Is this any different from leaving childhood beliefs in Santa Claus?
Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions
41–50 of 115 posts
Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
To play devil's advocate, are we at a state where you can confidently say the design is sloppy? I feel it's akin to looking at an incomplete puzzle and judging it prematurely.
When you look at the robustness of complex systems we design (i.e., IT systems) vs the robustness of the human body, I think it is at least fair to say it could be designed better.
Wait. How many times has your vision frozen? Your brain crashed?
How many times has your hearing stuttered in and out?
How many hearts have you had changed out in your lifetime? Eyes? Ears?
Are you on your second or third tongue?
To say that IT systems are more robust than the biological systems is wild.
A healthy human lives on average for sixty plus years with almost every major system in the body being totally beyond repair by medicine.
There is almost no IT system in existence that has gone more than a few years without a crash or shutdown.
Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions
#43I was a hardcore Dawkins fan at 16. Insufferable edgelord sort, and thought I’d stay that way. Then again I grew up Mormon and their theological rigor is… extremely tenuous. My grandmother was Catholic but I wasn’t really exposed to it as a kid. I’m 38 now and in the process of becoming Catholic. I’ve started going to mass every day. I’m not really sure why but I feel really great. Our goal is to inoculate our childr…
> Then again I grew up Mormon and their theological rigor is… extremely tenuous
The Mormons I know were warned against an "unhealthy" level of interest in theology. Very different from Catholicism, where they assume it's normal and healthy to be interested in theological questions, some people will go deeper than others, and the church should embrace it. The only Mormon I know who persisted in his interest despite official warnings was pretty racist and was convinced that racism, like polygamy, was still part of the faith and was only denied for political and social reasons. He got crosswise with some school officials (at BYU) because they wouldn't discuss it with him and temporarily lost his temple recommend. According to him, what they said he needed to correct was his excessive interest in theology.
Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions
#44I left in my teens. Religion seemed, at that time and still does, appears to reinforce systems of power and conformity rather than do good. Non-believers often ask themselves, "what god would have the ability to eliminate suffering and choose not to?" We should also ask, "What religious institution and followers, having amassed the riches of the world, would choose not to eliminate suffering when they could?" The wei…
> There's one way to win back believers and it's to eliminate in-group/out-group dynamics and replace it with material acts of benevolence - akin to large scale public works projects to eliminate suffering. That would make me think more of the organisations in question, but I don’t understand why it would affect belief. It has no bearing on the correctness of the claims they make.
It's difficult to imagine a religion that would be approve of having the ability to alleviate suffering and choose not to. It would seem to run contrary to the love and altruistic behavior that religions tend to profess as part of their belief system. Perhaps I'm mistaken that religions don't incorporate this as part of their belief systems?
Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions
#45I was born atheist as I think we all are. But I rejected the kind of indoctrination that follows pretty early on. More or less when I found out Santa Clause was a social construct that everyone agreed to lie about I started to question everything really. But also asking myself, "If this is bullshit, why would people lie about it?" I was satisfied in my atheism. Weirdly though, my mom took my sister and I to a Quaker…
Santa Clause was also my complete religious breaking point as a child!
Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, has anyone told you you're a compelling writer with insightful takes? They are wrong and misleading you. You should self edit these sorts of missives.
For what? Obviously I have touched something within you, so unless you mean me to believe I should consider your interest beneath my effort - which I assume would be less ambiguously stated, were that your intent - I don't understand what you could be getting at here.
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Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you look at the robustness of complex systems we design (i.e., IT systems) vs the robustness of the human body, I think it is at least fair to say it could be designed better.
Wait. How many times has your vision frozen? Your brain crashed? How many times has your hearing stuttered in and out? How many hearts have you had changed out in your lifetime? Eyes? Ears? Are you on your second or third tongue? To say that IT systems are more robust than the biological systems is wild. A healthy human lives on average for sixty plus years with almost every major system in the body being totally bey…
The fact that components of an IT system can just be swapped out when they break or wear out is not a disadvantage, but you seem to imply it is.
Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions
#48I was born atheist as I think we all are. But I rejected the kind of indoctrination that follows pretty early on. More or less when I found out Santa Clause was a social construct that everyone agreed to lie about I started to question everything really. But also asking myself, "If this is bullshit, why would people lie about it?" I was satisfied in my atheism. Weirdly though, my mom took my sister and I to a Quaker…
If you want to raise an atheist, go all in on Santa Clause. It's a great inocculation against superstition.
Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we were designed then it was a very sloppy designer. We can easily think of a myriad of ways it could have been done better. And quite mischievous to just leave all this evidence of evolution. I think that the gnostics with the idea of a malevolent creator god would fit our world better.
To play devil's advocate, are we at a state where you can confidently say the design is sloppy? I feel it's akin to looking at an incomplete puzzle and judging it prematurely.
the shared opening to the esophagus and trachea in humans (and many other mammals). Hundreds of choking deaths occur in the US every year due to food obstructions in the trachea. Doesn't seem too intelligent to purposefully design such a hazard. Also the “incomplete” argument falls apart easily if the premise was a superior intelligence created it from the get go - if it was so, why would the “supreme intelligence” leave things incomplete as you say? Why not make them right from the beginning?
Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think this is religious institution v non-religious institutions scenario where the first stopped caring and the second cares. I think it's: more comfortable/complacent societies don't care about eliminating suffering so established institutions (religious or not) just stopped caring too. Plenty less-established religious institution are (at least) convincing enough people they are focused on reducing sufferi…
> I think it's: more comfortable/complacent societies don't care about eliminating suffering so established institutions (religious or not) just stopped caring too This seems accurate to me. To wit: https://principiadiscordia.com/book/45.php But instead of 'just stopped caring' I might substitute 'realize they don't have the resources or power to fix the root cause and are resigned to reducing suffering on a small sc…
It's also important to keep in mind how much power Christianity has lost over the past few decades, to the point where most religious authorities have firmly chucked the whole "actually helping people" thing out the window in favor of power maintenance. Don't worry, Billy, once we've made women barefoot and pregnant again and wiped the gays off the face of the planet we can totally have our faith-based socialist[0] utopia.
Of course, their kids saw this as immediately, obviously wrong and disassociated from their parents. Then they proceeded to join the Democratic Party, bringing all of their entirely ineffectual political tools along with them. This was, again, very useful for helping a certain subset of elites[1] retain position in the social hierarchy but not useful at achieving any of our stated goals. Don't worry, @jointheresistance2016, once we've cancelled enough old fogeys in Hollywood and found someone who can pass all of our purity tests, we can totally have our Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communist utopia.
The answer to "OH. WELL, THEN STOP." is "But if we do that, then the bad guys win!" We've been drowning ourselves in outrage, accelerated by new communications technologies[2], as the people who actually run the show are plotting to see how quickly they can get everyone else to kill each other. Everyone is vying to grab as much power as they can as quickly as they can to impose their ideas upon everyone.
Free societies are built on a bedrock of decentralization, trustworthiness, and humanity[3]. Whether the institutions have the word "government" or "religion" (or "union") written on them matters less than if they're able to meaningfully resist attempts to divide and conquer the public. The more an institution focuses on gaining power, the less they care about eliminating suffering. I mean, why would they? That suffering is the point. It both eliminates a group of people as potential competing powers as well as creates a justification for you continuing to centralize power.
[0] I am perfectly aware that using this adjective is going to make many a Marxist's heads spin. Bear with me.
[1] Us (as in, the average tech worker) and our bosses (who have fucked off to the Trump Train)
[2] Specifically, cable TV and social media. The relative political harmony of the 1950s was aided by a deep and pervasive government censorship regime, whose harms are unrelated to this rant but were arguably worse.
[3] Or if your particular political ideolect prefers, "diversity, equity, and inclusion".