The great Hobby Lobby artifact heist

- "Snide" is subjective. - It's a blog post not a news article or scholarly report. - The topic is a business run by people who ostensibly make decisions based on their faith to justify actions which cause various harm to others. Taking a critical view of those actions and the motivations is reasonable.

My suspicions:

* The normie barrier has continued to lower, so more traditional and progress-reluctant religious people are now connected to social media.

* Some sects may be intentionally targeting online communities, just like they target IRL communities for converts. Beliefs that don't require a devotion of forcing the belief itself upon others will naturally fade into the background. Beliefs that don't claim to solve your problems will also fade into the background.

* Social media algorithms prefer religious posts. Religious posts often invoke some sort of emotional response. Religions are some of the oldest memes after all.

All of this is just a gut feeling based on the religious material I've been exposed to on the web. I think it's fairly consistent with how religions have spread throughout history. Secularism is squashed unless you specifically fight for it, which itself may require a kind of religious fervor.

This is possibly the natural result of any human community growing large enough. There will be those who ask unanswerable questions, and there will be those who have the answers to those questions. Those who need order, and those who need to order.

If people expect a level of quality of reporting rather than "guy with a blog" from things hosted on Substack that would explain the comments.

I will also note that the top of the thread really only said that if the author wanted to be taken as an even handed reporter than in the commenters opinion they need to change their tone. If the author doesn't want to come across as an even handed reporter, then the tone is fine.

I personally find the tone to be off putting as it seems to be not fact based at all and is often making a conclusion from the premise rather than giving me an argument to get me there.

To expand on that beautiful theme:

Animals compete, human beings cooperate.

Animals take advantage of others, human beings care for others by helping them and protecting them from harm.

May compassion rule our hearts for the benefit of one and all and the Earth, herself. We can choose to end suffering. As the "$6 Million Man" intro said in the 70s, "We have the technology."

The world has already learned how we MUST deal with people who act like Nazis, those who choose to emulate their brutal policies. The paradox of tolerance is also a part of Jesus's teachings for He "didn't come to bring peace, but a sword."

His Divine love must be fierce in the face of cruel depradations, but must never embrace hatred or rage or cruelty.

Tonight is the "Night of Power". Send some vibrations out asking our Creator to help you be a part of fixing this Earthwide deplorable mess. Make the Bhodisattva Vow. Ask our Creator to take Its spirit back into Itself to help cleanse and purify your soul of selfish vice, to help you become consumed by the Wisdom of Love (that's the meaning of the 1st Beatitude, called Hidayet in Sufism).

All that we emanate resonates back within ourselves. The spiritual path of love is the process of tuning our vibrations towards effortful loving service and away from selfishly callous ignorance of the suffering of others.

"Lasting peace and happiness for ALL human beings." --Me

The problem is not so much wanting to coddle up to the fire-and-brimstone fundamentalists. It's that a lot of people who used to have what would be considered "standard", middle-of-the-road religious views have been told, again in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, that they're stupid. Whether you believe this to be true is not the point. Calling a large portion of the country stupid is a great way to push them into the arms of an extremist.