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As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen

theatlantic.com

101–110 of 823 posts

Re: As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen

#101

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…

The United States has the world's largest Christian population, and its founding was directly influenced by religion; the Church of England and the Puritans.[1][2][3][4]

To suggest otherwise is to completely ignore not only history, but the present.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_Colony

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_of_New_England#Establ...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_of_Massachusetts_Bay

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_of_Massachusetts_Bay#...

Re: As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen

#102
post #38

Religion is going away and political affiliation resembles more of a cult. You know, very healthy.

Religion isn't going away. Ideology is religion. Very bad religion, but it is religion (or a "cult" to use your language, though that term is overloaded). And no one is without religion. Everyone worships something. The question is: are you worshiping the right thing? In terms of the "traditional" churches in the US, yes, mainline Protestantism is dying because it is a spent force (it has more or less fully acquiesce…

what definition of religion are you using? this is the dictionaries...

   religion
   /rɪˈlɪdʒ(ə)n/
   noun
   the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling 
   power, especially a personal God or gods.

Re: As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen

#103
post #82
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really buy it, it seems to suggest that scientific discoveries are not questioned and changed constantly, when they absolutely are. It's not accurate to always refer to them as "beliefs."

I think it expresses doubt in ability of a layperson to make a rational judgement on merits of a particular scientific research or process rather than on science itself.

I don't understand what this is supposed to mean. There is nothing in the context of "science itself" besides that particular scientific research or process. That's what it's defined as. Did you mean something like: a layperson might be inclined to place higher value on scientific research performed by a personal friend or colleague? That's probably true in some cases, but it's not "scientism."

Re: As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen

#104

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…

Walk into a mainstream religious setting. None of them are there because they got high. If that were the case, the 70s would have looked a lot different.

This is false.

A lot of people found religion in the 60's and 70's due to psychedelics, and have continued to do so ever since. As an example, many people were first drawn to Eastern religions through psychedelic experiences.

Also, arguments have been made that even the mainstream religions were originally founded (and in their early years sustained) due to psychedelic use. For an example see Allegro's "The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross".

That's not to mention many smaller religions such as the Native American Church, Santo Daime, Uniao Do Vegetal, etc.

Something else to consider is that drug use has been so stigmatized (not to mention illegal) for so long that many users have been afraid to come forward and admit their psychedelic use. That's been changing due to the Psychedelic Renaissance and its positive reception in the press, but there are likely to be many more people who haven't come out of the closet yet (not to mention users who died before this more permissive era started). So the number of people who were drawn to religion through psychedelic use is probably much larger than we know.

Re: As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen

#105
post #3

I wish we had a world where the discernment between science, axiom and ideology was a real thing ironed into the public muscle memory as much as ideology itself. Idealism.

Teleological thinking centers in our brain atrophy but remain active even if you denounce religion.

Teleological thinking persists regardless of whether you're secular. The "ideological intensity" in the article is partly a result of teleological drive judging every facet of modern life, even the trivial. On the left it is how X contributes to equity vs oppression, and on the right it is how X contributes to orderliness vs dysfunction.

Re: As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen

#106
post #93

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 –…

[deleted]

Re: As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen

#107
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are parts of Europe that have far more community and where people are far more social but far less religious than the US. 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…

I have no idea what you conceptualise as a “religion”; or how you measure “religiosity”.

I have a very broad definition - to me any belief system (collection of concepts used for understanding the world) is a religion.

Rationalism is one religion. Irrationalism is another religion.

Any preference you have for one or the other is just your opinion. The bias that you can’t justify.

The long-surviving is statistically unlikely to be irrational. It survived the test of time - Entropy.

What is far more likely is that you don’t (yet) understand what religion is.

Re: As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walk into a mainstream religious setting. None of them are there because they got high. If that were the case, the 70s would have looked a lot different.

This is false. A lot of people found religion in the 60's and 70's due to psychedelics, and have continued to do so ever since. As an example, many people were first drawn to Eastern religions through psychedelic experiences. Also, arguments have been made that even the mainstream religions were originally founded (and in their early years sustained) due to psychedelic use. For an example see Allegro's "The Sacred Mu…

I'm sure plenty of them did. But it's interesting I don't see Christians, Jews, or Muslims talk about how they get high all the time. They'd be put off by you suggesting it. It's even a central practice to not do so.

Re: As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen

#110
post #66
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you are a blue collar or unskilled worker, Sweden would have been better, The problem here is that for the Swedes to enjoy their social benefits, they cannot afford to have too many low skilled workers. The swedish economy is a high skilled economy, perhaps the highest skilled in the world. There are very few low-skill jobs, unlike the US which has an army of low skilled workers filling low skilled jobs. This is…

> The swedish economy is a high skilled economy, perhaps the highest skilled in the world. There are very few low-skill jobs, unlike the US which has an army of low skilled workers filling low skilled jobs. This is why the U.S. is able to absorb so many low skilled migrants whereas Sweden is having enormous problems finding jobs for their low skilled migrants. How is that not backwards? If you have 'an army of low sk…

> If you have 'an army of low skilled workers' then there's no room 'to absorb so many low skilled migrants', surely?

Why? The world doesn't work by laws of semantic symmetry. The Swedish economy is structured on automation, on lack of personal service roles, and on skilled industry. Swedish furniture manufacturers use robots and those on the shop floor that remain are required to have skills to operate those robots. Neither will you will find a huge pool of labor cutting people's lawns or being nannies or replacing roofs because there aren't many lawns to cut, roofs are made to last longer and be less labor intensive, and personal service is stygmatized. It's like Holland, which is the breadbasket of Europe but is a pioneer in agricultural automation and does not rely on large amounts of cheap migrant labor, whereas the US agricultural sector does. Even for something like restaurants, Swedish culture makes much less use of them -- e.g. San Francisco has 500 restaurants per 100K, But once you transition to a high skilled economy it becomes much harder to absorb low skilled workers.

Here, things like labor policies play a role. A high minimum wage, generous benefits and travel may pencil out for a high skilled worker that is willing to be paid 1/2 what they could get in the U.S., but they don't pencil out for a low skilled worker unless the low skilled worker's wages are high enough so that the various costs pencil out, which means there can't be too many of them as the services they provide will be more expensive means and thus have smaller utilization. That is why people complain about things like taxis, restaurant meals, bus trips, etc., costing a lot in Sweden, which is why Stockholm has 1/10 as many restaurants per 100K compared to Tokyo and 1/5 as many compared to San Francisco. Those high wages basically require a more capital intensive production processes and don't leave a lot of room for low skilled jobs.

Btw, that is one of the arguments for high minimum wages and generous benefits. The idea is that it will force firms to invest in more capital so that labor becomes more productive. That's the phenomena of McDonald's creating robot tellers and getting rid of workers. That's the process by which the revenue generated per worker is high enough to justify generous benefits. And the question with that approach is always can the economy transition to a high skilled economy or will there be a permanent underclass of unemployable low skilled workers. And Sweden has done a decent job of making this transition, although there is always a problem with high unemployment, it hasn't been the fiasco predicted, as most of the labor force has transitioned to high skilled work. But then that creates a problem when you dump a lot of low skilled workers on the economy -- they find themselves in the permanent unemployed class.

The U.S., on the other hand, has lower costs of employing labor and thus is able to absorb low skilled labor but the flip side is you do not have the same pressures towards automation and capital investment, so the US economy overall is much more mixed. It's not a high tech economy, it has a lot of low skilled jobs as well, and those low skilled jobs don't enjoy the same level of benefits.

It's a tough call which approach is "better". Culturally, the US will never become Sweden, but there are pros and cons of each approach.

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