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

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

#321

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 12:58 AM UTC

hilbertseries wrote: post #126

alkonaut wrote: post #71

I want to point out that this is incorrect: > It’s rare to hear someone accused of being un-Swedish or un-British—but un-American is a common slur, slung by both left and right against the other. Being called un-American is like being called “un-Christian” or “un-Islamic,” a charge akin to heresy. In fact to be unswedish is not just a common idiom it’s a positive one. It’s when you don’t show the typical negative Swe…

Seems that British nationalism runs pretty deep too, no? How else would you explain brexit?

[deleted]

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

#322

Post by colechristensen » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 12:58 AM UTC

simondw wrote: post #268

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 –…

> 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 Or maybe you have a different definition of "religious" than I do? But no, it must be that I lack the right cognitive tools. Sheesh.

There is a different and better way to put this: most people are completely unaware of the foundation of irrational nonsense that their worldview is based on. (yes, even, or especially so if they base their worldview on rationality)

If you are a member of a religion, the things you have “faith” in are right there in front of your awareness. If you don’t have religion, the metaphysics/mythos/philosophy your reality is based on is often never acknowledged. The “super rational” can be the worst at denying this and best at handwaving away anything that doesn’t fit into their sense of reason.

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

#323

Post by ukj » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 12:59 AM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #305

ukj wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if everyone is "religious", you've set a very low bar for what qualifies as religious And if everyone has “beliefs” then you have set a very low bar for what qualifies as belief which makes everyone a believer. You are playing a silly power game where you dismiss other people’s conceptual schemes so you can peddle your own. My view of the cosmos is that it is a computer simulation. It isn’t clearly false. But it is…

And if everyone has “beliefs” then you have set a very low bad for what qualifies as belief. Sure, if you look at what qualifies as a belief, it's pretty random. My view of the cosmos is that it is a computer simulation. It seems like the main thing this shares with religion is that it's wholly unverifiable. If you develop it in common with others and perhaps add rituals, you could qualify it along with Pastafarians…

It is 100% verifiable AND falsifiable.

You can verify that Physics is captured in Mathematics.

Mathematics is a Turing-recognisable language. If the universe is Physical then it is computable. This is a trivially true belief (see Church-Turing-Deutsch principle).

You can falsify my belief by producing Physics in language other than Mathematics.

Of course, as an instrumentalist/physicist, I don’t care if my beliefs are “actually true” as long as they work.

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

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Post by friedman23 » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:01 AM UTC

sidlls wrote: post #314

friedman23 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't think of anything you believe in that if someone came to you to "discuss" you wouldn't react instantly negative and start calling the other person insults?

Why bother? I don’t hold any belief strongly enough to merit such a reaction, though I might react negatively for other reasons. For example, past experience showing the insincerity of their own debate tactics and a lack of patience for rehashing it all yet again.

I don't know you and can't speak for you. But my point that all the people on here criticizing people on their moral systems are baseless stands. These same people would've been in the mob in salem executing so called witches a couple hundred years ago and would have been just as certain in their beliefs then.

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

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Post by jandrewrogers » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:01 AM UTC

deertick1 wrote: post #223

rootusrootus wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give me an example or two to clarify? Many things might not be well known to someone, but could be if they wanted to track down that information. That's a little different than something which has to be taken on faith by everyone .

Well the scientific method is fundamentally faith based in that we assume that there are immutable properties of thebuniverse that can be discovered and that our perception allows us to interrogate these properties. Yes this is a very well corroborated claim, but fundamentally faith based nonetheless.

Assuming that something is true for constructive reasoning purposes is not "faith-based", it is probabilistic. I don't have "faith" that the sun will rise tomorrow but I assign it a high probability based on priors for the purposes of practical reasoning. We provisionally accept certain axioms because of their high utility but the axioms may be discarded at any time if the utility or correctness is in doubt. Non-axiomatic reasoning systems are a real thing, we use them in computer science.

This entire discussion is predicated on a minimalist set of mathematical axioms being valid, but there isn't even agreement on what that set of axioms is (though it may seem so to a layman). We still manage to get on in the world because we can do highly effective utilitarian reasoning without that being resolved.

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

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Post by colinmhayes » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:01 AM UTC

friedman23 wrote: post #293

sidlls wrote: post #199

> Few people understand that most religions e.g. Judaism and Christianity have an apologetic discipline – a deliberate arm open to debate. The range of permissible debate is quite narrow in reality, and usually start from an assumption that the core tenets are more or less true. > 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 hav…

> usually start from an assumption that the core tenets are more or less true. You use this as a criticism of religion but I find it's true of secular people as well who have baseless beliefs that are just as deeply ingrained. Telling someone on hackernews you are religious you will probably get a ton of criticism and downvotes. You know what will get the same reaction? Telling someone you are a moral nihilist. Why i…

People have spent millenia thinking about rational answers to those questions. It's easy enough to find answers, but much like with religion there is no consensus. The answers follow a much more rigorous logic then "god said so" though. I'm not a moral nihillist because that's not a thing, but I am a moral anti-realist because it's clear that there are no intrinsic moral laws. It's all preference based.

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

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Post by _-david-_ » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:02 AM UTC

papito wrote: post #38

Religion is going away and political affiliation resembles more of a cult. You know, very healthy.

This is not true. Religion is in fact growing every where but the west and perhaps a few other places.

If you only meant the west then that is accurate, but due to the various birth rates it could very easily change with immigration.

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

#328

Post by geodel » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:02 AM UTC

FpUser wrote: post #193

alkonaut wrote: post #71

I want to point out that this is incorrect: > It’s rare to hear someone accused of being un-Swedish or un-British—but un-American is a common slur, slung by both left and right against the other. Being called un-American is like being called “un-Christian” or “un-Islamic,” a charge akin to heresy. In fact to be unswedish is not just a common idiom it’s a positive one. It’s when you don’t show the typical negative Swe…

Long time ago I was accused of being "un-Canadian(TM)" by neighbor because I do not watch hockey. Actually I do not watch sports at all but it did not matter to him. God knows what would've happened had I admitted not pouring maple syrup on my morning eggs and bacon.

Could you just get away by telling you are contributing your share to strategic reserve[1] to stabilize price for all Canadians. That would be very patriotic thing to do :-)

1. https://www.vpr.org/post/inside-global-strategic-maple-syrup...

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

#329

Post by contradict » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:03 AM UTC

hilbertseries wrote: post #126

alkonaut wrote: post #71

I want to point out that this is incorrect: > It’s rare to hear someone accused of being un-Swedish or un-British—but un-American is a common slur, slung by both left and right against the other. Being called un-American is like being called “un-Christian” or “un-Islamic,” a charge akin to heresy. In fact to be unswedish is not just a common idiom it’s a positive one. It’s when you don’t show the typical negative Swe…

Seems that British nationalism runs pretty deep too, no? How else would you explain brexit?

They did it to avoid being replaced by immigrants which isn't specific to Britain - it's more like European nationalism.

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

#330

Post by simonklitj » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:04 AM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #284

slibhb wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of whether "everyone is religious," everyone certainly has revelatory beliefs, i.e. beliefs that were not reasoned to. Christian thinkers have spilled a lot of ink attempting to clarify the boundary between reason and revelation whereas, in the secular world, many people do not seem to understand that many of their beliefs (particularly the foundational ones) are revealed.

As a non-religious person, certainly I understand many of my beliefs come from convention or intuition or whatever non-rational source, sure. But I don't have any meta-belief telling me to hold onto given beliefs-that-seem-implausible-or-unverifiable because I'll be rewarded in the end or because it's a test or whatever. I don't continually change whatever belief I know is arbitrary but that's because consistency has…

What is rational? Is not rationality subjective? What you might deem irrational others might deem perfectly rational, and vice-versa, what you might deem rational others might deem quite obviously irrational.

Are we to see experiences as rational explanation of a phenomena? Sure, I see and feel a rock, and I verify its existence rationally. I smell food and verify its existence rationally. What about people experiencing a divine being communicating to them, then?

No, we must disregard this as hallucination or a psychological problem. Only what we (and by we I mean the "educated western world") in our pre-determined frame of rationality deem rational can ever be rational, and all that falls outside must naturally be considered irrational irrespective of its potential rationality in relation to other experiences we might call rational.

Really (I think), something being rational is a state of mind, a common understanding with our peers. In a church most would agree that their belief is rational, not out of ignorance (though here you might disagree), but out of shared acceptance of a different frame of rationality, essentially accepting other experiences as being able to feed to rationality than those you might accept.

I guess the point I'm trying to make (and I might be way off) is that when you say that religiosity espouses irrationalist beliefs, they're irrational to you, within your frame of rationalism. To someone else you're the ignorant one who's fighting tooth and nail.

Edit: To those down voting I would love to engage further in conversation about this!