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Funding the Startup of The Atheopagan Society (with updates)
UPDATE MAY 31: WE HAVE REACHED OUR GOAL! Thanks to all our generous donors! Here it is, folks! We’re getting close to being ready to file for legal and nonprofit status for The Atheopagan Society, and need to raise the money to pay the fees. All donors (except those who wish to be anonymous) will be listed on the Society website as Patrons. The books of The Society will always be open to the community, showing where money has been spent. To be transparent: this money will flow through me, as we can’t get a bank account for it until it is legally recognized. But I will retain thorough records…
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The Doomsaying Simply Isn’t Helping: More on My Exchange with John Halstead
I really think my friend John Halstead has missed the most salient points of my recent post, “Why the Doomsters are completely wrong”. His response glosses over my most important critiques of his position and mischaracterizes others. First and foremost, though claiming the space of “speaking truth”, he ignores the thorough debunking of Michael Moore’s recent film, Planet of the Humans, which does the dirty work of the fossil fuel industry by making false claims about the impact and effectiveness of renewable energy sources. John doesn’t seem to acknowledge the very game we are playing here, which is one of contesting ideas. While he says that “of course” we should…
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Why the Doomsters are Completely Wrong
My friend John Halstead has published Die Early and Often: Being Attis in the Anthropocene, recently reprinted in Medium. In it, he argues that the job of humanity now is to die gracefully: to accept that extinction is coming and work to leave a legacy that supports the Earth’s further evolution and biodiversity, and the memory of a remarkable and admirable species. He spices this up with much Neopagan mythological stuff, such as the myth of the Dying God. But that’s in essence what he says. It’s a thoughtful, well-documented piece, and it’s completely wrong. It’s wrong for essentially four reasons: 1) It mistakes the very nature of the human…
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What if..?
What if we lived in a world that respected knowledge and expertise? That embraced kindness and compassion as the most important human qualities? The culture of which ensured that every mouthful of food, every day of living was acknowledged as a gift of the Sacred Earth? That saw poetry, art, music, rituals, happiness as every bit as important as money? In which every person felt loved, supported, and at home? In which the passages of the seasons, of birth, adulthood, aging and death were celebrated as sacred milestones? That’s the world Atheopaganism is working to bring about. Our goals are simple, and revolutionary: Happiness. Kindness. Compassion. Equality. And right relation…
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UPDATE: The Atheopagan Society. Also, Please Stay Home.
Well, the new nonprofit has a name! The Working Group selected The Atheopagan Society (TAPS) as our monicker. We hope to move relatively quickly in developing the documents we need to file for incorporation in California and federal tax exemption, but there are a lot of policies and details to be worked out. The Working Group is meeting by Zoom on Saturdays, though we may move around so members who haven’t been able to participate can attend. Meanwhile, I have been working on stuff for the new Society. TAPS will need a website, so I am building one; I have bought the domain “TheAPSociety.org” to ensure we have a good…
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Blue-Skying Under Quarantine
We are the people of the future, and we are organizing. So, there is going to be an Atheopagan religious nonprofit. As the working group (composed of Atheopagan scientists, Facebook group moderators, and other key supporters) comes together to work on this, I’m trying to dream really big for what the organization can do and be. I know a lot of what I don’t want it to be. I don’t want it to be a “church”, with a hierarchy and a doctrinaire approach to spirituality, and a rapacious thirst for money. You won’t have to “join” it to be an Atheopagan. It won’t even have a membership. Or membership…
