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From one point of view, Christianity is more of a culture than a purely religious thing. Books use allusions to the Bible, even if their authors and readers ar

From one point of view, Christianity is more of a culture than a purely religious thing. Books use allusions to the Bible, even if their authors and readers aren't very religious. People pay lip service to the idea of God (singular, capitalised, and having a particular brand of deity in mind), even if they haven't prayed in decades. > How in the world could FB figure out I'm an early adopter? Maybe if you accessed Facebook from a recently released device? Facebook decided that Mac OSX is part of my 'lifestyle', merely because of the fact that I access them through only through a Mac now despite being a PC owner for decades before that.

DanielBMarkham 10y ago
"From one point of view, Christianity is more of a culture than a purely religious thing." Excellent point. So much of the public dialogue involves similes and metaphors with references to an entire milieu of common myths and values. I was watching a history show once about religion in the U.S. An interesting thing that I never realized was that religious references were huge part of most every presidential speech up until just recently. It wasn't a dogmatic religious reference, rather the speeches used a common Judaeo-Christian backdrop as a canvas to make arguments about whatever the politician wanted. In a way, this common culture provided a lingua franca between folks of widely different belief systems who shared a lot of common stories. Even atheists and agnostics like myself were usually exposed to a ton of this growing up, and they could follow along -- many times making more of a religious argument in rebuttal than was presented in the first place! Because of this, even though I want the government to have nothing to do with religion, I feel that kids should be educated in whatever the common mythos is at the time in the culture around them. (I feel the same way about the classics) There's just too much nuance they would miss otherwise. So much of sharing and encouraging deep thought is about comparing complex ideas that are best introduced by reference. If you have no context for the reference, you're way behind the game (and likely will never catch up). Many times online if I'm in a discussion, I make a reference to a complex topic, waiting while the other person googles the keywords, and then I read a reply that obviously indicates that while facts have been consumed by the other person, the underlying concept hasn't really been absorbed into their life in order for them to be able to get it out and reflect upon it. They're just parroting Wikipedia blurbs. Would FB advertisers knowing this make them more able to sell to me? Probably not, but it might allow them to communicate with me in a more complex way than a pretty girl, an animated dancing bear, and an offer of a free iPod.
- dismantlethesun 10y ago
  > Probably not, but it might allow them to communicate with me in a more complex way .. True enough. One way I can imagine this being used is if you have a person from another culture (e.g. Japan), but the algorithm has identified them as Christian, then certain ads made for the Christian motifs will have more of an impact with them rather than simply being flowery allusions.

DanielBMarkham 10y ago

"From one point of view, Christianity is more of a culture than a purely religious thing." Excellent point. So much of the public dialogue involves similes and metaphors with references to an entire milieu of common myths and values. I was watching a history show once about religion in the U.S. An interesting thing that I never realized was that religious references were huge part of most every presidential speech up until just recently. It wasn't a dogmatic religious reference, rather the speeches used a common Judaeo-Christian backdrop as a canvas to make arguments about whatever the politician wanted. In a way, this common culture provided a lingua franca between folks of widely different belief systems who shared a lot of common stories. Even atheists and agnostics like myself were usually exposed to a ton of this growing up, and they could follow along -- many times making more of a religious argument in rebuttal than was presented in the first place! Because of this, even though I want the government to have nothing to do with religion, I feel that kids should be educated in whatever the common mythos is at the time in the culture around them. (I feel the same way about the classics) There's just too much nuance they would miss otherwise. So much of sharing and encouraging deep thought is about comparing complex ideas that are best introduced by reference. If you have no context for the reference, you're way behind the game (and likely will never catch up). Many times online if I'm in a discussion, I make a reference to a complex topic, waiting while the other person googles the keywords, and then I read a reply that obviously indicates that while facts have been consumed by the other person, the underlying concept hasn't really been absorbed into their life in order for them to be able to get it out and reflect upon it. They're just parroting Wikipedia blurbs. Would FB advertisers knowing this make them more able to sell to me? Probably not, but it might allow them to communicate with me in a more complex way than a pretty girl, an animated dancing bear, and an offer of a free iPod.

dismantlethesun 10y ago
> Probably not, but it might allow them to communicate with me in a more complex way .. True enough. One way I can imagine this being used is if you have a person from another culture (e.g. Japan), but the algorithm has identified them as Christian, then certain ads made for the Christian motifs will have more of an impact with them rather than simply being flowery allusions.