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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

#251

Post by joe_the_user »

bobthechef wrote: post #174
joe_the_user wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is an extremely ignorant position that trivializes "religion". First of all, as I have written elsewhere, everyone is religious. The question is: how good and true is your religion? To call it merely irrational is to show a total lack of understanding of the subject. And because religions are many, it makes little sense to speak of "religion" categorically in this way because they often have little or nothing in…

This is an extremely ignorant position that trivializes "religion". First of all, as I have written elsewhere, everyone is religious.

-- I can't see how that statement doesn't trivialize religion at least as much. IE, if everyone is "religious", you've set a very low bar for what qualifies as religious

I think made it clear you have religious beliefs, which involve ... clearly false views of the cosmos (with the possible exception of Buddhism) and you have religious institutions, which serve a variety of social, economic and psychological purposes. A church can be club with a few nods to God or it can be something like a political party hell bent on power or it can be other things. Many American Unitarians maintain the form of religion while dropping all the God part and that's as fine as anything as far as I'm concerned.

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

#252

Post by redis_mlc »

rootusrootus wrote: post #196
indymike wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of the things in the secular world must be taken on faith (belief absent inassailable truth). Truth is difficult and unclear.

Can you give me an example or two to clarify? Many things might not be well known to someone, but could be if they wanted to track down that information. That's a little different than something which has to be taken on faith by everyone .

> something which has to be taken on faith by everyone

- corona absolutely can't be a lab leak, and will be banned by social media as a conspiracy theory

- flimsy masks and t-shirts prevent the spread of corona according to govt. officials

Oh wait ...

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

#253

Post by fufmaya »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #176
tonymet wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which person is more committed to a religion: someone who goes to a sermon 1 hr / week, or someone who watches the news for 3 hours / day? The news content will contain the same ideological elements of the sermon: where you come from, what you should believe, what you should do with your life, what is right / wrong.

News is made up of things that literally happened and often have video proof. Religion is made up of things that did not happen and have no evidence. If something does have evidence of being true, it is called history. You are confusing obsession and focus with religion.

News is literally a story we tell each other to reinforce beliefs about the world.

Truth has no relation to news and news is not about observation of fact.

Even if you witness events yourself, your understanding of what occurred is a narrative you tell, not truth.

All truths and history are interpretations within religious (or ideological) frameworks. Truth as we use the word is not attainable.

There are no exceptions to this!

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

#254

Post by BlueTankEngine »

version_five wrote: post #129
fatsdomino001 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada is about to revert to the mean in a very hard way though, so I wouldn't count on that statistic too much.

I'm also curious to have more details. I'm Canadian and historically have been a big proponent of our country, to the point of smugness. But I'm currently very bearish on our future and curious to hear what others are thinking.

I would be very interested in hearing more about what changed your outlook.

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

#255

Post by manmal »

sidlls wrote: post #199

> Few people understand that most religions e.g. Judaism and Christianity have an apologetic discipline – a deliberate arm open to debate. The range of permissible debate is quite narrow in reality, and usually start from an assumption that the core tenets are more or less true. > 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 hav…

I had an otherwise enjoyable conversation with a just recently-turned-religious person. As soon as core tenets, as you nicely put it, where up for discussion, conversation came to a screeching halt. People who think the ten amendments must be strictly followed have a lot of cognitive dissonance to resolve, and reasoning is not welcome.

The same person asked me into great detail why vaccinations should be a good idea, and expected me to provide all the answers.

We both remained at our positions - she‘s now contemplating homeschooling her kid because of mask requirements, and I still don’t believe in a religion that says my gay friends need to become straight.

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

#256

Post by bluthru »

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…

>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.

One wonders how a people reaches this level of demoralization.

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

#257

Post by slibhb »

gameswithgo wrote: post #123

>The secular world would benefit from adopting more formal definitions of their belief system. Just as the religious world contains Christians, Jews, Scientologists, Muslims, Hindus, et cetc" with sometimes radically different ideas, the secular world too has a great many different people with different belief systems. >If you believe you are not religious, it just means that you don’t have the cognitive tools to rec…

Regardless of whether "everyone is religious," everyone certainly has revelatory beliefs, i.e. beliefs that were not reasoned to.

Christian thinkers have spilled a lot of ink attempting to clarify the boundary between reason and revelation whereas, in the secular world, many people do not seem to understand that many of their beliefs (particularly the foundational ones) are revealed.

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

#259

Post by [deleted] »

pjc50 wrote: post #185
tonymet wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money, medicine, “tolerance”, “racism”, politically incorrect language, natural selection, “the self,” public figures (CEOs, scientists, figureheads), celebrities, recycling, wearing masks, the super bowl, the oscars, the multiverse, the big bang, psychotherapy, anti-depressants, over-eating & dieting, conspicuous traveling, visiting nature, architecture. You can throw those into the religious categories e.g. virtue,…

... cheese, machine screws, steering wheel covers, arriving on time for appointments, the CIA, and Thursday. Have we left anything out?

[deleted]

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

#260

Post by tonymet »

hackyhacky wrote: post #249
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 –…

> 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. This is a poisonous reversal of reality, to the extent that I wonder if you're just trolling. Fact is, more religious people, especially the evangelical Christian sect that is most vocal and influential in America, is not about examining implicit beliefs, nor is it ope…

Did not intend to troll. The “cognitive tools” are the ability to discern which beliefs are religious in nature: taken on faith, ritualistic, ethical , etc.

Again I’m not saying that religion is better or worse. Actually this is a defense of religion as a framework for defining belief.

I’m arguing that secularism when taken on face value lacks the tools to recognize it’s own belief system.

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