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As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen

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

#741

Post by pyuser583 »

GreekPete wrote: post #600
ithkuil wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed ethical systems have changed throughout the lifespan of a religion. Religions are not set in stone and change more than what most religious people are willing to admit.

For example, people used to believe the Book of Genesis literally, and now (I believe) most denominations take it allegorically. I wonder how many similar stories like that will we have in the future. For me, it always felt like the interpretation of the Holy Books are changing through time as we understand science more and more. And it feels ironic to me.

Literal interpretation of Genesis is a fairly recent phenomenon. Fundamentalism is a modern religion.

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

#742

Post by ink »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #576
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…

The munchausen trilemma undermines the concept of “weighing the evidence”. Everything anybody believes to be true is either founded upon circular reasoning, a reasoning of infinite regression, or an arbitrary set of unprovable axioms. The consequence is that any level of belief in any truth can only be based upon faith. People who believe that their world view is based entirely upon facts and universal truths tend to…

While your first statement is correct, you may want to acknowledge that "faith" in ideas can be seen as a continuum from completely subjective to mostly objective. For instance: believing in QAnon conspiracies isn't the same as believing in, say, climate change. Yes, both require your definition of "faith", but the former requires you to suspend your belief in reality while the latter is congruent with your observations of reality.

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

#743

Post by Tainnor »

xinniethepooh wrote: post #738
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…

I'm always amazed when people bring up things like "the tooth fairy", "magical sky wizard", "flying spaghetti monster" as some sort of intellectual taunt to show the ridiculousness of somebody's belief. It's the Dunning-Kröger in action; people like you believe that somehow our universe, reality, the nature of humans, are perfectly definable. What you're not realizing is that the concept of God goes beyond any attemp…

> I don't use rationalize in the context you're thinking, but in the mathematical concept of rationality. Language, how we code information into words, is based upon rational polynomials whose coefficients and values take on the alphabet; binary systems being something you may be familiar with. As soon as you codify 'God' as something rational ('sky wizard?') you imply a limit and impose boundaries on a limitless and indescribable entity

That's just mumbo-jumbo of the "not even wrong" category.

If you want to make the claim that there are things in the universe that we can't ever understand and/or are fundamentally non-computable (in some mathematical sense), I can't fundamentally disagree. Nobody knows whether that's true or not.

It's a long stretch from there to any notion of God, though.

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

#744

Post by Tainnor »

tonymet wrote: post #434
p_j_w wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>most people are completely unaware of the foundation of irrational nonsense that their worldview is based on Maybe I live in some kind of intellectual bubble, but me and the vast majority of my atheist friends are all too aware of the fact that the rationality ends at some point, so I've gotta disagree with this pretty hard. In fact, I'd be hard pressed to find anyone I know personally who thinks it's rational all t…

can you elaborate on this? This is the kind of philosophical analysis that I think most secular thinkers lack. I know there are rigorous atheists who are capable of understanding their ideology, but they are few

So? Most religious people are incapable of understanding their own religion, too.

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

#745

Post by AmericanChopper »

ink wrote: post #742
AmericanChopper wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The munchausen trilemma undermines the concept of “weighing the evidence”. Everything anybody believes to be true is either founded upon circular reasoning, a reasoning of infinite regression, or an arbitrary set of unprovable axioms. The consequence is that any level of belief in any truth can only be based upon faith. People who believe that their world view is based entirely upon facts and universal truths tend to…

While your first statement is correct, you may want to acknowledge that "faith" in ideas can be seen as a continuum from completely subjective to mostly objective. For instance: believing in QAnon conspiracies isn't the same as believing in, say, climate change. Yes, both require your definition of "faith", but the former requires you to suspend your belief in reality while the latter is congruent with your observati…

This isn’t true at all. I would characterize faith as being a belief in any truth that you cannot prove. There is no such thing as a truth that can be proven (or at least none has been discovered so far). All truths are equally non-probable.

Your stance seems to be that a set of unprovable axioms you prefer to have faith are somehow superior to some other set of unprovable axioms that some other people may choose to have faith in. You might have all sorts of perfectly reasonable justifications for the axioms you have faith in, but if you want to claim your beliefs transcend faith then you’ll have to present a logical proof that survives the munchausen trilemma.

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

#746

Post by mensetmanusman »

Tainnor wrote: post #740
mensetmanusman wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> ‘God is Love’ doesn’t seem contradictory That's because it doesn't mean anything.

That’s one assertion certainly :)

Others have been beheaded asserting it. Life is certainly interesting though.

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

#747

Post by dang »

andrepd wrote: post #383

The ten commandments have things to say about working on Saturdays or fucking people whom you have not married, but don't have a word on the topic of slavery (in fact it is amply condoned in the Bible, incl. by Jesus, together with myriad other atrocities). This is trash morality which you should have zero respect for. It's only understandable if you take it for what it really is: Bronze age Middle-Eastern mythology.…

You started a wretched religious flamewar with this comment and perpetuated it below, including crossing into personal attack. This is not welcome on HN and if you do anything like this again we will ban you.

We've already had to warn you many times about breaking the site guidelines in the past. No more of this, please.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#748

Post by dang »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #484
andrepd wrote: post #383

The ten commandments have things to say about working on Saturdays or fucking people whom you have not married, but don't have a word on the topic of slavery (in fact it is amply condoned in the Bible, incl. by Jesus, together with myriad other atrocities). This is trash morality which you should have zero respect for. It's only understandable if you take it for what it really is: Bronze age Middle-Eastern mythology.…

Please look deeper into what version of slavery is described by the Bible. It's very, very different to Southern USA style slavery, and much less cruel. You can criticize it all you want, but please don't tar both with the same brush.

Please do not take HN threads further into the hell of religious flamewar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#749

Post by dang »

andrepd wrote: post #575
selfhoster11 wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please look deeper into what version of slavery is described by the Bible. It's very, very different to Southern USA style slavery, and much less cruel. You can criticize it all you want, but please don't tar both with the same brush.

[flagged]

Comments like this will get you banned here. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27498308.

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

#750

Post by dang »

vxNsr wrote: post #423
andrepd wrote: post #383

The ten commandments have things to say about working on Saturdays or fucking people whom you have not married, but don't have a word on the topic of slavery (in fact it is amply condoned in the Bible, incl. by Jesus, together with myriad other atrocities). This is trash morality which you should have zero respect for. It's only understandable if you take it for what it really is: Bronze age Middle-Eastern mythology.…

> fucking people whom you have not married, This is false, it says don't covet your neighbors wife. > working on Saturdays This has been shown time and again to boost productivity immensely to say nothing for mental health. You seem to have a bone to pick but don't understand the thing you're arguing against.

Please do not take HN threads further into the hell of religious flamewar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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