[HN Gopher] As religious faith has declined, ideological intensi... ___________________________________________________________________ As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen Author : ali92hm Score : 145 points Date : 2021-06-11 13:40 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com) | wturner wrote: | I wish we had a world where the discernment between science, | axiom and ideology was a real thing ironed into the public muscle | memory as much as ideology itself. Idealism. | rogerkirkness wrote: | Teleological thinking centers in our brain atrophy but remain | active even if you denounce religion. | beaconstudios wrote: | Teleological thinking does not have to be supernatural, as | long as you replace the idea of a "will" driving things | towards a final state, with the idea of attractors and stable | versus unstable states. You can't really deny telos and also | believe in evolution as a system that fits species to their | environments. | bobthechef wrote: | Right, telos is not purely a matter of will, which is a | special case. Telos is about the ordering of a thing toward | an end. You can't explain efficiently causality without | recourse to telos. The fact that the same causes | consistently lead to the same effects is a testament to the | telos of the things involved. | | Unfortunately, most opponents of telos don't really | understand what it really means. They seem to hold to a | mechanistic/Paleyian view of the world and assume the telos | can therefore only be something in some mind external to | the universe that directs things according to its purposes | but that things themselves lack any intrinsic teleological | character. But this is not correct. | beaconstudios wrote: | It seems to be the materialist/reductionist perspective, | which is based on 19th century science (despite being | totally outmoded since the early 20th century and the | discovery of emergent properties in physics and biology | alike). | | I sincerely think that it's the thing holding us back the | most in the 21st century. | lisper wrote: | Evolution fits species to their environments in exactly the | same sense (though not quite by the same mechanism) that | gravity fits puddles to theirs. | beaconstudios wrote: | That's also a teleological approach (looking at the final | state of the interaction of rain, terrain and gravity) - | I used evolution as an example because its the first | thing that came to mind. | wyager wrote: | The "science" most people believe (more accurately called | scientism) is an aspect of the state secular religion. | remarkEon wrote: | It's interesting seeing this point, which has been around the | internet for at least a decade now, start to get printed in | what are otherwise mainstream publications these days. I | don't know that I buy it, but I certainly understand and see | the merit of the argument. | zxzax wrote: | I don't really buy it, it seems to suggest that scientific | discoveries are not questioned and changed constantly, when | they absolutely are. It's not accurate to always refer to | them as "beliefs." | remarkEon wrote: | I mean, I agree with you, it's not accurate to refer to | "science" as "[a set of] beliefs" but that's sort of | besides the point. The point others are making is that | "believe the science" is not the mantra of a society that | actually "does science" but one that "Practices The | Science^(tm)". | varjag wrote: | I think it expresses doubt in ability of a layperson to | make a rational judgement on merits of a particular | scientific research or process rather than on science | itself. | icelancer wrote: | "Believe science." | | Vox and others stealth-editing articles, people yelling at | you if you don't blindly believe the CDC/WHO, etc. | | Science by its very nature is heretical, questioning, | skeptical. "Belief" in science is exactly what we should | not be doing, yet is pushed by the academic elites. | andrewmcwatters wrote: | There's a difference between speculation and practicing | belief, and what I see non-religous Americans practice is | secular belief--that is--scientism. "Belief" in science. | It's not speculation, because if it was, you might see | people saying "I don't know, we'll wait and see" more | often. Instead, I watch and read about people in America | who are _convinced_ of certain outcomes without any thought | as to whether or not what they posit is true. | bitL wrote: | Yeah, scientism used to be a huge problem at the end of the | 19th/beginning of the 20th century, and we seem to be there | again. | andrewmcwatters wrote: | '"Believe" in the science.' | tomohawk wrote: | As predicted by Nietzsche. | | For a great modern explainer, check out Beyond Reason, by Jordan | Peterson. Rule VI, abandon ideology covers this. | deadite wrote: | Not at all ironic that you're being downvoted in this thread. | andrewmcwatters wrote: | I don't know why you were downvoted for this. It's something he | explicitly described. You see it in the form of "corporate | values." Corporations don't have values, people have values, | and the subcontext of corporate values is that leadership at | those companies make their own values.[1][2] | | When you hear about a corporation espousing "values," they're | practicing corporate Nietzscheism. Most of the time, they're | not doing it because they knowingly follow Friedrich | Nietzsche's philosophy, but rather that they parrot the | philosophy from other corporate examples... as predicted by | Nietzsche. | | [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transvaluation_of_values | | [2]: https://philosophynow.org/issues/29/Nietzsche_and_Values | Mediterraneo10 wrote: | The article says that people need not just political engagement | but contemplation, standing outside the present moment and | communing with something beyond. But is that a view that | Americans now necessarily share? One concept that maybe has | become quietly mainstream is materialism. (By that, however, I am | not claiming that supporters of whatever American political camp | are literally Marxists.) That is, any kind of moment away from | present-day political struggles is viewed as capitulation or as | callously ignoring the plight of the oppressed. | | As a non-American, I get the impression that this is a growing | trend from it appearing even on e.g. internet literature forums | in the last few years: poets writing abstract work at a distance | from the political concerns of the present and seeking a certain | timelessness and glimpse of eternity (think T.S. Eliot in "Burnt | Norton") sometimes get called, by the Americans present, socially | irresponsible and doing nothing for POC. | TazeTSchnitzel wrote: | Surely Marxism _is_ an abstraction from present-day political | struggles? Capitalism didn 't appear yesterday. | vmception wrote: | I think this correlation is related to causation. I think there | are registers in people's minds that are simply occupied. | | Addicts occupy their predisposition to addiction with a single or | ever changing way of neglecting their responsibilities and | relationships and health, based on simple earliest exposure. | | Susceptible people occupy their predisposition to susceptibility | with religion or fervent ideology, the "choice" being simply the | earliest exposure. | | Whichever one shows up first occupies that part of their mind. No | different than a simpler organism impressing who its mother and | caretaker is. | vitiral wrote: | Reducing the actions of people to objects or "simpler | organisms" is rarely a helpful concept. Often people are much | more complicated than our reductions of them. | vmception wrote: | I should wrote "analogous" instead of "no different", as | analogies compare dissimilar things with common attributes, | and could provide the same introspective capabilities without | the easy ego based rebuttals | | There aren't enough differences for me to entertain the idea | of backtracking though | Growling_owl wrote: | > I think there are registers in people's minds that are simply | occupied. | | I think this is the case, anecdotally I noticed that if you are | a sports fan, then the "us versus them" rhetoric works much | less, or at least less than you'd expect in such people. | | At least for domestic politics, that's because you already get | your dose of "us versus them" from some other domain in your | life. | | Same for religion which is the main topic covered in the | article: | | People who are religious are less likely to fall prey of cults. | | Religious people are less likely to elevate "false prophets" | such as actors, musicians, rockstars and also the new | phenomenon represented by technoutopian cult leaders such as | Elon Musk or Elizabeth Holmes. | dclowd9901 wrote: | What a condescending and misanthropic view of people. So we're | just paramecia with "registers" waiting for occupation. | | As with anything, I think the real answer is much more nuanced. | | 1) This article is making the case that this behavior is | universal, when there is no evidence of that. As always has | been, there are subsects of any ideology that are ravenous in | their dogma. They are always the loudest and get the most | attention, because their actions are so extreme. It's selection | bias by the media, who (wouldn't you know it) are the same | folks making the assertion that political religiosity has | supplanted deified religiosity. | | 2) If there's something resembling a "trend" happening around | peoples' emotional investment in politics, it's likely around | the fact that politics is increasingly prodding itself into | peoples' lives. At the very least, if I travel abroad, and we | have a president like Trump, I look like a fucking idiot. That | sucks. At the worst, I'm a woman or minority whose livelihood | is negatively affected constantly by political footballing. | | This has nothing to do with an absence of god, but everything | to do with a real, quantifiable affect on peoples' lives. How | can you expect people, secular or not, to put up with the state | of social and political conversation as it exists today? If | they're staunch conservatives, how can they put up with a clear | wind blowing in the direction of socialism? If they're | democrats, how can they put up with a clearly obstructionist | and crooked counter party? | | Reducing all of that to computer parlance and the most basic | biologies undermines the real problems that people are dealing | with. | mrfusion wrote: | I don't think anyone judges you because of who the president | is. | vmception wrote: | Because they're "staunch conservatives" or "democrats", as | you wrote, because thats what they were exposed to first, not | because they had an array of choices set in front of them | with no external influence and said "that makes more sense" | | The same goes with religion | | The same goes with addicts | [deleted] | alkonaut wrote: | 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 | Swedishness. You aren't "accused" of it, you are congratulated. | | "-I went to say hello to all the neighbors in my building. -What | a nice and unswedish thing to do!" | scotty79 wrote: | "- You haven't joined a single armed conflict this decade! How | un-American of you! Good job!" | FridayoLeary wrote: | >Immigrants to America tend to become American; emigrants to | other countries from America tend to stay American. | | Is that true, or just the authors' speculation? Although it is | easily explained. Everyone wants to be American because the USA, | of all the countries in the world offers the greatest | opportunities to the greatest number of people. They are the top | of the food chain, in less nationalistic terms. (i'm not American | btw but i can see the truth). | underwater wrote: | The "truth" you see is the designed outcome of soft diplomacy | through the export of US culture via movies, television and the | internet. | | I know lots of non-US folk who love the values and | opportunities they experience in America. But I also know lots | of others who don't. | | I see my own country adopting more and more aspects from | America: individualism over community, the excessive | consumerism, the Starbuck-ification of every facet of our | lives, that I think are more harmful than beneficial. | jltsiren wrote: | Things may look a bit different from a (West) European | perspective. I know enough people who used to live in the US | but left, partly because they did not want to inflict US | citizenship upon their children. Among all wealthy countries, | US citizenship is probably the least desirable one if you don't | plan to live there permanently. | | In any case, the expat/immigrant situation is familiar to many | Europeans as well. The real difference is that most European | countries are nation states, while the US is a land of | immigrants and their descendants. "American" is an adopted | identity. You become American if you have lived in the US long | enough and consider yourself American. In contrast, "German" is | an assigned identity. You are German if other Germans generally | see you as German. You cannot become fully integrated into a | nation state as long as other people pay attention to your | origins. | antihipocrat wrote: | Does the USA really offer the greatest opportunities to the | greatest number of poor people as a share of the total | population, of all countries in the world? Why do so many | people from the USA believe this tripe without question? | | It feels like the 'shining city on the hill' was extremely | effective propaganda, for the domestic population. | bwb wrote: | That isn't true if you mean in terms of achieving the classic | American dream... Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and others | are moving more people out of lower/middle class to | middle/upper class as a percentage. I do not know in terms of | raw numbers but via % we are behind. | 13415 wrote: | I believe people who move to the US also like the comparably | low bureaucracy, as well as opportunities in some sectors. | Personally, I've lost my interest in moving to the US (or | even visiting it) a long time ago, around the time of Bush | Jr. for various reasons, but I'm still convinced that | founding a successful company with low starting capital is | easier in the US than almost anywhere else. The same is true | for acting, music, show business and all the support like | film cutting, audio engineering, special effects, etc. | Despite the increased competition, your career prospects in | these areas will probably be much higher if you move to L.A. | or NY than if you stay somewhere else in the world. | version_five wrote: | The "classic american dream" I believe involves being able to | move up through hard work. At least in Canada, if we are | moving people up class-wise it's by the government | subsidizing them more than it is by rewarding hard work. So I | believe the GPs point still stands. | Mediterraneo10 wrote: | If you move to the USA from the developing world or even | Eastern Europe, regardless of what job you do your salary | immediately soars above whatever you made in your country of | origin. Taxation on many consumer goods is also likely to be | lower. (For example, electronics can be expensive elsewhere | due to high import duties or VAT.) Of course, cost of living | in the USA is also much higher, but nevertheless lots of | immigrants feel that they have moved up in life just because | of the higher wages and consumeristic lifestyle now available | to them. | RGamma wrote: | At this point I think the EU should just set aside a nice | space somewhere and make it a raw capitalist, no taxes, no | regulations, no safety net zone. | | "Talent" seems to like that environment. | akarma wrote: | America is certainly the country with the most opportunity | for the most people. | | A shift that _has_ occurred from the 1950s to present is that | there is less of a guarantee of an upper-middle-class | lifestyle through a moderate [1] amount of effort. | | That easier opportunity, however, was unique to the era. | Prior to 1930, immigrants knew that America was a place for | exceptionally hard work and tons of opportunity and freedom - | that was the American dream. Not high taxation and | government-funded class movement from lower-middle to upper- | middle. | | [1] 40 hours a week, one full-time job for an established | corporate company supporting a family | nielsbot wrote: | Wasn't taxation very high during the period describe, and | declining gradually since then? | | I also thought home ownership was one of the main | generators of wealth for families, and wasn't that | government assisted in some way? | | (Not a historian) | jandrewrogers wrote: | No, taxation was not very high. Some tax _rates_ were | very high but they had an extensive range of deductions | that don 't exist today. The _effective_ tax rates, what | people actually paid as a percentage of gross income, | were similar to today. | | They lowered tax rates simultaneous with eliminating | deductions, making the changes over time roughly neutral | in terms of taxes paid. | somewhereoutth wrote: | You all work so hard for almost nothing (apart from | 'stuff', that is now mostly made in China). | | In Europe people have a much more relaxed attitude to work, | yet somehow pretty much everyone has a very high quality of | life - judged by quality of food, freedom from fear (e.g. | of losing their job, getting ill, or interactions with the | 'police'), and time to spend with people important to you. | rejectedandsad wrote: | Yet people in most of Western Europe (discounting Switzerland | and Luxembourg and maybe Norway) are objectively poorer than | even the poorest American states. | RGamma wrote: | Why is quality of life measured on consumption crap so | heavily? Personally idgaf about useless doodads that waste | resources and space in my home (or mind). | throw0101a wrote: | There are perhaps other metrics to go for, other than | 'just' monetary: | | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report#2020 | _re... | | Some other countries may have chosen to trade some personal | income/wealth for other things. | | Further, while there may be more money in general in the | US, using averages skews things a bit due to inequality; | social mobility is lower in the US than many other | countries: | | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Gatsby_curve | | If you're not already at/near the top in the US, good luck | getting there. | scotty79 wrote: | Yeah, but that's because USA basically swims in cash | because since world uses dollar as core currency for the | global economy USA has to print more dollars to match the | growth of global economy to avoid deflation. And once it | prints it it does with those dollars what it pleases. | Mainly buys ton of stuff from the world, but still keeps | enough to maintain status of wealthy country. | | It's no wonder people can get more cash it the country that | basically prints it for the whole world. | | Once the global economy start shrinking or the world moves | to yuan or euro USA will descend to level of Eastern | European country in a generation or two tops. | ardit33 wrote: | Yes. when I lived in Sweden, I noticed that Swedes in | general have less stuff. Smaller housing, fewer cars, less | ability to buy stuff, and even go out. The average engineer | salary was almost half (about 60%) of those in NYC and SF, | while prices coffee/going out in Stockholm were almost the | same as in NYC. Rent prices were lower though. | | But, their quality of life seemed higher overall. Less | stressful in general, more vacations and time off, more | thoughtful planing of their cities, etc. | | So, it seems like a tradeoff. If you are a blue collar or | unskilled worker, Sweden would have been better, while | you'd struggle in the US. But if you are a skilled worker | (even blue collar, like plumber or electrician), you'd do | better in the US. | | I'd rather be a barista in Sweden than in the US, but I'd | rather be an engineer in the US than in Sweden. | sometimesshit wrote: | Ardit, | | You need to measure purchasing power using PPP rate, but | even still NY and SF known to be expensive areas with | high tax rates. | | SF engineer could earn 200k year but this money could be | much low as 80k in another state if you compare | purchasing power. | rsj_hn wrote: | > If you are a blue collar or unskilled worker, Sweden | would have been better, | | The problem here is that for the Swedes to enjoy their | social benefits, they cannot afford to have too many low | skilled workers. The swedish economy is a high skilled | economy, perhaps the highest skilled in the world. There | are very few low-skill jobs, _unlike_ the US which has an | army of low skilled workers filling low skilled jobs. | This is why the U.S. is able to absorb so many low | skilled migrants whereas Sweden is having enormous | problems finding jobs for their low skilled migrants. So | while sure, you are better off being a low skilled worker | in Sweden just as you are better off being a high skilled | worker in the U.S., but that 's because these two | economies are structured very differently. | OJFord wrote: | > The swedish economy is a high skilled economy, perhaps | the highest skilled in the world. There are very few low- | skill jobs, unlike the US which has an army of low | skilled workers filling low skilled jobs. This is why the | U.S. is able to absorb so many low skilled migrants | whereas Sweden is having enormous problems finding jobs | for their low skilled migrants. | | How is that not backwards? | | If you have 'an army of low skilled workers' then there's | no room 'to absorb so many low skilled migrants', surely? | | If you have 'a high-skilled economy' then surely you are | 'having enormous problems' _filling_ your low-skilled | jobs, and welcome migrants? | | Indeed, isn't Sweden famously highly accepting of | migrants and in particular refugees? Presumably skewed | low-skilled if at all? | | (Neither Swedish nor American, so not pushing an agenda, | just commenting. :)) | kortilla wrote: | It's harder to move to Canada though. | yongjik wrote: | While the sentiment may be true for Americans living in | America, if an American decides to emigrate to a different | country then they obviously think living in this new country is | better for them - unless they move back later, I don't think | emigrating Americans remain "American" for long, certainly not | after a generation or two. | f38zf5vdt wrote: | From the 1880s to 2000 this may have been the case, but I don't | think it is anymore. Any country with public health insurance | that is decent is more attractive than the US. People are not | blind, they see Americans dying of diabetes because they can't | afford insulin that they attempted to crowdfund. [1] | | The US has evolved into a modern dystopia under the first-past- | the-post system and cloture in the senate. I think the election | of Donald Trump was the signal to the rest of the world that | America's democracy may not even be a democracy. Republicans | are currently digging themselves in to remove as much democracy | from the American political system as possible. [2] I'm not | sure where the country will end up. | | [1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/shane-patrick-boyle- | died-a... | | [2] | https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2021/06/the-... | newfriend wrote: | > The US has evolved into a modern dystopia | | > America's democracy may not even be a democracy | | > Republicans are currently digging themselves in to remove | as much democracy | | Here's the ideological intensity that the article mentioned. | This is delusional. | | The smartest, most driven people still come to the US to | start businesses and seek fortune, because it's the best | place in the world to do so. | f38zf5vdt wrote: | I'm not from the US, so I suppose I don't know. One of my | uncles immigrated there and works in a VA hospital. The | stories he tells me, of people dying of ailments that are | common in the third world, seems to suggest otherwise. | krapp wrote: | Everything f38zf5vdt said and that you've quoted here can | be true (at least subjectively) while your own reply is | also true. You're not actually addressing or contradicting | their arguments, such as they are, just declaring them | categorically invalid because "capitalism." | bdv5 wrote: | In other words the opportunists come to the US. The most | selfish and greedy. The results speak for themselves. | icelancer wrote: | >> Any country with public health insurance that is decent is | more attractive than the US. | | Depending on what you want to do with your life, this is | mostly true. But immigration laws to countries with these | kinds of welfare structures tend to be much tighter than ones | without for reasons that are obvious. | vitiral wrote: | I feel that many issues are not only a confusion of values, but a | confusion of what values even _are_. There is some cookie cutter | bullshit about what is "good" or "bad" and this is used to paint | a broad and incoherent picture which breaks down the structures | it is painted on. Like confusing ageism with public policy of how | to handle disease. Or being idealistic to avoide concern over | secondary consequences. You can be called a lot of names by | trying to point out secondary consequences which harm certain | woke policy choices. When did someone decide there were clear | answers to challenging issues and cut off further debate? | yoshamano wrote: | The Christian Science Monitor also ran a similar article last | month that I feel is worth a read. | | https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2021/0512/Is-politics... | | Rather than try to drive any particular point this is more of a | discussion piece about this moment in time. | pmoriarty wrote: | We may be on the cusp of a great religious revival, due to the | increased acceptance and eventual mainstreaming of psychedelics. | | People often interpret their psychedelic experiences in religious | terms, and psychedelic use has often created new religions and | helped to engender an authentic reconnection to existing | religions. | | Mainstream religions rarely offer much more than platitudes or a | place to socialize for the majority of their adherents, of whom | many are part of the religion simply because their parents were, | or because the church is the social center of their town. | | They don't have an authentic connection to the teachings, many | don't even read their sacred scriptures, rely on priests to tell | them what to believe, and usually neither they nor their priests | ever had a mystical experience. | | Then psychedelics come in to the picture, and suddenly they may | have a renewed sense of the sacred, religious texts and spaces | come alive, and they may even come face to face with what they | experience as the genuine heart of their tradition, including | meeting, talking to or even being god. | | This is not an uncommon occurrence, even for atheists and | agnostics. | | I don't think the mainstream culture has fully appreciated either | how enormously powerful such experiences can be, nor their | repercussions. | | Historically, mainstream religions have been very against drug | use, but it'll be interesting to see what happens when their | churches, mosques, and synagogues start filling up with people | who were drawn there through mystical experiences they had on | psychedelics. | andrewmcwatters wrote: | Walk into a mainstream religious setting. None of them are | there because they got high. If that were the case, the 70s | would have looked a lot different. | perfmode wrote: | it's worth also introducing another word into the vocabulary of | the discussion: spirituality | [deleted] | ukj wrote: | Well...yeah! | | Religion serves a function. Even if that function is | psychological. | | When you take religion away, something else will fill the | utility-gap. | | Silly humans failing to grasp the purpose of stories/narratives. | | Edit for the downvoters (who clearly don't understand): the | question "Why do science and philosophy matter?" has only | religious/ideological answers. | Spooky23 wrote: | Religion is about culture, belief and community. The fading of | the mainstream religions is making room for the more | fundamentalist, marketing driven religious practices that are | often about money and politics. | ukj wrote: | We are social animals. A religion is what scientists call a | "paradigm". | | The socially acceptable ideas/paradigms of today are the | religions of next century. | | Hegel was right. | joe_the_user wrote: | There are parts of Europe that have far more community and | where people are far more social but far less religious | than the US. | | Religion is just a long surviving irrational belief system. | It may serve a more social purpose or a less social | purpose. Oppositely, the purpose of unifying a community | can be served by a number of things, religion isn't | necessary for that. As other mention, extreme religiosity | is rising in the US even as average religion is declining | but that's naturally ideological. | [deleted] | dilawar wrote: | Really? How about growth and decline of Marxism vis-a-vis | religion? | [deleted] | briefcomment wrote: | People feel the urge to label some one, group, or idea, as bad. I | get around this by accepting that I am bad. It helps me see the | best in everyone else, and makes me hold myself to really high | standards. It is sometimes unpleasant though. | | It's probably some sort of natural calibration process. | rogerkirkness wrote: | I've come to terms with this by denouncing morals and focusing | on ethics. | briefcomment wrote: | I agree about morals. They're always relative, and can | sometimes be fluid. Holding someone to a set of morals is | usually pretty shortsighted. | | What do you mean by ethics here? | | The one thing I try to hold myself to is to maximize | individual choice, even if I don't currently agree with some | of the choices. | Swizec wrote: | Isn't this what Catholicism is all about? We are all sinners | and terrible people. Therefore we should see the best in fellow | human and give money to the church so it can offset our tab | with god | | I realize most people stick to the "everyone is bad" part and | forget that they too are an everyone and gloss over the whole | forgiveness and acceptance part. | rubyn00bie wrote: | Uhhh... this article is really out of touch with the world and | I'm pretty sure they totally didn't understand at a minimum half | of what they're talking about. | | I'd really like to point out something that's just a fact, that | was told to me, while I was abroad, by non-US citizens: | | The USA is the only country where you can move to and say you're | from. I can't ever move to France and call myself French. I can't | move to Germany and be German, no more than I can ever move to | Japan and call myself Japanese. One can however, move to the | United States, and call themselves American. | | There is something binding to America, much greater than | religion, and it's the idea of freedom. Not even real freedom, | just the god damn idea of it. | | > As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has | risen | | ROFLCOPTR. Next you're going to try and sell me a tool to predict | stock prices based on the weather (and I did read more after | laughing my ass off at the sub heading). | | To assume that religion is what held together America is itself | fucking stupid. I could accept greed, war mongering, or pretty | much anything except the bullshit veil of religion. This was | obviously written by someone who has no lens without religion and | so applies it everywhere they can. It'd be more accurate to title | this article "let's blame the problems of the world on the | decline of religion, because I'm to stupid and willfully ignorant | to accept the complex dynamics of modern society." | antattack wrote: | "Join me in our crusade to reap the rewards of our global | victory' | | Said President Bush in 2005. This is when politics started | exploiting faith in the open. | freshhawk wrote: | Uh ... is it news to people that american nationalism is a very | religious belief system? | | It isn't to outsiders, I definitely heard this comparison made | when I was in school ... which was the 90's. | | This also feels more like americans adjusting to having explicit | ideological beliefs in the first place, since the decades-long | political monoculture is breaking up. There is an interesting | religious feel to party affiliation in the US, but nothing | particularly exceptional compared to other places. Maybe that's | an outsider missing some nuance though. | remarkEon wrote: | >Uh ... is it news to people that american nationalism is a | very religious belief system? | | I think the "news" here, such as there actually is any, is that | modern secular progressivism has adopted (transplanted?) many | religious notions from e.g. Catholicism, and the comparison | bothers people because the left prides itself on being anti- | religious. American Nationalism has pretty much always been | tied to Christianity given the history of the country, so yeah | it's not surprising at all to point that out. | tonymet wrote: | 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, vice & virtue just as | religion does. | | One aspect of religion I appreciate is that these aspects are | well codified and debated - i.e. much more explicit. | | In the secular world these aspects exist but they are implied. | Thus they are difficult to debate and attack. | | Few people understand that most religions e.g. Judaism and | Christianity have an apologetic discipline - a deliberate arm | open to debate. | | The secular world would benefit from adopting more formal | definitions of their belief system. I think that would reduce the | conflict and neurosis that comes from engaging a nebulous system. | | You may not believe in religion, but religions are a good | template for ideology. | ta2162 wrote: | It will be interesting to see how far this develops as | generations become less and less religious. It will be | interesting to see how areas like the Middle East change. | Causality1 wrote: | This is mirrored in the precipitously dropping support for | freedom of speech in the US, especially among youth. As ideology | becomes more intense heresy becomes less acceptable, and it seems | if people can't quell heretical speech with threats of fire and | brimstone they'll do it with legislation and police. | jakelazaroff wrote: | Freedom of speech isn't a "non-ideological" ideal, and there's | not one single definition. For example, most liberals (in the | classical sense) support free speech but are not absolutists; a | libertarian might see that as repressive, while a progressive | might see it as dangerous. | oblak wrote: | isn't ideological intensity an euphemism for religious faith? or | is that the joke | bencollier49 wrote: | religio = piety | | ideo = images / ideas | | I think religious devotion is a subset of ideological | intensity. | eruci wrote: | That's good news! Ideology is more malleable than religion. | papito wrote: | Religion is going away and political affiliation resembles more | of a cult. You know, very healthy. | bobthechef wrote: | Religion isn't going away. Ideology is religion. Very bad | religion, but it is religion (or a "cult" to use your language, | though that term is overloaded). And no one is without | religion. Everyone worships something. The question is: are you | worshiping the _right_ thing? | | In terms of the "traditional" churches in the US, yes, mainline | Protestantism is dying because it is a spent force (it has more | or less fully acquiesced to the culture, become a consumer and | servant of that culture, which means it no longer has any | purpose). Muslims who move her tend to become moderates and | likely shed Islam entirely eventually. You do see some growth | among Evangelicals, but in any case, globally (Africa, Asia), | you do see Catholicism and Islam growing. The West is in this | sense a decadent freak. | joe_the_user wrote: | The total number of people identifying as religious in the US | is declining. The number of people identifying as | evangelical/"born again" is rising. | | Of course, it's about the same thing in the religious and non- | religious cult-dynamics are somewhat similar. | | Of course, it's a product of any "local community" fading away | - the moderating influence of random people living near one is | fading. | someotherblah wrote: | America does have a god. It's called "the product". Just because | it's falling short of the vaccum religion used to fill doesn't | mean we won't pivot to something else. Enjoy the ride folks. | kortilla wrote: | For a good chunk of the of the country the god is actually | anti-capitalist ideals now, | neonate wrote: | https://archive.is/MzBm5 ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-06-12 23:00 UTC)