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Agree that this is nothing new. Manipulation of people through misinformation has been the rule for a long time. What do you think religion is? Manipulation of
by ako 6y ago
Agree that this is nothing new. Manipulation of people through misinformation has been the rule for a long time. What do you think religion is? Manipulation of people through misinformation to coerce people into behavior which benefits society.
- thisismyswamp 6y ago*Benefits a very small part of society, you mean
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- TeMPOraL 6y agoBoth. Organized religion has always been an instrument of control and fostered inequality, but it also glued societies together and provided an incentive structure that promoted selfless behavior.
- camhart 6y agoYes, horrible things have, at times, been done in the name of religion. But to claim that religion, generally speaking, is all about manipulation through misinformation is wrong.
- ako 6y agoI'm not even stating horrible things were done. Religion is just a management tool to align people's actions in a way that benefits the society they live in, and help it succeed in competition with other societies. A lot of the effects of religion have been mostly positive, but in its core it's based on misinformation.
- camhart 6y agoI take issue with the generalization that all religions are based on misinformation.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- qq4 6y agoWhat true accounts would you suggest religions are based upon?
- dimitrios1 6y agoWell in modern times today, eye witness testimony still carries much weight, and still being used to determine truth in a court of law. So therefore, the eye witness testimony of hundreds of commoners, including the inner circle of disciples and apostles who saw Jesus Christ in flesh and blood and attest to his miracles in person, plus the third party accounts by roman and jewish independent observers and historians alike.
- finndark 6y agoI have never heard of any true historical proof of the existence of Jesus whatsoever. No eyewitness accounts, no Roman accounts, no Jewish accounts, etc. And to top it off, his story ends with him rising from the dead!8-))
- cat199 6y ago> No eyewitness accounts, no Roman accounts, no Jewish accounts, etc. debate the authenticity all you want, but what exactly do you think the new testament is?
- wolfgang42 6y agoIt’s hard to be sure of anything that happened so long ago, but there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence, and scholars almost universally agree that there was at least a person by that name doing things in the area at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_for_the_historicity_of_Jesus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_for_the_historicity_of... are two good places to start.
- catawbasam 6y agoReligion is a powerful force, so it can be used to manage people. But it is far more than that.
- ImprovedSilence 6y agoI think it may be a natural human condition to be a part of a religion. But these days, politics has become the religion, instead of in the past, the religion became the politics....
- cat199 6y agoi sometimes wonder if karl marx were alive today if he would say that mass media is the opium of the masses..
- rayiner 6y agoI’m not sure I totally buy it but stunning parallels: https://us-central1-spirit-fish-function.cloudfunctions.net/sections/news/articles/revenge-of-the-yankees https://us-central1-spirit-fish-function.cloudfunctions.net/...
- stordoff 6y agoI'm unsure why this site is asking for access to my Google account. I suspect this is the same article: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/revenge-of-the-yankees https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/revenge-of-...
- chongli 6y agoReligion is not a tool. It was not designed by anyone. It's an emergent phenomenon, a product of culture. Sure, some people (especially historically) have treated it like a tool, but that is not religion's fault (religion can't be at fault because it lacks agency). Those people would have seized upon whatever cultural phenomenon that was available to their own political purposes.
- arcticbull 6y ago> Religion is not a tool. It was not designed by anyone. It's an emergent phenomenon, a product of culture. It absolutely was designed. Thoughtfully and explicitly. You might find it interesting to learn about how the new testament was assembled. Many books did not make it into the final version of the new testament, left on the cutting room floor of history. The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew for instance has a teenage Jesus fighting dragons. Check out the New Testament Apocrypha. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament_apocrypha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament_apocrypha
- dooglius 6y agoFrom the linked page, it looks like this occurred hundreds of years after Christianity started, and after it was already quite well-established, so it doesn't seem accurate to say that the Christian religion was designed, even if the new testament was.
- arcticbull 6y agoWithout venturing further back, which we can, consider that for most people the New Testament is the religion. The Old Testament is a collection of neo-pagan stories, fables and rules for fair play in olden times.
- throwawaytolk 6y agoThis is such an uninformed view; I am surprised to see it advanced on this forum. Any scholar of the NT knows that the apochrypha date very late and the cannon is the legitimately oldest extant texts. There is no evidence that earlier texts were excluded. You do know (you probably don't) that the majority of the Pauline epistles are considered to be authentic, by secular atheist scholars, and date to to the middle of the first century right? Outside of the pauline works, Hebrews is dated to no later than about 45 AD by secular, non believing scholars. You're advacing a rather tired late 19th century view that just doesn't wash in the light of modern scholarship but was the darling of many 1800s and early 1900s lutherans.
- Igelau 6y ago> to claim that religion, generally speaking, is all about manipulation through misinformation is wrong This claim only holds water because -- in theory -- there is no precise definition of what "religion" is. In practice, it's a set of rules and rituals to follow (literal manipulation) on penalty of an unprovable/unfalsifiable entity or system punishing you (misinformation). So, okay, "generally speaking" it's not about that. Now show me that the majority of religions don't boil down to manipulation and misinformation.
- elliekelly 6y agoFacebook and twitter allow the manipulation and coercion to happen faster and more efficiently. We weren’t ready for that massive shift in media.
- ehsankia 6y agoIt's honestly not too different than the pandemic we are living through. But instead of a biological virus, it's more of a thought virus. There's a lot of discussion in this thread about whether information should be more or less open, but if anything I think this past few years has shown how ideas such as antivaxx, antimask and election fraud can spread extremely effectively online and infiltrate millions of minds. Reminds me a bit of CGPGrey's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
- cercatrova 6y agoDawkins coined meme to mean just such a cultural piece of information that disseminates. Just as a gene wants to get to as many people as possible (ie natural, sexual selection) so too do ideas. In this case, the internet has vastly sped it up such that ideas can travel instantaneously.
- kazinator 6y agoUnfortunately, bad ideas also, like that meme should refer to a low-effort combination of some stock picture and some caption conveying puerile humor or a subcultural circle jerk.
- ehsankia 6y agoIt's not only that that ideas travel, but also how they evolve and adapt like a virus to be in the most potent and engaging version, not too dissimilar from natural selection. It also is true that they are much easier to spread than to cure (debunk).
- bra-ket 6y agoI still think mainstream news have a larger role in this, social media are followers. People share news stories as if they are true, with context often omitted, manipulated or outright fabricated. But people still trust their news. CNN, NYT, Washington Post, HuffPost, Vox, Fox News turned into extremely biased sources of disinformation and blatant propaganda. E.g. a fabricated story in The Atlantic magazine, citing anonymous sources, was repeated and amplified by all these major media hubs and then further by social media for weeks. It's like a giant wave after wave of misinformation and rumors presented as facts. The burden of evidence apparently no longer applies. The bias is mostly on the left wing of political spectrum, but the right wing are not too far behind.
- ameen 6y agoYou’re still able to employ critical thinking. I’d say the lack of critical thinking has led us here.
- throwawaytolk 6y agoWhat do you think politics is? What do you think morality is? What a tired old marxist line this is; And one never applied to say, the political theory of marx himself
- briantakita 6y agoIf you break down religion to be an organized belief system or doctrine, religion can exist without being called a religion. Religion is no more misinformation than a particular Philosophy is misinformation; a perspective on reality. Even the meta-philosophical act (philosophy of philosophy) of having an ontology of philosophy or any form of abstraction/reification, is an organized form of how one views the world.
- unixhero 6y agoThis IS new in our modern times. Ever since The Second World War this has never occured. The US yo me now seems to have become close to the comedy movie Idiocracy. You know in the 80s and 90s everyone looked up to the US so much. It was where everyone dreamt of going. I dont know anyone who clings on to that idea now.
- memorybadger 6y agoTruth is required to act freely. Freedom requires knowledge, and in order to act freely in the world, you need to know what the world is and know what you’re doing. You only know what you’re doing if you have access to the truth. So freedom requires truth, and so to smash freedom you must smash truth. Part of what fascist politics does is get people to disassociate from reality, there is no truth, there is only opinions. You get them to sign on to this fantasy version of reality, and from then on their anchor isn’t the world around them — it’s the leader and his opinion. Part of interview on Fascism with Jason Stanley Professor of Philosophy at Yale University.