Becoming more religious has helped me identify religious tendencies in the secular world. Ideology doesn’t imply supernatural deities, and some worldly phenomenon can be elevated to a supernatural level. Secular belief contains rituals, origin stories, deities, saints, priesthood, blasphemy, vice & virtue just as religion does.
One aspect of religion I appreciate is that these aspects are well codified and debated – i.e. much more explicit.
In the secular world these aspects exist but they are implicit, making them difficult to debate and attack.
Few people understand that most religions e.g. Judaism and Christianity have an apologetic discipline – a deliberate arm open to debate.
The secular world would benefit from adopting more formal definitions of their belief system. I think that would reduce the conflict and neurosis that comes from engaging a nebulous system.
If you believe you are not religious, it just means that you don’t have the cognitive tools to recognize the secular ideology that you have adopted.
> If you believe you are not religious, it just means that you don’t have the cognitive tools to recognize the secular ideology that you have adopted.
Not all secular beliefs are ideologies. I think there are two key common factors between religious beliefs and ideologies that call themselves "secular":
First, people don't acquire the beliefs by considering and weighing evidence; they acquire them by being told them, usually at a young age, by people they trust, and making them part of their identity. That's why people are so resistant to changing such beliefs.
Second, the set of beliefs acquired in this way is not just a few isolated ones, but a whole network of beliefs that cover every aspect of life and are all asserted as justification for each other in what amounts to a logical circle. That's why it's so hard to penetrate such a belief system and get people to doubt it, even if it flies in the face of easily obtainable evidence.
>Few people understand that most religions e.g. Judaism and Christianity have an apologetic discipline – a deliberate arm open to debate.
Open to talking about it, sure, but the crucial element that separates apologetics from real debate is that one side is forbidden from changing their mind. In religion there is a rule overshadowing the exchange of ideas that says, "no matter how convinced you are, or how weak your own case is, you should stick with it, because it's virtuous to stick with this belief no matter what."
> It’s rare to hear someone accused of being un-Swedish or un-British—but un-American is a common slur, slung by both left and right against the other. Being called un-American is like being called “un-Christian” or “un-Islamic,” a charge akin to heresy.
In fact to be unswedish is not just a common idiom it’s a positive one. It’s when you don’t show the typical negative Swedishness. You aren’t “accused” of it, you are congratulated.
“-I went to say hello to all the neighbors in my building. -What a nice and unswedish thing to do!”
To clarify the point, when other Swedes act a little “unswedish” it may be cosmopolitan cool, but it is limited to the national/ethnic in group. When Arabs, Somalians, or Nigerians, or other foreign peoples act unswedish its expected, and if loud, an annoyance
One political party in Australia tried to adopt this and starting calling people "un-Australian".
The leader of the other party stood up and tore him to shreds, saying that the magic of Australia is that it's a country of immigrants and that by very definition, everyone there is Australian. It's perfectly fine to disagree about stuff and have discussions, but we're all still Australian. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to tear the country apart and should never be given a microphone again.
The other guy has never tried that childish divisive tactic again.
> It’s rare to hear someone accused of being un-Swedish or un-British—but un-American is a common slur, slung by both left and right against the other. Being called un-American is like being called “un-Christian” or “un-Islamic,” a charge akin to heresy.
People may be called un-American as a political weapon, but that's about all it is. People in politics use all sorts of childish phrases as weapons. In reality I've never been called un-American or seen another person called un-American, unless it was for humor.
In my anecdotal experience, calling out "un-Nationality" seems way more common in the New World than the Old World and I wonder if this is still remnants of nation-building side effects.
As a black man I have been called unblack plenty times when my views differed. It's a pretty effective slur that leads to one keeping their opinion to themselves.
As an American I find being accused of being unAmerican is usually something I find humorous:
1) If you don't blow stuff up on 4th of of July you are unAmerican!
2) If you can't eat Hotdogs like Joey Chestnut you are unAmerican!
3) If you don't own gun you are...
Long time ago I was accused of being "un-Canadian(TM)" by neighbor because I do not watch hockey. Actually I do not watch sports at all but it did not matter to him. God knows what would've happened had I admitted not pouring maple syrup on my morning eggs and bacon.
Unaustralian is reasonably common, used as a slur by both sides of politics, the same as described in the article. Tends to be called out with accusations of jingoism in the mud flinging though, which might make it different.
>"If matters of good and evil are not to be resolved by an omniscient God in the future, then Americans will judge and render punishment now. We are a nation of believers. If only Americans could begin believing in politics less fervently, realizing instead that life is elsewhere. But this would come at a cost—because to believe in politics also means believing we can, and probably should, be better"
I think the author is part of a group of largely public intellectuals in the US who have subscribed to the theory of "religion is the opium of the people, but that's a good thing".
Yes, the loss of religion does away with a glue that in some sense kept a sort of false peace intact. Injustices can no longer be explained away with metaphysical explanations, superficial alliances under the banner of faith cannot be maintained. The people who stand to lose from this are the kind of people who write these op-eds. People who benefit from delaying conflict. The people who stand to benefit from the loss of religion are the people who need some justice in this world, not in the next one.
TLDW: we don't know if Peterson is religious or not but he thinks that Christianity must stay. Harris (obviously) is an atheist and thinks religions must go. Now, Douglas is interesting. He's an atheist but thinks that Christianity must stay because much-much worse ideologies would take its place. Peterson and Douglas like to prove their point by pointing to existing ideologies that are already very dangerous.
Personally, I don't have any argument to offer. Since seeing this debate, I thought about this topic a lot but I still didn't come to a conclusion.
The question for me is: Is a mutually shared narrative required for a society to maintain cohesion and engagement at scale?
If the assumption is "yes" then the challenge becomes whether the narrative is actually epistemologically solid enough to bear scrutiny from all angles - something I don't actually believe exists.
I think in the US the narrative since the Colonies formed, has been something like "Land of Opportunity" which a healthy proportion of the US and world doesn't believe in, and realistically only some segment of the world population did believe in for a short period after WWII.
If you are interested in this topic, I really cannot recommend reading A Secular Age by the philosopher Charles Taylor enough.
It’s a huge book but the basic takeaway is this: the modern secular world is a thing that was created over the course of many centuries and cultural developments. It is not merely the subtraction of so-called primitive beliefs. The “subtraction thesis” is the predominant model of how most people (and until recently, religious scholars) interpreted the secularizarion process.
This means that the same basic historical and psychological forces are at play, but they’ve just been morphed and combined in different ways. What is truly new about the modern secular world is its immanence, which basically just means it is not concerned with a “world beyond” this one, and its “cross pressures”, or the state of being aware of other viable alternatives to one’s belief system.
I'm concerned of both aspects. For one, thinking that secular belief is essential or natural – as if it's defined only by the material world and observations on it. Secular belief also assumes its universal (why wouldn't it be since we all live on the same earth). This leads to totalitarianism (with a small t)
The themes here remind me of another politics-is-the-new-religion article by David French, "America Is in the Grips of a Fundamentalist Revival". [1]
In it he draws a distinction between religion and fundamentalist religion (which the author has a background with), with a key quality of the latter being a lack of a sort of humility, a certainty that they're right. Which in turn leads them to be less tolerant of opposing viewpoints - because (in their view) they can see right and wrong so clearly, it pulls them to the position that "error has no rights".
That being said, I think it is easy to pay too much attention to the extremes.
An analysis of the US's political problems is out of scope of a HN comment, but one thing I did recently was read books by two prolific authors on the US left and right [2] (who each have historically been aligned with one of our two political parties). They both contained opposing narratives covering the last 100 years or so, but what was very interesting was how they both overlapped around certain key historical/political events.
I think reading these books was quite helpful for my understanding of US politics in a way that isn't really covered by the news cycle (in the future, I'd like to spend more time reading these sorts of books and less time on news).
Phyllis Tickle wrote a book on this about a decade ago. Her argument is that every ~500 years there is a major shakeup in the Christian world, and we’re in the midst of one right now.
As religious faith has declined, comment intensity on HN has risen.
All joking aside this is a pretty well-known phenomenon that folks like Hegel and Nietzsche have discussed. The Enlightenment has had its tentacles on formalized religion for over 300 years in the Western World.
Nietzsche’s mad man who runs about the town telling people that “God is Dead” is not meant to be taken as a positive or light statement. Nietzsche posited that many of the key elements of modern society would cease to have meaning. Why then, if man is not created in the image of God, should man treat fellow man in any which way? What justification does one have for not harming fellow man if his fellow man is but ape?
Books I loved with perspectives on this are “Enlightenment Now” by Steven Pinker and “The Rise of the Modern Self” by Carl Trueman.
There are religions, there are ideologies, and there are tribalisms. Tribalism is the underlying cause of most of humanity's bad behavior. And unfortunately, it creeps into religions and ideologies more often than not.
In other words, as the article states, rationality is not going to increase as religion decreases. Tribalism is a fundamental human tendency, and few religions / ideologies address it correctly – if at all.
> In his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King Jr. wished that “one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.” The very idea that a nation might have a creed—a word associated primarily with religion—illustrates the uniqueness of American identity as well as its predicament.
That was a quote from the _Reverend_ Martin Luther King Jr, no less, so it's fair to say he knew the connotations and chose that term deliberately. Honestly, it still bothers me when I notice how often leftists will quote King, while never acknowledging the role that Christianity played in his work. He was an extremely well-trained Baptist Minister, with a doctorate in systematic theology. For whatever reason, I don't really see the modern Social Justice types taking many cues from Baptist Theology these days.
You've confused me. Are you saying that "leftists" cannot quote king because he was Christian? Why's that matter? Also, quotes can be used for many purposes outside of their origin, e.g., love thy neighbour, etc.
Define religion as a societal organization, beliefs as mental convictions without proofs, and faith as determination and grit towards hope and higher goals.
Then by the very process of dismantling organized religion, whatever core is left, will not be average: The remaining core will be the more fundamentalist, more extreme and the annoyingly louder part. Its position in society will take time to shift though, all the while new technology platforms make such voices heard louder and wider than before.
When people lose beliefs, the addicted will need something else to hold on to. In this case, the quest for riches, fame and money. So for those already rich, it only makes sense to buy up all sources of knowledge and information, such as media, education and civic spaces. Making the snake eat its tail, prevents it from nibbling your own coffers. Beliefs are governed by being infallible, which is the false core itself.
Whatever direction people take, will be powered by faith. The hope for something better, wether it be in printing more currency, or less. And it makes sense for all involved not to get people engaged in anything that really matters.
So it is not from the outside or from another person true faith will blossom, as faith is ever so much more than mere beliefs.
Yeah, people need to believe in something - faith is part of our human nature, and that's why it's a phenomenon across the globe. As an Eastern Orthodox, I don't need any ideology other than Orthodoxy, which defines my value system and which pretty much gives me an answer for all the good and bad happening; it's unifying, not dividing. That's why I have a hard time associating myself with any secular ideology, as they all conflict with Orthodoxy in one or many ways. I always found it funny that Republicans in the States often present themselves as Christians. Still, they don't act as such - in fact, their values predate Christ and are based on the Old Testament ("An eye for an eye," etc.) and ignore the existence of the New Testament and the teachings of Christ.
It’s interesting that basically no evidence is presented for the focal narrative of the piece, just generalizations and subjective impressions. I think the author is one of the many people who mistook the partisan civility that resulted from, and whose fading remnants lasted a while past, the long period of realignment covering most of the mid-to-late 20th Century in which the two major parties were not well-aligned with the main ideological divides, so that neither could too-openly invoke them without risking internal schism, with an absence of intense ideological division.
I'm not religious, not an atheist either. When I was a kid we went to church. I'm curious what (if anything) other parents substitute for organized religion with their kids. Or do you choose to participate anyway even if not devout? To be clear, I'm a big fan of questioning everything, but I definitely see benefits to being part of something like organized religion and wonder how I will fill that void with my son.
What gap did you feel that church filled in your own childhood?
I went to church as a kid too, but the only positive thing I remember about it has a secular alternatives (youth choir).
Otherwise I just remember: Wearing uncomfortable clothes and trying to sit still while bored out of mind for an hour, trying to intentionally make us late so we wouldn't have to go, my dad getting angry at me for intentionally making us late, spending forever sitting in traffic and finding a parking spot.
Honestly I don’t know. My parents were not religious and so I’m not baptized and never went to church. It’s like when people ask me: didn’t you miss not having a brother or a sister? Well how can I miss it if I never had it? Instead they had friends and we did camping trips, and dinners, and bbqs, and we went to the movies, and to the acquarium, and stuff…
People feel the urge to label some one, group, or idea, as bad. I get around this by accepting that I am bad. It helps me see the best in everyone else, and makes me hold myself to really high standards. It is sometimes unpleasant though.
It's probably some sort of natural calibration process.
Isn’t this what Catholicism is all about? We are all sinners and terrible people. Therefore we should see the best in fellow human and give money to the church so it can offset our tab with god
I realize most people stick to the “everyone is bad” part and forget that they too are an everyone and gloss over the whole forgiveness and acceptance part.
False correlation. People realizing that belief in imaginary beings somewhere out there is false is a good thing. Any correlation at the same time of a rise in people becoming political or ideological zealots has nothing to do with the failure of religion in modern science based societies.
Agreed that weakening religious ideology is good, but disagree that it’s uncorrelated with changing politics. A large part of evangelical political backlash is explicitly rooted in the disappearance of religious symbolism and language from American public life. Exhibit A would be the absurd furor over Starbucks cups not saying “Merry Christmas”. The current intensifying political divide has a lot to do with devout Christians feeling insecure about their diminishing societal influence and the author manages to completely ignore that glaringly obvious fact.
The interesting argument IMO is that current secular ideology seems to trend toward “ignore all religious holidays” or “remove all religious symbolism from society” when a perfectly rational and arguably more populist alternative would be to include and celebrate them all.
I also think that religiosity is a neurological phenomenon and is as much a part of being a human as language, music, money or tool use. Nobody, including myself, can escape it.
I see a lot of talk in this thread about making the definition of "religion" meaningless by broadening it too much, but I think the definition that gets narrowed in is "the phenomenon of humans engaging in dogmatic belief." A good example of this is transhumanism, specifically, the idea that you can upload your mind to a computer. It is all but given based on our current scientific understanding that the mind is inseparable from the body, yet somehow particularly atheist people behave as if they are separate things. This is a dogmatic belief.
Other closely related behaviors are ideological movements. I believe that religion is largely social in nature and driven more by social pressure and community/family and less by actual rational analysis or any other method of coming to conclusions about the world. I think it shows in the decline of traditional religion and also in the rise of what are often being termed "religions" these days by detractors (correctly in many cases, for example the Gaia worship end of times cult). When that is taken into account, the irrational behavior of swathes of people who hold as a core identity characteristic their perceived strict adherence to rationality makes a lot of sense.
I know I have a religion, I don't know what it is exactly, but I'm a human so I have one. But I try to be open to any idea I hold being challenged, I'd like my belief system to be as close to the truth as I can get it, and that means ignoring social proof and being prepared to find out that anything and everything I believe is wrong. Of course, until I find out I'm wrong, I think I'm right.
>A good example of this is transhumanism, specifically, the idea that you can upload your mind to a computer. It is all but given based on our current scientific understanding that the mind is inseparable from the body, yet somehow particularly atheist people behave as if they are separate things. This is a dogmatic belief.
It's unknown if such a technology will be possible one day, but I don't find transhumanism or that idea dogmatic. The human mind is of course part of the human body, but there's nothing that prescribes any particular mind must be part of a biological body. This is known as "substrate independence". If substrate independence is true, it would suggest creation of conscious machines and simulation of conscious beings is feasible.
There are additional difficulties when it comes to the possibility of actually "uploading" one's mind, but it seems incorrect to say "atheists who trust science believe the mind and body are inseparable, yet here they act like they can be separated". The atheist/physicalist/scientific claim is that the mind emerges from the brain, and that the brain is made of ordinary matter - not that they're "inseparable" in the sense that there can't be such a thing as a mind without a fleshy body.
It's orthogonal to "bodiness" or an idea of anything like a soul. If substrate independence is true, then a mind is a thing which must exist on some physical substrate composed of matter. It's fine if you believe substrate independence isn't true, but I don't see any dogma. Perhaps a dogma would be "substrate independence is true" without demonstrating any evidence of it, but I haven't seen that claim. This'll probably only ever be known for sure if some group actually manages to instantiate a seemingly-conscious mind on a non-biological substrate, and if it seems to pass every possible test for consciousness we can devise.
> A good example of this is transhumanism, specifically, the idea that you can upload your mind to a computer.
Better examples might be what you can find in certain strands of rationalism: the simulation argument, that God (friendly AI) doesn't exist but ought to be created, that if the AI isn't summoned (programmed) in a very particular way it will be maximally dangerous, the Judgment day when the AI is brought online, and even intangible possible Hells through TDT and basilisk arguments.
I can't help getting the impression there's a weirdly distorted version of Christianity in there somewhere, and the reason it can survive is because its adherents don't recognize that that's what it is.
Blaming the trend of declining religious faith in the American people is as easy as blaming replacement migration.
How about we talk about declining standard of living, wealth inequality, and rules that apply only to the working class while the political/wealthy classes live their best lives.
I feel that many issues are not only a confusion of values, but a confusion of what values even _are_. There is some cookie cutter bullshit about what is "good" or "bad" and this is used to paint a broad and incoherent picture which breaks down the structures it is painted on. Like confusing ageism with public policy of how to handle disease. Or being idealistic to avoide concern over secondary consequences. You can be called a lot of names by trying to point out secondary consequences which harm certain woke policy choices. When did someone decide there were clear answers to challenging issues and cut off further debate?
I think most belief systems, religious or otherwise, sort of boil down to: "believe what you need to believe in order to get through life with some sort of meaning". Otherwise things can get a little too bleak in our heads...
[+] [-] tonymet|4 years ago|reply
One aspect of religion I appreciate is that these aspects are well codified and debated – i.e. much more explicit.
In the secular world these aspects exist but they are implicit, making them difficult to debate and attack.
Few people understand that most religions e.g. Judaism and Christianity have an apologetic discipline – a deliberate arm open to debate.
The secular world would benefit from adopting more formal definitions of their belief system. I think that would reduce the conflict and neurosis that comes from engaging a nebulous system.
If you believe you are not religious, it just means that you don’t have the cognitive tools to recognize the secular ideology that you have adopted.
[+] [-] pdonis|4 years ago|reply
Not all secular beliefs are ideologies. I think there are two key common factors between religious beliefs and ideologies that call themselves "secular":
First, people don't acquire the beliefs by considering and weighing evidence; they acquire them by being told them, usually at a young age, by people they trust, and making them part of their identity. That's why people are so resistant to changing such beliefs.
Second, the set of beliefs acquired in this way is not just a few isolated ones, but a whole network of beliefs that cover every aspect of life and are all asserted as justification for each other in what amounts to a logical circle. That's why it's so hard to penetrate such a belief system and get people to doubt it, even if it flies in the face of easily obtainable evidence.
[+] [-] whatshisface|4 years ago|reply
Open to talking about it, sure, but the crucial element that separates apologetics from real debate is that one side is forbidden from changing their mind. In religion there is a rule overshadowing the exchange of ideas that says, "no matter how convinced you are, or how weak your own case is, you should stick with it, because it's virtuous to stick with this belief no matter what."
[+] [-] alkonaut|4 years ago|reply
> It’s rare to hear someone accused of being un-Swedish or un-British—but un-American is a common slur, slung by both left and right against the other. Being called un-American is like being called “un-Christian” or “un-Islamic,” a charge akin to heresy.
In fact to be unswedish is not just a common idiom it’s a positive one. It’s when you don’t show the typical negative Swedishness. You aren’t “accused” of it, you are congratulated.
“-I went to say hello to all the neighbors in my building. -What a nice and unswedish thing to do!”
[+] [-] jeofken|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grecy|4 years ago|reply
The leader of the other party stood up and tore him to shreds, saying that the magic of Australia is that it's a country of immigrants and that by very definition, everyone there is Australian. It's perfectly fine to disagree about stuff and have discussions, but we're all still Australian. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to tear the country apart and should never be given a microphone again.
The other guy has never tried that childish divisive tactic again.
[+] [-] IncRnd|4 years ago|reply
People may be called un-American as a political weapon, but that's about all it is. People in politics use all sorts of childish phrases as weapons. In reality I've never been called un-American or seen another person called un-American, unless it was for humor.
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[+] [-] pjc50|4 years ago|reply
Unbritishness definitely gets thrown around, especially these days.
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[+] [-] Barrin92|4 years ago|reply
>"If matters of good and evil are not to be resolved by an omniscient God in the future, then Americans will judge and render punishment now. We are a nation of believers. If only Americans could begin believing in politics less fervently, realizing instead that life is elsewhere. But this would come at a cost—because to believe in politics also means believing we can, and probably should, be better"
I think the author is part of a group of largely public intellectuals in the US who have subscribed to the theory of "religion is the opium of the people, but that's a good thing".
Yes, the loss of religion does away with a glue that in some sense kept a sort of false peace intact. Injustices can no longer be explained away with metaphysical explanations, superficial alliances under the banner of faith cannot be maintained. The people who stand to lose from this are the kind of people who write these op-eds. People who benefit from delaying conflict. The people who stand to benefit from the loss of religion are the people who need some justice in this world, not in the next one.
[+] [-] GreekPete|4 years ago|reply
TLDW: we don't know if Peterson is religious or not but he thinks that Christianity must stay. Harris (obviously) is an atheist and thinks religions must go. Now, Douglas is interesting. He's an atheist but thinks that Christianity must stay because much-much worse ideologies would take its place. Peterson and Douglas like to prove their point by pointing to existing ideologies that are already very dangerous.
Personally, I don't have any argument to offer. Since seeing this debate, I thought about this topic a lot but I still didn't come to a conclusion.
[+] [-] AndrewKemendo|4 years ago|reply
If the assumption is "yes" then the challenge becomes whether the narrative is actually epistemologically solid enough to bear scrutiny from all angles - something I don't actually believe exists.
I think in the US the narrative since the Colonies formed, has been something like "Land of Opportunity" which a healthy proportion of the US and world doesn't believe in, and realistically only some segment of the world population did believe in for a short period after WWII.
[+] [-] keiferski|4 years ago|reply
It’s a huge book but the basic takeaway is this: the modern secular world is a thing that was created over the course of many centuries and cultural developments. It is not merely the subtraction of so-called primitive beliefs. The “subtraction thesis” is the predominant model of how most people (and until recently, religious scholars) interpreted the secularizarion process.
This means that the same basic historical and psychological forces are at play, but they’ve just been morphed and combined in different ways. What is truly new about the modern secular world is its immanence, which basically just means it is not concerned with a “world beyond” this one, and its “cross pressures”, or the state of being aware of other viable alternatives to one’s belief system.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Secular_Age
[+] [-] slim|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tonymet|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway34241|4 years ago|reply
In it he draws a distinction between religion and fundamentalist religion (which the author has a background with), with a key quality of the latter being a lack of a sort of humility, a certainty that they're right. Which in turn leads them to be less tolerant of opposing viewpoints - because (in their view) they can see right and wrong so clearly, it pulls them to the position that "error has no rights".
That being said, I think it is easy to pay too much attention to the extremes.
An analysis of the US's political problems is out of scope of a HN comment, but one thing I did recently was read books by two prolific authors on the US left and right [2] (who each have historically been aligned with one of our two political parties). They both contained opposing narratives covering the last 100 years or so, but what was very interesting was how they both overlapped around certain key historical/political events.
I think reading these books was quite helpful for my understanding of US politics in a way that isn't really covered by the news cycle (in the future, I'd like to spend more time reading these sorts of books and less time on news).
[1] https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/america-is-in-the-grip...
[2] Paul Krugman's "The Conscience of a Liberal" and Charles Murray's "By the People"
[+] [-] keiferski|4 years ago|reply
https://www.amazon.com/Great-Emergence-How-Christianity-Chan...
This post explains it well:
https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/are-we-in-a-500-year-reli...
[+] [-] adaisadais|4 years ago|reply
All joking aside this is a pretty well-known phenomenon that folks like Hegel and Nietzsche have discussed. The Enlightenment has had its tentacles on formalized religion for over 300 years in the Western World.
Nietzsche’s mad man who runs about the town telling people that “God is Dead” is not meant to be taken as a positive or light statement. Nietzsche posited that many of the key elements of modern society would cease to have meaning. Why then, if man is not created in the image of God, should man treat fellow man in any which way? What justification does one have for not harming fellow man if his fellow man is but ape?
Books I loved with perspectives on this are “Enlightenment Now” by Steven Pinker and “The Rise of the Modern Self” by Carl Trueman.
“You gotta serve somebody.” -Bob Dylan
[+] [-] simplify|4 years ago|reply
In other words, as the article states, rationality is not going to increase as religion decreases. Tribalism is a fundamental human tendency, and few religions / ideologies address it correctly – if at all.
[+] [-] sudosteph|4 years ago|reply
That was a quote from the _Reverend_ Martin Luther King Jr, no less, so it's fair to say he knew the connotations and chose that term deliberately. Honestly, it still bothers me when I notice how often leftists will quote King, while never acknowledging the role that Christianity played in his work. He was an extremely well-trained Baptist Minister, with a doctorate in systematic theology. For whatever reason, I don't really see the modern Social Justice types taking many cues from Baptist Theology these days.
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[+] [-] _y5hn|4 years ago|reply
Then by the very process of dismantling organized religion, whatever core is left, will not be average: The remaining core will be the more fundamentalist, more extreme and the annoyingly louder part. Its position in society will take time to shift though, all the while new technology platforms make such voices heard louder and wider than before.
When people lose beliefs, the addicted will need something else to hold on to. In this case, the quest for riches, fame and money. So for those already rich, it only makes sense to buy up all sources of knowledge and information, such as media, education and civic spaces. Making the snake eat its tail, prevents it from nibbling your own coffers. Beliefs are governed by being infallible, which is the false core itself.
Whatever direction people take, will be powered by faith. The hope for something better, wether it be in printing more currency, or less. And it makes sense for all involved not to get people engaged in anything that really matters.
So it is not from the outside or from another person true faith will blossom, as faith is ever so much more than mere beliefs.
[+] [-] nikolay|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] sudosteph|4 years ago|reply
I went to church as a kid too, but the only positive thing I remember about it has a secular alternatives (youth choir).
Otherwise I just remember: Wearing uncomfortable clothes and trying to sit still while bored out of mind for an hour, trying to intentionally make us late so we wouldn't have to go, my dad getting angry at me for intentionally making us late, spending forever sitting in traffic and finding a parking spot.
[+] [-] baby|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] betwixthewires|4 years ago|reply
My only rule is when they ask me what I believe I will not lie to them. But they can be religious if they want.
[+] [-] briefcomment|4 years ago|reply
It's probably some sort of natural calibration process.
[+] [-] Swizec|4 years ago|reply
I realize most people stick to the “everyone is bad” part and forget that they too are an everyone and gloss over the whole forgiveness and acceptance part.
[+] [-] rogerkirkness|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stjohnswarts|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] plaidfuji|4 years ago|reply
The interesting argument IMO is that current secular ideology seems to trend toward “ignore all religious holidays” or “remove all religious symbolism from society” when a perfectly rational and arguably more populist alternative would be to include and celebrate them all.
[+] [-] betwixthewires|4 years ago|reply
I see a lot of talk in this thread about making the definition of "religion" meaningless by broadening it too much, but I think the definition that gets narrowed in is "the phenomenon of humans engaging in dogmatic belief." A good example of this is transhumanism, specifically, the idea that you can upload your mind to a computer. It is all but given based on our current scientific understanding that the mind is inseparable from the body, yet somehow particularly atheist people behave as if they are separate things. This is a dogmatic belief.
Other closely related behaviors are ideological movements. I believe that religion is largely social in nature and driven more by social pressure and community/family and less by actual rational analysis or any other method of coming to conclusions about the world. I think it shows in the decline of traditional religion and also in the rise of what are often being termed "religions" these days by detractors (correctly in many cases, for example the Gaia worship end of times cult). When that is taken into account, the irrational behavior of swathes of people who hold as a core identity characteristic their perceived strict adherence to rationality makes a lot of sense.
I know I have a religion, I don't know what it is exactly, but I'm a human so I have one. But I try to be open to any idea I hold being challenged, I'd like my belief system to be as close to the truth as I can get it, and that means ignoring social proof and being prepared to find out that anything and everything I believe is wrong. Of course, until I find out I'm wrong, I think I'm right.
[+] [-] meowface|4 years ago|reply
It's unknown if such a technology will be possible one day, but I don't find transhumanism or that idea dogmatic. The human mind is of course part of the human body, but there's nothing that prescribes any particular mind must be part of a biological body. This is known as "substrate independence". If substrate independence is true, it would suggest creation of conscious machines and simulation of conscious beings is feasible.
There are additional difficulties when it comes to the possibility of actually "uploading" one's mind, but it seems incorrect to say "atheists who trust science believe the mind and body are inseparable, yet here they act like they can be separated". The atheist/physicalist/scientific claim is that the mind emerges from the brain, and that the brain is made of ordinary matter - not that they're "inseparable" in the sense that there can't be such a thing as a mind without a fleshy body.
It's orthogonal to "bodiness" or an idea of anything like a soul. If substrate independence is true, then a mind is a thing which must exist on some physical substrate composed of matter. It's fine if you believe substrate independence isn't true, but I don't see any dogma. Perhaps a dogma would be "substrate independence is true" without demonstrating any evidence of it, but I haven't seen that claim. This'll probably only ever be known for sure if some group actually manages to instantiate a seemingly-conscious mind on a non-biological substrate, and if it seems to pass every possible test for consciousness we can devise.
[+] [-] evoo5Rlyea2D|4 years ago|reply
Better examples might be what you can find in certain strands of rationalism: the simulation argument, that God (friendly AI) doesn't exist but ought to be created, that if the AI isn't summoned (programmed) in a very particular way it will be maximally dangerous, the Judgment day when the AI is brought online, and even intangible possible Hells through TDT and basilisk arguments.
I can't help getting the impression there's a weirdly distorted version of Christianity in there somewhere, and the reason it can survive is because its adherents don't recognize that that's what it is.
[+] [-] dnndev|4 years ago|reply
TV, radio, news, internet, personal voice - comments posts such as hacker news.
People would have never connected before social media, tv, radio to align in mass.
Religion has been more about social that faith for decades. Now people have another option - internet and social media.
[+] [-] gogopuppygogo|4 years ago|reply
How about we talk about declining standard of living, wealth inequality, and rules that apply only to the working class while the political/wealthy classes live their best lives.
The existing system is broken.
[+] [-] vitiral|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] osrec|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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