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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

#681

Post by AndrewKemendo »

Barrin92 wrote: post #568

I think the real issue is laid out at the end >"If matters of good and evil are not to be resolved by an omniscient God in the future, then Americans will judge and render punishment now. We are a nation of believers. If only Americans could begin believing in politics less fervently, realizing instead that life is elsewhere. But this would come at a cost—because to believe in politics also means believing we can, an…

The question for me is: Is a mutually shared narrative required for a society to maintain cohesion and engagement at scale?

If the assumption is "yes" then the challenge becomes whether the narrative is actually epistemologically solid enough to bear scrutiny from all angles - something I don't actually believe exists.

I think in the US the narrative since the Colonies formed, has been something like "Land of Opportunity" which a healthy proportion of the US and world doesn't believe in, and realistically only some segment of the world population did believe in for a short period after WWII.

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

#682

Post by UncleMeat »

watwut wrote: post #562
_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…

The argument is not that the science is same as religion. The argument is that individuals dont rationally objectively verify or figure out every experiment and scientific claim. I stead, we all rely on trust to institutions and processes to tell us how it is. Which is how it is. Most people dont even know how science actually work beyond elementary school level of simplification. And even if you actually do science…

Trust develops over time. We can trust scientific institutions because of past successes and how their construction promotes future successes. Scientific institutions are also constrained in their function. It is not the case that all forms of trusting institutions are intellectually equal.

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

#683

Post by kazoomonger »

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 –…

I think the issue you're facing in thinking that these aspects exist but are implicit is that you're looking at the world through religion-colored glasses, which distort the way you're viewing things.

I'll admit that in the absence of religion, some people pick up ideological causes and treat them as a religion. However, I'm interested in knowing what "rituals, origin stories, deities, saints, priesthood, blasphemy, vice & virtue" you think I have.

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

#684

Post by betwixthewires »

zxzax wrote: post #646
betwixthewires wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sure are doing a lot of not understanding in here. Let me break it down for you: the vast majority of people who say things like "trust the science" don't have the first clue about what the science actually says. It's a dogmatically held belief to them. That isn't to say that the problem does not occur in other types, or that they're wrong about what they believe just because they don't understand it.

>You sure are doing a lot of not understanding in here. I mean, yes? I don't pretend to know everything about everyone. >the vast majority of people who say things like "trust the science" don't have the first clue about what the science actually says. It's a dogmatically held belief to them. I can't agree with this, if they would change their mind about it, it's not a dogmatic belief. You seem to be generalizing abo…

Every christian that turned atheist held a dogmatic belief, changing your mind later doesn't change that it is dogmatic. And in my experience, most people need more than rational opposing viewpoint to change their minds about most things.

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

#685

Post by betwixthewires »

fighterpilot wrote: post #552
betwixthewires wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Belief that your mind can be moved is a dogmatic belief, if you hold it, seeing as our current scientific understanding of the brain precludes it. That isn't to say a machine cannot be conscious, or that a different type of consciousness cannot exist.

Why does current scientific knowledge preclude it? Is a simulation of the entire human body impossible in principle, or alternatively is it known that such a simulation won't be conscious?

Because from our current understanding, the mind is an emergent property of the brain, not some ethereal thing contained by the brain. It might be possible to create artificial consciousness, to find consciousness that occurs in different ways, but to move a human mind out of a brain, as far as we can tell, is impossible.

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

#686

Post by lhorie »

Haiatu wrote: post #503
lhorie wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I read it like that as well. I've seen this idea illustrated this way: a kid raised in a religious community gets drilled from an early age about morals as an umbrella abstraction (in the form of allegories from religious texts), so they don't need to be micromanag…

Plenty of people prove this not to be working at all. Plenty of priests have fucked kids. Religoius people are often enough the same amount of assholes or more. I have not fought over a city for ages due to some believe.

Religious types often say the same of the non-religious. Here's other analogies to illustrate the reductio ad absurdum: plenty of people prove school not to be working (by getting failing grades, passing by cheating, etc), plenty of people prove entrepreneurship not to be working (by going bankrupt), etc. All this line of observation shows us is that variability exists everywhere.

Something to keep in mind is that religious societies have existed for millennia, whereas societies that are openly non-religious are a relatively recent development, so comparing the two ought to account for a potential lack of historical hindsight on one of the sides.

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

#687

Post by kazoomonger »

roenxi wrote: post #626
amcoastal wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

That is a bad definition of religion. I will accept a field of study's conclusions in the absence of time myself to investigate. However, if it turns out that field is incorrect (say with the reproducibility crisis), then I won't "have faith" and believe anyways. In other words, belief != faith, and I'm willing to update my beliefs based on new evidence.

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

#688

Post by Tainnor »

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 –…

> The secular world would benefit from adopting more formal definitions of their belief system.

It's called (analytic) philosophy.

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

#689

Post by AndrewKemendo »

adaisadais wrote: post #625

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. Nie…

You're correct that this isn't really new territory in philosophy - but "lay" people are actually starting to see it play out at scale in society which is making them perk their ears up.

I doubt we'll see Beyond Good and Evil become a NYT bestseller unfortunately.

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

#690

Post by Causality1 »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #617
textgel wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not that I disagree with you, but you're improperly combining the censorship actions of private individuals and of governments. Freedom of speech has never limited what actions private platform holders can take against users.
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