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As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen

theatlantic.com

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

#131

Post by __s »

tonymet wrote: 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 –…

I don't see how being an atheist means someone lacks the ability to recognize ideology. Religion may help because it gives practice putting boundaries on ideas which are obviously ridiculous. You can't go around pushing everyone to follow Deuteronomy for very long

Overall these pitfalls can be avoided by following some principles: reject taboos, seek more information, avoid metaphor, accept that some things you can't know

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

#132

Post by ukj »

bobthechef wrote: post #127
ukj wrote: post #13

Well…yeah! Religion serves a function. Even if that function is psychological. When you take religion away, something else will fill the utility-gap. Silly humans failing to grasp the purpose of stories/narratives. Edit for the downvoters (who clearly don’t understand): the question “Why do science and philosophy matter?” has only religious/ideological answers.

I agree with you that in the absence of what we conventionally call "religion" doesn't mean the essential character of religion is erased. Abandoning one religion means adopting another. Abandoning a religious faith with thousands of years of refinement for some quackery invented yesterday, especially without proportional reason, is not exactly the move of a sound mind. I also think religion serves a real need, but a…

What is the utility of truth?

If it has none then I don’t need it.

Reflexivity is precisely where meaning/religion comes from. From the self.

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

#133

Post by kazen44 »

ardit33 wrote: post #40
rejectedandsad wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet people in most of Western Europe (discounting Switzerland and Luxembourg and maybe Norway) are objectively poorer than even the poorest American states.

Yes. when I lived in Sweden, I noticed that Swedes in general have less stuff. Smaller housing, fewer cars, less ability to buy stuff, and even go out. The average engineer salary was almost half (about 60%) of those in NYC and SF, while prices coffee/going out in Stockholm were almost the same as in NYC. Rent prices were lower though. But, their quality of life seemed higher overall. Less stressful in general, more…

Also, social control is quite a bit stricter in a lot of (especially northern) european countries compared to the US.

Showing one's wealth is in bad taste, and bragging about status is considering being an outlier. This is slowly changing (since about the 80's) but prior to that, showing off your middle class wealth as a status indicator was frowned upon in certain circles. especially considering the hardship most people endured during and after ww2.

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

#134

Post by jeofken »

alkonaut wrote: post #71

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…

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

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

#135

Post by paulpauper »

This is a commonly held view among the punditry. But the author ignores the obvious counterexample: all the division in the 50s, 60s, and 70s such as over desegregation, civil rights, abortion, and the Vietnam war, despite higher rates of religiosity. You cango farther back: the civil war. America has always been deeply divided.

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

#136

Post by simplify »

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.

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

#137

Post by SubuSS »

sometimesshit wrote: post #79
ardit33 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. when I lived in Sweden, I noticed that Swedes in general have less stuff. Smaller housing, fewer cars, less ability to buy stuff, and even go out. The average engineer salary was almost half (about 60%) of those in NYC and SF, while prices coffee/going out in Stockholm were almost the same as in NYC. Rent prices were lower though. But, their quality of life seemed higher overall. Less stressful in general, more…

Ardit, You need to measure purchasing power using PPP rate, but even still NY and SF known to be expensive areas with high tax rates. SF engineer could earn 200k year but this money could be much low as 80k in another state if you compare purchasing power. It's complex. The Americans can always buy a car but never foods. This become a meme in my home country. There are always trade offs.

But are the trade offs equivalent?

There is a reason folks flock more to SF rather than to nowhere state. If you save 10%, it is still 20k saved compared to 8k. If you lose your job, there are 10 choices compared to one (or none), access to cutting edge of tech rather than reading about it on hacker news and so on.

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

#138

Post by keithnz »

tonymet wrote: 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 –…

the secular world is simply the things that are not connected with religion, to talk about it as a "thing" that needs anymore definition than that doesn't really make sense. It doesn't make sense for "secular" to define itself anymore than that. There may be groups of secular people who develop the kinds of traits you are interested in, for instance secular humanism. But the "secular world" is just those things that are not connected with religion and secular things don't really anymore traits other than that.

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

#139

Post by skissane »

hilbertseries wrote: post #126
alkonaut wrote: post #71

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…

Seems that British nationalism runs pretty deep too, no? How else would you explain brexit?

Many would argue that Brexit was more about English nationalism than British nationalism.

What makes the UK very complex is the coexistence of two layers of national identity – British layered over English, Scottish, Welsh, (Northern) Irish. Which layer a person identifies with is very often determined by their politics, and sometimes also by religious/cultural background. (British vs Irish identity in Northern Ireland tends to correspond with Protestant vs Catholic religious background, albeit there are exceptions to that generalisation.) At the same time, given England is 85% of the population, the boundary between "British nationalism" and "English nationalism" is often quite vague. Its boundaries with Scottish nationalism, Welsh nationalism, Irish nationalism, tend to be more clearly cut.

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

#140

Post by kazen44 »

rsj_hn wrote: post #110
OJFord wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

dutch farming (especially kasbouw/greenhouses) are absolutely crazy. in 2019, they exported roughly 95 billion euro's. And they are the second exporter globally. Mind you the country is absolutely tiny in comparison to the number one exporter (the USA).

[0] https://www.government.nl/latest/news/2020/01/17/dutch-agric...

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