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

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

#351

Post by sudosteph » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:22 AM UTC

version_five wrote: post #118

I'm not religious, not an atheist either. When I was a kid we went to church. I'm curious what (if anything) other parents substitute for organized religion with their kids. Or do you choose to participate anyway even if not devout? To be clear, I'm a big fan of questioning everything, but I definitely see benefits to being part of something like organized religion and wonder how I will fill that void with my son.

What gap did you feel that church filled in your own childhood?

I went to church as a kid too, but the only positive thing I remember about it has a secular alternatives (youth choir).

Otherwise I just remember: Wearing uncomfortable clothes and trying to sit still while bored out of mind for an hour, trying to intentionally make us late so we wouldn't have to go, my dad getting angry at me for intentionally making us late, spending forever sitting in traffic and finding a parking spot.

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

#352

Post by opportune » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:23 AM UTC

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 –…

Your recognition of explicit vs. implicit ideology is addressed by Slavoj Zizek in some of his work. He generalizes ideology to be mostly a set of assumed or unstated beliefs and ideas which are so internalized they are not even consciously recognized. Could be good further reading for those further interested in the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek_bibliog...

One of the main points of Zizek regarding ideology, relevant to what you said, is that as religious ideology has waned in importance, other ideologies have taken their place, yet because they do not come from religions we do not recognize them as ideologies, though they are. But ideology has always existed in this form, in the background. It is just without religion taking a forefront in life that the importance of other ideologies has grown.

Anyway, I bring it up because I do not think it is possible for us to explicitly address all ideology. Ideology is part of the human condition, not in a metaphysical sense, but because we have only limited abilities to perceive and understand the world - finite lifetimes, limited senses, limited cognitive abilities. We must make assumptions and generalizations, take things for granted, and trust people and ideas so that we can spend our time thinking about other things.

Why? Because it's exhausting to explicitly address all ideology. I'll give you some examples: Country, Culture, Government, Justice, Love, Fairness, Ownership, Work. In discourse we take on only limited slices of what these concepts mean, yet we take their existence and high level concepts for granted (though one person's concept of fairness may not match another's). These are heavy, complicated topics in themselves.

> 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.

Depends on how you define religion. In my opinion what separates religion from philosophy or just ideology, is claims regarding the supernatural and divine. You can absolutely appreciate religions for their wonderful philosophy and theology while rejecting what I would consider very core parts of what makes one a believer in a religion, like belief in supernatural events or divine beings.

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

#353

Post by pengstrom » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:24 AM UTC

deertick1 wrote: post #223

rootusrootus wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

Well the scientific method is fundamentally faith based in that we assume that there are immutable properties of thebuniverse that can be discovered and that our perception allows us to interrogate these properties. Yes this is a very well corroborated claim, but fundamentally faith based nonetheless.

It's a little more insidious than that. The great majority of people will never personally replicate a finding. They will depend entirely on the honesty of/faith in the entire chain between scientist and messanger. it just turns out it mostly works.

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

#354

Post by 8note » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:25 AM UTC

jeofken wrote: post #145

jltsiren wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things may look a bit different from a (West) European perspective. I know enough people who used to live in the US but left, partly because they did not want to inflict US citizenship upon their children. Among all wealthy countries, US citizenship is probably the least desirable one if you don't plan to live there permanently. In any case, the expat/immigrant situation is familiar to many Europeans as well. The rea…

Some Americans I know make a big difference between being a settler nation, like those who came to where there was no civilisation but hunters/gatherers, vs immigrants who move into the blooming civilisation

somewhere that you claim is hunters/gatherers*

Just because the farming and ranching looks different, doesn't make it not farming or ranching

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

#355

Post by 8note » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:27 AM UTC

themolecularman wrote: post #182

whatshisface wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like, the difference between one ship full of Pilgrims and every subsequent ship, or between one wagon train and every subsequent wagon train, or between the people on the Mayflower and their kids (who showed up in a society that already existed).

The people who draw the distinction generally don't like the pilgrims settlers because of what they did when they got here. In contrast to immigrants, who did not "settle" anyone or any land. You can see a lot of this in today's politics as well.

The land is still being settled today; eg. Trump allowing previously unsettled land to be destroyed for oil and gas extraction

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

#356

Post by pessimizer » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:27 AM UTC

As religious faith has declined, computers have also gotten a lot faster, and there are far fewer three-camera sitcoms being shot. Also, the religiously faithful have become a lot more ideologically intense. I guess the Civil War and the Cold War were a relative time of peace compared to now, when pundits get yelled at on twitter.

Liberals (social and economic) continue to fall for the moderation fallacy and to cite the law of averages. I guess it's just six of one and half a dozen of the other, it'll all come out in the wash, and the more things change, the more things stay the same.

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

#357

Post by amelius » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:27 AM UTC

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.

How would that statement apply to your god? And would they be religious?

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

#358

Post by trainsplanes » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:29 AM UTC

tonymet wrote: post #211

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…

Atheism is actually polytheistic. The Gods can be identified by answering these questions: “why am I here?”, “who am i?”, “what should I do?”, “what is true?”, “why should I suffer & die?”, “what will happen tomorrow?”, “who matters more: myself or others?”. The deities of the secular religion would be “the self”, your parents, “the government/state and its figureheads“ , money (and the institutions controlling it),…

A lot of those questions would be answered by "I don't know", and I don't know how that could be considered a god or similar to religious thinking. "I don't know" is a concept religions seek to avoid.

You seem to have some motivation to bring non-religious people away from their thinking, or looking down on them in some way, and making strange and spurious arguments in order to do so.

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

#359

Post by mustafa_pasi » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:31 AM UTC

tonymet wrote: post #211

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…

Atheism is actually polytheistic. The Gods can be identified by answering these questions: “why am I here?”, “who am i?”, “what should I do?”, “what is true?”, “why should I suffer & die?”, “what will happen tomorrow?”, “who matters more: myself or others?”. The deities of the secular religion would be “the self”, your parents, “the government/state and its figureheads“ , money (and the institutions controlling it),…

This is a standard argument most Christians make. It is not really true. You do not have to believe anything. You do not have to have answers.

Let me give you an analogy. Imagine growing up in a militaristic society, and the expectation is that you join the military and fight in whatever wars your imperialistic country engages in. Now suppose you do not feel like doing that. Then your community starts asking you, "but then, if you don't fight with us, then who will you fight for?". Do you feel in your life that you have to fight for one particular empire?

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

#360

Post by reddog » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:31 AM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #301

reddog wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best example I can think of would be the Chinese cultural revolution. Millions killed and hundreds of millions had their lives destroyed because they were perceived by the "faithful" (by mostly highschool and college age Chinese, not police or military) as as not being true to Maos teaching.

That's pretty easy to understand in terms of power and secular belief, I don't see why religion is needed or particularly helpful.

The 30 years war, the 7 years war, the crusades, the inquisition, the witch hunts can also be understood in terms of power and secular belief. That does not mean they were not also powered by religous fervor.

Or the break it down: Mao is the godhead, the little black book the scripture, the gang of four the disciples, the 4 olds the devil, the red guard the clergy and inquisitors, communism the religion and promised socialist utopia the heaven. Watch some youtube videos of red guard rallies and tell me you are not watching a religious service akin to a evangelical tent revival.