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The Man Who Saves You from Yourself (2013)

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Re: The Man Who Saves You from Yourself (2013)

#101

Post by JoshuaDavid »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #54
api wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> morality and self-restraint. ... and hope. Note the lack of hope among so many skeptics. Start talking to them about the future and you quickly discover that not only is life meaningless and success essentially random, but human civilization is doomed to extinction due to ecological overshoot soon so who cares... This lack of hope can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. It causes people to disengage and stop investing i…

Says who? All of the atheists I know tend to have some like of Star Trek-like futurist beliefs. Or watered-down Tim Leary beliefs of mind expansion and space migration. Also, its probably not in our best interest to pretend that extinction events don't happen. If anything, if we're seeing some paranoia, it might be healthy paranoia. Imagine if Al Gore was a "everything happens for a reason" type person and didn't car…

Correction -- all of the atheists you know who vocally express their beliefs have Star-Trek-like beliefs, or other generally optimistic beliefs about the future. The atheists who think that there's a significant chance that we'll manage to wipe ourselves out in the next century generally aren't going to vocalize those beliefs, unless there's something actionable that can be done about it (though I don't think I actually know anyone who thinks that ecological overshoot is a real threat to civilization, much less humanity).

I think you see the pessimists on both sides of the secular / religious divide. The difference is that pessimism is generally low-status and frowned upon in secular groups, meaning that pessimists in those groups are generally not very vocal about their pessimism.

Re: The Man Who Saves You from Yourself (2013)

#102

Post by arjn »

gobots wrote: post #94
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cults have another attribute: a mechanism for addicting members and keeping them, usually through psychological means.

So, Catholicism's / baptists / etc. hell, the Jehovah's Witnesses everlasting destruction, Mormon / Jehovah's Witness / Amish excommunication... ad nauseum.

Its literally every one of the the large religions.

Re: The Man Who Saves You from Yourself (2013)

#103

Post by gress »

silverbax88 wrote: post #89
briantakita wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Therapy is a medical science, Therapy is a practice, not a science. > but every layperson seems to think they have enough knowledge to comment on what it is or whether it's needed. Ah, the "leave it to the experts" trope. Giving that responsibility to someone else is the same as relying on a guru or a religious personality to tell you what to believe & do. If you look into psychology & related fields, there are dif…

Medicine is based in science. Not sure what you are getting at by claiming it isn't.

Psychotherapy is not the same as physical medicine.

Re: The Man Who Saves You from Yourself (2013)

#104

Post by [deleted] »

jqm wrote: post #81
gress wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they really need that certainty, or has that been trained into them from an early age?

That is a very good question. But it appears religion (even atheist religions) manifests itself in just about every society so it probably is a need of most people to a certain extent. Maybe the answer is to keep inventing better religions. The old ones keep appearing more and more ridiculous and pernicious. I suppose this trial and error produces lots of cults and casualties. Or maybe the answer is for people to gro…

[deleted]

Re: The Man Who Saves You from Yourself (2013)

#105

Post by dropit_sphere »

arjn wrote: post #77

So here is a question : What is the difference between a cult and an established religion ? Is it the size of the following ? Is it the time of origin, i.e. recent vs long ago ? Is it the number of followers ? Or is it some combination of the above, or something else altogether ?

I think it really is size, time established, etc.

This sounds impure, but actually as I think about it it's quite scientific: does it lead to mass suicide? Can respectable people hold such beliefs while continuing the behaviors that made them respectable? Is the cult/religion "fit" in the evolutionary sense? By their fruits shall ye know them, it seems.

Re: The Man Who Saves You from Yourself (2013)

#106

Post by sirmarksalot »

silverbax88 wrote: post #49
javajosh wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a lot of what's being offered is actually good...meditation...society Indeed. >I don't see too many gen-x'ers and gen-y's dying to get up early to go to church to be sermonized by the ravings of 1st century zealots. I don't see how that's remotely in their interests. Here you hint at a problem: when you take away religion you leave a vacuum. What fills that vacuum? In our society, today, by default it is filled with…

I think the issue is people thinking that there is a vacuum in themselves that can be 'filled'. Too many people want to find an answer outside of themselves, possibly for the simple reason that true self-growth is really fucking hard. On one hand, religion serves to control people who would otherwise not be controlled. Fear is the driving factor - don't steal, or you won't go to heaven. Don't murder, or you won't go…

I don't think most religious people think of it as that kind of quid pro quo. Most people, regardless of conviction, want to do "good," whatever that means. Religion tells people what they already believe: that helping other people is a good thing, even when it's not comfortable, and there is some reason for you to do it -- some kind of meaning. They don't obey God out of fear of hell; they use heaven and hell to rationalize what they already feel is right. Regardless what the doctrine may say, people believe in God because they want to be good, not the other way around.

This instinct gets manipulated by certain religious institutions that emphasize political and scientific claims made either by church leaders or their religious text. They use it to justify other things that they already "know" without strong evidence. Ideas like racial purity, xenophobia and the like. And they often make the same mistake that you have, in believing that people who believe differently only do so for material reasons, and without the fear of eternal damnation, we'll immediately descend into a society of savages and psychopaths.

Re: The Man Who Saves You from Yourself (2013)

#107

Post by judk »

gress wrote: post #73
enraged_camel wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>This is like saying, "Now that we don't have phrenology, we need a new phrenology." No, we just accept we can't figure out how people work or what kind of people they are by feeling their skulls. We live with the ambiguity and... But that's the whole point: a lot of people simply cannot live with the ambiguity. For them, ambiguity means uncertainty, and uncertainty means fear and a lack of stability in general. Ins…

Do they really need that certainty, or has that been trained into them from an early age?

Obviously very hard to test. But no one is told they need certainty. And a lot of people get existential angst -- a topic discussed on HN at length.

And we clearly have a strong need for social belonging, most of us.

Spiritual experience is scientifically measurable brain activity. People enjoy it.

Re: The Man Who Saves You from Yourself (2013)

#108

Post by gwern »

prestadige wrote: post #27
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #20

This is a long article with a lot of items to discuss, but my take is that its "easy" to "brainwash" people because a lot of what's being offered is actually good, but, of course, used cynically and for social control. The Hare Krishna kid didn't know it before, but he now realizes that meditation helps with his social anxiety. Except now, he's in bed with the Krishna's, instead of finding a personal and secular path…

Worth remembering though that there are many cultish aspects to the mainstream, e.g. political movements fight tooth and nail to influence what young children are taught at school.

> there are many cultish aspects to the mainstream

Quite literally, given how many aspects of 'cults' went mainstream. Environmentalism, meditation...

Re: The Man Who Saves You from Yourself (2013)

#109

Post by nandemo »

jqm wrote: post #90
arjn wrote: post #77

So here is a question : What is the difference between a cult and an established religion ? Is it the size of the following ? Is it the time of origin, i.e. recent vs long ago ? Is it the number of followers ? Or is it some combination of the above, or something else altogether ?

Easy. A "cult" is a disparaging term for a religion that someone other than yourself belongs to. YOUR belief group on the other hand is obviously not a cult, but a religion. (Actually I guess it might be size, but in common vernacular I think the above is actually often the case).

That's certainly not the only or even the most common usage of the word.

For example, most educated Catholics don't consider the Anglican church or mainstream Judaism or Islam as cults. On the other hand, many Catholics would consider Jehova's Witness and some pentecostal churches as cults, even though at some level Catholicism's doctrines share more bullet points with these organizations than with Judaism or Islam.

Re: The Man Who Saves You from Yourself (2013)

#110

Post by JoeAltmaier »

gobots wrote: post #94
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cults have another attribute: a mechanism for addicting members and keeping them, usually through psychological means.

So, Catholicism's / baptists / etc. hell, the Jehovah's Witnesses everlasting destruction, Mormon / Jehovah's Witness / Amish excommunication... ad nauseum.

Those are really passive techniques. Cults have active, planned techniques of mind control. Try this: http://www.scribd.com/doc/514598/How-Cults-Seduce
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