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

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

#361

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

throwamon wrote: post #241

kevstermcgee wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> agreed and the world would be more navigable if they adopted distinct names, garb & beliefs the way the other religions did. Athiesm is to religion what not collecting stamps is to a hobby. We aren't the ones creating an imagined reality. We're just saying until there's substantive evidence to support the existence of a deity we probably shouldn't assume one exists.

You imply from your comparison that atheism is [not belonging to a group with a shared belief] and then say "we" [belong to a group with a shared belief], which is clearly self-contradictory. I strongly agree with the first part, but not with the second. There are certainly atheists who wouldn't agree with what "we" (you) are "just saying".

We, the people who aren't interested in unicorns, are rarely mentioned on lists of fantasy fandom although we do share the same feelings about a particular element of the fantasy genre.

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

#362

Post by grecy » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:33 AM UTC

8note wrote: post #350

grecy wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One political party in Australia tried to adopt this and starting calling people "un-Australian". The leader of the other party stood up and tore him to shreds, saying that the magic of Australia is that it's a country of immigrants and that by very definition, everyone there is Australian . It's perfectly fine to disagree about stuff and have discussions, but we're all still Australian. Anyone who says otherwise is…

That's very unfortunate for the indigenous folks, being left out if the country's definition

Well, yeah, the way Australia treats it's indigenous people is absolutely disgraceful.

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

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Post by tonymet » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:37 AM UTC

opportune wrote: post #352

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 Zi…

I agree with you , and have been influenced by Zizek. We assume religions are primitive , but it’s likely that they are advanced stages of earlier ideologies. I’m expecting contemporary / secular ideology to evolve into a formal religion with canon , priesthood etc

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

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Post by p_j_w » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:37 AM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #322

simondw wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Or maybe you have a different definition of "religious" than I do? But no, it must be that I lack the right cognitive tools. Sheesh.

There is a different and better way to put this: most people are completely unaware of the foundation of irrational nonsense that their worldview is based on. (yes, even, or especially so if they base their worldview on rationality) If you are a member of a religion, the things you have “faith” in are right there in front of your awareness. If you don’t have religion, the metaphysics/mythos/philosophy your reality is…

>most people are completely unaware of the foundation of irrational nonsense that their worldview is based on

Maybe I live in some kind of intellectual bubble, but me and the vast majority of my atheist friends are all too aware of the fact that the rationality ends at some point, so I've gotta disagree with this pretty hard. In fact, I'd be hard pressed to find anyone I know personally who thinks it's rational all the way down.

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

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Post by civilized » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:37 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 –…

> Few people understand that most religions e.g. Judaism and Christianity have an apologetic discipline – a deliberate arm open to debate.

They have arguments that they make to nonbelievers. That's not the same as being genuinely open to debate.

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

#366

Post by eli_gottlieb » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:38 AM UTC

rogerkirkness wrote: post #22

wturner wrote: 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.

There is no specific center in the brain for teleological thinking.

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

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Post by hooande » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:38 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.

The difference is that science, by nature, must produce testable hypotheses. I don't assume on faith that F=ma. I can make a prediction of what the force will be based on ma, and then conduct an experiment to see if that's true

I cannot test whether or not I will go to heaven after I die. This belief requires faith

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

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Post by jandrewrogers » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:39 AM UTC

zokula wrote: post #231

jandrewrogers wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, it feels true. I, like many Americans, know an enormous number of immigrants and poor people that moved into the middle and upper-middle class through hard work and discipline. There is still plenty of opportunity to do that US if you apply yourself. Economic mobility is very high in the US (which is distinct from social mobility). When I've worked in Europe, it has always been evident that this is much…

> Economic mobility is very high in the US Not so much. The U.S. is not even in the top 10 of countries for Economic mobility.

The US ranks very high in terms of absolute mobility. Measures of relative mobility are only comparable between countries if they have similar wage compression curves, which is also partially a function of country size. US wages are much less compressed than in Europe -- see also: engineering wages -- so they aren't meaningfully comparable in relative terms.

Given two countries with the same median wage (PPP), a 20k increase in income in one country may be relatively "economically mobile" and a 40k increase in income in the other is not, even though the income increase is much larger in real terms. When average people talk about economic mobility, they mean the second case; using relative mobility is misleading.

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

#369

Post by syshum » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:42 AM UTC

kevstermcgee wrote: post #181

tonymet wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the secular world has many different people agreed and the world would be more navigable if they adopted distinct names, garb & beliefs the way the other religions did. If you think about it, every thanksgiving debate was really a religious debate among people who didn’t clarify their membership.

> agreed and the world would be more navigable if they adopted distinct names, garb & beliefs the way the other religions did. Athiesm is to religion what not collecting stamps is to a hobby. We aren't the ones creating an imagined reality. We're just saying until there's substantive evidence to support the existence of a deity we probably shouldn't assume one exists.

The problem with that text book definition of Atheism, or Anti-Theist is that the the label of Atheist has taken an a life of its own, and the majority of people publicly proclaiming themselves to be an "Atheist" do not simply seek "evidence to support the existence of a deity", no instead they adopt the so called Atheism+ movement that incorporates loads of other philosophical and political positions into the label of "Atheist". It has become decidedly Authoritarian Left in its political positioning, so much so that many libertarians that used to proudly use the Atheist Label has stopped referring to themselves as Atheist

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

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Post by kemayo » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:42 AM UTC

rsj_hn wrote: post #333

colinmhayes wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have spent millenia thinking about rational answers to those questions. It's easy enough to find answers, but much like with religion there is no consensus. The answers follow a much more rigorous logic then "god said so" though. I'm not a moral nihillist because that's not a thing, but I am a moral anti-realist because it's clear that there are no intrinsic moral laws. It's all preference based.

It is not all preference based, as very few moral systems lead to thriving societies that are stable and able to self-reproduce rather than collapsing back into chaos. In fact, almost none do. Take a look at the ten commandments. "Honor thy father and mother so that it may be well with you and you may live long in the land". What happens when generation n+1 thinks they are morally superior to generation n? The same a…

I think you're arguing against something the grandparent didn't claim? They didn't say that various moral systems wouldn't have different outcomes, just that none of them would be intrinsically correct.

We can note, for instance, that "produces a thriving society" is a thing for which you're imposing a preference. There's no inherent reason why that's the true system, just that we think it'd be nifty if that was an outcome.