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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

#431

Post by eezing »

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 –…

You’re arguing semantics. For many Americans, religion implies the existence of god. Your definition of religion is too vague for debate.

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

#432

Post by samhain »

tonymet wrote: post #260
hackyhacky wrote: post #249

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. 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.

I agree with the parent, you’re argument almost appears disingenuous to the point of looking like a troll or bait. This perspective is substituting any belief with a religious belief which is a false equivalency. It’s unfortunate that the grandparent is the top comment right now.

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

#433

Post by tonymet »

Jedd wrote: post #300
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 –…

> Becoming more religious has helped me identify religious tendencies in the secular world. Do you believe that becoming religious made you smarter / more aware, or that it made you more eager to seek reassuring comparisons outside your religion? > The secular world would benefit from adopting more formal definitions of their belief system. Benefit whom? The 'secular world' is perhaps not as centrally organised as yo…

> Do you believe that becoming religious made you smarter / more aware

As in it's equipped me with mental models to understand which components of secular life are acts of faith & ritual vs reason.

> 'secular world' is perhaps not as centrally organised as you may believe or wish for

Nor is it uniform. But there are some overt and some covert aspects. the covert forces benefit from being nebulous.

One reason religions are so open to attack is that they have a clear identity and value system (not necessarily good, but at least clearly stated). If you think about it, you can have a healthier relationship with a religious opponent– as long as you have equal power, you can oppose each other in a healthy way.

The secular world is applying all sorts of demands & social pressures on you, and there's no way to oppose them, because secular ideology doesn't have an identity, an institution or value system open to attack. It's like fighting smoke or a swarm of bees.

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

#434

Post by tonymet »

p_j_w wrote: post #364
colechristensen wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

can you elaborate on this? This is the kind of philosophical analysis that I think most secular thinkers lack. I know there are rigorous atheists who are capable of understanding their ideology, but they are few

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

#435

Post by jart »

friedman23 wrote: post #293
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…

> 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…

When I think of religion in the context of Hacker News I think of things like Michael O. Church evangelizing functional programming or the people who challenged the epistemological paradigm of the cladistics journal which must be parsimony. So I feel confused when I see the other kind of religion here. One way you could make us feel even more uncomfortable is by sharing information we haven't considered, like a weakness in a computer system or a contradiction in a generally accepted practice.

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

#436

Post by flyingchipmann »

BackBlast wrote: post #428
flyingchipmann wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so funny when people intentionally define anything as kind of religion in order to fit their worldview. Take it this way, scientific thinking/method is about a system to analyze. It can be used analyze anything(yourself, math, religion). It's like a function, where you put input data and try your best analyze critically to get an reasonable output. And it can even be used to analyze itself!(like higher order fun…

You seem to believe that the scientific method and religion are mutually exclusive. I'm going to split out some terms here. Scientific Method, Academic Science, and Secularism. The latter two are connected to atheism, at least in this era, and are more in line with ideologies and I do not desire to further address or describe them in this post except to say that they do not have a monopoly on the merits of the scient…

You are putting words in my mouth. What I am saying is that scientific method is way of thinking. If you have to compare to religion. They are orthogonal. You can apply scientific method and claims that you believe god exist. Because you can't scientific prove otherwise. But at the same time, you can apply scientific method and claims the reverse, that you don't believe god exist. That's fine, because you also can't prove otherwise. And surprise, you can claim you don't know, which is also perfectly fine. The most important part is you don't always arrive at some certain conclusion, and that's fine.

Because it was not about result. Or rather, it's never about the result. It's about the process, in same vain of procedural justice. It's about finding the provability.

The thing is if you can't move past that you have to make a result. Or the extreme, result is ignoble. That the process of proving the utmost important part. You will never get what scientific method is about. Just like your last paragraph. Sure, there are so many theories. Maybe even someone claimed that that harry porter is real! But why do you have to believe or not to believe if you only care about the process of proving and provability.

It's not about proving that the religious people are wrong(or proving irreligious people are wrong). It's about the fact that, for some people , they truly don't care about the result or take the result itself so far as undetermined (still care about the proving process though) and moved past it.

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

#437

Post by jturpin »

mEATsack wrote: post #426
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…

> Why is murder evil? Why is stealing evil? Why is anything evil or good for that matter? These are covered by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Evil in this context is any violation of rights as defined by the UDHR https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma... Why resort to a religion when you can have empathy for your fellow human, seems like a waste of time :)

The UN does not decide what is _evil_ or not, and empathy is not some self-evident trait from which all objective morality comes from. You could possibly argue that empathy is evolutionary and aids society and in that way has some objective merit, but the GP is right, we have to accept that our moral systems are rooted in some assumptions.

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

#438

Post by tonymet »

blackearl wrote: post #375
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. Hubris is a sin. I'm sure someone with your sharp cognitive tools can recognize that.

I literally mean a toolkit of mental models, like quantum physics vs classical. Believing one or the other doesn't make anyone better – they both have applications.

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

#440

Post by tonymet »

Igelau wrote: post #394
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. You had something interesting to say, why'd you have to go and close it out with flamebait?

Fair enough what's a better wording. I'm trying to convey the mental models that are more natural in the religious world and lacking in the secular world (outside of philosophy )
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