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I want to point out that this is incorrect: > 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 Swe…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Teleological thinking does not have to be supernatural, as long as you replace the idea of a "will" driving things towards a final state, with the idea of attractors and stable versus unstable states. You can't really deny telos and also believe in evolution as a system that fits species to their environments.
Right, telos is not purely a matter of will, which is a special case. Telos is about the ordering of a thing toward an end. You can't explain efficiently causality without recourse to telos. The fact that the same causes consistently lead to the same effects is a testament to the telos of the things involved. Unfortunately, most opponents of telos don't really understand what it really means. They seem to hold to a m…
I sincerely think that it's the thing holding us back the most in the 21st century.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Religion is about culture, belief and community. The fading of the mainstream religions is making room for the more fundamentalist, marketing driven religious practices that are often about money and politics.
We are social animals. A religion is what scientists call a “paradigm”. The socially acceptable ideas/paradigms of today are the religions of next century. Hegel was right.
Religion is just a long surviving irrational belief system. It may serve a more social purpose or a less social purpose. Oppositely, the purpose of unifying a community can be served by a number of things, religion isn't necessary for that. As other mention, extreme religiosity is rising in the US even as average religion is declining but that's naturally ideological.
I want to point out that this is incorrect: > 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 Swe…
>Immigrants to America tend to become American; emigrants to other countries from America tend to stay American. Is that true, or just the authors' speculation? Although it is easily explained. Everyone wants to be American because the USA, of all the countries in the world offers the greatest opportunities to the greatest number of people. They are the top of the food chain, in less nationalistic terms. (i'm not Ame…
That isn't true if you mean in terms of achieving the classic American dream… Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and others are moving more people out of lower/middle class to middle/upper class as a percentage. I do not know in terms of raw numbers but via % we are behind.
We may be on the cusp of a great religious revival, due to the increased acceptance and eventual mainstreaming of psychedelics. People often interpret their psychedelic experiences in religious terms, and psychedelic use has often created new religions and helped to engender an authentic reconnection to existing religions. Mainstream religions rarely offer much more than platitudes or a place to socialize for the maj…
Uhhh... this article is really out of touch with the world and I'm pretty sure they totally didn't understand at a minimum half of what they're talking about. I'd really like to point out something that's just a fact, that was told to me, while I was abroad, by non-US citizens: The USA is the only country where you can move to and say you're from. I can't ever move to France and call myself French. I can't move to Ge…
Sure, it doesn't happen on day one, but it doesn't in the US either.