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The spread of information has allowed people to form their own moralistic code and spiritual journey that doesn't rely on having an institutional infrastructure
by datavirtue 6y ago
The spread of information has allowed people to form their own moralistic code and spiritual journey that doesn't rely on having an institutional infrastructure. They are choosing religions that reject elite priesthoods, a trend now going back for thousands of years starting with Zarathustra. I consider this progress.
- arbitrage 6y ago> They are choosing religions that reject elite priesthoods Do you have an example of such in the modern age? I don't really see many people I know "choosing religions that reject elite priesthoods"
- flyingfences 6y agoQuakerism would fit the bill, though I don't know how many people are choosing it these days.
- xattt 6y agoThis is hard to define as there is ambiguity between religion and spirituality. Even a subscription to pure scientific worldview is a religion in itself.
- bryanlarsen 6y agoQAnon?
- PeterisP 6y agoQAnon seems to have many parallels with "prophetic" religions where you don't have a priesthood class organizing specific groups of followers e.g. parishes, but you have a priesthood class interpreting the words of a prophet and popularizing these interpretations; in this case "priesthood" isn't a formal distinction, but de facto you tend to have specific minority of people fulfilling this role.
- danbruc 6y agoThey are choosing religions that reject elite priesthoods [...] They choose no religion.
- thefounder 6y agoReligion is a way of life. You surely have one, it's just not very ritualistic.
- danbruc 6y agoHaving a religion may be a way of life but not every way of life is a religion. At least as long as we are not stretching the definition of religion into meaninglessness.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y agoI've grown tiresome of this trend to redefine words with well-known and universally understood meanings to basically "whatever I want it to mean".
- SketchySeaBeast 6y agoA, not the. I don't think you can argue with any sort of coherency that rejecting religion is a religion, unless you reduce the concept of religion down to a belief, in which case some people's religion is "bigfoot".
- hobofan 6y agoI can understand that viewpoint (e.g. avid sports fans are a prime example), but it always seems to be a talking point of religious institutions themselves, with the goal of people thinking "oh, I'm bound to have some form of religion anyway, so I'll just stay with my current one".
- fennecfoxen 6y agoThey choose politics. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/03/27/religious-fervour-is-migrating-into-politics https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/03/27/religious...
- 987yghj 6y agoThey have chosen new religions and a new elite priesthood, they just have different names.
- cycrutchfield 6y agoSo deep
- 987yghj 6y agoMuch sarcasm.
- rdtwo 6y agoWokeism is the new thing in elite west coast culture. It’s just not officially classified as a religion because it’s less organized
- gruez 6y agoscott alexander sort of covered that. https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/30/new-atheism-the-godlessness-that-failed/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/30/new-atheism-the-godles...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- joeberon 6y agoAgreed, it's been replaced by pure materialism/physicalism
- lapetitejort 6y agoThere's probably an appreciable percentage (I have no source for this) of people who leave organized religion because of the gaudiness of megachurches and grand gilded cathedrals. Materialism is not unique to the modern era or secularism.
- lazysheepherd 6y ago
- bad_good_guy 6y agoWhy do you assume these people are choosing religion at all?
- analog31 6y agoI think there's a rhetoric out there, that "everybody needs a religion," and that identifies any vehemently held ideology or close-knit social group as a religion. It's tautological. This is exacerbated by the difficulty of forming a general definition of "religion" that isn't riddled with exceptions. Defining "religion" broadly enough to include all religions makes it end up including everything else too. But "your group is a religion too" seems like a combination of confirmation bias and tu quoque fallacy.
- beaconstudios 6y agoreplace "religion" with "philosophy" and it reads better - after all, religion is just philosophy.
- analog31 6y agoIndeed, but "your group is a philosophy too" doesn't have the same rhetorical impact.
- beaconstudios 6y agobecause people don't care about philosophy, but they care about religion - either being for or against their or others' religions. Mainly because many religious people don't think of it as philosophy, and atheists think of it as worthless.