This thread is surprising to me. Not just as a topic on HN, seems it will be a downvote upvote war lol.

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This response was going to be in reply to ex-Mormon with PTSD but I broadened it to a new thread since this got long.

To answer OP, I do not have a religious or spiritual practice. Unless you call doing things I enjoy and trying to appreciate the moment spiritual.

To respond to the threads, I'm surprised by the number of comments saying religion, and in particular incorporating their children, is a regular routine for their family.

Though most not to the extreme of experience of the ex mormon HN er.

To me adults can believe and do whatever they want. If it makes them happy great. Makes them a better person even better.

So long as it doesn't encroach on others' autonomy and freedom. Especially children.

That often leads to children not having safe spaces or potentially being outright kicked out of their home.

The opposite of what a lot of religions preach.

Encroaching on freedom and autonomy of adults is increasingly happening too.

Potentially the most damaging is having multiple SCOTUS justices openly evangelizing their religious institutions and actively ruling to reshape our country based on their faith.

Damaging to women & gender especially.

Amy Coney Barrett to me is shocking in that she belonged to a super odd fringe group where she served as a literal handmaid (their term, to be fair though it's more like a leadership role).

An otherwise probably intelligent women leading an org preaching that “Women were homemakers; they were there to support their husbands,” one former member said in an interview. “My dad was the head of the household and the decision-maker.” wapo: https://archive.is/S1NSh

Does her husband decision-make her legal rulings?

BTW these strict and forced gender roles are also being forced and hurting with trans treatment bans and other gender identity discrimination.

Scalia is another example. So too was Barr. Oddly all catholics even though evangelicals hold more power and %.

I suggest reading Barr's speech to Notre Dame it was crazy to me. [2]

He specifically said he made decisions based on his interpretation of Catholicism. A bunch of the OG Trump pushers like Bannon are part of this weird Catholic group (example oddness: they built a militaristic monastery compound for 'gladiators' in italy)

They are open about their campaign to reshape the US into what they view as its origins, specifically governed Christianity (also implied white but that's another thread)

Barr said that this decreasing religious participation - specifically christianity - is the demise of rule of law, ethics, & what he considers the breaking up of families (divorce, or what I consider the autonomy not to be in relationships you don't want to be in, or are in danger with). Maybe allowing states to ban divorce is on the chopping block next.

That's scary to me. The people in charge of enforcing and shaping the law will tell you in a speech that they are making decisions guided by their religion, no matter what they tell the Senate that religion has nothing to do with it or that somehow they've never had an opinion on Roe...

Other examples abound in SCOTUS, look to religious schools. Ruling it's 'discrimination' & forcing state funding of religious schools which do actually discriminate in their written rules against for instance LGBTQ students and faculty (actively writing that they refuse them education, which goes against 70 years of SCOTUS rulings). Not to mention not having to actual teach things like you know, science.

[2] https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/williambarrnotreda...