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As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen

theatlantic.com

611–620 of 823 posts

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

#611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Believe science." Vox and others stealth-editing articles, people yelling at you if you don't blindly believe the CDC/WHO, etc. Science by its very nature is heretical, questioning, skeptical. "Belief" in science is exactly what we should not be doing, yet is pushed by the academic elites.

I’m slightly surprised to see this line of thinking in HN. The so-called “Belief” in science is not driven by blind faith that what people are saying are true. It’s that you understand that before something is believed it goes through a rigorous system of fact checking / experimental confirmation. So if something is considered by people from different fields as true, then it likely is. But as you said, it’s questioni…

> It’s that you understand that before something is believed it goes through a rigorous system of fact checking / experimental confirmation

To be honest, the way you’ve phrased this makes it sound like you’ve totally bought in to state secular scientismic dogma.

The entire concept of “fact checking” (outsourcing your rational facilities to journalists and e-celebs) is diametrically opposed to actual scientific thought.

It’s also completely false that before “something is believed” (by which I think you mean is ensconced as scientismic dogma by the cathedral) it is subject to actual “experimental confirmation” (under any reasonable interpretation of that term). How many times has the FDA changed the official “nutrition science” dietary recommendations over the last 50 years? The entire time, they’ve claimed their approach has been evidence-based, which may be true in some narrow sense, but the predictive confidence of their claims are so bad and noisy that they keep changing the official “scientific” beliefs.

This is not unique to nutrition. Many politically relevant fields have very strong-sounding dogmatic claims made from on high with what is actually extremely weak evidence.

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

#612

The themes here remind me of another politics-is-the-new-religion article by David French, "America Is in the Grips of a Fundamentalist Revival". [1] In it he draws a distinction between religion and fundamentalist religion (which the author has a background with), with a key quality of the latter being a lack of a sort of humility, a certainty that they're right. Which in turn leads them to be less tolerant of oppos…

Phyllis Tickle wrote a book on this about a decade ago. Her argument is that every ~500 years there is a major shakeup in the Christian world, and we’re in the midst of one right now. https://www.amazon.com/Great-Emergence-How-Christianity-Chan... This post explains it well: https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/are-we-in-a-500-year-reli...

The Christian world is only ~2000 years old. What evidence is there for a 500 year cycle?

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

#615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phyllis Tickle wrote a book on this about a decade ago. Her argument is that every ~500 years there is a major shakeup in the Christian world, and we’re in the midst of one right now. https://www.amazon.com/Great-Emergence-How-Christianity-Chan... This post explains it well: https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/are-we-in-a-500-year-reli...

The Christian world is only ~2000 years old. What evidence is there for a 500 year cycle?

It's covered in the post linked to in my comment.

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

#616
post #597
post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and my response is that the average person doesn’t rationally need to intellectually revalidate every scientific and technological fact from first principles because we are surrounded by overwhelming evidence, and that highlighting that not everyone has done that is not actually all that clever or relevant if you think about it. No faith in shadowy institutions is required to see the facts of technological and s…

And then you have done validation of some of the proposition of modern science and technology. But quite a lot "science" can not verified in the same manner as some physics, math, chemistry and biology can. And to go from the fact that some science is verifiable and then conclude that everything which tries to take on the label science or follow similar rituals to the verifiable sciences, also deserves the same respe…

Some (most even that is relevant day to day?) is quite easy to validate and yet we still have flat-Earthers.

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

#617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom of speech isn’t a “non-ideological” ideal, and there’s not one single definition. For example, most liberals (in the classical sense) support free speech but are not absolutists; a libertarian might see that as repressive, while a progressive might see it as dangerous.

No it basically is. Nor does it have multiple definitions. The only people who claim it does are those trying to smuggle censorship in while calling it "freedom of speech".

So you think sexual harassment at work, child porn, libel and death threats should be legal? You think platforms should take no action against spam, doxxing or revenge porn? Those are all examples of censorship.

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

#618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't see why some see the need to clump people together by what they don't believe in. Atheism isn't about "interest" or "feelings", so your comparison doesn't hold either. Different people arrive at the same conclusions via completely different paths, many not even rationally. It's really arrogant to assume atheists are superior in this regard (and I'm not saying you said that but it's not too hard to infer), and I say that as an atheist myself.

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

#619
post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and my response is that the average person doesn’t rationally need to intellectually revalidate every scientific and technological fact from first principles because we are surrounded by overwhelming evidence, and that highlighting that not everyone has done that is not actually all that clever or relevant if you think about it. No faith in shadowy institutions is required to see the facts of technological and s…

the person of faith would also counter you with 'overwhelming evidence' of what God is doing for him... sometimes, this evidence is just subjective, at other times, it is clear and can be measured. Another analogy that I have heard is that 'magic' is when one is just wowed by what they see without being able to understand how it happens. Apple products bring that 'magic' though it can all be explained away in technic…

What is the (sometimes) clear and measurable evidence of what god has done for someone?

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

#620

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’m arguing that secularism when taken on face value lacks the tools to recognize it’s own belief system."

Truly a bonkers assertion when secularism includes enormous institutions to fund and perform tasks as various as the hard sciences to the most abstract philosophical investigations and the entire gamut of cultural production around and between.

The average person doesn't much participate in these institutions but the average Catholic hasn't read Humanea Vitae either.

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