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>I don't know how we got here, it's a bit scary. I think we got here because of telecommunications and the internet. The world is joining up and a nascent coll

>I don't know how we got here, it's a bit scary. I think we got here because of telecommunications and the internet. The world is joining up and a nascent collective mind is emerging. Like the individual mind it has a set of ideas about who it is and what it should be doing, a.k.a. an 'ego'. Many potential thoughts in a normal mind are continually being censored/suppressed because they do not conform to those fixed ideas. Something similar is happening on a larger scale. However just as there is hope for the individual in the form of spiritual awakening there's hope for the world too. The form it would take is unknowable for now. If it resembled a religious revival then I guess it would have to be a new and rather different kind of religion. Where might militant atheists and religious fundamentalists find common ground? Presumably within the new fields of consciousness and AGI research. Though I doubt they'll like it much, at least to begin with...

repolfx 8y ago
I'm not sure it's anything to do with the internet. A lot of this stuff is taking place offline - shouting people down at lectures and things like that. My own theory is it's due to the decline of religion. I say that as a non religious person who has lately started wondering if I'm so right to be that way (I never used to question the righteousness of scientific atheism). Religion can be defined as a moral framework. We have agency and we must act. Religion helps answer the question "how must I act" in a thorough and formalised way: it tells us what right and wrong is, and it does so from a position of pseudo-authority (God says it, so it must be moral). The common thread between all these conservatives-get-censored stories we're seeing is that leadership, whether it be corporate political or academic, is staggeringly weak in the face of moral outrage. Even when that outrage is coming from people who are barely adults, people far more senior and more experienced than them fold immediately - even if they actually disagree. I think this is because without any kind of rigorous moral framework, people don't have any footing on which to push back. Someone pops up and says "that person is the devil because they don't respect women" or whatever, and maybe that's a total pastiche of their position but it's a position anchored in the moral framework of identity politics/femininism. Without any equivalent grounding in an alternative moral framework, the leadership doesn't know how to respond, they are desperate to see themselves as a "good person" and so they're left scrambling to obey the demands of the assembled mob. If they already felt like they were good people, they'd be much more capable of resisting such attacks. Organised religion crops up in every human society throughout history except this one - I believe we're really the first to be widely atheist. But it seems all we've done is replace one set of gods with another: now instead of worshipping invisible deities of peace, love, war, etc, we worship at the deities of minority intersections ... and crusade against heretics who deny the sanctity of that worship.
- trentnix 8y ago
  Everyone worships something. You can worship deity, the State, or yourself. Those working tirelessly to shut down contrary thoughts and opinions and playing semantics games are doing so with a religious fervor and to redefine social norms to their own worldview.
  - max76 8y ago
    > Everyone worships something. I don’t think someone following the tenets of Buddhism would worship anything. Correct if me I’m wrong.
    - jerf 8y ago
      It depends on your definition of "worship". It's not particularly well defined.
      - muraiki 8y ago
        Yeah, for particular sects of Buddhism, such as Pure Land, one can observe practices that are more akin what we would call worship.
        jerf 8y ago
        Heh, yeah, it depends on your definition of "Buddhism", too. It's probably somewhat better defined than "worship" in some sense, but still a broad target. Between the two fuzzy words you can craft significant overlap or make then virtual opposites.
- dangerface 8y ago
  > Religion helps answer the question "how must I act" in a thorough and formalised way Most religions condone murder in the name of their "religion", this is not how people should act. Most religions teach their "morals" with parables that can be interpreted in different ways, not what I would call formalised or thorough. The fact that christianity is so divided while claiming to believe the same thing should be all the proof you need of this, and its not just christianity.
GoblinSlayer 8y ago
>Where might militant atheists and religious fundamentalists find common ground? Postmodern atheism and postmodern theism converge.
pjc50 8y ago
> Where might militant atheists and religious fundamentalists find common ground? It turns out that the answer to this is transphobia, sadly.

repolfx 8y ago

I'm not sure it's anything to do with the internet. A lot of this stuff is taking place offline - shouting people down at lectures and things like that. My own theory is it's due to the decline of religion. I say that as a non religious person who has lately started wondering if I'm so right to be that way (I never used to question the righteousness of scientific atheism). Religion can be defined as a moral framework. We have agency and we must act. Religion helps answer the question "how must I act" in a thorough and formalised way: it tells us what right and wrong is, and it does so from a position of pseudo-authority (God says it, so it must be moral). The common thread between all these conservatives-get-censored stories we're seeing is that leadership, whether it be corporate political or academic, is staggeringly weak in the face of moral outrage. Even when that outrage is coming from people who are barely adults, people far more senior and more experienced than them fold immediately - even if they actually disagree. I think this is because without any kind of rigorous moral framework, people don't have any footing on which to push back. Someone pops up and says "that person is the devil because they don't respect women" or whatever, and maybe that's a total pastiche of their position but it's a position anchored in the moral framework of identity politics/femininism. Without any equivalent grounding in an alternative moral framework, the leadership doesn't know how to respond, they are desperate to see themselves as a "good person" and so they're left scrambling to obey the demands of the assembled mob. If they already felt like they were good people, they'd be much more capable of resisting such attacks. Organised religion crops up in every human society throughout history except this one - I believe we're really the first to be widely atheist. But it seems all we've done is replace one set of gods with another: now instead of worshipping invisible deities of peace, love, war, etc, we worship at the deities of minority intersections ... and crusade against heretics who deny the sanctity of that worship.

trentnix 8y ago
Everyone worships something. You can worship deity, the State, or yourself. Those working tirelessly to shut down contrary thoughts and opinions and playing semantics games are doing so with a religious fervor and to redefine social norms to their own worldview.
- max76 8y ago
  > Everyone worships something. I don’t think someone following the tenets of Buddhism would worship anything. Correct if me I’m wrong.
  - jerf 8y ago
    It depends on your definition of "worship". It's not particularly well defined.
    - muraiki 8y ago
      Yeah, for particular sects of Buddhism, such as Pure Land, one can observe practices that are more akin what we would call worship.
      - jerf 8y ago
        Heh, yeah, it depends on your definition of "Buddhism", too. It's probably somewhat better defined than "worship" in some sense, but still a broad target. Between the two fuzzy words you can craft significant overlap or make then virtual opposites.
dangerface 8y ago
> Religion helps answer the question "how must I act" in a thorough and formalised way Most religions condone murder in the name of their "religion", this is not how people should act. Most religions teach their "morals" with parables that can be interpreted in different ways, not what I would call formalised or thorough. The fact that christianity is so divided while claiming to believe the same thing should be all the proof you need of this, and its not just christianity.

GoblinSlayer 8y ago

>Where might militant atheists and religious fundamentalists find common ground? Postmodern atheism and postmodern theism converge.

pjc50 8y ago

> Where might militant atheists and religious fundamentalists find common ground? It turns out that the answer to this is transphobia, sadly.