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There is an excellent SMBC comic on politics: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-08-21 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-08-21. Transcribing the headin
by stared 7y ago
There is an excellent SMBC comic on politics: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-08-21 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-08-21. Transcribing the headings (not the complete dialogs):
"
1. If you have a self-consistent view, you're going to have problems.
2. In a self-consistent framework, you have infinite regression problems.
3. If you want your group to hold together, you need an ideology that doesn't make any sense.
4. Once you have a nonsensical platform, the group members can define the group however they want. Goals may change. The organization persists.
"
And well, it is the best description of any mainstream, organized religion. It is not about beliefs, as many may think: it is about group identity and loyalty. (Think about crusades, or violence against LGBT people, vs "turn the other cheek" and "love your neighbor".)
Of course, one needs to pay the lip service to a professed ideology - but then it is about loyalty not necessarily - beliefs.
- war1025 7y agoThat's a really top-notch comic. Thanks for sharing.
- Zarath 7y agoTotally agree. I used to know a hardcore catholic and spend a lot of time around other hardcore catholics and I was amazed at how nearly anything could be back-rationalized and absorbed into the philosophical framework with ease. It's as if the framework itself is designed to neutralize counterarguments. And not because it is based in reality and there is evidence to back everything up, but rather because, as you mentioned, the logical framework is so self-consistent.
- pazimzadeh 7y ago"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." - F. Scott Fitzgerald Agreed. As an atheist, I found that some of the smartest people around are religious.