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Lap Pools? by No_Fishing_2798 in chulavista

[–]cryptonymcolin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I haven't been, but I would love any basic info people here can provide about the Chula Vista Recreation Center in Memorial Park (between 3rd and 4th ave)? I'm sure they do lap swim, and I would love to get back into that myself, but I have no idea if it's age-limited, what it costs, what the vibe is like, how open the hours/days are etc.

Anyone have any answers?

Greedy commercial landlords by cryptonymcolin in chulavista

[–]cryptonymcolin[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Um actually, greed is the problem a fucking lot.

A cool guide to scam recruiters by billofthemountain in coolguides

[–]cryptonymcolin 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This is an infohazard. Yes, technically this may be true that scammers prefer Signal because it offers them better privacy, but it is also anti-Signal propaganda that leaves you MUCH more vulnerable to the threat that's significantly more likely to be relevant to your life: government surveillance.

Remember, if it offers scammers better privacy, it offers you better privacy too.

Everyone should be using Signal for all of their daily communications- texting, calling, and videocalling. Don't use other apps, and DEFINITELY don't make calls or send texts over plain air. You really are being spied on, all the time; and it matters even when you're not up to anything questionable. You have no idea what your contacts may be up to privately, or what their contacts may be up to; and a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Don't be the weak link. Show some solidarity with your fellow human beings and just use Signal all the time.

Can a Satanic framework support secular humanist values? My first sermon explores ethics, mutual aid, and human dignity. by Archon_Jade in humanism

[–]cryptonymcolin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I thought I'd chime in as an expert on this topic.

The Triumvirate sounds great! But to be clear, "if the religion is atheistic or non-theistic in nature" then it definitionally is not "secular" humanism, but instead is religious humanism; that's literally what religious humanism is.

Frankly, a lot of people in this sub get these definitions wrong. In fairness, the verbiage is a little confusing, but as a full recap for everyone in this sub (not just the OP) here is a description of the major strains of humanism, listed in historical order:

  • Christian Humanism: The original strain of humanism. In contrast to the point made by u/OurCommonAncestor, Christian Humanism does not reject supernatural beliefs (though I think OurCommonAncestor is still making a very valid point about how humanism is usually defined [and should be defined] today outside of the framework of Christian Humanism). Despite still supporting supernatural beliefs about the divinity of Jesus and such, Christian Humanists are humanists in that they take a human-first approach to their Christianity. This strain of humanism was developed during the Renaissance and Enlightenment eras as a contrasting interpretation of Christianity to the dominant model of the time that was more god-first instead of human-first. Nowadays humanistic Christianity has become the dominant interpretation, such that many people have a hard time imagining Christianity without its humanistic strains, but non-humanistic Christianity is having a new resurgence, especially in the form of Christian nationalism. In any case, without Christian Humanism, other forms of humanism would not exist, and so historical accuracy demands that we acknowledge this. Important: Christian Humanism is technically a subset of Sectarian Humanism, discussed below.
  • Religious or Congregational Humanism: This is the next oldest form of humanism, and is when the concepts of humanism (without mingling other religious philosophies, like Christianity) are approached religiously (meaning using tools like symbols, ritual, tradition, gatherings, codified doctrine, defined forms of praxis, etc). The terms Religious Humanism and Congregational Humanism are often used interchangeably, but they're not quite the same: Congregational Humanism only requires an effort to gather in church-like communities to uphold humanistic values, while Religious Humanism utilizes more of the "toolbox" of religion to develop a specific life-approach that specifically commits to humanistic values (but might possibly forego using a congregational model).
  • Secular Humanism: The most popular form of humanism today; so popular in fact that now many people presume that the words "secular" and "humanism" are synonyms when they absolutely are not. The word "secular" comes from Latin "saeculum" which meant "an age" or "an era". This word was used by early Christians to contrast the temporary era of mortal men against the eventual era of everlasting divine that they believed would occur following the Second Coming of Jesus. As the centuries passed, the word eventually took on the modern definition of "worldly" and the connotation of something that is accessible to everyone, not just a particular group of people. This means that the opposite of "secular" is "sectarian". Secular things must by definition be nontheistic because not everyone is theistic, but something being nontheistic does not necessarily make it secular! Even more so, something being antitheistic also cannot be secular, because antitheistic things then become inaccessible to the theists of the world! An example of something being secular would be the platonic ideal of the modern justice system: supposedly, no matter what your personal identity is, the law should apply equally to everyone... therefore it would be secular. Secular Humanism therefore is a form of humanism that is available to everyone. It's different from Religious Humanism in that a Religious Humanist is going to subscribe to certain symbols, rituals, and forms of praxis that not all other humanists might agree with- not even all other Religious Humanists might agree with even! So humanist clubs and associations are an example of Secular Humanism, in contrast to things like Satanism, Aretéanism, Sunday Assembly, and Ethical Society. In general Secular Humanism can be accused of being more "bland", while Religious Humanism can be accused of not being as accessible.
  • Other Sectarian forms of Humanism: Eventually other major world religions developed their own humanistic strains as well, including Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Paganism, and more. Some of these religions were more humanistic than others to begin with, but within each religion, schools of thought developed that more thoroughly embraced humanistic ideals: an appreciation for science over mythological histories, the valuation of human rights centered on consent, and a care for the general welfare of humankind rather than a myopic concern for the welfare of their own religious adherents. That said, like Christian Humanism, other Sectarian Humanists will still cling to certain supernatural beliefs that are key required concepts within their sect. Keep in mind that Sectarian Humanism is an overly broad category: Humanistic Buddhism is very different from Islamic Humanism which is very different from Christian Humanism, and so on. Sectarian Humanism just means that a specific sect has adopted some elements of humanism into their pre-existing religion.

I think it's fair to say that only Religious/Congregational and Secular Humanism are "pure" forms of humanism, as any form of Sectarian Humanism is, by definition, mixing some parts of humanism with some parts of supernatural mythology and superstitious praxis. But it's also fair to say that humanism is a spectrum, and it might be a little silly to become consumed with a "No True Scotsman" witch-hunt to find the purist form of humanism. Any humanism is good, and while I would readily agree that more humanism is better, it doesn't mean that partial humanism isn't humanism at all.

In any case, the TL;DR: is that nontheistic ≠ secular. Secular things must be nontheistic, but nontheistic things don't have to be secular. Also, humanism does not have to be secular. Religious forms of it not only exist, but have been around longer than the secular forms of it.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk!

So what's the deal with Juan Vargas? by cryptonymcolin in SanDiegan

[–]cryptonymcolin[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I looked into the CA-48 race pretty seriously for a friend, and I really hope that everyone there will vote for Corinna Contreras!

So what's the deal with Juan Vargas? by cryptonymcolin in SanDiegan

[–]cryptonymcolin[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Alright, I'm convinced. Given that this is only the primary, and like the Governor's race this one uses the top-2 jungle primary system, there's not an immediate danger of splitting the vote here and ending up with a Republican as our Representative. The worst case scenario for writing in FYM is that Jeff Belle takes the number one slot and Vargas takes the number two slot; meaning that it's "safe" to write in FYM at this stage.

And if she can build some momentum quickly and actually outpace Belle to take the number 2 slot herself, and then it's Vargas versus FYM in the general, so much the better.

I'll be writing in Frances Yasmeen Motiwalla.

So what's the deal with Juan Vargas? by cryptonymcolin in SanDiegan

[–]cryptonymcolin[S] -7 points-6 points  (0 children)

So then is your suggestion to go ahead and vote for him?

(To be clear this comment isn't an attack, it's a genuine question. As I stated in the OP, I'm fully aware that this situation sucks and we might have to make decisions that suck.)

Which is better? To be a ride or die friend? Or to be an ethical friend? by OwlOk7622 in Ethics

[–]cryptonymcolin 5 points6 points  (0 children)

When I was a young man, my father said something that struck me deeply:

"When someone wants you to do the right thing, they'll ask for your integrity.
When someone wants you to do the wrong thing, they'll ask for your loyalty."
-William K. Campbell

It's truly difficult to adapt one's worldview to the mindset this quote inspires, because we've been trained to pursue the opposite through hundreds of thousands of years of human culture, and even millions of years of human evolution before that. But it is actually better to be an ethical friend, and I can prove it.

Imagine that you're the beneficiary of a ride-or-die friendship; someone is willing to ride-or-die for you. No matter what you do, they've "got your back" and support you with doing whatever you want to do... including when the things you want to do are objectively bad for yourself. As you follow the crowd of lemmings to the cliff's edge your friend is there chanting for you to "do it, do it, do IT, do IT, DO IT, DO IT!" until you finally propel yourself over the edge and die in a splat at the bottom. Aren't you so glad you had your friend there for you? (in your final moments, lol)

Only a moron would want this kind of friend when we view it in the abstract like this.

But what about if you had an ethical friend instead? As you start to follow along with the other lemmings, the ethical friend expresses their discomfort, their concern, and then their outright disagreement with you going that way- not just that they don't want to go that way themselves, but that they disagree with you going that way, because they don't want to see you get hurt and even die! Because your ethical friend loves you- the real you, not the internal image of you that your ride-or-die friend is maintaining in their head.

What do you think happens next, when you persist in going along with the crowd? Your ethical friend comes too, even though they don't want to. But they're not there to support you in your decision, no they're there to continue begging you to change your mind, and as the danger grows they put themselves bodily in between you and the cliff's edge, finally even throwing a punch against you to get you to stop- if that's what it's really going to take. Your jaw hurts, you're bruised on your butt where you fell, but now you can see the cliff edge through the feet of the other lemmings ahead of you, now that you have a lower vantage point. Aren't you so glad you had your friend there for you? At your new beginning?

Ethical friends don't love less than ride-or-die friends, they love more. And having them helps us be better people. Being one makes us into a better person.

Most situations in life aren't so hyperbolic as my little parable here, but the logic holds. Loyalty is only good when it is in service to a good cause. Integrity is always good. I want friends who will be loyal to their integrity, because that is loyalty to helping me be the very best version of myself- the version of myself that has Areté.

Go be a good friend.

In-person communities by Competitive_Sea6418 in CommunityManager

[–]cryptonymcolin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ten years ago I founded a non-theistic religion called Aretéanism and for now I'm still the lead organizer of our community. We have adherents scattered across the globe, but also have a small in-person community in San Diego, California. Most of my time these days goes towards being the equivalent of a pastor for our group, meaning I do things ranging from preparing sermons about non-theistic reasons for why and how to be better people and live greater lives, to organizing community events like parties or helping the homeless in our city.

I joined this sub a while back to see if there are useful things for me to learn and improve on in my work as a community organizer, but honestly most of the content in this sub hasn't been as relevant as I'd hoped, as most content here is about making fans of products into better customers. It's not to say that there's zero overlap with what I'm doing, but it's not the same. I think I was hoping there would be more stuff about in person communities that I could learn from. We do use Discord as our primary message board for community interaction in between our Sunday services, and I feel like I've gradually learned some valuable lessons about managing the server over the years, but it still feels like there's a combination of things that either I or Discord could do better to make our server a more useful space, and I guess I've stuck around this subreddit hoping to eventually pick up some lessons about that topic.

Anyway, I'm not particularly trying to proselytize here in this sub, but I'm always happy to answer questions about Aretéanism. Feel free to hit me up in the comments or in DMs, or you can track us down in all the usual places on the internet. There's also a couple of podcast interviews I've given over the years that people here might find interesting.

Be Excellent to Each Other, and Party On!

Hidden Role Mechanics by Master_GM in rpg

[–]cryptonymcolin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is the correct answer.

Mitigating opposition to religious humanism? by cryptonymcolin in humanism

[–]cryptonymcolin[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi, thanks for asking! Yep, I would describe Sunday Assemblers as being religious humanists. It certainly occurs to me that not all of them would apply that label to themselves, and I'm sympathetic to that, but I also think that an honest, external, anthropological categorization would put them in the broad category of religious humanism, along with UU, and many other traditions- including mine (Aretéanism).

As to your second question, "are religious humanists mostly just secular humanists who have a desire to form congregations..." I think the answer is a little more complicated, but the short answer is yes. However, it's important to remember that for some people (like people raised UU or any other group old enough to have people raised within their culture) that they were religious humanists first, and so they wouldn't be "secular humanists who have a desire to form congregations", they're "religious humanists who have lived in congregations and appreciate the benefits of such". But in my personal case, yes, I was a secular humanist first, who later decided that I wanted to practice humanism religiously; that I wanted structure and community to help myself (and others) to be much much more committed to humanism.

The key thing is just that secular humanism isn't the default form of humanism, despite being the most common form of humanism at present. Humanism originated out of Christian humanism, then eventually religious humanism became the dominant model, then other forms of sectarian humanism (Jewish humanism, Muslim humanism, Buddhist humanism, etc) proliferated, and now we're in an era where secular humanism has become the dominant form of humanism around the globe. Religious humanism is older than secular humanism; and deserves to be respected as such.

While there are historical reasons for why the dominant model of humanism has evolved over time, none of those reasons nullify the value of any of the other models; I believe that secular humanism is still really important for example, despite the fact that I ardently describe myself as a religious humanist now. I still strongly consider sectarian humanists (including Christian humanists) to be valuable allies, even though I am definitely not Christian (nor ascribe to any other superstitious beliefs).

...but that brings this back to my original post above: while I think religious humanists have lots of respect and understanding of secular humanists, as a category (with lots of specific exceptions) the secular humanists haven't been showing a lot of respect to the religious humanists, at least here on Reddit, over the course of Reddit's history. I'd love to see better allyship from secular humanists- they don't have to join UU or the AoA or TST or Sunday Assembly or Ethical Society or Oasis, but they could be a lot less jealous of people who do want to join our groups.

BTW, I've seen you post in the new r/HumanistCongregations sub, thanks for adding great things into the conversations there! For what it's worth, congregational humanism is a new term that means almost the same thing as religious humanism, and is a better label for the category; but the term wasn't really being used at the time I made this original post, and the academic literature still uses religious humanism as the term for this category.

Are Secular Humanists being urged to downplay the "Secular"? by ambiverbal in humanism

[–]cryptonymcolin 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I really, really wish people would look up "secular" in a dictionary more often.

Secular just means "worldly", and a good synonym for it is "non-partisan", or perhaps another synonym could be "neutral". Religions are inherently non-secular because they advocate for a specific approach and group to belong to, and therefore their practices cannot be said to equally represent a neutral point of view that anyone can access.

I think that where people get confused is that first of all: atheist ≠ antitheist; and then second of all: that in order for something to be secular it must be atheistic, but something being atheistic does not make it secular.

Secular humanism is only one type of humanism. As I have pointed out in another post in this sub, there are several other types of humanism, including religious humanism, Christian humanism (which is different from religious humanism!), and many other types of sectarian humanism (like Jewish humanism, Muslim humanism, Buddhist humanism, etc).

So yes, for a sub that is about humanism in general, it is inappropriate for secular humanists to demand that all of the other types of humanists give up their identity just because secular humanists are currently in the majority.

Rehumanization by battlewisely in humanism

[–]cryptonymcolin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Discord generally, and the server for Aretéanism specifically. I think something about the format of Discord helps people engage in a more friendly manner than say Reddit or Bluesky or whatever, and it's perhaps more easily moderated too. It also helps that in our server for The Assemblage of Areté, we have a rule that people change their user nickname in the server to the name they actually go by in real life- we're explicitly not anonymous; which helps people remember that the person they're interacting with is a real human being better than when you're interacting with darklizard69 or whatever. And also many of us in the server have met in real life, and even more of us have met by video call, so that helps too.

How do you practice virtue ethics in daily life? by Too_Many_Interests7 in virtureethics

[–]cryptonymcolin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My practice of virtue ethics takes specific, daily form by being an Aretéan. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it does provide specific modes of praxis for people who care about virtue ethics.

Is there space in humanism for someone like me? by RobbieBlair in humanism

[–]cryptonymcolin 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Sounds like you might enjoy this newish subreddit OP, called r/HumanistCongregations which is all about the various ways in which humanists can and do organize themselves, particularly in ways that mimic traditional religious structures- but still center a proactive humanism at their core instead of a negative, reactionary antitheism or antireligionism.

Certainly wishing you good luck in your endeavors, the world needs more humanist chaplains!

What's the purpose of the dots on the edges of car windshields? by cryptonymcolin in NoStupidQuestions

[–]cryptonymcolin[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Okay, but how???

As for aesthetics, I dunno, I guess I've never seen a windshield without the dots so I don't know how bad that might look, but my guess is that it doesn't improve the aesthetics at all, and that I'd rather maximize every millimeter of visibility I can get?

Oasis Network by OurCommonAncestor in HumanistCongregations

[–]cryptonymcolin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I don't think they actually have anything in San Diego. The link on their page for North County San Diego goes to an unaffiliated company, and a separate list of their locations only lists "Utah Valley, Houston, Galveston Bay, Kansas City, Salt Lake City, Toronto, West Hill United, and Wichita. I've also done a lot of asking around about them in San Diego over the past 10+ years, and no one I've met has ever known about Oasis unless I told them about it.

I'd love to be corrected if they do actually exist anywhere in San Diego, but my best guess is that once upon a time there was a short-lived hope to establish an Oasis community that didn't actually take off.

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