Today's Supreme Court Decision on Age Verification Tramples Free Speech and Undermines Privacy

Hear, hear. Give me myth. Give me legend. Leave your theology at the door, though. I love me an ancient tale.

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.

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.

You can blame whoever you want, but the real blame comes down to one simple thing. Religion.

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.

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.