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As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen

theatlantic.com

511–520 of 823 posts

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

#511
post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't know you and can't speak for you. But my point that all the people on here criticizing people on their moral systems are baseless stands. These same people would've been in the mob in salem executing so called witches a couple hundred years ago and would have been just as certain in their beliefs then.

Religion is dividing our society. Its reasonable to wish for an independent believe system for our whole society.

Nonetheless arguing on hn is not a mob.

But yes discriminiation of woman is a bigger problem than religion. Forced marriages, hanging gay people, raping children, religious conflicts are a huge issue still today.

Unfortunate for us, sciencse or a global believe system doesn't need to have a church. It happens trhough alignment, communication etc.

We are already more aligned through knowledge but we just don't promote that. My friend and i are not going to our science church on sunday because we don't need to. We don't need to discuss 1+1=2 because its proven. And while social norms are not that explicit, we see big progress here as well: In germany for example, we don't hang people on carcranes because they are gay.

Its just harder to keep track of this and doing the right thing if you don't get it pushed in every sunday. And indepenedent of this, in bavaria you had one hour every week christian religion in school. I grew up with plenty of assholes. Clearly religioun did not brought us as humans together.

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

#512
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…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27488136.

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

#513

>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…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27488136.

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

#514

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.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27488136.

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

#515

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…

>In contrast, modern secular culture, although not immune to tribalism and ideological blindness, is much more open to building belief through analysis and understanding, i.e. the scientific method. I think this was true, at a certain point in or for a window of time, but it certainly isn't true today. There are well known axioms that are not-to-be-challenged, and doing so risks expulsion (i.e. Excommunication). So m…

That's certainly the way Fox News tries to portray secularism. In my experience, it has no basis in reality.

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

#516
post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 religion…

> 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.

That's because there is no such thing as "secular ideology". It's a meaningless phrase.

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

#517

>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.

And there are good reasons for that. The currently dominating set of progressive views is inherently dynamic and based on the Overton moving in one direction. This is in direct opposition to religion where the basic set of values is normally fixex, often by a sacred book containing the words believed to be spoken by the founder or a deity.

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

#518
post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Few people understand that most religions e.g. Judaism and Christianity have an apologetic discipline – a deliberate arm open to debate." Just want to point out that Jewish apologetics is not the same as Christian apologetics. Christian apologists are working in furtherance of the Christian goal of converting everyone to Christianity. Jewish apologists are working only to prevent other Jews from being swayed by the…

> Jewish apologists are working only to prevent other Jews from being swayed by the arguments made by other religions (primarily those from Christian missionaries, who often target Jews specifically). The Judaism when the Talmud was written was a fanatically proselytizing sect, as is clear if you read the talmud. They created seed outposts all over the Roman empire of new converts, as they sought (and obtained) speci…

I am curious to know what part in the Talmud refer to proselytizing.

The passage you cite refers to a gentile that wants to convert , not a tentative at active pproselytizing

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

#519
post #418

I grew up in a Protestant home (southern baptist church, 3x/week + youth activities). I have nothing against religion and I like religious people, I just don’t have strong faith anymore; the older I get the more skeptical I get of everything. It always makes me grin how much secular political issue adherents act like religious people. You can just listen to the language (“climate deniers” etc., “the end is near in 12…

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

#520
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 –…

Yuval Harari makes a very similar argument in “Sapiens”. I really recommend reading it. It’s an eye opener.
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