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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

#461

Post by Cyberthal »

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…

> The range of permissible debate is quite narrow in reality

What? Christian apologetics meets atheists, Satanists, Darwinists, whoever. I don't even know how restricting apologetics to a very narrow permissible debate would work, unless like the MSM one can control which opponent gets on the mic.

Christians enforce a narrow range of theological divergence acceptable as orthodox, but that is not apologetics.

> You're basically defining all belief as religious belief

No he isn't. He's defining humans as religious, and observing that the absence of affiliation with a major organized religion doesn't change this.

I live in a Communist country in which the Party sometimes explicitly substitutes for a church. In the USA, congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, which means that naturally a state church will evolve that denies being a state church -- both the "state" and "church" parts. Humans being both religious and hierarchical, it's often tricky to determine whether state is running church or vice versa. The ball is always under the other cup.

If you dare, I'm sure you can think of a few recently-invented blasphemies which if violated would result in censure of a progressively more official nature. Whoever can hunt witches, holds the pulpit, even if it comes with a press badge rather than a funny hat.

Remember to recycle.

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

#462

Post by betwixthewires »

wturner wrote: post #272
wyager wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “science” most people believe (more accurately called scientism) is an aspect of the state secular religion.

I don't know who "most people" are but if you are conflating science with values (I did a quick look up of the definition of "scientism") you are doing it wrong - and it isn't science. This reminds me of a video I watched once. An author named Sam Harris wrote an entire book titled The Moral Landscape that supposedly (I haven't read the book) makes the argument that science can precisely inform our value judgments .…

As someone who does agree with Sam Harris' view, I do notice that he does this thing where over explains his point to fog it up and then when confronted accuses his opponent of misattributing what he said. It is a clever but dishonest debate tactic.

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

#463

Post by tonymet »

keiferski wrote: post #447

If you are interested in this topic, I really cannot recommend reading A Secular Age by the philosopher Charles Taylor enough. It’s a huge book but the basic takeaway is this: the modern secular world is a thing that was created over the course of many centuries and cultural developments. It is not merely the subtraction of so-called primitive beliefs. The “subtraction thesis” is the predominant model of how most peo…

I'm concerned of both aspects. For one, thinking that secular belief is essential or natural – as if it's defined only by the material world and observations on it. Secular belief also assumes its universal (why wouldn't it be since we all live on the same earth). This leads to totalitarianism (with a small t)

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

#464

Post by irrational »

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…

>I just don't think there is a god.

This would be agnostic (militant agnostic?), wouldn't it? I think a true atheist would say "I know that there is not a god."

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

#465

Post by 1123581321 »

manmal wrote: post #255
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,…

What led her to change to the religion?

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

#466

Post by irrational »

jart wrote: post #413
simonklitj wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is rational? Is not rationality subjective? What you might deem irrational others might deem perfectly rational, and vice-versa, what you might deem rational others might deem quite obviously irrational. Are we to see experiences as rational explanation of a phenomena? Sure, I see and feel a rock, and I verify its existence rationally. I smell food and verify its existence rationally. What about people experienc…

Rational means you'll make choices that benefit yourself. It's one of the core assumptions of game theory, economics, and policymaking. All the math breaks as soon as that's not the case because irrational is unpredictable. What's nice about rational agency is that it makes cooperation without hierarchy possible so it's been known to rustle the jimmies of the first estate.

Do we want people to make choices that benefit themselves? That seems to be the root of so many problems in the world. Shouldn't we encourage people to make choices that benefit others, benefit the wider community, etc.?

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

#467

Post by betwixthewires »

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.

Let them be religious. If their mother is religious and wants them in a church let it happen.

My only rule is when they ask me what I believe I will not lie to them. But they can be religious if they want.

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

#468

Post by onion2k »

failwhaleshark wrote: post #400
joe_the_user wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a non-religious person, certainly I understand many of my beliefs come from convention or intuition or whatever non-rational source, sure. But I don't have any meta-belief telling me to hold onto given beliefs-that-seem-implausible-or-unverifiable because I'll be rewarded in the end or because it's a test or whatever. I don't continually change whatever belief I know is arbitrary but that's because consistency has…

Religion, spiritual beliefs, ghosts, lottery ticket "investing," superstitions, luck, horoscopes, phobias, ritual sacrifices, Capgras delusions/changelings, and faith healing are examples of what I categorize as magical thinking. These are the ways of animals who cannot control their emotions long-enough to think clearly and honestly between banging on bones in front of a monolith. If the average member of society is…

phobias

That's an odd thing to put in your list. Phobias aren't something people choose to believe in. They're specifically an irrational, subconscious pattern of behaviour. That isn't a belief.

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

#469

Post by krmboya »

simplify wrote: post #136

There are religions, there are ideologies, and there are tribalisms. Tribalism is the underlying cause of most of humanity's bad behavior. And unfortunately, it creeps into religions and ideologies more often than not. In other words, as the article states, rationality is not going to increase as religion decreases. Tribalism is a fundamental human tendency, and few religions / ideologies address it correctly – if at…

I know at least in Christianity tribalism is addressed.

One instance where Jesus says love your neighbour, then the listeners ask him who should be considered a neighbour. He responds with a story about a Samaritan who goes out of his way to help a Jew robbed and left for dead, as an example of a good neighbour.

Jews and Samaritans at the time despised each other.

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

#470

Post by pdonis »

coldtea wrote: post #204
pdonis wrote: post #160

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. Not all secular beliefs are ideologies. I think there are two key common factors between religious beliefs and ideologies that call themselves "secular": First, people don't acquire the beliefs by considering and weighing evidence; they acquire them by being told them,…

> First, people don't acquire the beliefs by considering and weighing evidence; they acquire them by being told them, usually at a young age, by people they trust, and making them part of their identity. That's why people are so resistant to changing such beliefs. Second, the set of beliefs acquired in this way is not just a few isolated ones, but a whole network of beliefs that cover every aspect of life and are all…

> Those two hold for, say roughly, 90% of what most people believe, secular or not

See my response to tonymet upthread.

> Even most scientific theories people believe, they haven't examined and are incapable of following their theories and experiements personally - they were just being told they are truth and they trust it to be so.

For some theories that are called "scientific", yes, this is true--but that's because the scientists themselves don't have a track record of correct experimental predictions to begin with. (String theory, for example.)

But for theories like, say, General Relativity, there is a huge track record of correct experimental predictions, and those predictions include things in our everyday experience now, like GPS. It's true that most people cannot verify for themselves the entire chain of reasoning that leads from the Einstein Field Equation to how their GPS device works, but they know that GPS works from their personal experience, so they know that whatever theory scientists are using to make GPS work, works. They don't have to take that on trust.

In other words, for scientific theories that actually have practical impacts, you don't have to just accept what scientists say on trust; you can look at their track record of correct predictions.

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