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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

#761

Post by pdonis »

orestarod wrote: post #735
pdonis wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Free will implies non determinism, that is the important part.

> Free will implies non determinism

Depends on which definition of free will you are using. Some definitions are compatible with determinism.

Also, even if we go with a non-deterministic definition of free will, "non-deterministic" is not the same as "supernatural". Quantum mechanics is not deterministic.

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

#762

Post by Haiatu »

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…

Thats not true for math / science.

Math is based on fundamental global laws which exist and can be checked from everyone and they can come up all with the same math.

We could isolate a baby and it could create the same math while it couldn't create the same religion.

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

#763

Post by Haiatu »

simonklitj wrote: post #698
Haiatu wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We actually don't know that: "What about people experiencing a divine being communicating to them, then?" But we have studied this and the answers tell us what the most realistic thing actually is and thats why we see 'divine being communicating to them' as a mental illness. You can expierence this challanging thought yourself by taking LSD. Realizing that you are actually know everything for a few hours and than get…

I don’t know much of the field of rationality, yet I can’t help but think that you confirm my idea that rationality is subjective. You determine rationality based on probability, so essentially when you’re saying something is irrational, you mean it is improbable (or in your words realistic). Taken further, is it not then irrational to think that the earth arose out of absolute nothingness, to become the perfectly al…

I do connect rationality with math and chances.

Of course there is always an unkown right? We don't know it all.

But as i said somewhere else: math for example is universal, you can come up with the same rules independently were you are.

This doesn't happen with religion/believe.

There is no experiment in the world, which shows any universal truth to believing in one specific god or more specific gods or religion.

Nothing spiritual was proven ever in my lifetime. None.

So i dream. I like to come up with things, ideas, stories, places etc. but that doesn't motivate me to believe in it so hard that it affects my normal life.

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

#764

Post by hallgrim »

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 –…

Is it possible that becoming religious has not equipped you with helpful models, but rather it has led you to project your approach to understanding the world onto others? That last paragraph really screams that. I’ve had and witnessed many discussions between believers and non-believers where the believers just couldn’t fathom the possibility that a secular person could honestly say “I don’t know” instead of blindly believing something

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

#765

Post by Haiatu »

lhorie wrote: post #686
Haiatu wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

Thats not my point i was making.

The parent mentioned specifically religious believes as a tool for good child upbringing.

My counter argument shows, that religious upbringing doesn't necessarily mean a good moral & ethics.

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

#766

Post by _teyd »

everdrive wrote: post #652
_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…

I think there’s an important distinction to be made here, as I’ve had a lot of the same frustrations as you. Science itself is genuinely NOT religious, and can truly be used to understand the nature of the world, and make practical use of that understanding. But, if it’s true that man is a religious animal, it’s going to mean that people will always take a religious bent on any major topic in their lives. And so the…

I totally agree. My objection is more to things like "my opinions are as good as science because science is all just made up too."

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

#767

Post by textgel »

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.

Fair points; I'm trigger happy from progressives demanding people be fired for liking a tweet and am unwilling to let them weasel their way into stupid demands but those examples that surround actual legality are fair counters.

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

#768

Post by Siira »

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 –…

> One aspect of religion I appreciate is that these aspects are well codified and debated – i.e. much more explicit.

In a liberal bubble in an atheist society? I remember the South Park episodes on the prophet, and I remember my countrymen executed for "insulting" the said prophet. At least the "cancel culture" chills some racism.

> 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.

You can understand the simple fact that all us humans being shitty doesn't imply that some aren't even shittier? When we say someone is "selfish," it means they are more selfish than a majority of people.

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

#769

Post by Tainnor »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #746
Tainnor wrote: post #740

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ‘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.

If you want to have a discussion here you should try harder.

edit: let's just play the game, shall we?

"God is Love", first of all - is this a definition of God or one of love? I have a feeling it's trying to be both, but that is invalid. It's probably trying to tap into some intuitive understanding of what "love" is and to connect it to some other concept, such as God.

In any case, a) we haven't defined what "love" is and that's not gonna be an easy definition - maybe we should start there; b) suppose we know what love is: if you say "God is love", and you use that as a definition for God then... why do we need a concept of God? We can just go and rewrite the entire bible and substitute every occurrence of God with "love"? So, in the beginning, love created the universe? Love died for our sins? Love sent the great flood and told Noah to build an ark? Even if you don't take these stories at face value, the bible clearly ascribes agency to God, but if God is just love, then love supposedly has agency something that... probably doesn't make sense with most people's definition of love. See point a)

I would suggest for you to pick up an introductory textbook to some topic in analytic philosophy and compare the rigour of the explanations therein with "God is love".

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