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

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

#721

Post by briefcomment » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 9:04 PM UTC

snypox wrote: post #656

baby wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it though, don’t religious people think everyone else not part of their religion is going to hell?

I asked this from a Christian friend of mine. He said that the "uninitiated", like indigenous people will be judged by their conscience. I told him that people in Iraq are 99% muslims and they definitely know about the existence of Christianity so they aren't really uninitiated. If I remember correctly, he said that if a culture poisons your mind to not believe in the Christian God, then you're still considered "unin…

> "culture poisons your mind"

That seems like quite the cop out lol. Pretty sure any decision to not practice Christianity would meet this criteria.

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

#722

Post by simplify » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 9:04 PM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #707

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…

> 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. I think one needs to go a bit deeper. Tribalism is ~~the~~ an underlying cause, but I believe an even deeper cause lies at the root (or a deeper root at least), one that enables tribalism and all oth…

I don't think it's useful to blame consciousness in the context of this thread. Why not keep going and blame the big bang for the mass shooting in Austin yesterday morning? Technically true, but not useful to point out.

Additionally, you're assuming there is such a thing as objective reality. Your 1+1=2 example is based on manmade axioms. It's not an objectively true statement, it's a conclusion based on an approximated system of logic that humans have invented for convenience. How much is "one" apple, for example? If "1" in your equation represents an apple, can you swap one apple for another and have an equivalent result?

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

#723

Post by thu2111 » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

_teyd wrote: post #628

coldtea wrote: post #599

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. 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.

"Science and technology" are a vague abstraction. What people mean when they describe science as becoming a religion is more specific - they're using "science" as a shorthand for academic institutions specifically and the various maladies that go along with that, maladies like:

- The reproducibility crisis in social sciences

- The floods of BS coming out of public health research, a crisis for which we don't even have a name yet

- The journals who only care about impact and not about scientific integrity

- Politicians who appear to be completely controlled by modellers who never validate their models and whose predictions are always wrong

- People who are instinctively loyal to that whole set of power structures and rituals, such that they dismiss any claim of scientific misconduct as conspiracy theories, as ignorance, etc.

and so on. The fact that certain fields of study and other parts of society have been able to use the scientific method to produce concrete things doesn't automatically imply that all (so-called) scientists do so, and given the proliferation of scientific fields that produce nothing concrete, doesn't even imply the majority do.

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

#724

Post by tonymet » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 9:18 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #191

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.

> most people don’t have the time to weigh the evidence of say 90% of their beliefs. Most of the "beliefs" you refer to actually don't have to be beliefs at all. They have no practical consequences; they don't change anything about what the person who claims to have them actually does . Such beliefs don't have to have their evidence weighed because they make no practical difference. When people say they "believe" the…

This 90% figure includes core beliefs of the world, right and wrong, history, epistemology and so on.

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

#725

Post by mensetmanusman » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 9:25 PM UTC

Tainnor wrote: post #693

mensetmanusman wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might not be true. Most religious people change their beliefs. A religion is a set of assertions or axioms that, like any mathematical or logical system, cannot ever be proven or disproven (by their very definition). When one goes about living one’s life, they require life experiences that guide them one way or the other.

Mathematics is distinguished by at least two characteristics from religion: 1. Precise definitions 2. Not proven inconsistent (As for 2, we know we can't prove the bulk of mainstream maths consistent. However, since the crisis triggered after Russell's paradox was discovered and set theory was formalised in a better way, nobody has been able to poke a fundamental hole into current mathematics. Moreover, there are cer…

Sorry if it seemed like I was conflating the two, I was just trying to compare one facet of each. My use of the word ‘like’ was supposed to be an allegorical one.

(Assuming, by conflate, it is the combining two into one, per definition).

‘God is Love’ doesn’t seem contradictory.

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

#726

Post by mistermann » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 9:25 PM UTC

dorchadas wrote: post #718

mistermann wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps they have priests with costumes, and I am not aware of any alchemy, but are these "shortcomings" in any sort of fundamental, materially important way?

It's 'internal alchemy' [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neidan

Ah, thanks for that. These seem fairly harmless to me but I'm not so knowledgeable, what do you think?

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

#727

Post by pdonis » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 9:30 PM UTC

mensetmanusman wrote: post #662

pdonis wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> believing that religious believers accept 100% of religious belief without reasoning about them is a misunderstanding. I didn't say anything about religions and ideologies not using reasoning. Anyone who has read, say, Thomas Aquinas is perfectly aware that religious people can use all kinds of complicated reasoning to justify their beliefs. What I did say is that the set of beliefs in question are "all asserted as…

“ They're just a free-standing, self-consistent logical structure that can't be justified in any way except by claiming that it justifies itself. It's not that Aquinas didn't use reasoning; as noted above, he did--lots of it.” Interestingly, this also describes all of math, logic, and philosophy. One of the more interesting axioms or assertions is whether there exists free will, which is, by any interesting definitio…

> free will, which is, by any interesting definition, a supernatural entity

How so? I can think of at least one interesting definition by which free will is a perfectly good physical process going on in human brains, not supernatural at all.

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

#728

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 9:43 PM UTC

[deleted]

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

#729

Post by tonymet » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 9:43 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 –…

Just wanted to say thanks for everyone who participated it was a really interesting discussion and example of “apologetics” bordering between religious and secular belief. I learned a lot from people.

I saw a few comments interpreting the last line as snarky or condescending. I just meant that my experience helped equip me with tools to understand the world better, like learning a new language or programming language does. There are other paths e.g. through philosophy that many seculars pursue as well.

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

#730

Post by mistermann » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

simplify wrote: post #722

mistermann wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I think one needs to go a bit deeper. Tribalism is ~~the~~ an underlying cause, but I believe an even deeper cause lies at the root (or a deeper root at least), one that enables tribalism and all oth…

I don't think it's useful to blame consciousness in the context of this thread. Why not keep going and blame the big bang for the mass shooting in Austin yesterday morning? Technically true, but not useful to point out. Additionally, you're assuming there is such a thing as objective reality. Your 1+1=2 example is based on manmade axioms. It's not an objectively true statement, it's a conclusion based on an approxima…

I think of it much as you might when debugging a systems problem: it seems to me that the nature of consciousness is likely the least distant and most impactful entity that we are able to exert influence upon.

I do indeed assume there is an objective reality, as it seems you do (or did) as well. Something I find very interesting about this theory is that it regularly invokes a solipsism response when someone is exposed to it, even though it is a very simple idea that is fairly consistent with mainstream psychology and neuroscience.