The latter is infested with members of the former in the US, all the way up to the POTUS. Nothing gets done without the Christian organizations agreeing to it one way or the other, unless the elected critter who proposes it wants to lose the next election.
Don’t underestimate the temporal power of Jesus in the US.
But we do want this to be an international thing, or don’t we? Just because America is usually governed by religious near-fanatics, it doesn’t mean we have to behave the same and by that risk not being taken serious in the whole rest of the world…
Many other countries in the world are heavily influenced by established churches. Take Spain or Portugal for instance. But it’s true a “funky” US-style newly founded church would be classified as a cult in many countries, like in France.
There’s nothing wrong with the Church of Transhumanism being a church in the US, and a NGO / registered charity elsewhere. What’s what the LDS church does - in part - to avoid being kicked out of France in fact.
Completely agree here.
Transhumanism is a serious thing. It is a philosophy, an Ideal…
And it has serious people being taken seriously and achieving things!
Make a mockery of that Ideal as you are proposing, @anon3825968, and all you’ll achieve is a tiny bit of personal gain for a few people in the US, at the cost of further gaping the divide within our community, worldwide.
Things are hard already for us… to the point people are considering opening a church to get things done!
Intentionally turning into a mockery the only movement actually getting things done in your favour… would definitely not help it!!
Yurpp!!
If it’s a side-effect of someone trying to do something serious, like @amal’s posture… I can deal with it.
But if this comes from someone wanting to just take advantage of everyone else, “because others do it”, and making an intentional mockery of Transhumanism in the process, like @anon3825968’s approach…
Then I have a harder time sitting idly… 
So you think Amal wants to found a church for reasons other than those I have laid out eh? 
By the way, I don’t intend to make a mockery of anything. I’m not the one founding the church. I don’t intend to do anything in fact, because I’m far too lazy. But if I were intent to mock someone, it would be the religious freaks themselves.
There is.
An NGO in UK/France with ties to a mockery “make-a-joke-of-yourself” church in US would never be taken seriously here, unless it takes active steps to go against said “church”.
If it’s a serious “Transhumanist Church”, then it affects less an European NGO, though…
There are examples with NGOs with ties to the Satanic temple over here which never got anything done… until they re-branded to sever all the ties with the satanic temple. Then they miraculously started to be taken seriously. 
No.
But the posture is different.
I get your whole “I don’t care about what others think of me” vibe… It’s great, from an individual perspective!
But once we start to talk about any organisation which speaks for a collective of people, then “what others think of it” does matter. Actually, it’s the only thing which matters! because that is the main coin of trade such an organisation will have to be able to achieve things.
Whatever vibe you think you got, you totally misread what I wrote.
“They” being people who take religion serious, which might be quite a lot as you stated yourself.
And though I totally share that attitude in my “private life”, I wouldn’t put it that way if I actually had to work with such people to achieve some goal 
@coma beat me to making the quote! 
And gladly she did. She expanded on that better than I would!
Yeah, that’s not “I don’t care what others think”, that’s “I dont care what RELIGIOUS people think”.
Also, that was just my personal opinion. I said nothing about the CoT, or how it should pose to be taken seriously.
The only thing I said about the CoT is that, at its core, it’s a vehicle to take advantage of the status afforded to religions. Specifically in the US, probably.
Beyond that, you can sugar-coat it into an organization with branches dedicated to education, research, support for mental patients, legal services for victims of discrimination at work, but that’s what it is.
Real churches are congretations of people who inexplicably bow down and worship some magical being in the sky, or hold totally nonsensical beliefs, and group together as an organization legally defined as a church, devoted to forcing the government to give them the freedom to do their inexpicable rituals even if they contravene normal rules and regulations. Pretend churches like FSM or CoT tack onto that and take advantage of those privileges. There’s no two ways around it.
Yeah, but like I said - this doesn’t really work. At least in Germany, it’s not possible to do something against the rules because of religion 
Be that as it may, that’s what Amal is creating the CoT for.
But if it doesn’t work for the intended goal, and might even lead to things getting even worse for all of us - do you really think it’s a good idea?
You should seriously read about the Satanic temple.
Also…
Not only in Germany. Unless you create a religious practice, which would seriously limit the number of allowed installers available, even in US it might not work as expected.
Then bringing the spotlight into this practice, it might make things much harder instead!
I think so. The CoT might gain some traction stateside, possibly gain tax exemption status, and win a few wins against stupid laws in this or that state.
As for outside the US, nobody with two working brain cells takes new US churches seriously anyway. So there’s no harm in founding it in the US. Like I said, it can take another, more serious form elsewhere, depending on the country. The Mormons, Scientologists, and all manners of wackos are doing very well in Europe without necessarily being fully integrated into a legal church.
I wish the influential people over here had more than a single working brain cell…
One thing I learned in this life:
Never, EVER, underestimate human stupidity! 
There is. There are ripples felt in Europe and far away, from such US churches which makes things over here harder to be achieved.
Even if we’re not talking about laws…
The Transhumanism movement as a whole would be impacted and associated with a phony joke of a church… Harder to be taken seriously anywhere in the world.
this…
And on that one, why not make it serious from the beginning? It wouldn’t make it worse for the US part (tax reduction applies on NGO as well, practices against the law are still impossible for a church), but a lot better for the rest of the world.
True, dat
If that’s the case, then it’s up to our Glorious Leader to go ahead and found the US chapter, knowing that it might impact how it looks outside the US.
But somehow I doubt it: there are many people like us who see the purpose of incorporating into a church in the US for purely practical reasons, and don’t delude themselves into thinking it’s a real church. There are also plenty of people who view religious anything as a good thing.
In any case, if you’re gonna called it “church” of anything, whether or not it is a church, if kinda stains the purity of whatever movement you’re afraid it might defile. If you’re that worried, call it “Transhumanist International” or something else for starters.
I… absolutely missed your point on that last post, @Rosco…
As in… every single sentence I read from your post got contradicted by your next sentence?
Yet, on this sentence:
I am not arguing against that.
Just pointing out that you could make the “Church of Blorp”, which has the exact same agenda as you need now. But with zero drawback to the international community.
Church of Blorp would also bring a lot less damage to Transhumanist actions both within US and out of it.
Etc…
So why to associate this “purely for practical reasons” Church with something like Transhumanism?
If it’s just a tool, like you said, then Blorp is just as effective as Transhumanism, no?
If ultimately you’re arguing for a name change so that Transhumanist doesn’t appear in it, fine by me
My points were:
Amal will decide whether it’s appropriate to create a US church if it might hurt non-US chapters.
Calling anything “church” will antagonize someone or other. That’s just the nature of the word. If you want to be consensual, don’t call it a church to begin with, whatever its true purposes are.