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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

#811

Post by ttfkam »

pdonis wrote: post #798
ttfkam wrote: post #788

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, you've made the claim they all lie. It's up to you to provide the evidence since I can't prove a negative. I can't point to a news story that lacks lies and claim they're all true. It's up to you to put up specific examples and demonstrate a pattern of deception. PBS News Hour Frontline Reuters BBC News NPR's morning and evening news Associated Press Then papers of record (excluding editorial column or op-ed):…

> It's up to you to provide the evidence since I can't prove a negative. If you honestly can't come up with a mountain of evidence on your own, then either you have not been paying attention at all, or we live on different planets. Or you have simply not bothered to independently check anything they say. (More on what "independently" means below.) And if you honestly believe that the sources you cite (and yes, I'm ta…

Asked for specific examples of lying from any of those sources. Show me one. Put just a single link and say why it's a lie. It shouldn't be hard considering the depth of claimed journalistic malfeasance.

You made the claim. Now prove it. My claim is that these news outlets are on the up and up. I have listed the ones I trust.

Don't just say, "They all lie." That's lazy and disingenuous. Put up just a single example of a lie, and I'll be listening to your side of things. Otherwise you're just the crazy guy on the corner with the tin foil hat talking about lizard people. "You can't trust anyone" sounds conspicuously paranoid.

Evidence matters.

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

#812

Post by ttfkam »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #806
ttfkam wrote: post #776

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Omnipotent. Omniscient. Omnibenevolent. Like the CAP theorem, you can only have two without substantial compromise.

Compromise depends on the understanding of the hierarchy. When ancient texts list God as Love, they note that Love is an act of (free) will (free will being considered a supernatural entity, even today). Free will is placed high on the hierarchy, which has interesting consequences. E.g. humans are free to do horrible things, and are free to choose not to love. If humans had no free will and were all instinct, there w…

So you're saying there's evil and suffering in the world, but God can't prevent it because he created free will? Sounds like a limit on his omnipotence.

Your explanation makes it out that free will is inherently prone to evil and suffering. If so, that would make free will somewhat inherently evil even though it arises from God. Strikes at the heart of omnibenevolence.

Either there's a limit to his ability or a limit to his goodness. No amount of hand waving can remove that.

If He is all good but can create creatures that corrupt his good works… You see the logical conundrum there, right?

I would understand if you don't WANT to see it. It feels wrong to see it. But it's there if you're being honest. You can ignore it. Many do. It's still there despite any aversion to it.

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

#813

Post by ttfkam »

pdonis wrote: post #798
ttfkam wrote: post #788

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, you've made the claim they all lie. It's up to you to provide the evidence since I can't prove a negative. I can't point to a news story that lacks lies and claim they're all true. It's up to you to put up specific examples and demonstrate a pattern of deception. PBS News Hour Frontline Reuters BBC News NPR's morning and evening news Associated Press Then papers of record (excluding editorial column or op-ed):…

> It's up to you to provide the evidence since I can't prove a negative. If you honestly can't come up with a mountain of evidence on your own, then either you have not been paying attention at all, or we live on different planets. Or you have simply not bothered to independently check anything they say. (More on what "independently" means below.) And if you honestly believe that the sources you cite (and yes, I'm ta…

As an alternative, since you brought up primary sources, you could always show a case where one of the news outlets I mentioned took a story from somewhere else, who took it from somewhere else, who either made it up or turned the chain of citations into a self-referencing circle.

That would be a perfectly acceptable demonstration of "fake news" that would draw me in to listen to your side of things.

All it takes is a little evidence.

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

#814

Post by tonymet »

kemayo wrote: post #313
tonymet wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You raised a good point about all belief vs religious belief. Which beliefs do you take on faith? Which would have you outcast if you didn’t believe them? Which lead you to a personal sacrifice? Which beliefs cause great anxiety or pleasure with no tangible evidence? Not comprehensive but those are categories of beliefs elevated to religious in nature. For example, believing that the Lakers are the best basketball te…

Religion has a meaning, and it specifically relates to the supernatural. If something makes no supernatural claims, it's not a religion. To whit, "believing that your life got substantially better or worse following an election" would not be a religious belief. This is because it can be tested, and would have a simple cause/effect based in physical reality. It might be an intangible "I feel better about things becaus…

There can be natural objects with supernatural reverence like god emperors . Money, covid, climate change are all supernatural phenomenon with a material basis

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

#815

Post by tonymet »

tonymet wrote: post #814
kemayo wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religion has a meaning, and it specifically relates to the supernatural. If something makes no supernatural claims, it's not a religion. To whit, "believing that your life got substantially better or worse following an election" would not be a religious belief. This is because it can be tested, and would have a simple cause/effect based in physical reality. It might be an intangible "I feel better about things becaus…

There can be natural objects with supernatural reverence like god emperors . Money, covid, climate change are all supernatural phenomenon with a material basis

The modern state , with perceived ability to control fate is another

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

#816

Post by tonymet »

tonymet wrote: post #814
kemayo wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religion has a meaning, and it specifically relates to the supernatural. If something makes no supernatural claims, it's not a religion. To whit, "believing that your life got substantially better or worse following an election" would not be a religious belief. This is because it can be tested, and would have a simple cause/effect based in physical reality. It might be an intangible "I feel better about things becaus…

There can be natural objects with supernatural reverence like god emperors . Money, covid, climate change are all supernatural phenomenon with a material basis

Along with cosmological origins which cannot be observed materially like Big Bang predicate or multiverse

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

#817

Post by throwaway34241 »

keiferski wrote: post #455
throwaway34241 wrote: post #116

The themes here remind me of another politics-is-the-new-religion article by David French, "America Is in the Grips of a Fundamentalist Revival". [1] In it he draws a distinction between religion and fundamentalist religion (which the author has a background with), with a key quality of the latter being a lack of a sort of humility, a certainty that they're right. Which in turn leads them to be less tolerant of oppos…

Phyllis Tickle wrote a book on this about a decade ago. Her argument is that every ~500 years there is a major shakeup in the Christian world, and we’re in the midst of one right now. https://www.amazon.com/Great-Emergence-How-Christianity-Chan... This post explains it well: https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/are-we-in-a-500-year-reli...

Thanks for the link. So much has changed in the last 500 years that it makes me wonder how much the (distant) past can tell us about the future, but sometimes there's interesting stuff. This topic reminds me a little bit of Ray Dalio's articles (on the rise and decline of empires) which also tries to find patterns that only become apparent over a gigantic time period. [1]

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/chapter-1-big-picture-tiny-nu...

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

#818

Post by blindmute »

ttfkam wrote: post #811
pdonis wrote: post #798

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's up to you to provide the evidence since I can't prove a negative. If you honestly can't come up with a mountain of evidence on your own, then either you have not been paying attention at all, or we live on different planets. Or you have simply not bothered to independently check anything they say. (More on what "independently" means below.) And if you honestly believe that the sources you cite (and yes, I'm ta…

Asked for specific examples of lying from any of those sources. Show me one. Put just a single link and say why it's a lie. It shouldn't be hard considering the depth of claimed journalistic malfeasance. You made the claim. Now prove it. My claim is that these news outlets are on the up and up. I have listed the ones I trust. Don't just say, "They all lie." That's lazy and disingenuous. Put up just a single example o…

I made an account just to respond to this, for that guy. It will be easiest if I just post the original pieces which gathered such information, but you can follow the links within them yourself.

NPR, Washington Post, NY Times, CNN, etc etc "independently confirmed" that Trump had protestors gassed to stage a photo op [1], that the officer in DC was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher [2], that Russia placed bounties on US soldiers [3], absolutely none of which happened, as we now have proof. Few retractions were made. You absolutely cannot trust a single word coming from the media apparatus, about anything, at any point.

[1] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/yet-another-media-tale-trum...

[2] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-media-lied-repeatedly-a...

[3] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/journalists-learning-they-s...

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

#819

Post by ud_0 »

tonymet wrote: post #793
ud_0 wrote: post #640

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. The label "not religious" doesn't mean anything. People use it to refer to atheists, in which case you are alleging that atheists by definition don't have the tools to understand their own position - which is absurd. Others use the term to refer to minimally-practicing…

I'm saying that secular people have more religious tendencies than they are aware of. By understanding religion and/or philosophy, those tendencies can be recognized.

That is a sweeping and nebulous claim, and somewhere within it is the premise that atheism is a symptom of insufficient reflection and awareness.

To get a sense of how condescending that comes across, imagine if I turned that around by saying: "Religious people have more atheistic tendencies than they're aware of. By understanding atheism and/or science, these tendencies can be recognized."

A huge number of HNers would immediately see all the things that are wrong with this sentence: it generalized a diverse group, it alleges their world view is invalid and incomplete, and it's an obvious attempt of the speaker to redefine other people's convictions in terms that are easier to attack.

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

#820

Post by ttfkam »

blindmute wrote: post #818
ttfkam wrote: post #811

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asked for specific examples of lying from any of those sources. Show me one. Put just a single link and say why it's a lie. It shouldn't be hard considering the depth of claimed journalistic malfeasance. You made the claim. Now prove it. My claim is that these news outlets are on the up and up. I have listed the ones I trust. Don't just say, "They all lie." That's lazy and disingenuous. Put up just a single example o…

I made an account just to respond to this, for that guy. It will be easiest if I just post the original pieces which gathered such information, but you can follow the links within them yourself. NPR, Washington Post, NY Times, CNN, etc etc "independently confirmed" that Trump had protestors gassed to stage a photo op [1], that the officer in DC was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher [2], that Russia placed boun…

You'll notice your one source is Glenn Greenwald. One.

Be a shame if his account of the tear gassing in front of the church were backed up by the pastor of said church. Except the pastor (who was also hit with the tear gas) backs up the accounts of the protestors. Protestors who were still out because the curfew had not begun yet. Details. Details. https://www.npr.org/2020/06/01/867532070/trumps-unannounced-...

This is not to say that journalists are perfect. Far from it. They are after all human. But reputable outlets issue public corrections to errors they've made. https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-donald-trump-afghanista...

Looking at Sicknick's death, I see a large number of outlets all noting he died of stroke. https://www.google.com/search?q=Brian+Sicknick%27s+Death

You will hopefully note that CNN (who Greenwald calls out) is NOT on my list of credible sources. Saying that CNN is guilty of airing half-baked stories buys you little in this discussion.

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