As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen • Hacker News Board

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

#311

Post by icelancer » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 12:54 AM UTC

gandalfgreybeer wrote: post #248

icelancer wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Believe science." Vox and others stealth-editing articles, people yelling at you if you don't blindly believe the CDC/WHO, etc. Science by its very nature is heretical, questioning, skeptical. "Belief" in science is exactly what we should not be doing, yet is pushed by the academic elites.

I’m slightly surprised to see this line of thinking in HN. The so-called “Belief” in science is not driven by blind faith that what people are saying are true. It’s that you understand that before something is believed it goes through a rigorous system of fact checking / experimental confirmation. So if something is considered by people from different fields as true, then it likely is. But as you said, it’s questioni…

>> The so-called “Belief” in science is not driven by blind faith that what people are saying are true. It’s that you understand that before something is believed it goes through a rigorous system of fact checking / experimental confirmation.

Right. None of which happened with the proclamations by the CDC/WHO who also had potential perverse incentives. Globally appointed scientists are not the arbiters of science. That is my biggest issue with the "believe science" movement.

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

#312

Post by friedman23 » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 12:54 AM UTC

TimPC wrote: post #306

friedman23 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> usually start from an assumption that the core tenets are more or less true. You use this as a criticism of religion but I find it's true of secular people as well who have baseless beliefs that are just as deeply ingrained. Telling someone on hackernews you are religious you will probably get a ton of criticism and downvotes. You know what will get the same reaction? Telling someone you are a moral nihilist. Why i…

There is an entire branch of Philosophy called Ethics that gives us better answers to these questions and a better framework for grappling with them then religion ever has. It is quite arrogant to assume that atheists have no answers at all to these questions.

Ah yeah, good argument, a field of study exists. Given you are a well educated atheist you can explain the underpinnings of your morality right?

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

#313

Post by kemayo » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 12:55 AM UTC

tonymet wrote: post #278

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…

You raised a good point about all belief vs religious belief. Which beliefs do you take on faith? Which would have you outcast if you didn’t believe them? Which lead you to a personal sacrifice? Which beliefs cause great anxiety or pleasure with no tangible evidence? Not comprehensive but those are categories of beliefs elevated to religious in nature. For example, believing that the Lakers are the best basketball te…

Religion has a meaning, and it specifically relates to the supernatural. If something makes no supernatural claims, it's not a religion.

To whit, "believing that your life got substantially better or worse following an election" would not be a religious belief. This is because it can be tested, and would have a simple cause/effect based in physical reality. It might be an intangible "I feel better about things because I know people agree with me, and think that people in positions of political power will support my interests" -- but there's nothing supernatural about that.

As was said, if you want to redefine the word "religion" to mean "any sort of belief system", then sure, go for it. It's a great way to troll and provoke arguments.

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

#314

Post by sidlls » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 12:55 AM UTC

friedman23 wrote: post #309

manmal wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

You can't think of anything you believe in that if someone came to you to "discuss" you wouldn't react instantly negative and start calling the other person insults?

Why bother? I don’t hold any belief strongly enough to merit such a reaction, though I might react negatively for other reasons. For example, past experience showing the insincerity of their own debate tactics and a lack of patience for rehashing it all yet again.

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

#315

Post by idiotfinder » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 12:55 AM UTC

trophycase wrote: post #163

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…

A religious person making a tautological argument!? I'm shocked!

found one!

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

#316

Post by joe_the_user » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 12:56 AM UTC

xelxebar wrote: post #234

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…

> This is just a sort of tautological argument, wherein you adopt that "to be religious" is the same as "to have a belief system". Not OP, but I think this is a pretty narrow reading of their statement. Personally, I read it to be more about value and community dynamics. Institutionalized religions often are very explicit about their (supposed) terminal values and arrange social situations to explicitly work toward o…

I believe OP is pointing out that secular groups (at least those within view of OP's demographics) mostly fail to have explicitly defined value systems.

You could say that secular groups may have implicit value systems, may even implicitly enforce but because they haven't made these values explicit, they allow to explicate, question and change them - whereas religion is about maintain an explicit and unchanging set of values.

So there's more to the not-explicitness of a secular process than "a religion that doesn't say it's a religion".

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

#317

Post by 8note » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 12:58 AM UTC

fufmaya wrote: post #221

hilbertseries wrote: post #120

It’s interesting how you’ve written so much here and not given what concrete example. Makes it very difficult to examine your argument, when you simply state that secular ideology is religious. I think it’s worth noting the definition of secular is: > denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis.

Secular beliefs are invariably religious positions. It comes down to what you believe is axiomatic about the world. For example, asserting that life is soulless and meaningless is to take a stand on something that you cannot know. It's a religious position. All secular beliefs stem from similarly foundationless religious positions. Or maybe not foundationless, but without acknowledgement of the religious roots (that…

Your soul example is not axiomatic.

The actual axiom is that real things are observable/that empiricism is true. That's not even a required secular thing; secular folks can believe in souls as well, or be rationalists, where what's real does not depend on what you can observe.

But for some subset of us, the soul is not measurable, nor can youcreate a test to determine whether something has a soul or not, so souls do not exist, by comparison to something like the electrical charge.

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

#318

Post by Tade0 » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 12:58 AM UTC

tonymet wrote: post #144

hilbertseries wrote: post #120

It’s interesting how you’ve written so much here and not given what concrete example. Makes it very difficult to examine your argument, when you simply state that secular ideology is religious. I think it’s worth noting the definition of secular is: > denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis.

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,…

> I’m not taking good / bad position just applying religious lens to secular lifestyle.

I think your way of speaking about this doesn't do them any justice.

Frankly, reading those descriptions, I would assume you're an atheist.

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

#319

Post by halfnormalform » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 12:58 AM UTC

deertick1 wrote: post #219

trophycase wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A religious person making a tautological argument!? I'm shocked!

An atheist denigrating the intellect of a religious person?! I'm shocked. It is a tautological argument in that it is true absolutely. Thats not a bad thing. Any system of belief is fundamentally predicated on faith based axioms. E.g. basically everything one thinks is "religious" to some degree.

No intellect was degraded. It was the behavior. Also your response is merely an insult followed by 5 unsupported statements. Can you try again?

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

#320

Post by 908087 » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 12:58 AM UTC

Most have just replaced or combined prior religion with a combination of QAnon/MAGA, conspiracism, anti-vax nuttery, nationalism, cryptocurrency / MLM schemes / Ponzi schemes / reddit pump and dump operations, various other purported get-rich-quick schemes, etc.