@scottknick.bsky.social
Director of Information Technology at the Freedom From Religion Foundation. I'm an Atheist of the Buddhist variety. I love to be arch.
Iβm hungry
12.02.2025 17:04 β π 1045 π 218 π¬ 30 π 6Who's really at risk in the Catholic Charities case.
08.04.2025 00:54 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0
Oklahoma State Superintendent of Instruction Ryan Walters released a statement today claiming he has filed a lawsuit against the Freedom From Religion Foundation. We won't be backing down. ffrf.us/42rMhs4
31.03.2025 21:30 β π 115 π 25 π¬ 6 π 3Actually, FFRF has hundreds of members -- and one employee -- in Oklahoma!
31.03.2025 23:51 β π 2 π 1 π¬ 0 π 04/ Late -- The Buddha knows all the metaphysical answers and doesn't mind pronouncing on them. Indeed, by the Abhidhamma it's almost all that's discussed. I think these trajectories trace the changing rhetorical needs of the Sangha as it struggled to survive against Brahmanism.
14.03.2025 01:37 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 1 π 03/ My view is that we can trace "trajectories" though the Pali Canon, that roughly look like this:
Early -- The Buddha rejects metaphysical speculation.
Middle -- The Buddha knows all these metaphysical answers, but refuses to teach anything but suffering and the end of suffering.
2/ The sutta itself portrays Gotama's enlightenment experience as one in which he sees everything and learns everything. Most of this is in the metaphysical rather than the phenomenological realm. This material is undeniably in the canon.
14.03.2025 01:24 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0I ran and refreshed my memory on MN 100. So many things to say:
1) The sutta is obviously quite late. The widow's offense -- the one that gives rise to the whole narrative -- is to repeat "Namo tassa bhagavato arahato sammasambuddhasa" three times!
If by "unseen" James meant "imperceptible," I think earliest Buddhism would still resist definition as a religion. Remember one of the characteristics of the Buddha's dhamma: "Ehipassiko."
14.03.2025 00:53 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0
One little-reported fact from the new Pew Religious Landscape study: the proportion of US Buddhists who are white fell from 52% in 2007 to just 25% in 2024. Today 56% of US Buddhists are Asian; 55% of Buddhists were born outside the United States. www.pewresearch.org/religion/202... #Buddhism
27.02.2025 02:24 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0
If religious nationalists are such a rarity, how did they manage to take over the country?
#christiannationalism, #FFRF, #PewResearch
I understand that Google Maps has a laughable and humiliating error, completely mislabeling the Gulf of Mexico. Obviously the app is no longer reliable, and until Google fixes it I will be using MapQuest (shown below for reference.)
12.02.2025 01:33 β π 4 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0My view is not quite that earliest Buddhism was atheistic. Rather, Gotama had no use for metaphysics at all. It seems he saw speculation beyond the phenomenological realm as a hazardous waste of time. So a Buddhist is not compelled to accept supernaturalist ideas, and I don't.
02.02.2025 20:31 β π 2 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0
Mark Dann and I talked with PRRI's @robertpjones.bsky.social about the oversized role White Christian voters played in the re-election of Donald Trump.
youtu.be/5dlPJlYpcwc?...
Yes! Introduce them to the guy who's holding that gun to their head! They should at least know the name of the one who's threatening them with eternal agony?
12.01.2025 20:00 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0
Weβre pleased that the Court of Appeals left the district courtβs injunction fully intact.
As the district court ruled, this law is unconstitutional on its face.
news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/l...
I think so.
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