Persecution by religionists; post-religious society; spiking global temperatures; 2 gender cases

Published: Sun, 10/08/23

RSA Daily

For atheists, rationalists and secular humanists in Australia

Tuesday, October 10, 2023

Rationale, the magazine of the Rationalist Society of Australia

Good morning ,

The RSA's Campaigns and Communications Co-ordinator has uncovered a story about persecution that deserves widespread coverage by the mainstream media. Read our first lead story and see if you agree.

Lead stories

Investigation exonerates former top Navy chaplain and advocate of secular reform | Rationalist Society of Australia

Read this to show just how far extremist religionists will go to not only defend their own positions but attack those who have a different worldview. A committee of taxpayer-funded clerics - many of whom are Pentacostals - made formal complaints about Collin Acton, a former top Navy chaplain, because he was urging Navy to develop a form of wellbeing support that reflected the (non-religious) majority of serving men and women. A formal investigation found him not guilty.

If you happen to know anyone in the media who might be interested in this story of unwarranted persecution, please send them this story. It needs to be more widely known. And read our second submission into Defence and Veteran Suicide below - in which we list how religious-based chaplaincy in the Defence Forces view serving men and women as 'mission fields' to be recruited for God.

RSA submission to the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide

The Stats Guy: As religion falls, a different 'social glue' is needed

More wisdom from the stats from Simon: " ..eventually (many decades into the future), a majority of people move away from interpreting religious texts as literal truth to view them as wisdom traditions that contain millennia of collective human knowledge .. unfortunately, the path to a new stage of collective religious awareness tends to be accompanied by ugly, often violent, intra-religious infighting (this can be as bad as the Wars of the Reformation, which consumed Europe with war, truces and more war from 1522-1648) .. the current purveyors of truth fight tooth and nail to keep their ranks and keep their literal interpretation of faith alive .. I’d therefore argue that praying for religion to act as social glue in Australia won’t be a good bet in my lifetime .. in the meantime, strengthening the middle class (this includes making housing more affordable) and investing in sports are better bets than religion to provide social stability in Australia."