7 ms·

The wider issue, of course, is that the entire dogma is a fiction without any basis in reality. Arguing over direction to preserve attendance may be pointless i

The wider issue, of course, is that the entire dogma is a fiction without any basis in reality. Arguing over direction to preserve attendance may be pointless if you've built an organization around a fairy tale.

aaron-lebo 9y ago
It has some basis in reality and affects some 1 billion lives. I'm sure you believe only 100% true, non dogmatic things. Your comment is pretentious and shallow.
- brian-armstrong 9y ago
  The fact that it affects a billion people and is built on falsehoods should be cause for concern.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    So is politics, and most of the other groups humans form or consider themselves to be members of. This might be a bug, or might be a feature, but is not in any way unique to religion. It's how human tribes work.
- cjsuk 9y ago
  Doesn’t mean it’s wrong!
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  Whether it has some basis in reality is besides the point. The defining characteristic of a religious institution is that it promotes faith as an epistemology, thus explicitly encouraging people to engage in more irrationality.
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    Was hoping that people that see themselves as enlightened and rational would recognize the complete lack of nuance or reality in statements like "entire dogma is a fiction without any basis in reality". You don't believe that's simplistic? Is that a way to jumpstart useful dialog about that institution?
    - hectorlorenzo 9y ago
      Have you read this? http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/24/how-did-new-atheism-fail-so-miserably/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/24/how-did-new-atheism-fai...
      - steanne 9y ago
        i have to go with siderea's response https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1361333.html https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1361333.html
        vacri 9y ago
        What's always missing from these discussions is that that patronising mockery and outright dismissal is how atheists and agnostics have always been treated by the religious - it wasn't until atheists started really kicking and screaming about the injustice that people started to take note. One the one hand you have folks like this complaining of atheists merely being (gasp) rude!, and on the other hand you have things like some states in the US still not allowing atheists to hold office, by articles in their consitutions[1]. It's exactly the same with women's rights and minority civil rights: "Really, people would listen to them more if they just toned down and spoke politely". We already know that that doesn't work and just gets you ignored. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/07/08/there-are-states-where-you-technically-cant-hold-public-office-if-youre-an-atheist/?utm_term=.5b10c6e2d2f9 https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/07/08/t...
        ZeroGravitas 9y ago
        Both those articles, and the comments seem focused on liberal's tolerance of religion as a problem, to a degree that astonishes me as an outsider looking into their communities. The crushing weight of cognitive dissonance seems so vast that it lends an almost religious aura to their discussions as they carefully avoid the rather glaring truth that religion permeates US politics at all levels but that it's clearly more ingrained on the Republican side.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Religious institution != religion. Especially in case or large, mainstream religions, where the institution itself has little direct influence on how people live their lives. Religions are all about community, and for communities, traditions and beliefs are usually social objects, i.e. arbitrary things around which a community forms. The question of whether it's really true or false is - to most Catholics - just about as relevant as the question whether Star Trek is true or false is relevant to Trekkies. The issues those communities are debating are not about how their beliefs match reality, but how their beliefs match the canon around which the community is built.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
      > Religions are all about community No, communities are all about community. There are religious communities. But there is also religion and even religious institutions that are not about community. And there are communities that are not religious. The thing that distinguishes religion, be it a community or otherwise, from non-religion is the promotion of faith as an epistemology. > The question of whether it's really true or false is - to most Catholics - just about as relevant as the question whether Star Trek is true or false is relevant to Trekkies. How relevant it is to them is not the question. The question is how epistemologyically sound their position is. The average Trekkie will, if asked, correctly accept the proposition that the universe they are a fan of is fictional. The average Catholic on the other hand will, if asked, incorrectly accept the proposition that the universe they are a fan of is real. Also, the latter is consistently a part of the indoctrination, so it's kindof dishonest to claim that they don't consider it relevant.
    - saiya-jin 9y ago
      very true. but communities built on lies, wishful thinking and self-projections end up eventually in troubles (and usually eventually end). major religions did get most of things right, otherwise they wouldn't remain around for millennia, but eventually fail some simple logic tests. for me, abstract concept of faith is great. I have absolutely 0 need for it and can lead happy moral fulfilled life without it, but if it helps billions to be better humans inward and outward, great for them and all of us. the problem starts when corrupted, greedy, f*ed up people with tons of issues take this faith, bend it to their current desires and push millions into wars, despair and overall dark ages. few hundred/thousands of years from now on, if humans still live, they will look back and wonder how otherwise smart mankind could base so much of their existence around such weird illogical things. at least I hope so...
  - foldr 9y ago
    >it promotes faith as an epistemology, thus explicitly encouraging people to engage in more irrationality. Catholicism probably puts less emphasis on faith than pretty much any other theistic religion. Its main doctrines are supported by volumes of dense (and rather tedious) rational argumentation.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
      So, catholicism doesn't hold that a god exists, then?
      - foldr 9y ago
        It holds that God's existence can be established by rational argument.
        zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
        Which itself is an irrational position to hold, so if that is indeed a position they hold, they hold it by faith.
        foldr 9y ago
        No, they hold it on the basis of certain arguments for God's existence.
        zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
        How do irrational arguments for the existence of a god support the position that that god's existence can be established by rational argument?
        foldr 9y ago
        I am not taking a position on whether the arguments are good or bad. But supposing the arguments are bad, sincerely believing something on the basis of a bad argument is not the same as believing it by faith.
cjsuk 9y ago
Slight correction: well funded, tax immune, sovereign, pyramid shaped fairy tale circling the drain. Even CoE here in the U.K. are running hooky hedge funds. As always, money and power. At least ultra-capitalists are honest about their motivations.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
torstenvl 9y ago
Organizations themselves are fictions. Y Combinator, for example, doesn't actually exist in any sort of real sense. If they suddenly lost all their assets, the fictionalized entity would still exist. Nothing that actually exists in the physical world, nothing you can prove the existence of scientifically, is coextensive with the entity known as Y Combinator Management, LLC. It exists only to the extent it is written that it exists, and that people believe it.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  > Nothing that actually exists in the physical world, nothing you can prove the existence of scientifically, is coextensive with the entity known as Y Combinator Management, LLC. You might be surprised, but brains and court records and all of that are actually physical and perfectly accessible to scientific investigation.
  - simonbarker87 9y ago
    Only if we all agree that those documents actually mean something in our collective imagination. This is a primary difference between us and animals, we can collectively agree that the paper in a file or the bits in a computer mean that something exists. Even physical cash only works if we all collectively agree that a £5 note ($5 bill) is an ok thing to trade for an item that is priced at £5. If I could persuade enough people that incorporation documents are invalid and that we all collectively agreed the corporations would cease to exist. This is of course an absurd notion and not practically achievable but there was a time before corporations existed and there could be a time after which they existed if we want. This is the same for any human conceived idea.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
      > This is a primary difference between us and animals, we can collectively agree that the paper in a file or the bits in a computer mean that something exists. I think that is a very confusing way to look at things. It's not that we collectively agree that the document means that something exists, but rather this is the category of things for which existence is by definition caused by the existence of those documents. A corporation is not some ethereal thing that exists, and we agree that we are justified in believing it exists because there is a document, but rather the document is effectively the corporation. The thing we as a society agree about is merely linguistic in nature: We agree on the definition of the terms, i.e., we have a common language.
hectorlorenzo 9y ago
Ironically, you are preaching to the choir, and not adding much to the conversation. No wonder atheists are the new vegans.
mpermar 9y ago
Isn't reality a fiction either?
TeMPOraL 9y ago
> Arguing over direction to preserve attendance may be pointless if you've built an organization around a fairy tale. Doesn't matter. What other commenters here try to point out as well, a lot - if not most - organizations are built around one fiction or another. Some examples: - Fanclubs, fandoms, convent attendees - those are literally communities built around fairy tales. - Programming language communities - built around ever-changing artifacts of human imagination, they too have to deal with possible change of direction impacting attendance. - Political parties - organized around some people's understanding of some ideas, + shitton of meaningless slogans that everyone interprets how they like. Exist mostly to self-perpetuate, as evidenced whenever any established party has anything meaningful to say or do; suddenly the official program takes second place towards what helps electability. - Companies - the ultimate bubbles of meaninglessness, they in principle - and often in practice - exist as an ever charging group of people bound together by will to make money on ever changing product for ever changing market, lead by ever changing board. I'd add nationalities, as there's plenty of crazy fiction going on in there, but they're at least usually bound geographically, so there's that. -- The point being, many if not most organizations are built around some fairy tale or other, and what an organization is built around rarely matters to anything. What matters is how strong the community is, and that's pretty much purely social factor, without any actual dependence on objective reality.
- brian-armstrong 9y ago
  The difference being that religions lack the comfortable layer of detached irony that a modern fandom has. Star Trek fandoms don't insist that Star Trek is the genesis of human life and the only source of truth.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Yeah. But I feel that's just because that belief is not the part of their fandom. When I look at people from $largeMainstreamReligion, I see people who will defend it as "the genesis of human life and the only source of truth" as a fact of the community you're supposed to accept. But then looking at their lives, they pay at best a lip service to the actual contents of that "source of truth", and instead only participate in the accepted traditions. Basically, I feel that religions, fandoms, school associations ("I'm a Harvard Alumni"), etc. all work pretty much in the very same way.
erikb 9y ago
The catholic church has 1.3 billion members (see wikipedia) and 1.7 billion USD cash flow [1], owning some of the most valuable property in the world (e.g. [2]). How fiction is that? While not being catholic myself, I think the difference between believing that there is a Jesus up in the sky watching you masturbate and the believe that Google will conquer the whole world by AI is not that different. Both influences people to spend money respectively which in turn makes the corresponding organization that much more powerful. Not believing in it oneself shouldn't stop one from accepting it's real world influence as important. [1] https://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2012/08/catholic-church-america https://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2012/08/catholic-ch... [2] https://www.walksofitaly.com/blog/vatican/catholic-church-real-estate https://www.walksofitaly.com/blog/vatican/catholic-church-re...

aaron-lebo 9y ago

It has some basis in reality and affects some 1 billion lives. I'm sure you believe only 100% true, non dogmatic things. Your comment is pretentious and shallow.

brian-armstrong 9y ago
The fact that it affects a billion people and is built on falsehoods should be cause for concern.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  So is politics, and most of the other groups humans form or consider themselves to be members of. This might be a bug, or might be a feature, but is not in any way unique to religion. It's how human tribes work.
cjsuk 9y ago
Doesn’t mean it’s wrong!
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
Whether it has some basis in reality is besides the point. The defining characteristic of a religious institution is that it promotes faith as an epistemology, thus explicitly encouraging people to engage in more irrationality.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  Was hoping that people that see themselves as enlightened and rational would recognize the complete lack of nuance or reality in statements like "entire dogma is a fiction without any basis in reality". You don't believe that's simplistic? Is that a way to jumpstart useful dialog about that institution?
  - hectorlorenzo 9y ago
    Have you read this? http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/24/how-did-new-atheism-fail-so-miserably/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/24/how-did-new-atheism-fai...
    - steanne 9y ago
      i have to go with siderea's response https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1361333.html https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1361333.html
      - vacri 9y ago
        What's always missing from these discussions is that that patronising mockery and outright dismissal is how atheists and agnostics have always been treated by the religious - it wasn't until atheists started really kicking and screaming about the injustice that people started to take note. One the one hand you have folks like this complaining of atheists merely being (gasp) rude!, and on the other hand you have things like some states in the US still not allowing atheists to hold office, by articles in their consitutions[1]. It's exactly the same with women's rights and minority civil rights: "Really, people would listen to them more if they just toned down and spoke politely". We already know that that doesn't work and just gets you ignored. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/07/08/there-are-states-where-you-technically-cant-hold-public-office-if-youre-an-atheist/?utm_term=.5b10c6e2d2f9 https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/07/08/t...
      - ZeroGravitas 9y ago
        Both those articles, and the comments seem focused on liberal's tolerance of religion as a problem, to a degree that astonishes me as an outsider looking into their communities. The crushing weight of cognitive dissonance seems so vast that it lends an almost religious aura to their discussions as they carefully avoid the rather glaring truth that religion permeates US politics at all levels but that it's clearly more ingrained on the Republican side.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Religious institution != religion. Especially in case or large, mainstream religions, where the institution itself has little direct influence on how people live their lives. Religions are all about community, and for communities, traditions and beliefs are usually social objects, i.e. arbitrary things around which a community forms. The question of whether it's really true or false is - to most Catholics - just about as relevant as the question whether Star Trek is true or false is relevant to Trekkies. The issues those communities are debating are not about how their beliefs match reality, but how their beliefs match the canon around which the community is built.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
    > Religions are all about community No, communities are all about community. There are religious communities. But there is also religion and even religious institutions that are not about community. And there are communities that are not religious. The thing that distinguishes religion, be it a community or otherwise, from non-religion is the promotion of faith as an epistemology. > The question of whether it's really true or false is - to most Catholics - just about as relevant as the question whether Star Trek is true or false is relevant to Trekkies. How relevant it is to them is not the question. The question is how epistemologyically sound their position is. The average Trekkie will, if asked, correctly accept the proposition that the universe they are a fan of is fictional. The average Catholic on the other hand will, if asked, incorrectly accept the proposition that the universe they are a fan of is real. Also, the latter is consistently a part of the indoctrination, so it's kindof dishonest to claim that they don't consider it relevant.
  - saiya-jin 9y ago
    very true. but communities built on lies, wishful thinking and self-projections end up eventually in troubles (and usually eventually end). major religions did get most of things right, otherwise they wouldn't remain around for millennia, but eventually fail some simple logic tests. for me, abstract concept of faith is great. I have absolutely 0 need for it and can lead happy moral fulfilled life without it, but if it helps billions to be better humans inward and outward, great for them and all of us. the problem starts when corrupted, greedy, f*ed up people with tons of issues take this faith, bend it to their current desires and push millions into wars, despair and overall dark ages. few hundred/thousands of years from now on, if humans still live, they will look back and wonder how otherwise smart mankind could base so much of their existence around such weird illogical things. at least I hope so...
- foldr 9y ago
  >it promotes faith as an epistemology, thus explicitly encouraging people to engage in more irrationality. Catholicism probably puts less emphasis on faith than pretty much any other theistic religion. Its main doctrines are supported by volumes of dense (and rather tedious) rational argumentation.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
    So, catholicism doesn't hold that a god exists, then?
    - foldr 9y ago
      It holds that God's existence can be established by rational argument.
      - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
        Which itself is an irrational position to hold, so if that is indeed a position they hold, they hold it by faith.
        foldr 9y ago
        No, they hold it on the basis of certain arguments for God's existence.
        zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
        How do irrational arguments for the existence of a god support the position that that god's existence can be established by rational argument?
        foldr 9y ago
        I am not taking a position on whether the arguments are good or bad. But supposing the arguments are bad, sincerely believing something on the basis of a bad argument is not the same as believing it by faith.

cjsuk 9y ago

Slight correction: well funded, tax immune, sovereign, pyramid shaped fairy tale circling the drain. Even CoE here in the U.K. are running hooky hedge funds. As always, money and power. At least ultra-capitalists are honest about their motivations.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

torstenvl 9y ago

Organizations themselves are fictions. Y Combinator, for example, doesn't actually exist in any sort of real sense. If they suddenly lost all their assets, the fictionalized entity would still exist. Nothing that actually exists in the physical world, nothing you can prove the existence of scientifically, is coextensive with the entity known as Y Combinator Management, LLC. It exists only to the extent it is written that it exists, and that people believe it.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
> Nothing that actually exists in the physical world, nothing you can prove the existence of scientifically, is coextensive with the entity known as Y Combinator Management, LLC. You might be surprised, but brains and court records and all of that are actually physical and perfectly accessible to scientific investigation.
- simonbarker87 9y ago
  Only if we all agree that those documents actually mean something in our collective imagination. This is a primary difference between us and animals, we can collectively agree that the paper in a file or the bits in a computer mean that something exists. Even physical cash only works if we all collectively agree that a £5 note ($5 bill) is an ok thing to trade for an item that is priced at £5. If I could persuade enough people that incorporation documents are invalid and that we all collectively agreed the corporations would cease to exist. This is of course an absurd notion and not practically achievable but there was a time before corporations existed and there could be a time after which they existed if we want. This is the same for any human conceived idea.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
    > This is a primary difference between us and animals, we can collectively agree that the paper in a file or the bits in a computer mean that something exists. I think that is a very confusing way to look at things. It's not that we collectively agree that the document means that something exists, but rather this is the category of things for which existence is by definition caused by the existence of those documents. A corporation is not some ethereal thing that exists, and we agree that we are justified in believing it exists because there is a document, but rather the document is effectively the corporation. The thing we as a society agree about is merely linguistic in nature: We agree on the definition of the terms, i.e., we have a common language.

hectorlorenzo 9y ago

Ironically, you are preaching to the choir, and not adding much to the conversation. No wonder atheists are the new vegans.

mpermar 9y ago

Isn't reality a fiction either?

TeMPOraL 9y ago

> Arguing over direction to preserve attendance may be pointless if you've built an organization around a fairy tale. Doesn't matter. What other commenters here try to point out as well, a lot - if not most - organizations are built around one fiction or another. Some examples: - Fanclubs, fandoms, convent attendees - those are literally communities built around fairy tales. - Programming language communities - built around ever-changing artifacts of human imagination, they too have to deal with possible change of direction impacting attendance. - Political parties - organized around some people's understanding of some ideas, + shitton of meaningless slogans that everyone interprets how they like. Exist mostly to self-perpetuate, as evidenced whenever any established party has anything meaningful to say or do; suddenly the official program takes second place towards what helps electability. - Companies - the ultimate bubbles of meaninglessness, they in principle - and often in practice - exist as an ever charging group of people bound together by will to make money on ever changing product for ever changing market, lead by ever changing board. I'd add nationalities, as there's plenty of crazy fiction going on in there, but they're at least usually bound geographically, so there's that. -- The point being, many if not most organizations are built around some fairy tale or other, and what an organization is built around rarely matters to anything. What matters is how strong the community is, and that's pretty much purely social factor, without any actual dependence on objective reality.

brian-armstrong 9y ago
The difference being that religions lack the comfortable layer of detached irony that a modern fandom has. Star Trek fandoms don't insist that Star Trek is the genesis of human life and the only source of truth.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Yeah. But I feel that's just because that belief is not the part of their fandom. When I look at people from $largeMainstreamReligion, I see people who will defend it as "the genesis of human life and the only source of truth" as a fact of the community you're supposed to accept. But then looking at their lives, they pay at best a lip service to the actual contents of that "source of truth", and instead only participate in the accepted traditions. Basically, I feel that religions, fandoms, school associations ("I'm a Harvard Alumni"), etc. all work pretty much in the very same way.

erikb 9y ago

The catholic church has 1.3 billion members (see wikipedia) and 1.7 billion USD cash flow [1], owning some of the most valuable property in the world (e.g. [2]). How fiction is that? While not being catholic myself, I think the difference between believing that there is a Jesus up in the sky watching you masturbate and the believe that Google will conquer the whole world by AI is not that different. Both influences people to spend money respectively which in turn makes the corresponding organization that much more powerful. Not believing in it oneself shouldn't stop one from accepting it's real world influence as important. [1] https://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2012/08/catholic-church-america https://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2012/08/catholic-ch... [2] https://www.walksofitaly.com/blog/vatican/catholic-church-real-estate https://www.walksofitaly.com/blog/vatican/catholic-church-re...