Should secular humanist organizations take on the mission of providing personal behavior development tools in areas as productivity, mindfulness, goal setting, habit tracking, time management etc.

It seems that secularism is mostly focused on antitheism. While that is a reasoned position does it play a significant role in fostering the personal success of secularists?

https://abcnews.go.com/US/dozen-female-athletes-sue-ncaa-transgender-participation-policy/story?id=108185214

These are the principles mentioned in the wiki article:

Need to test beliefs – A conviction that dogmas, ideologies and traditions, whether religious, political or social, must be weighed and tested by each individual and not simply accepted by faith.

Reason, evidence, scientific method – A commitment to the use of critical reason, factual evidence and scientific method of inquiry in seeking solutions to human problems and answers to important human questions. Fulfillment, growth, creativity – A primary concern with fulfillment, growth and creativity for both the individual and humankind in general. Search for truth – A constant search for objective truth, with the understanding that new knowledge and experience constantly alter our imperfect perception of it.

This life – A concern for this life (as opposed to an afterlife) and a commitment to making it meaningful through better understanding of ourselves, our history, our intellectual and artistic achievements, and the outlooks of those who differ from us.

Ethics – A search for viable individual, social and political principles of ethical conduct, judging them on their ability to enhance human well-being and individual responsibility.

Justice and fairness – an interest in securing justice and fairness in society and in eliminating discrimination and intolerance.[29]

Building a better world – A conviction that with reason, an open exchange of ideas, good will, and tolerance, progress can be made in building a better world for ourselves and our children.

In 2 minutes on this sub, I see:

-there are no human rights because they do not exist in nature, which is contrary to the justice and fairness principle above

-defense of Koran burning, which is again an example of intolerance.

I grew up atheist in a town with 22 churches. I was told I was bad for not going to church when I was in second grade.

I've never wanted to become those people by attacking the religious beliefs of others, and I believe freedom to worship or not worship is a human right

Is that in line with this sub?

So.. As someone newly introduced to the ideology of secular humanism, what are small steps I can take to feel like I am contibuting in some way to helping others? Not every person is obviously able to go to large steps. Today, I did a small gesture while out to lunch and instead of leaving a regular tip, I left them a hundred dollars. They came out as I was leaving, quite astonished and asked me if I made a mistake lol I said no. It was nice to be able to make a difference at all in someone's life, even if it was just something trivial.

Baby steps right?

It's amazing to me after all people have gone through at the hands of the catholic church that people still allow that cult to exist. Sending your kids to mass is like dropping them off at Jimmy Saville house.

Hello all. I joined this group a little while back but neglected to post anything. I don't believe in god and believe society should be kept secular. I believe more so in human values, human equality and generally trying to be a good person to others regardless of race, creed, gender, sex, beliefs or sexuality. To me, this is a reasonable stance and one of the things I believe in the most.

Do I fit in here at all?

It's unfortunate this place is so barren. I think we as Humans would be pretty upset if we went all our lives without contributing to an overall higher mission in this lifetime. We have the power to bring heaven into existence yet here we are doing nothing. No matter what happens to earth it will be our doing and therefore our punishment or our reward. Just wanted to start chatting with people that are willing to devote themselves to Humanity and discuss where we go from here.

Re: religion, philosophy, evidence, logic, science, ontology, reality, truth, biology, axiology

The truth will set you(r mind) free, but not without cost.

As a most honest human, a bona fide commitment to learn and grow to your utmost potential, is a lifestyle that can often involve brutal cognitive clashes challenging memes in your mind and sometimes - parting with your most dearly beloved or deeply guarded views, beliefs, attitudes, frameworks, etc.

Recommended: ensure you're stable and supported, educated on emotional and neural self-regulation (broadly, self-care), and proceed with caution. Though this largely lays bare - the vital truth - the path to the light is dark and dreadful.

Sentience derives axiology, is at the denotational root of all connotation, and entails the basis behind WHY you value your life, humanity, or value anything at all, in fact. This critical finding is a key parameter that informs a valid vantage point of intelligence. Ignorance will result in our destruction, if left unchecked. Granted, such intellectual deprivation runs on a spectrum, as does advancement. Beware, and make the ascent, if you can.

https://youtu.be/l8fP9gYBsR4?feature=shared

I haven't been really active in that community, but I saw a post there about Demnark's decision to ban Quaran burnings and all the responses were insanely Islamaphobic. It put a bad taste in my mouth. It seems like a lot of the active members of that sub are just antitheist, and violently so. I was raised atheist, and I feel like antagonizing any religious group like that will not foster any type of understanding, and only serves to prove any bigoted opinions they may have about you 🤷

EDIT/side note since this got spicy:

There is a spectrum of religious devotion. I don't want to pander to extremists, they have no interest in changing and wish death upon queer people like myself. I am concerned about people in the middle of that spectrum turning to extremists for answers when all they see is intolerance and ridicule from Atheists. It takes an empathetic approach to deprogram someone who was raised in a religion.

Please tell me if this is not allowed/not appreciated here. I do not wish to break any rules or upset anyone.

Anyway, myself and a couple of others are currently working to build /r/SecularAF (our central location is on Discord where il share the link below), as a positive space for people to engage on topics that matter, an organization pushing the benefits of skepticism and critical thinking, a venture hoping to promote the separation of religion and government, and an entity bettering the world around us through constant activism and philanthropy. As I said, we are brand new and just getting going. We have been around for about a month and now have 51 members in our server. However, we have already reached a plateau where we are in severe need of some relatively small funding support to keep progressing (~$500 for now). This would help us fund our first in person meetup next week, as well as help us to be able to build and host an official website finally.

I say all that in order to ask you all if there was anyone here who could / would be willing and able to consider helping us out with part of this raise. If so, we would love to chat some more with you. In the meantime, we'd love if you came and checked us out to see what we have going so far. You can find us on Discord via the link on our sub ( /r/SecularAF ) or using the invite code cyQRaybPXw .

If you have any questions or concerns, I'd be more than happy to answer them. I hope to hear from some of you. But regardless, I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season ahead!!

Sincerely,

AlexAtheus

“ I have no religion, and at times I wish all religions are at the bottom of the sea. He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap. My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him against the liberty of his fellow-men.”

(TLDR) No, a half-mile wide human embedded and controlled spaceship-body is not an abomination to nature, to humans, or to our selves. We did not create some monster. There are no monsters. Our selves are creations of our social world. If we radically alter our social world, we radically our selves. Evolution and DNA does not create some standard human self or human environment.

A Different Self

We can imagine 2000 years in the future the following procedure: A fetus is developed rather normally. We have standard DNA/epigenetic structure, perhaps slight cognitive enhancement, but still very much human.

Then, at birth, we prepare the baby to become a half-mile wide, star hopping space ship. We remove all limbs and plug peripheral nerves into ship sensors and into thrusters and flaps. We carefully remove the eyes and ears and plug those sensory systems into new “eyes.” These can be sensory systems that see a great range of the electromagnetic spectrum. We plug other visual nerves into instrument converters that feed the brain with other information, about radiation for example.

Our newborn human, our slightly enhanced brain, is now learning to govern the motion and sensory systems of the ship. Where brains once navigated through the human body, they now govern a ship-body. For the most part, we can still imagine this brain as running through many of the thought processes of us today, including of the representations that it has of its self. We can allow it to still run on emotions, if we want. We could still have desires, fear, and doubt. We could still have many of the characteristics that we see in us today. (Don't ask about sex!)

These kinds of thoughts remind us of several things. There is not some endpoint to evolution that was “human.” There is not an endpoint that looks like our selves today, living in a "normal" environment and body. The above story is not an abomination to humans, because nature cares nothing for this false essentializing of the “human" or of the environment.

All evolution did was end up with a DNA structure like the one that sits inside our cells. Importantly, nature was not trying to create a “human” that lives in a standard earth and pack-societal environment. Our DNA may have developed within such processes, but there was not some desire of evolution that humans/DNA remain within that environment.

Furthermore, there is not some genuine self sitting within our DNA just waiting to emerge into existence. Pretty much any kind of characteristic that we have today can be grossly changed given a radically different environment. Many of those characteristics can be radically changed through normal social environmental changes that we are capable of today. Even today we can radically change the characteristics of our sexuality, our introversion/extroversion, our gender, and so on. We can of course also edit DNA pre- and post-birth, as well as other chemical and brain alterations.

A cheap shot, but you should hit over the head anyone talking about expression of their true self. We can give better descriptions of our selves than that. There are interesting tales to tell about how our DNA becomes what we are. Our selves are products of a contingent social environment. One that we as society choose. Your self is determined by your parents and community. That could have been done completely differently. We can build radically different selves for the next line of selves, if we choose.

Stories about why we are the way we are will require a rich combination of genes and environment. When we de-essentialize the human condition, when we de-essentialize our selves, we can begin to tell the interesting stories about why we are the way we are. We can only do that by seeing the openness of the social and environmental world.

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Congratulations you are an atheist. 

Now discard other discordant beliefs. Hold your self at arm's length. 

One of the best arguments against religion is the fact that most people believe their parents' beliefs. An iranian is muslim. A roman is catholic or polytheistic. A german is protestant. Even your basic belief about god is only there because of your background. 

Belief in god and your particular religion is wrong because it is not grounded in empiricism. It is merely grounded in word of mouth. Your parents' beliefs came from their parents' beliefs. 

The reason why this argument is so devastating is because when you reflect on religious beliefs, all you can do is ground it in the folk tales told by people. The places where religion tries to attach itself to reality is a shambles. Laughable. Which means, all there is, is word of mouth and nonsense abstract notions pulled out of thin air.

I am asking you today to set aside all beliefs of your parents and culture. And not just the foolish. But all of it. See your parents' world. See your self as a product of that world. See your created self as a non-critical product of that world. All sorts of judgments, structures, identities, and behavior flow through your self. You, your self, your brain/mind, was slowly created by a world you could not see while you were being programmed by it. There are endless cultural structures to that world that are as empty as religion. Some of those will be small and benign cultural artifacts. Some of that programming may even flow from empirical knowledge, which is fine to keep hold of. 

But the vast majority of who you are is empty cultural baggage. As empty as that religious baggage that you so readily shed. Why you have rubber-stamped all the other cultural baggage I do not know. Now, of course you do not really have a choice. Some of this stuff is just part and parcel of you, of your self. A lot of it, though, are things that you can stop taking seriously. Just like you have stopped taking your cultural religion seriously.

My argument here. Is that it is not just religion you should shed. But a great deal of your self, beliefs, behaviors, and identity.

 
You should do this not because all of these things are as wrong as religion. Some of them are just benign culture. The bigger problem is that they weave their way into the programming of your brain/mind in a way that you can not even see. We need to see our cultural world so we can evaluate it and change it. We need to see the structures of our self, of our psychology, so that we can evaluate it and change it. If we choose to change it (free will does not exist).  

We ask for a pledge by each nation: "Our nation pledges to demilitarize, if all other nations demilitarize as well."

It is an empty pledge contingent on all other nations making the pledge as well. Even then, there is no teeth. It was just a pledge. We would then have to begin new conversations, write new treaties, and begin scaling back. We would not expect the U.S. to pledge first.

I want a candidate making a protest challenge in the primary of the Democratic Party. It would be a single issue campaign focusing on getting that pledge by each nation. It would be an international campaign. We would search out small, peaceful nations first to get them to pledge.

The world does not demilitarize without all the major players doing so. I know people will scoff at Russia, but Russia should see by now they're a 2nd rate military power. If 100's of nations have pledged demilitarization maybe they begin to see that as a better future. China should definitely see this as a better future. Their strength comes from elsewhere.

I see no reason why dozens of rather peaceful nations would not take this pledge and encourage the rest of the world to do the same. It is an empty pledge until all other nations agree. We would encourage 2/3 consent by legislative bodies. It needs to be a unified commitment. We of course want the pledge from both our friends and our enemies. Religions can push their people to such a pledge.

From there, once the world makes such pledges, we will have different conversations with each other. Empty islands in the middle of the sea become less important. Military unions become less important. Those conversations and actions would take time. It would take an end to cold wars and economic wars to gain trust between all parties.

Many people in the world would urge their leaders to take up such a cause. Hopefully, in the long run, we spend that money and time that we spent on militaries and instead spend it on building better societies and exploring our world.

_______

Just for fun: This arose out of my contemplation of the great silence. If we are the only intelligent species, then we should be making sure we are safe and thriving. Right now, all we know is that we are the only intelligent species. Of course, greater peace is a good in its own right.

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The issue here is that we define complex behavioral traits by how they manifest in us as adults. Most of these traits are complex traits that we experience. They run through our brain/minds. That is, there is imagery, emotion, feeling, and even linguistic description that we give to them. We end up with a disjunction between societal definitions and what is actually being created by genetic material. It is a large disjunction. The analyzing of human behavioral traits from genetic material has been hopelessly flawed. At least, as the program has so far been laid out.

(A YouTube video(7 min) where I say the same thing as below.)

Sexuality, gender, and pretty much everything about our selves is capable of being done completely differently. This is made abundantly clear with a simple thought experiment. If your DNA was put into a single sex society, that had no knowledge, no concept, and no imagery of the other sex, including in animals, what sexuality would you be? What gender would you be?

Your genes are cheap. We can build different selves out of our same DNA that would be radically different, robust selves. To do so, we would have to build radically different social worlds. We have to accept, as reflective beings, that we can build radically different social worlds. We are very slowly socialized into our environment. We very slowly become complex selves, full of all the thoughts and imagery that flow through us.

Let's say our sexuality was completely determined by pheromones. For all of human history, we just live our lives in particular societies and allow beliefs and definitions of sexuality to arise. We, our selves, do not desire pheromones. We desire bodies, behaviors, appearances, whatever you desire in people. That is, when we experience our sexuality, it is a complex mental and emotional phenomena. So, we figure out that the entirety of our sexuality is this complex mental phenomena laid atop pheromones. Scientists isolate these pheromones. They spray the pheromone on a hamster and people start having emotional feelings towards hamsters. That may be something you would have to do in an early age before a person attaches sexual emotions and imagery to humans. If the pheromone story was the case, and discovered, and we did this a hundred years ago, many of the discussions about identity and behavior would have been different. We would have been more willing to destabilize the structure of our selves and world. I think many people would be more willing to hold their self at arm's length. They would see the accidentality of how genes and non-reflective parents/society allowed for a non-critical world to be set up around their DNA. They would see more of the story of why they are what they are.

Though our actual biology is more complicated than the pheromone story, this is essentially what is wrong with putting many of our behavioral traits into genetic schemata. Our genes do not lead to the kind of social world and selves that we see, unless you want to argue some long term deterministic, dialectic buildup across history. We are reflective beings. We can create any social world we want. At least as a species or community. The study of heritability, twin studies, and evolutionary psychology have constantly hit their head against such a problem. The problem is not in evolutionary and genetic paradigms. The problem is in overstating and solidifying psychology and behavioral traits that have immensely complex components. Language allows for self-reflection and self-blossoming in fabulous ways. The programming of our brains by genes/environment is wonderfully complex.

Let me give another thought experiment. We are travelling on a spaceship in the future. The idea is that we have created a single sex society and environment (And make no mistake, though a thought experiment, we could do the fundamentals of this today). Let's go all males. This ship has an AI program and artificial womb technology that has stored millions of fertilized eggs (or we just finagle cells). These males are raised to be knowledgeable but we deny them knowledge of females, across all life forms. That is, they have no imagery of female bodies or the concept of female altogether. Let's say they have the same spread of male genetics as society today. What sexuality are these males? I am telling you, right now, they are not desiring female bodies. Evolution did not program brains that have imagery of female bodies. Evolution did not need to do that. Whatever genes do to create sexual desire, it is worlds away from societal definitions and personal experiences.

It is not good enough in this day and age to say that a trait is a combination of genes and environment. Behavior and identity traits are fundamental to our selves. If we are not telling a good story about how they arise, then we are failing to tell a baseline story about why we are the way we are. This also means that we have trouble analyzing our contingent social world. Taking these traits as part and parcel of our selves has created a givenness to our characteristics. On an individual level, as we probe our own thoughts, it makes sense that we experience these things as they are given. Academically, and for purposes of self discovery, we need to tell better stories. As reflective beings, we need to remind people that we can build any self and any world (within reason) that we want.

Just to sidestep this, I fully support LGBTQ rights. That does not mean we retreat into our selves and into our world. Given the difficulties of unraveling our programming by genes and environment, I argue that we should, generally, put knowledge attainment before reproduction of self and society.

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