I used to work for a software development company in Louisiana. At company meetings the CEO would always close with a prayer to Jesus, which was certainly the only time in my programming career I had to deal with that. Maybe 80% of the company were Christians but the rest of us were Jews, Muslims, Hindus and atheists (just me) and it was always weird to be looking around at each other while everybody else had their heads bowed. Unfortunately, this company was pretty much the only game in town for programmers so nobody was willing to call the CEO out for this shit.
I grew up poor. We never got to go to the christian summer camp like all our friends. The upside is that we never got sexually assaulted like all our friends.
Public non religious schooling helped. I had sorted things out pretty early on that being alone with any adult was not beneficial. I was a nervous and frightened child and I honestly believe that it saved me on many occasions. My best friend whom I have known since I was four did not have such luck.
Unfortunately, most people are emotional creatures first. Sometimes only. So facts don't really matter because they're engaging on the emotional level of "christian stuff feels good and safe, but other stuff feels dangerous and foreign". We all do this to some extent. There's no solution.
People mostly change their mind because stuff coming from their in-group, or horrible trauma.
That's true for this specific thing, but won't solve the underlying problem of "things I'm comfortable with are good, and abstract things like facts and fairness don't matter"
Getting my son's high school coach on the horn to suggest this as a new approach. To date, we've just been banking on angels assisting the outfield, and it has not worked out.
i mean, if you support a rational society that uses reasoning to create an altruistic stewardship of the world, then it pretty much justifies an any means necessary approach to defeat christian nationalism (or any other superstitious, irrational belief system). otherwise, the next century is going to unimaginable suffering.
It's been years though, I mainly ran a 4 Chaos Warrior, 1 Gutter Runner and supporting Beastman mutants team. The rat took care of everything involving scoring, and the Chaos Warriors worshipped Nuffle the only way they knew how, via Kerrunch.
"Pagan" is a very broad term, and I could see a form of athesist paganism developing. Nature exists, and you can start with that. Rituals would be purely an expression of appreciation for the natural world around us.
Plus, you have an excuse to run around naked in the woods. Which is the actual goal here.
The two times religion entered my school life were when we studied myths in English class, and in sociology where we watched Jesus Camp and had to figure out how people could be so retarded (different time)
I wasn't uncomfortable. I was thinking get it girl! It takes a lot of courage to go to a school and teach kids the goat mother birthed them under a pale blue moon.
But it's a Christian country. So get with the program or get burned at the stake, hanged, stoned, drowned, flayed and shot. Not necessarily in that order.
At this time the counter reads only 18 out of 37. We still have 19 in the loop, so while the numbers are neck and neck, the majority came through on this one.
There may yet still be hope for us after all!