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

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

#621

Post by Retric » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:04 PM UTC

chakkepolja wrote: post #408

tonymet wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s be honest, most people don’t have the time to weigh the evidence of say 90% of their beliefs. They go to school & watch television, and generally adopt the beliefs of their surroundings. And believing that religious believers accept 100% of religious belief without reasoning about them is a misunderstanding.

> And believing that religious believers accept 100% of religious belief without reasoning about them is a misunderstanding. Had they reasoned about them, most 2000 year old customs would have hardly survived.

They reason within the framework of those ideas. If you accept a religious text is accurate and find an obvious contradiction then rather than rejecting the religious text you’re going to try and justify both statements as true.

So if Osiris was said to have red hair in one passage and was blond in another then they may have been referring to different people, one statement was a metaphor, he has hair of both colors at the same time, he had each at different ages, he dyes his hair at some point, etc. And of course people feel such ideas are worth fighting over.

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

#622

Post by swebs » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:07 PM UTC

efitz wrote: 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…

>Far left ideologies have a century of murdering tens of millions of people that didn’t agree with them or in some cases just didn’t cheer loudly enough.

There was a big debate in 2019 of communism vs capitalism among two famous professors. When one of them mentioned the communist revolution being a call for "bloody violent revolution" the audience cheered with approval. It was chilling.

https://youtu.be/qsHJ3LvUWTs?t=1295

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

#623

Post by simondotau » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:09 PM UTC

ehvatum wrote: post #610

throwaway210222 wrote: post #603

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. There is no mechanism by which the ABSENCE of a belief in your parent's invisible sky wizards becomes just evidence of an alternative belief system. Not believing in the tooth fairy does not make my understanding and endorsement of say, the periodic table, an equivalen…

The issue is seen when it comes to the question of what intolerance a secular person will not tolerate.

You are alluding to the Paradox of Tolerance.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

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

#624

Post by Angostura » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:10 PM 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 –…

> 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.

That sounds like twaddle. It could just be that the person recognises their secular ideology - and knows that it doesn't constitute a religion.

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

#625

Post by adaisadais » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:10 PM UTC

As religious faith has declined, comment intensity on HN has risen.

All joking aside this is a pretty well-known phenomenon that folks like Hegel and Nietzsche have discussed. The Enlightenment has had its tentacles on formalized religion for over 300 years in the Western World.

Nietzsche’s mad man who runs about the town telling people that “God is Dead” is not meant to be taken as a positive or light statement. Nietzsche posited that many of the key elements of modern society would cease to have meaning. Why then, if man is not created in the image of God, should man treat fellow man in any which way? What justification does one have for not harming fellow man if his fellow man is but ape?

Books I loved with perspectives on this are “Enlightenment Now” by Steven Pinker and “The Rise of the Modern Self” by Carl Trueman.

“You gotta serve somebody.” -Bob Dylan

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

#626

Post by roenxi » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:12 PM UTC

amcoastal wrote: post #583

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 –…

While your points are good your last paragraph projects a lot of weaknesses onto your readers. Do you believe you're the first person to come up with these points and realize them? Or perhaps that someone could have taken an opposite approach of yours -- moving from very religious to non-religious and can see the same behaviors? And then you continue to assume the only way forward is to perpetrate that behavior. All…

Being religious isn't a weakness, it is an inevitability. A human mind is very limited and not up to the challenge of understanding everything - people have to accept most of their knowledge through social proof. Once social proof is involved religious-looking structures evolve rapidly. It isn't a matter of having or not having cognitive tools, it is that the tools necessary to avoid faith and community can't exist. At least without a level of change that shatters what it means to be human.

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

#627

Post by chakkepolja » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:12 PM UTC

FlyingSnake wrote: post #584

chakkepolja wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hinduism is not a religion in western sense. We don't have a set list of doctrine and rules to follow. When I say I am allowed to be atheist or agnostic according to Vedas, your typical dumb Purohit also screams and tries to justify it's not that. It's almost like Vedas or Upanishads or the values they emphasize have no place in preist centered medieval / modern "Hinduism".

Your typical dumb purohit is not needed to follow Dharma. No one's going to issue a Fatwa if you do your own research and find your own way. You are free to choose between the Astika or Sramana or any of the heterodox schools. The doctrine is there but not in form of DIY commandments.

This is true but doesn't apply to those of us who have to follow certain traditions for the satisfaction of parents. Given a choice I am an atheist / agnostic.

Edit: And 'Dharma' in texts is used to refer to qualities such as 'dhriti' (courage) and r'ta (truthfulness), much more than its being used to refer to rituals. So I don't necessarily even need to read any of these to follow "dharma".

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

#628

Post by _teyd » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:13 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #599

_teyd wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This idea that science and technology is just another random religion is so frustrating, but I encounter it online way more often than I would expect. I don’t need to personally review and understand the details of why electricity and the internet work, because I am literally typing this message on an electronic device and sending it via the internet. No faith needed, and anyway.. I can go build a simple computer and…

> This idea that science and technology is just another random religion is so frustrating, but I encounter it online way more often than I would expect. Well, "frustrating" is not a scientific argument itself, it's a subjective feeling. More like what a faithful would feel against blasphemy. Isn't it at least a little ironic? > I don’t need to personally review and understand the details of why electricity and the in…

Science and technology would not be able to produce concrete things if understanding it was practically beyond 99.999% of people or if it was remotely nearly as fundamentally corrupt as you are describing.

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

#629

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:16 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #621

chakkepolja wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And believing that religious believers accept 100% of religious belief without reasoning about them is a misunderstanding. Had they reasoned about them, most 2000 year old customs would have hardly survived.

They reason within the framework of those ideas. If you accept a religious text is accurate and find an obvious contradiction then rather than rejecting the religious text you’re going to try and justify both statements as true. So if Osiris was said to have red hair in one passage and was blond in another then they may have been referring to different people, one statement was a metaphor, he has hair of both colors…

[deleted]

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

#630

Post by cogman10 » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:17 PM UTC

rsj_hn wrote: post #475

pdonis wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems that you are saying that religious beliefs aren't really valid because they aren't based in reality. For the specific example I gave (Thomas Aquinas), it's not really a question of the beliefs being "valid" or not; it's just that they have no practical impact at all, which means it doesn't really matter whether you believe them or not, at least not if the beliefs are taken in isolation. However, it is a pr…

> it's just that they have no practical impact at all, That's funny because a system that kept a civilization together for 1000 years is being claimed to have "no value" by someone who has no idea how to keep any society together and is mimicking the conventional wisdom of those overseeing a disintegrating society as a result of this ignorance. Not only does the work of Aquinas have value, it has more value over the…

> That's funny because a system that kept a civilization together for 1000 years is being claimed to have "no value" by someone who has no idea how to keep any society together and is mimicking the conventional wisdom of those overseeing a disintegrating society as a result of this ignorance.

Value changes with time. Horse whips had a lot of value at one time. Now, not so much.

Religion is prevalent in many societies, and it isn't the same religion. This talk of the value of aquinas ignores the fact that all his reasoning only really applied to christian religions. Yet other religions without deities or with many of them provided the same social structures christianity has.

Consider, for example, China. Just as old and grand as European civilization with a religion mostly focused on the mandate of heaven given to their leaders.

Now consider modern China, which is an atheist state that's been thriving. Certainly, not without problems, but it's hard to argue their civilization hasn't become a major world power.