the last third of their expected lifetimes. When we get old, we stick with the decisions we have already made.
BUT what I find encouraging about the multi-generational chart is that ALL of the older generations including my generation, the Boomers, are NOT DECREASING in their secularity. This debunks the myth I have heard for years from theists that as atheists get older and begin facing their mortality, they will return to religion. Nope. We've measured this for a long time, and the return to the churches isn't happening. When you have seen through a delusion, you don't want to go back.
There's a natural "survivor effect" that skews towards greater religiosity as a generation ages, because men die earleir and they tend to be less religious. All things being equal, we should see a turnover in the boomer and gen-X charts the same way we see in the silent generation chart.
So the fact that irreligiosity is still increasing in boomers and gen-Xers is actually quite extraordinary. It means the true 'deconversion' rate is so high that it overwhelms this survivor effect and makes the overall trend point in the opposite direction.
Bored to tears or guilt-tripped or whatever...made to feel unworthy of everything...I could go on. How much time you got?
For me the best part of Sunday Worship Services was when they were finally OVER and I could spend a few minutes outside in the sunlight talking to my friends and trying to feel normal again before being whisked home by my parents.
I don't think I understood that it is a problem. It works out fine in Norway, not replacing religion with anything else. Here the only problem is that the regent, Harald, more or less forced the government to keep a paragraph that states that the regenten has to be xian of a specific group.
NZ used to be one of the – if not the – least religious countries in the world until we got access to information from ex-communist countries which turned out to be more irreligious. I'd certainly sooner live here than in the US or – well – most of the US anyway. Wouldn't mind living in San Francisco as long as I had enough money.
When I was in SF back '91 while waiting for the trolley, I perused a real estate advert booklet. A two-bedroom/one-bath house was listed for $190,000. My parents bought a two-bedroom/one-bath house in an unincorporated part of the county bordering St. Pete for $15,900 eight years earlier. Can you imagine what the prices must be like today?
Just paid slightly north of $1.3 million for a house with an granny flat for the son who can't get a mortgage. Right at the height of the market – but luckily we also sold the height of the market and there are no mortgages involved. Still probably lost money though. And we now have no savings. 😛
It seems like nearly all the former colonies call their currency a dollar instead of the "motherland"'s pound. All of them have different values, of course. Wonder if we could combine them all and come up with one currency for all those countries like the Euro, so a dollar would be a dollar would be a dollar.
Hell no. Like I said we put our life savings into this thing as did the son, not that he had much time to save but his social life – if not non-existent is reasonably restricted so he managed to save hundred thousand dollars in four years of work. And he didn't have a student loan so ...
And of course my wife worked her way into a pretty good job in the tertiary sector, where they find it very difficult to replace her because she's the only one who really knows what she's doing and is competent enough. She's delayed her retirement because of this. So it's been hard but doable.
I know what they are in LA, (my sister is house-shopping) so I can only imagine they're worse in SF. 900 sq ft 850,000. I got 1900 for 180 5 years ago, now valued at about 268 in SA
Not since we reformed the whole church-thing in 2012. But the current king advised the government/parlament to keep a paragraph about the regents belief in our constitution. A regent still has to hold the belief system belonging to the Lutheran beliefsystem. I has been a very devoted republican* since then. More than what I already was.
It would seem as though, indeed, The Kids Are All Right.
Big surprise (NOT!) that it's the generation that has grown up with the internet and its open availability of unfiltered information that are the most likely group to be without religion. It also helps that, as religions begin to lose their numbers and influence and react by becoming more radical and less reasonable, GenZ sees this as well and likely doesn't care very much for it.
We still have a LONG way to go before religion is relegated to obscurity and irrelevance ... but we're getting there.
No vote to censure, no proportional disciplinary action, just expulsion. Their offense? Shouting through a bullhorn (𝘰𝘩 𝘯𝘰, 𝘰𝘩 𝘯𝘰, 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘢 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥, 𝘰𝘩 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘳, 𝘰𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘰𝘳). Disruptive, certainly, but hardly grounds for summarily shitcanning sitting legislators. Two of the three Democrats targeted were successfully expelled; the third retained her seat by a single vote (for bonus points, guess which two out of the three aren't white).
This raises two points: OT: What are they going to call the children of Gen Z?
The leading edge of Gen Z is rapidly approaching 30.
As they become parents, will any significant percentage of them flock back to the church to teach their kids "values", as so many older generations did, or will they stick with their disdain for traditional religions and instill values in their children without it? And what kind of woo will they embrace in its place?
What’s funny is that my siblings should all be the same generation, we only span six years and grew up close, but my younger brother is the first year of the millennial generation. And my elder brother is the epitome of Gen. x.
A few weeks ago, much to my dismay, my Brother sent a text to the family of a "Proud Dad" moment because one of his kids asked, "can we go to church?" (They're 7 and 8) Even more distressing, he was raised Catholic and AFAIK still is.
I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I get the impression my brother and/or his ex-wife has been taking them for a while.
My siblings and I don't talk religion much, they know I don't go to church, though they may not know how deep my dissatisfaction goes, but I was raised Baptist and I get the impression they know about as much about that tradition as I do about Catholicism. I'm not even sure my sister and youngest brother go to church except when they're visiting their mother. I know if they do, their politics make them very bad Catholics.
The decline religiosity, and especially the way it's more pronounced for the younger folk, is what motivates a lot of the increasingly hysterical reactions from the religious freaks, or religious freakshows as I like to call them now. This was already the case back in 2010 or so and it's getting worse, e.g., the anti-trans/anti-anything gay laws they're passing. And these efforts, as the article mentions, are likely a big reason why younger folks are leaving or never acquiring any affiliation. In other words, the more of this hateful bigoted crap the hardcore religious keep engaging in, the faster they're going to push people out of the faith, and that includes folks of all ages. So we can thank them for doing the world a great service for committing a kind of metaphorical suicide, or darwin awarding themselves.
"... the problem with people leaving organized religion is that they’re not necessarily replacing it with anything else. We’re not changing what our communities look like and believe; we’re just losing communities, period. As much as I’d like to think people who leave church are becoming more politically or socially active, we’re often just choosing isolation and nebulous online communities which don’t have the same benefits."
I was never much of a joiner, but once I was out as an atheist, I wanted to DO something with it, which is why I joined the Freedom From Religion Foundation and it's local arm, the Northern Ohio Freethought Society. I also joined the Cleveland Freethinkers, purely for fun and for the comradery of simple things like sharing a good meal and good company with like-minded people.
I'm also online with Atheist Universe, and while that's a small community, it's an enjoyable one.
Is Fox really suggesting that people send DT money for his defense? Hasn't he spent the last 2 decades telling us how rich he was. How many buildings he owns. Sell a few. Probably raise the property value to take his name off the building.
Yes, they really are suggesting that the man who flew to New York in his personal 757 airliner, then was driven to the courthouse in a limousine, dressed in a suit likely costing more than most blue-collar workers make in a year- and was then allowed to just fly back to Florida, because apparently a man who owns a 757 somehow 𝘪𝘴𝘯'𝘵 a flight risk despite, y'know, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘪𝘳𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘸𝘯𝘴 which is fully capable of just hanging a louie and fucking off to the Caymans or wherever- needs a $5 donation from Jim-Bob Fox Viewer to help with his legal bills.
Well, I wouldn't consider him a flight risk either. He's surrounded by Government agents at all times. Now if he dismisses his SS detail, then yeah he's going to run.
It's still utterly, completely insane that he was allowed to just leave like that... forget flight 𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘬- he 𝘥𝘪𝘥 flee. He left the court's jurisdiction, and they just let him do it. The man's got a local residence, for shit's sake! House arrest his ass 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 until it's go-time- I'm willing to bet that's still worlds more lenient treatment than the defendants who were arraigned before and after him got.
There was a story from – I think the 1960s may be late 50s, about someone in the US who put an advert in a newspaper saying "send a dollar" and giving a PO Box number. Every day this would go in until it was saying only one week left to send a dollar and so on down. Guy made thousands of dollars and couldn't be prosecuted, because he didn't promise anyone anything.
So yes, people will send money to just about anything. 😇
Duck-billed, egg-laying, venomous, marsupial, mammals. Somebody was fucking with us. Deity, aliens, time-traveling humans, Atlanteans, somebody was fucking with us.
Someday, if we're very very lucky, humanity will finally cast off all religious delusion.
A dream, I know. But still I have it.
So, we have religious communities that alienate and vilify benign and vulnerable sections of society being replaced with the nebulous communities that intentionally act to protect and include the most vulnerable. But we lament the change?
I’m not lamenting anything. Finding new ways to solve problems the religious only superficially address is progress. It doesn’t have to look like it did before, and it should not.
Religious leaders cling to the delusion these young people will come to their senses, find Jesus, and come rushing back to church. A few might, most won't. I know of very few people who ever returned to organized religion after abandoning it.
Makes perfect sense to me. Gen Z have spent their whole lives getting fucked over by overtly religious asshats taking away their bodily autonomy, vilifying them and their LGBTQ peers, wrecking the economy, trashing the environment, and blaming them (y'know, when they're not 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 blaming Millennials instead) for all the world's problems- which they had no hand in causing because they weren't even born yet when the relevant decisions were being made- and all the while, those same overtly religious asshats extol the virtues of their goddything and how wonderful Da Lawd has been to 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮. Boomers and elder Gen X-ers might as well have put up a flashing neon sign proclaiming "𝑹𝑬𝑳𝑰𝑮𝑰𝑶𝑵 𝑴𝑨𝑲𝑬𝑺 𝒀𝑶𝑼 𝑨 𝑺𝑯𝑰𝑻𝑻𝒀 𝑷𝑬𝑹𝑺𝑶𝑵" in giant bold lettering.
Frankly, I'd be surprised if 𝘢𝘵 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘵 another quarter aren't nones as well, and just can't be as vocal about it because their families and communities are largely composed of overtly religious asshats. You can only kick down at and browbeat the youth so much before they realize the grownups in their lives are full of shit and just do their own thing instead.
Thank you for wording my thoughts in Norwegian to very good English.
"[Gen Z] began high (non-religious) and yet the numbers are still going up. As [the older generations] appear to be leveling off, there’s no telling how much higher the Gen Z non-religious numbers will get."
The leveling off of the older generations is simply because people tend to make big decisions and big changes before they reach the last third of their expected lifetimes. When we get old, we stick with the decisions we have already made.
BUT what I find encouraging about the multi-generational chart is that ALL of the older generations including my generation, the Boomers, are NOT DECREASING in their secularity. This debunks the myth I have heard for years from theists that as atheists get older and begin facing their mortality, they will return to religion. Nope. We've measured this for a long time, and the return to the churches isn't happening. When you have seen through a delusion, you don't want to go back.
There's a natural "survivor effect" that skews towards greater religiosity as a generation ages, because men die earleir and they tend to be less religious. All things being equal, we should see a turnover in the boomer and gen-X charts the same way we see in the silent generation chart.
So the fact that irreligiosity is still increasing in boomers and gen-Xers is actually quite extraordinary. It means the true 'deconversion' rate is so high that it overwhelms this survivor effect and makes the overall trend point in the opposite direction.
"That said, the problem with people leaving organized religion is that they’re not necessarily replacing it with anything else. "
You know what, I'll take what I can get with people leaving religion and leave what happens afterwards to afterwards.
Maybe they're replacing it with sleeping in on Sunday morning. :)
And visit to actuals museums the rest of the day.
A day at the beach, a matinee, breakfast or lunch at a favorite restaurant...
The possibilities are endless when you're not shackled by having to attend worship services in your best clothes, bored to tears.
Noooo! It is illegal to pet manatees.
Especially the one name Hannity.
Ugh! The thought of petting him is vomit-inducing.
I wouldn't touch him with a .... 39-and-a-half-foot pole.
What if you buy it a drink first?
Bored to tears or guilt-tripped or whatever...made to feel unworthy of everything...I could go on. How much time you got?
For me the best part of Sunday Worship Services was when they were finally OVER and I could spend a few minutes outside in the sunlight talking to my friends and trying to feel normal again before being whisked home by my parents.
A matinee, a Pinter play, perhaps a piece of Mahler's. I'll drink to that. And one for Mahler.
Sometimes more than once a week.
And being less stressed out and less judgmental.
I wonder how many replace religion with conspiracy theories?
I know many churches have replaced religion with conspiracy theories.
And those that haven’t aren’t that much different anyway, religion being the original conspiracy theory.
Most churches ARE conspiracy theory breeding grounds nowadays.
"They conspire, they lurk, they watch my steps, hoping to take my life." I know that sounds like Donald Trump, but it's from Psalm 56:6.
Also sounds like "The Dream Police" by Cheap Trick.
I'm sure rump has picked up his share of cheap tricks, too.
I'm pretty sure Melania wasn't cheap.
Good point. Seems to me that the religious are more susceptible to conspiracy theories than the nonreligious, but that's just off the top of my head.
Or for that matter with some sort of hippie dippy woo new-age nonsense. But even that's probably better than Christianity.
My crystals tell me you're right.
Crystal light? Crystal meth? Or, heaven forbid, Crystal Pepsi?
I don't think there's any bottler in the country that still makes that mess. Hell, I can barely get them to make Diet Pepsi around here.
Root beer for me. Dad's, A&W, Mug, Thomas Kemper, Triple XXX, you name it.
No Diet Coke? 😵🤢🤮 It was formulated to taste like Pepsi.
Crystal balls: you can tell by the tinkling sound when I move.
Crystal Carrington.
That was the blonde?
I had to go to Walgreens tonight and I saw something even more abominable than Crystal Pepsi. Peeps Pepsi.
Tried it, really nasty.
EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!
That is just another one of the neurological defects of the conservative brain.
Better known as conspiracy fantasies.
I don't think I understood that it is a problem. It works out fine in Norway, not replacing religion with anything else. Here the only problem is that the regent, Harald, more or less forced the government to keep a paragraph that states that the regenten has to be xian of a specific group.
NZ used to be one of the – if not the – least religious countries in the world until we got access to information from ex-communist countries which turned out to be more irreligious. I'd certainly sooner live here than in the US or – well – most of the US anyway. Wouldn't mind living in San Francisco as long as I had enough money.
When I was in SF back '91 while waiting for the trolley, I perused a real estate advert booklet. A two-bedroom/one-bath house was listed for $190,000. My parents bought a two-bedroom/one-bath house in an unincorporated part of the county bordering St. Pete for $15,900 eight years earlier. Can you imagine what the prices must be like today?
Just paid slightly north of $1.3 million for a house with an granny flat for the son who can't get a mortgage. Right at the height of the market – but luckily we also sold the height of the market and there are no mortgages involved. Still probably lost money though. And we now have no savings. 😛
Assuming that's NZD, at today's X-rate, that's 812,116.50 in USD.
It seems like nearly all the former colonies call their currency a dollar instead of the "motherland"'s pound. All of them have different values, of course. Wonder if we could combine them all and come up with one currency for all those countries like the Euro, so a dollar would be a dollar would be a dollar.
Easily fixed. Just enter politics, with the slogan "Make New Zealand Great Again." Idiots will send you a fortune.
That's a reasonably crowded niche at the moment. :)
Teaching pays that much in NZ! 😲
Hell no. Like I said we put our life savings into this thing as did the son, not that he had much time to save but his social life – if not non-existent is reasonably restricted so he managed to save hundred thousand dollars in four years of work. And he didn't have a student loan so ...
And of course my wife worked her way into a pretty good job in the tertiary sector, where they find it very difficult to replace her because she's the only one who really knows what she's doing and is competent enough. She's delayed her retirement because of this. So it's been hard but doable.
Teachers here are getting hosed.
I know what they are in LA, (my sister is house-shopping) so I can only imagine they're worse in SF. 900 sq ft 850,000. I got 1900 for 180 5 years ago, now valued at about 268 in SA
SF is one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the country. Seattle's not too far behind them.
Is royalty in Norway at the head of church like in England ?
Not since we reformed the whole church-thing in 2012. But the current king advised the government/parlament to keep a paragraph about the regents belief in our constitution. A regent still has to hold the belief system belonging to the Lutheran beliefsystem. I has been a very devoted republican* since then. More than what I already was.
*) Not US-style of course.
Generally speaking, the kids are alright.
Who?
Baba O'Riley, for one.
Happy Jack, as well.
Boris the Spider.
Magic Bus.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5ac624ce71ce2f50cc291b9e09a25f3321b2500179da4ff213b3c49067f07a3e.png
𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘍𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘺 got a reboot?
Have you heard them when they try to speak?!
Speak? 🤔🙊👀💤🎩🐩🐾🐙🍿🍼⛲🚽🔥🎯🃏💰🗑;-)
It would seem as though, indeed, The Kids Are All Right.
Big surprise (NOT!) that it's the generation that has grown up with the internet and its open availability of unfiltered information that are the most likely group to be without religion. It also helps that, as religions begin to lose their numbers and influence and react by becoming more radical and less reasonable, GenZ sees this as well and likely doesn't care very much for it.
We still have a LONG way to go before religion is relegated to obscurity and irrelevance ... but we're getting there.
And to think... I was atheist before it was 'young and hip' to be so (;
"when I was your age I had to climb uphill in the snow (both ways) to GTF away from religion!"
You didn't believe the stories when they happened, and don't believe them now. : )
OT#2- This is what happens when the modern GQP gets a supermajority: https://apnews.com/article/tennessee-lawmakers-expulsion-d3f40559c56a051eec49e416a7b5dade
No vote to censure, no proportional disciplinary action, just expulsion. Their offense? Shouting through a bullhorn (𝘰𝘩 𝘯𝘰, 𝘰𝘩 𝘯𝘰, 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘢 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥, 𝘰𝘩 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘳, 𝘰𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘰𝘳). Disruptive, certainly, but hardly grounds for summarily shitcanning sitting legislators. Two of the three Democrats targeted were successfully expelled; the third retained her seat by a single vote (for bonus points, guess which two out of the three aren't white).
From the pictures I saw yesterday the three of them seemed black. Am I wrong ?
one is white the other two are not.
Yes but the white woman did not get expelled.
So the crime here seems to be not just shouting out of order in the legislature, it's shouting out of order in the legislature while black.
A couple of commenters here have mentioned a certain Who song, soooooooo...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afam2nIae4o
(Were they ever that young?)
They look like such nice boys, before they were blowing up drums, smashing guitars and rolling around in baked beans.
Pete did get in a couple of windmill strums.
No acid I've ever taken has given me a flashback that strong.
Were any of us that young? Youth has f...f...f...faded away.
Hope I die before...Damn! Too late.
This raises two points: OT: What are they going to call the children of Gen Z?
The leading edge of Gen Z is rapidly approaching 30.
As they become parents, will any significant percentage of them flock back to the church to teach their kids "values", as so many older generations did, or will they stick with their disdain for traditional religions and instill values in their children without it? And what kind of woo will they embrace in its place?
"What are they going to call the children of Gen Z?"
I'd start with "Hey you little fuckers! Get off my lawn!"
I think they’ve gone back around to A.
What’s funny is that my siblings should all be the same generation, we only span six years and grew up close, but my younger brother is the first year of the millennial generation. And my elder brother is the epitome of Gen. x.
DM older sister 1949, DM 1951, my cousin S 1970, our uncle 1972, me 1980. Talk about age gap and mixed generations 😁
1949 ... an excellent year!
Let me guess. Yours ?
https://youtu.be/ydcUaTpiHgQ?t=7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJTBru5F4mU 🙂
Howzabout this one...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur30bn_3G58
(A little darker and heavier, I know)
OK, Boomer. ;)
Gen Zod?
KNEEL!
A few weeks ago, much to my dismay, my Brother sent a text to the family of a "Proud Dad" moment because one of his kids asked, "can we go to church?" (They're 7 and 8) Even more distressing, he was raised Catholic and AFAIK still is.
Time to get the kids body cams and pepper spray for their birthdays, I guess.
Can you offer to go along with the kids to offer commentary?
One: They're in North Carolina. Two: My stomach is not strong enough to sit through a Catholic Mass. I barely made it through his wedding.
Well, in NC you could probably find some moonshine to help you make it through.
Or protection.
Do they already go to church and asked on a day off or are they just becoming interested in attending for the first time?
I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I get the impression my brother and/or his ex-wife has been taking them for a while.
My siblings and I don't talk religion much, they know I don't go to church, though they may not know how deep my dissatisfaction goes, but I was raised Baptist and I get the impression they know about as much about that tradition as I do about Catholicism. I'm not even sure my sister and youngest brother go to church except when they're visiting their mother. I know if they do, their politics make them very bad Catholics.
As Dara O Briain says, "you can join the Taliban, and all you'll be is a bad catholic." Exactly what your status would be I've no idea. 🙂
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a44867e33254fa9927977a688c1ca0e90f6016b51a41288d198f569b61606ab2.jpg
Always got to jump in with Jesus, where nobody asked their opinion. And then getting huffy when they are laughed at.
Why do I suddenly feel the need to get railed in a sundress...
I don't know what "railed in a sundress" means. Is it safe to google? ; )
Well, there’s a very old joke about teaching your daughters to never play strip poker while wearing a sundress.
NSFW
https://youtu.be/qT2UqGaHzH8
Now I know what a romper is.
I don't remember that from Romper Room.
😄🤤
Okay, I just don't want to know. I've had far too many bad experiences googling seemingly innocuous phrases like "happy ending". 😇
I'll save you the trouble of goggling "wax job." NSFW
https://youtu.be/RiM323cUHr0?t=24
God, that joke is so old even I've heard of it. 😇
Even I understood 😅
You should start to read the right books.
I kinda had it figured out. I didn't know about the tictac challenge part. : )
They must do it while eating tictac candies ? Quite risky IMHO.
Well, you don't eat the tictacs. Not at first anyway. ; )
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Get+railed
I found out from knowyourmeme.
I wander away from the thread for a bit and everybody beats me to the answer(s). :)
That's what you get for not bringing one of these to the library.
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/W/IMAGERENDERING_521856-T2/images/I/51lpBn7FN7L.__AC_SX300_SY300_QL70_FMwebp_.jpg
The decline religiosity, and especially the way it's more pronounced for the younger folk, is what motivates a lot of the increasingly hysterical reactions from the religious freaks, or religious freakshows as I like to call them now. This was already the case back in 2010 or so and it's getting worse, e.g., the anti-trans/anti-anything gay laws they're passing. And these efforts, as the article mentions, are likely a big reason why younger folks are leaving or never acquiring any affiliation. In other words, the more of this hateful bigoted crap the hardcore religious keep engaging in, the faster they're going to push people out of the faith, and that includes folks of all ages. So we can thank them for doing the world a great service for committing a kind of metaphorical suicide, or darwin awarding themselves.
Their death throes are going to do a *lot* of damage. Gen Z may not see it cleaned up in their lifetimes.
"... the problem with people leaving organized religion is that they’re not necessarily replacing it with anything else. We’re not changing what our communities look like and believe; we’re just losing communities, period. As much as I’d like to think people who leave church are becoming more politically or socially active, we’re often just choosing isolation and nebulous online communities which don’t have the same benefits."
This element does not bother me in the least.
I find it ironic that Hemant apparently laments online communities, given the one that has coalesced around him.
One who is spread all over the world qui plus est.
Pono. 🙂
Not my favorite Miyazaki.
Kiki's Delivery Service? Spirited Away? Howl's Moving Castle?
Mononoke Hime. Try to guess why 😉
He does admit that he's just speculating, of course. :)
I was never much of a joiner, but once I was out as an atheist, I wanted to DO something with it, which is why I joined the Freedom From Religion Foundation and it's local arm, the Northern Ohio Freethought Society. I also joined the Cleveland Freethinkers, purely for fun and for the comradery of simple things like sharing a good meal and good company with like-minded people.
I'm also online with Atheist Universe, and while that's a small community, it's an enjoyable one.
OT- Have another cup of schadenfreude, courtesy of The Daily Show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8GPuFSHkA8
Is Fox really suggesting that people send DT money for his defense? Hasn't he spent the last 2 decades telling us how rich he was. How many buildings he owns. Sell a few. Probably raise the property value to take his name off the building.
Yes, they really are suggesting that the man who flew to New York in his personal 757 airliner, then was driven to the courthouse in a limousine, dressed in a suit likely costing more than most blue-collar workers make in a year- and was then allowed to just fly back to Florida, because apparently a man who owns a 757 somehow 𝘪𝘴𝘯'𝘵 a flight risk despite, y'know, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘪𝘳𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘸𝘯𝘴 which is fully capable of just hanging a louie and fucking off to the Caymans or wherever- needs a $5 donation from Jim-Bob Fox Viewer to help with his legal bills.
Which he probably won't pay anyway.
Well, I wouldn't consider him a flight risk either. He's surrounded by Government agents at all times. Now if he dismisses his SS detail, then yeah he's going to run.
It's still utterly, completely insane that he was allowed to just leave like that... forget flight 𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘬- he 𝘥𝘪𝘥 flee. He left the court's jurisdiction, and they just let him do it. The man's got a local residence, for shit's sake! House arrest his ass 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 until it's go-time- I'm willing to bet that's still worlds more lenient treatment than the defendants who were arraigned before and after him got.
There was a story from – I think the 1960s may be late 50s, about someone in the US who put an advert in a newspaper saying "send a dollar" and giving a PO Box number. Every day this would go in until it was saying only one week left to send a dollar and so on down. Guy made thousands of dollars and couldn't be prosecuted, because he didn't promise anyone anything.
So yes, people will send money to just about anything. 😇
Damn ethics. I could have a plane already.
I HAVE HAD IT WITH THESE MOTHERFUCKING...PLATYPI? ON THIS MOTHERFUCKING TRAIN!
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-65158947
Duck-billed, egg-laying, venomous, marsupial, mammals. Somebody was fucking with us. Deity, aliens, time-traveling humans, Atlanteans, somebody was fucking with us.
Why not a time-traveling alien? I know one that would do that.
Who does he think he is, Phineas or Ferb?
Perry's looking to muscle in on Dr. Doofenshmirtz' plan to take over the entire Tri-State Area.
MTG: Jesus was arrested and murdered by the Roman government.
To which I reply: When the state does it, it is an execution not murder.
https://img.ifunny.co/images/2390a12b69e01275aa1aaad04ebd679a3a5b8578357d54e05344800b7c12c4c1_1.jpg
"Other states are doing away with the death penalty, mine's putting in an express lane" - Ron White (Texan)
Let's not forget this Desi Lydic classic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD9LEPML8uk&pp=ygUWZGVzaSBseWRpYyBmbG9yaWRhIG1hbg%3D%3D
OR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M81-GM0mTc4