Initiateofthevoid

Please don't feel that the best thing you can do is shut up! You deserve a voice in the matter, even if it is much harder for you to use it the way others can use theirs.

Besides, not everyone can always be or even needs to always be the person who spreads the message. We need people to help figure out what the problems and solutions are just as much as we need people to share those problems and solutions with the world.

It is usually a necessary evil that we have marketers to sell the things that wouldn't exist without the engineers to produce them.

I already told you what I didn’t agree with and why I didn’t agree with it several times

I didn't and still don't see any explanations for why you disagree, other than "being athiest" which I do not believe is sufficient explanation in and of itself. There are plenty of athiests who find reasons to agree or disagree on this topic beyond that single belief.

I apologize if my approach seems insistent that you need to agree with me. I only wanted to explore the topic further, and am happy to discontinue that if the desire is not reciprocated. Farewell.

I have no idea how to interpret “improve our conscious contact with God” any other way.

... All they’re really doing is using their imagination to simulate a being greater than themselves and then asking “what would that being want for my life?”

This is a secular interpretation of "improve our conscious contact with God" that doesn't actually involve "communicating with a God"

Is there something about this interpretation that you don't understand or disagree with?

You are missing the point, voting in a party that has been moving slowly right isn’t a way to fix it.

Most of us are well aware voting them in wasn't going to fix the core problems of the United States.

However, most of us are also well aware that voting them out is making the core problems worse. One need only apply a blindfold and throw a dart at any of the executive decisions made over the last week to find incontrovertible evidence of that.

Accelerationism is nothing but supporting facism. There is no magical moment where fascists run a nation into the ground, the system collapses, and somehow you get to decide what happens after.

What comes after can be just as bad - if not worse - than what came before. And you will do nothing - less than nothing - to stop it by choosing not to vote.

I'm not questioning the value of non-electoral political action. That is just as - if not more - important. Get involved. Use your voice. Donate. Rally. Please.

I am only challenging this naive idea that "not voting" = "protesting". You cannot protest by staying home. You cannot protest by sitting out. Not voting isn't action, it's inaction and no revolution will ever, ever start with inaction.

I have no idea how to interpret “improve our conscious contact with God” any other way.

Then you're not experiencing any empathy for them. You're not actively putting yourself in their perspective, their world. You're accepting what they say, not extrapolating from that to understand what they think.

Religious people generally don't hear voices in their head. We know God doesn't talk to them. They know God doesn't talk to them. They might believe in signs or whatever, but they don't hear a voice when they pray, and they certainly don't expect to.

From the outside perspective of an athiest, you should be able to see that all they're really doing is using their imagination to simulate a being greater than themselves and then asking "what would that being want for my life?"

This is not very functionally different from asking ourselves "if I was a better person, what would I want for my life?"

The theistic process could be corrupted by malformed ideas about the things a deity would want, sure. But the athiestic process could also be corrupted by malformed ideas about the things a good person would want.

There has never, ever been anything approaching a protest that starts with the words "sitting out”.

Sitting out has definitely been a form of protest. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_bus_boycott

The Montgomery bus boycott didn't start with sitting out. It started with Rosa Parks sitting in.

Not to mention the easily understood fact that an economic boycott - one which causes direct material consequences - has absolutely no relation to some sort of "political boycott", which causes zero consequences against anyone in power.

Hell democracy is measured by political votes, a nation with low voter turn out are considered non democratic.

Yes? Congratulations, you are therefore contributing to our continued democratic decline.

You're not engaging with the challenge to your original statement.

You don't protest by sitting out. So what are you doing?

What the radical left are doing is sitting out in protest of a broken system.

There has never, ever been anything approaching a protest that starts with the words "sitting out".

That's not revolution, that's apathy and disinterest. That's what the people in power want.

Don't sit out. Stand up. Do something. Or don't. But don't lie to yourself and others and say that sitting out of the problem makes it any better.

If the user was going to message someone off platform they’d still be sending them an unencrypted message anyways if they have to switch apps to SMS.

It sounds like they don't want to take responsibility for that user choice or be connected to anything that happens because of that choice.

It would still be an insecure choice, even with obvious UX distinctions. It would only be a matter of time before headlines muddy the waters with "intercepted Signal messages reveal..." or "Judge rules in favor of subpeona for unencrypted Signal messages..."

No, they haven't always been extremely greedy and selfish. All social animals strike a balance between self-interest and group-interest, and humans are no different.

Some humans have always been extremely greedy and selfish. And some of those humans have always been charismatic and persuasive. And many other humans are not equipped to differentiate between emotionally persuasive and right. Well-intentioned humans will often connect themselves to the wrong people or ideas.

That's not really their fault. We're repurposing evolution's creations for things they weren't built to do. We're trying to build empathy and connection with people that are chronologically, geographically, and/or psychologically distant from us.

And unfortunately we're trying to do that while a handful of us try to sever those connections and build physical and metaphorical barriers between us for their own self-interest.

Most of us struggle with the ability to feel empathy and connection with our own future selves. We often choose instant gratification over personal benefit, we often choose to forego temporary burdens in the present at the foreseen expense of finding greater burdens in the future.

That's not greed or self-interest. That's the opposite of self-interest. That's just the burden of the rising ape. But it's no reason to lose hope, and it's no reason to stop trying.

The most important proof that humans aren't all greedy and selfish is that people are still trying to do better. We are still trying to build better connections, even as others try to tear them apart.

I am describing its original purpose in the sense of prayer's original purpose in psychology and sociology.

One can learn lessons from religious practices without becoming religious in the process.

Besides prayer in general, take another look at the step:

... improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

Do you know what that is? Look at it as an athiest, and imagine what purpose that step serves.

Seeking to understood God and his will? That's not - as many would put it - a human trying to communicate with a Sky Dad.

That's a human trying to understand his own Coherent Extrapolated Volition: "our wish if we knew more, thought faster, were more the people we wished we were, had grown up farther together; where the extrapolation converges rather than diverges, where our wishes cohere rather than interfere; extrapolated as we wish that extrapolated, interpreted as we wish that interpreted"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_artificial_intelligence

When a human makes a gesture and a sound on cue, they're usually engaging in in-group signalling. But when a human prays and meditates on finding God's Will for them, they are trying to imagine their own desires and needs from the standpoint of a superior being. One with more information, a greater mind, a greater moral compass. They are trying to make themselves better by imagining the ways they could be better.

Athiests do this too, they just call it cognitive behavioral therapy and moral philosophy.