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As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen

• neonate 5y ago
  https://archive.is/MzBm5 https://archive.is/MzBm5
• wturner 5y ago
  I wish we had a world where the discernment between science, axiom and ideology was a real thing ironed into the public muscle memory as much as ideology itself. Idealism.
  • rogerkirkness 5y ago
    Teleological thinking centers in our brain atrophy but remain active even if you denounce religion.
    • beaconstudios 5y ago
      Teleological thinking does not have to be supernatural, as long as you replace the idea of a "will" driving things towards a final state, with the idea of attractors and stable versus unstable states. You can't really deny telos and also believe in evolution as a system that fits species to their environments.
      • lisper 5y ago
        Evolution fits species to their environments in exactly the same sense (though not quite by the same mechanism) that gravity fits puddles to theirs.
        • beaconstudios 5y ago
          That's also a teleological approach (looking at the final state of the interaction of rain, terrain and gravity) - I used evolution as an example because its the first thing that came to mind. Evolution is also a good touchpoint because everybody who considers themselves "rational" accepts it, and yet it is taught, and reasoned about, teleologically - compared to most pop-science topics which are analytical in nature.
          • lisper 5y ago
            I don't think most people would think of puddles as having telos. Telos goes beyond what is and looks at purpose and meaning in terms of what ought to be. Puddles don't really have a purpose in that sense, and neither does evolution. Puddles fill voids, not because that's their purpose, but simply because that's what happens when you have water, gravity, and the right kind of void. Likewise for evolution. I know some people like to ascribe telos to evolution, but they're simply wrong, at least as adjudicated by the evidence.
            • beaconstudios 5y ago
              My understanding is that telos is about the final configuration of something, the outcome of it, as well as its goals in the human sense, and that these two ideas are covered by the concepts of intrinsic and extrinsic telos. Extrinsic telos, as in human purposive use, isn't what I was talking about - I meant intrinsic telos, the settled state that a system will reach if left to its own devices. If you leave rain to its own devices, it will form puddles through gravity and the depressions in the environment. If you don't change the environment (practically impossible given species are part of the environment themselves, but hey-ho), evolution will (loosely) match the species to said environment, or kill them off, if allowed to run to infinite time. Those examples both spell out the idea of intrinsic telos to me.
              • lisper 5y ago
                I refer you to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telos "Telos [refers] to the full potential or inherent purpose or objective of a person or thing,[2] similar to the notion of an 'end goal' or 'raison d'être'. Telos is the root of the modern term teleology, the study of purposiveness or of objects with a view to their aims, purposes, or intentions." Puddles don't have aims, purposes, or intentions.
                • beaconstudios 5y ago
                  From the teleological viewpoint, the purpose of rain is to become a puddle - or soak into the soil, or rejoin the oceans, etc etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology > (from τέλος, telos, 'end', 'aim', or 'goal,' and λόγος, logos, 'explanation' or 'reason')[1] or finality[2][3] is a reason or explanation for something as a function of its end, purpose, or goal, as opposed to as a function of, say, its cause. > Natural teleology, common in classical philosophy, though controversial today,[5] contends that natural entities also have intrinsic purposes, irrespective of human use or opinion. For instance, Aristotle claimed that an acorn's intrinsic telos is to become a fully grown oak tree. That's the angle I'm coming from. Especially this part, given my introduction to teleology was through learning about systems theory: > An example of the reintroduction of teleology into modern language is the notion of an attractor.
      • bobthechef 5y ago
        Right, telos is not purely a matter of will, which is a special case. Telos is about the ordering of a thing toward an end. You can't explain efficiently causality without recourse to telos. The fact that the same causes consistently lead to the same effects is a testament to the telos of the things involved. Unfortunately, most opponents of telos don't really understand what it really means. They seem to hold to a mechanistic/Paleyian view of the world and assume the telos can therefore only be something in some mind external to the universe that directs things according to its purposes but that things themselves lack any intrinsic teleological character. But this is not correct.
        • beaconstudios 5y ago
          It seems to be the materialist/reductionist perspective, which is based on 19th century science (despite being totally outmoded since the early 20th century and the discovery of emergent properties in physics and biology alike). I sincerely think that it's the thing holding us back the most in the 21st century.
    • drak0n1c 5y ago
      Teleological thinking persists regardless of whether you're secular. The "ideological intensity" in the article is partly a result of teleological drive judging every facet of modern life, even the trivial. On the left it is how X contributes to equity vs oppression, and on the right it is how X contributes to orderliness vs dysfunction.
    • eli_gottlieb 5y ago
      There is no specific center in the brain for teleological thinking.
  • wyager 5y ago
    The “science” most people believe (more accurately called scientism) is an aspect of the state secular religion.
    • andrewmcwatters 5y ago
      '"Believe" in the science.'
    • remarkEon 5y ago
      It’s interesting seeing this point, which has been around the internet for at least a decade now, start to get printed in what are otherwise mainstream publications these days. I don’t know that I buy it, but I certainly understand and see the merit of the argument.
      • zxzax 5y ago
        I don't really buy it, it seems to suggest that scientific discoveries are not questioned and changed constantly, when they absolutely are. It's not accurate to always refer to them as "beliefs."
        • remarkEon 5y ago
          I mean, I agree with you, it's not accurate to refer to "science" as "[a set of] beliefs" but that's sort of besides the point. The point others are making is that "believe the science" is not the mantra of a society that actually "does science" but one that "Practices The Science^(tm)".
        • varjag 5y ago
          I think it expresses doubt in ability of a layperson to make a rational judgement on merits of a particular scientific research or process rather than on science itself.
          • zxzax 5y ago
            I don't understand what this is supposed to mean. There is nothing in the context of "science itself" besides that particular scientific research or process. That's what it's defined as. Did you mean something like: a layperson might be inclined to place higher value on scientific research performed by a personal friend or colleague? That's probably true in some cases, but it's not "scientism."
• tomohawk 5y ago
  As predicted by Nietzsche. For a great modern explainer, check out Beyond Reason, by Jordan Peterson. Rule VI, abandon ideology covers this.
  • deadite 5y ago
    Not at all ironic that you're being downvoted in this thread.
  • andrewmcwatters 5y ago
    I don't know why you were downvoted for this. It's something he explicitly described. You see it in the form of "corporate values." Corporations don't have values, people have values, and the subcontext of corporate values is that leadership at those companies make their own values.[1][2] When you hear about a corporation espousing "values," they're practicing corporate Nietzscheism. Most of the time, they're not doing it because they knowingly follow Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy, but rather that they parrot the philosophy from other corporate examples... as predicted by Nietzsche. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transvaluation_of_values https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transvaluation_of_values [2]: https://philosophynow.org/issues/29/Nietzsche_and_Values https://philosophynow.org/issues/29/Nietzsche_and_Values
    • opportune 5y ago
      What's interesting about stated/explicit corporate values is they are almost always based on what you'd call "slave morality", like being good, traditionally moral participants. That's because those values are for underlings and PR for the general public, though set by the top. But of course, they are actually run under the master morality of doing what is expedient to achieve the goal (usually money). > Most of the time, they're not doing it because they knowingly follow Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy, but rather that they parrot the philosophy from other corporate examples... as predicted by Nietzsche. It could also be that in the modern world, most powerful institutions don't associate themselves with religion directly (like pre-modern power structures, kingdoms and empires, etc) so they have no default values to fall back on. Large corporations transcend nations and cultures, so cannot even fall back on those specific cultural values. Thus they must make their own, not necessarily to mimick others, but because having a large organization with no publicly stated values is simply confusing to us hairless apes.
• Mediterraneo10 5y ago
  The article says that people need not just political engagement but contemplation, standing outside the present moment and communing with something beyond. But is that a view that Americans now necessarily share? One concept that maybe has become quietly mainstream is materialism. (By that, however, I am not claiming that supporters of whatever American political camp are literally Marxists.) That is, any kind of moment away from present-day political struggles might be viewed as capitulation or as callously ignoring the plight of the oppressed. As a non-American, I get the impression that this is a growing trend from it appearing even on e.g. internet literature forums in the last few years: poets writing abstract work at a distance from the political concerns of the present and seeking a certain timelessness and glimpse of eternity (think T.S. Eliot in “Burnt Norton”) sometimes get called, by the Americans present, socially irresponsible and doing nothing for POC.
  • TazeTSchnitzel 5y ago
    Surely Marxism is an abstraction from present-day political struggles? Capitalism didn't appear yesterday.
• vmception 5y ago
  I think this correlation is related to causation. I think there are registers in people's minds that are simply occupied. Addicts occupy their predisposition to addiction with a single or ever changing way of neglecting their responsibilities and relationships and health, based on simple earliest exposure. Susceptible people occupy their predisposition to susceptibility with religion or fervent ideology, the "choice" being simply the earliest exposure. Whichever one shows up first occupies that part of their mind. No different than a simpler organism impressing who its mother and caretaker is.
  • vitiral 5y ago
    Reducing the actions of people to objects or "simpler organisms" is rarely a helpful concept. Often people are much more complicated than our reductions of them.
    • vmception 5y ago
      I should wrote "analogous" instead of "no different", as analogies compare dissimilar things with common attributes, and could provide the same introspective capabilities without the easy ego based rebuttals There aren't enough differences for me to entertain the idea of backtracking though
  • Growling_owl 5y ago
    > I think there are registers in people's minds that are simply occupied. I think this is the case, anecdotally I noticed that if you are a sports fan, then the "us versus them" rhetoric works much less, or at least less than you'd expect in such people. At least for domestic politics, that's because you already get your dose of "us versus them" from some other domain in your life. Same for religion which is the main topic covered in the article: People who are religious are less likely to fall prey of cults. Religious people are less likely to elevate "false prophets" such as actors, musicians, rockstars and also the new phenomenon represented by technoutopian cult leaders such as Elon Musk or Elizabeth Holmes.
  • dclowd9901 5y ago
    What a condescending and misanthropic view of people. So we're just paramecia with "registers" waiting for occupation. As with anything, I think the real answer is much more nuanced. 1) This article is making the case that this behavior is universal, when there is no evidence of that. As always has been, there are subsects of any ideology that are ravenous in their dogma. They are always the loudest and get the most attention, because their actions are so extreme. It's selection bias by the media, who (wouldn't you know it) are the same folks making the assertion that political religiosity has supplanted deified religiosity. 2) If there's something resembling a "trend" happening around peoples' emotional investment in politics, it's likely around the fact that politics is increasingly prodding itself into peoples' lives. At the very least, if I travel abroad, and we have a president like Trump, I look like a fucking idiot. That sucks. At the worst, I'm a woman or minority whose livelihood is negatively affected constantly by political footballing. This has nothing to do with an absence of god, but everything to do with a real, quantifiable affect on peoples' lives. How can you expect people, secular or not, to put up with the state of social and political conversation as it exists today? If they're staunch conservatives, how can they put up with a clear wind blowing in the direction of socialism? If they're democrats, how can they put up with a clearly obstructionist and crooked counter party? Reducing all of that to computer parlance and the most basic biologies undermines the real problems that people are dealing with.
• FridayoLeary 5y ago
  >Immigrants to America tend to become American; emigrants to other countries from America tend to stay American. Is that true, or just the authors' speculation? Although it is easily explained. Everyone wants to be American because the USA, of all the countries in the world offers the greatest opportunities to the greatest number of people. They are the top of the food chain, in less nationalistic terms. (i'm not American btw but i can see the truth).
  • bwb 5y ago
    That isn't true if you mean in terms of achieving the classic American dream… Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and others are moving more people out of lower/middle class to middle/upper class as a percentage. I do not know in terms of raw numbers but via % we are behind.
    • version_five 5y ago
      The "classic american dream" I believe involves being able to move up through hard work. At least in Canada, if we are moving people up class-wise it's by the government subsidizing them more than it is by rewarding hard work. So I believe the GPs point still stands.
      • bwb 5y ago
        That is not true based on the data. Everyone in the world tries to move up through hard work, connections, and whatever advantages they are able to press. "Recent studies suggest that there is less economic mobility in the United States than has long been presumed. The last thirty years has seen a considerable drop-off in median household income growth compared to earlier generations. And, by some measurements, we are actually a less mobile society than many other nations, including Canada, France, Germany and most Scandinavian countries. This challenges the notion of America as the land of opportunity" https://www.pewtrusts.org/-/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/reports/economic_mobility/empamericandreamreportpdf.pdf https://www.pewtrusts.org/-/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/wwwpe...
    • Mediterraneo10 5y ago
• vitiral 5y ago
  I feel that many issues are not only a confusion of values, but a confusion of what values even _are_. There is some cookie cutter bullshit about what is "good" or "bad" and this is used to paint a broad and incoherent picture which breaks down the structures it is painted on. Like confusing ageism with public policy of how to handle disease. Or being idealistic to avoide concern over secondary consequences. You can be called a lot of names by trying to point out secondary consequences which harm certain woke policy choices. When did someone decide there were clear answers to challenging issues and cut off further debate?
• deleted 5y ago
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• ukj 5y ago
  Well…yeah! Religion serves a function. Even if that function is psychological. When you take religion away, something else will fill the utility-gap. Silly humans failing to grasp the purpose of stories/narratives. Edit for the downvoters (who clearly don’t understand): the question “Why do science and philosophy matter?” has only religious/ideological answers.
  • Spooky23 5y ago
    Religion is about culture, belief and community. The fading of the mainstream religions is making room for the more fundamentalist, marketing driven religious practices that are often about money and politics.
    • ukj 5y ago
      We are social animals. A religion is what scientists call a “paradigm”. The socially acceptable ideas/paradigms of today are the religions of next century. Hegel was right.
      • joe_the_user 5y ago
        There are parts of Europe that have far more community and where people are far more social but far less religious than the US. Religion is just a long surviving irrational belief system. It may serve a more social purpose or a less social purpose. Oppositely, the purpose of unifying a community can be served by a number of things, religion isn't necessary for that. As other mention, extreme religiosity is rising in the US even as average religion is declining but that's naturally ideological.
        • ukj 5y ago
          I have no idea what you conceptualise as a “religion”; or how you measure “religiosity”. I have a very broad definition - to me any belief system (collection of concepts used for understanding the world) is a religion. Rationalism is one religion. Irrationalism is another religion. Any preference you have for one or the other is just your opinion. The bias that you can’t justify. The long-surviving is statistically unlikely to be irrational. It survived the test of time - Entropy. What is far more likely is that you don’t (yet) understand what religion is.
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• briefcomment 5y ago
  People feel the urge to label some one, group, or idea, as bad. I get around this by accepting that I am bad. It helps me see the best in everyone else, and makes me hold myself to really high standards. It is sometimes unpleasant though. It's probably some sort of natural calibration process.
  • rogerkirkness 5y ago
    I've come to terms with this by denouncing morals and focusing on ethics.
    • briefcomment 5y ago
      I agree about morals. They're always relative, and can sometimes be fluid. Holding someone to a set of morals is usually pretty shortsighted. What do you mean by ethics here? The one thing I try to hold myself to is to maximize individual choice, even if I don't currently agree with some of the choices.
    • fighterpilot 5y ago
      I don't go so far as denouncing morals, I'm glad they exist, but I'm very skeptical of them. Morality works well for its evolved purpose, which is to bind together small tribes and push someone into action in response to visual and audio cues that someone is suffering. Beyond that, it's highly flawed. It doesn't get switched on for out-groups. Arguably it contributes to tribal conflict. It can be co-opted so easily by nefarious charismatic leaders, motivating morally outraged people towards atrocity. It can be co-opted easily by a victim-playing psychopath in an interpersonal setting for personal gain. It's used as a mask for policies and ideologies that are really a byproduct of jealousy, envy, self-interest, among other motivations. It's not rational, we become less altruistic as the scale of the problem grows, and we respond more to emotional stimuli than actual information about what's going on.
    • skissane 5y ago
      The problem with talking about "morals"-vs-"ethics" is that it isn't very clear what is the actual difference between them. One point of view–to which I subscribe–is that the terms are synonyms. One comes from Latin, the other comes from Greek. English does that sometimes. Others insist they differ in meaning. But there doesn't seem to be any consensus on what the actual difference is. I've heard many proposals, and the only thing I've found they have in common is that they disagree with each other. Some people say "morals" is about principles and "ethics" is about their application. Others say "morals" are religious and "ethics" are secular. Yet others say "morals" are personal and "ethics" are professional and/or political. I'll just stick with using the two words as interchangeable synonyms myself.
• freshhawk 5y ago
  Uh ... is it news to people that american nationalism is a very religious belief system? It isn't to outsiders, I definitely heard this comparison made when I was in school ... which was the 90's. This also feels more like americans adjusting to having explicit ideological beliefs in the first place, since the decades-long political monoculture is breaking up. There is an interesting religious feel to party affiliation in the US, but nothing particularly exceptional compared to other places. Maybe that's an outsider missing some nuance though.
  • remarkEon 5y ago
    >Uh ... is it news to people that american nationalism is a very religious belief system? I think the "news" here, such as there actually is any, is that modern secular progressivism has adopted (transplanted?) many religious notions from e.g. Catholicism, and the comparison bothers people because the left prides itself on being anti-religious. American Nationalism has pretty much always been tied to Christianity given the history of the country, so yeah it's not surprising at all to point that out.
    • sidlls 5y ago
      In America, religion has always had an outsized influence in everything, including leftist movements. It's no surprise that its influence has extended to other movements in ways both subtle and (perhaps) surprising.
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  • godelski 5y ago
    It isn't. Politics being the new religion and growing amounts of atheism and agnosticism has commonly been the scapegoat. But it is easy to disprove. The South is extremely religious and just as radical (if not more) than the areas of the country that aren't as religious. If it was the lack of religion we'd see the political fervor be less homogeneously distributed (and similarly if religion caused this division). Neither is this news to people nor is it a good claim. But it is a believable claim so that's why we're talking about it.
• Causality1 5y ago
  This is mirrored in the precipitously dropping support for freedom of speech in the US, especially among youth. As ideology becomes more intense heresy becomes less acceptable, and it seems if people can't quell heretical speech with threats of fire and brimstone they'll do it with legislation and police.
  • jakelazaroff 5y ago
    Freedom of speech isn’t a “non-ideological” ideal, and there’s not one single definition. For example, most liberals (in the classical sense) support free speech but are not absolutists; a libertarian might see that as repressive, while a progressive might see it as dangerous.
    • textgel 5y ago
      No it basically is. Nor does it have multiple definitions. The only people who claim it does are those trying to smuggle censorship in while calling it "freedom of speech".
      • jakelazaroff 5y ago
        So you think sexual harassment at work, child porn, libel and death threats should be legal? You think platforms should take no action against spam, doxxing or revenge porn? Those are all examples of censorship.
        • Causality1 5y ago
          Not that I disagree with you, but you're improperly combining the censorship actions of private individuals and of governments. Freedom of speech has never limited what actions private platform holders can take against users.
          • jakelazaroff 5y ago
            I agree with that, but rarely do I see the nominally “free speech” crowd on HN make that distinction.
• oblak 5y ago
  isn't ideological intensity an euphemism for religious faith? or is that the joke
  • bencollier49 5y ago
    religio = piety ideo = images / ideas I think religious devotion is a subset of ideological intensity.
• eruci 5y ago
  That's good news! Ideology is more malleable than religion.
• papito 5y ago
  Religion is going away and political affiliation resembles more of a cult. You know, very healthy.
  • bobthechef 5y ago
    Religion isn't going away. Ideology is religion. Very bad religion, but it is religion (or a "cult" to use your language, though that term is overloaded). And no one is without religion. Everyone worships something. The question is: are you worshiping the right thing? In terms of the "traditional" churches in the US, yes, mainline Protestantism is dying because it is a spent force (it has more or less fully acquiesced to the culture, become a consumer and servant of that culture, which means it no longer has any purpose). Muslims who move her tend to become moderates and likely shed Islam entirely eventually. You do see some growth among Evangelicals, but in any case, globally (Africa, Asia), you do see Catholicism and Islam growing. The West is in this sense a decadent freak.
    • keithnz 5y ago
      what definition of religion are you using? this is the dictionaries... religion /rɪˈlɪdʒ(ə)n/ noun the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.
      • beaconstudios 5y ago
        under that definition, Buddhism isn't a religion - so it's clearly not a very good definition.
  • joe_the_user 5y ago
    The total number of people identifying as religious in the US is declining. The number of people identifying as evangelical/"born again" is rising. Of course, it's about the same thing as the religious and non-religious cult-dynamics are somewhat similar. Of course, it's a product of any "local community" fading away - the moderating influence of random people living near one is fading.
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• someotherblah 5y ago
  America does have a god. It's called "the product". Just because it's falling short of the vaccum religion used to fill doesn't mean we won't pivot to something else. Enjoy the ride folks.
  • kortilla 5y ago
    For a good chunk of the of the country the god is actually anti-capitalist ideals now,
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• alkonaut 5y ago
  I want to point out that this is incorrect: > It’s rare to hear someone accused of being un-Swedish or un-British—but un-American is a common slur, slung by both left and right against the other. Being called un-American is like being called “un-Christian” or “un-Islamic,” a charge akin to heresy. In fact to be unswedish is not just a common idiom it’s a positive one. It’s when you don’t show the typical negative Swedishness. You aren’t “accused” of it, you are congratulated. “-I went to say hello to all the neighbors in my building. -What a nice and unswedish thing to do!”
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  • 627467 5y ago
    In my anecdotal experience, calling out "un-Nationality" seems way more common in the New World than the Old World and I wonder if this is still remnants of nation-building side effects.
  • dstroot 5y ago
    As an American I find being accused of being unAmerican is usually something I find humorous: 1) If you don't blow stuff up on 4th of of July you are unAmerican! 2) If you can't eat Hotdogs like Joey Chestnut you are unAmerican! 3) If you don't own gun you are...
  • hilbertseries 5y ago
    Seems that British nationalism runs pretty deep too, no? How else would you explain brexit?
    • skissane 5y ago
      Many would argue that Brexit was more about English nationalism than British nationalism. What makes the UK very complex is the coexistence of two layers of national identity – British layered over English, Scottish, Welsh, (Northern) Irish. Which layer a person identifies with is very often determined by their politics, and sometimes also by religious/cultural background. (British vs Irish identity in Northern Ireland tends to correspond with Protestant vs Catholic religious background, albeit there are exceptions to that generalisation.) At the same time, given England is 85% of the population, the boundary between "British nationalism" and "English nationalism" is often quite vague. Its boundaries with Scottish nationalism, Welsh nationalism, Irish nationalism, tend to be more clearly cut.
• yoshamano 5y ago
  The Christian Science Monitor also ran a similar article last month that I feel is worth a read. https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2021/0512/Is-politics-the-new-religion https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2021/0512/Is-politics... Rather than try to drive any particular point this is more of a discussion piece about this moment in time.
• pmoriarty 5y ago
  We may be on the cusp of a great religious revival, due to the increased acceptance and eventual mainstreaming of psychedelics. People often interpret their psychedelic experiences in religious terms, and psychedelic use has often created new religions and helped to engender an authentic reconnection to existing religions. Mainstream religions rarely offer much more than platitudes or a place to socialize for the majority of their adherents, of whom many are part of the religion simply because their parents were, or because the church is the social center of their town. They don't have an authentic connection to the teachings, many don't even read their sacred scriptures, rely on priests to tell them what to believe, and usually neither they nor their priests ever had a mystical experience. Then psychedelics come in to the picture, and suddenly they may have a renewed sense of the sacred, religious texts and spaces come alive, and they may even come face to face with what they experience as the genuine heart of their tradition, including meeting, talking to or even being god. This is not an uncommon occurrence, even for atheists and agnostics. I don't think the mainstream culture has fully appreciated either how enormously powerful such experiences can be, nor their repercussions. Historically, mainstream religions have been very against drug use, but it'll be interesting to see what happens when their churches, mosques, and synagogues start filling up with people who were drawn there through mystical experiences they had on psychedelics.
  • andrewmcwatters 5y ago
    Walk into a mainstream religious setting. None of them are there because they got high. If that were the case, the 70s would have looked a lot different.
    • pmoriarty 5y ago
      This is false. A lot of people found religion in the 60's and 70's due to psychedelics, and have continued to do so ever since. As an example, many people were first drawn to Eastern religions through psychedelic experiences. Also, arguments have been made that even the mainstream religions were originally founded (and in their early years sustained) due to psychedelic use. For an example see Allegro's "The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross". That's not to mention many smaller religions such as the Native American Church, Santo Daime, Uniao Do Vegetal, etc. Something else to consider is that drug use has been so stigmatized (not to mention illegal) for so long that many users have been afraid to come forward and admit their psychedelic use. That's been changing due to the Psychedelic Renaissance and its positive reception in the press, but there are likely to be many more people who haven't come out of the closet yet (not to mention users who died before this more permissive era started). So the number of people who were drawn to religion through psychedelic use is probably much larger than we know.
• dilawar 5y ago
  Really? How about growth and decline of Marxism vis-à-vis religion?
• rubyn00bie 5y ago
  Uhhh... this article is really out of touch with the world and I'm pretty sure they totally didn't understand at a minimum half of what they're talking about. I'd really like to point out something that's just a fact, that was told to me, while I was abroad, by non-US citizens: The USA is the only country where you can move to and say you're from. I can't ever move to France and call myself French. I can't move to Germany and be German, no more than I can ever move to Japan and call myself Japanese. One can however, move to the United States, and call themselves American. There is something binding to America, much greater than religion, and it's the idea of freedom. Not even real freedom, just the god damn idea of it. > As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen ROFLCOPTR. Next you're going to try and sell me a tool to predict stock prices based on the weather (and I did read more after laughing my ass off at the sub heading). To assume that religion is what held together America is itself fucking stupid. I could accept greed, war mongering, or pretty much anything except the bullshit veil of religion. This was obviously written by someone who has no lens without religion and so applies it everywhere they can. It'd be more accurate to title this article "let's blame the problems of the world on the decline of religion, because I'm to stupid and willfully ignorant to accept the complex dynamics of modern society."
  • gspr 5y ago
    Huh? Maybe France is a bit special, but I'd wager you could move to Germany, the Netherlands or Scandinavia and call yourself [insert local identity] just as quickly as you could in the US. At least in the cities (but then again, try being a Syrian refugee in rural Alabama). Sure, it doesn't happen on day one, but it doesn't in the US either.
  • andrewmcwatters 5y ago
    The United States has the world's largest Christian population, and its founding was directly influenced by religion; the Church of England and the Puritans.[1][2][3][4] To suggest otherwise is to completely ignore not only history, but the present. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_Colony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_Colony [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_of_New_England#Establishment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_of_New_England#Establ... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_of_Massachusetts_Bay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_of_Massachusetts_Bay [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_of_Massachusetts_Bay#Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_of_Massachusetts_Bay#...
• antattack 5y ago
  "Join me in our crusade to reap the rewards of our global victory' Said President Bush in 2005. Once politics and faith intermingle the result is higher intensity.
  • Lammy 5y ago
    > Once politics and faith intermingle the result is higher intensity. America has been into that since the very beginning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apotheosis_of_Washington https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apotheosis_of_Washington
• tonymet 5y ago
  Becoming more religious has helped me identify religious tendencies in the secular world. Ideology doesn’t imply supernatural deities, and some worldly phenomenon can be elevated to a supernatural level. Secular belief contains rituals, origin stories, deities, saints, priesthood, blasphemy, vice & virtue just as religion does. One aspect of religion I appreciate is that these aspects are well codified and debated – i.e. much more explicit. In the secular world these aspects exist but they are implicit, making them difficult to debate and attack. Few people understand that most religions e.g. Judaism and Christianity have an apologetic discipline – a deliberate arm open to debate. The secular world would benefit from adopting more formal definitions of their belief system. I think that would reduce the conflict and neurosis that comes from engaging a nebulous system. If you believe you are not religious, it just means that you don’t have the cognitive tools to recognize the secular ideology that you have adopted.
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  • nvahalik 5y ago
    What’s even more interesting is that most ideologies also adhere to a standard religious framework as well: - anthropology - problem of evil/sin - redemption - eschatology If your system he answers to these, you basically have a religion.
    • Retric 5y ago
      That’s a very western take on religion. Some have no belief in an end time with a static or cyclical world. Sin/evil isn’t really a thing in many religions. Polytheistic religions for example can have multiple contradictory ideas for what the correct actions are.
      • lolinder 5y ago
        Eschatology doesn't just have to do with the end times. It is "concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul". Hinduism and Buddhism clearly address this. Confucianism and Shinto may be exceptions, and of course there are plenty others that I'm not familiar with, but eschatology is far from being only a preoccupation of Western religions.
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• chrisgd 5y ago
  Religious faith has declined. Social media has increased.
• oblib 5y ago
  Wow... that was not what I expected. The author shares a very interesting and insightful perspective that is well worth taking in.
• throwaway34241 5y ago
  The themes here remind me of another politics-is-the-new-religion article by David French, "America Is in the Grips of a Fundamentalist Revival". [1] In it he draws a distinction between religion and fundamentalist religion (which the author has a background with), with a key quality of the latter being a lack of a sort of humility, a certainty that they're right. Which in turn leads them to be less tolerant of opposing viewpoints - because (in their view) they can see right and wrong so clearly, it pulls them to the position that "error has no rights". That being said, I think it is easy to pay too much attention to the extremes. An analysis of the US's political problems is out of scope of a HN comment, but one thing I did recently was read books by two prolific authors on the US left and right [2] (who each have historically been aligned with one of our two political parties). They both contained opposing narratives covering the last 100 years or so, but what was very interesting was how they both overlapped around certain key historical/political events. I think reading these books was quite helpful for my understanding of US politics in a way that isn't really covered by the news cycle (in the future, I'd like to spend more time reading these sorts of books and less time on news). [1] https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/america-is-in-the-grips-of-a-fundamentalist https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/america-is-in-the-grip... [2] Paul Krugman's "The Conscience of a Liberal" and Charles Murray's "By the People"
  • keiferski 5y ago
    Phyllis Tickle wrote a book on this about a decade ago. Her argument is that every ~500 years there is a major shakeup in the Christian world, and we’re in the midst of one right now. https://www.amazon.com/Great-Emergence-How-Christianity-Changing/dp/080107102X https://www.amazon.com/Great-Emergence-How-Christianity-Chan... This post explains it well: https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/are-we-in-a-500-year-religious-revolution https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/are-we-in-a-500-year-reli...
    • fighterpilot 5y ago
      What's the proposed mechanism behind the 500-year periodicity? Without a plausible mechanism it's hard to take seriously.
• version_five 5y ago
  I'm not religious, not an atheist either. When I was a kid we went to church. I'm curious what (if anything) other parents substitute for organized religion with their kids. Or do you choose to participate anyway even if not devout? To be clear, I'm a big fan of questioning everything, but I definitely see benefits to being part of something like organized religion and wonder how I will fill that void with my son.
  • sudosteph 5y ago
    What gap did you feel that church filled in your own childhood? I went to church as a kid too, but the only positive thing I remember about it has a secular alternatives (youth choir). Otherwise I just remember: Wearing uncomfortable clothes and trying to sit still while bored out of mind for an hour, trying to intentionally make us late so we wouldn't have to go, my dad getting angry at me for intentionally making us late, spending forever sitting in traffic and finding a parking spot.
  • betwixthewires 5y ago
    Let them be religious. If their mother is religious and wants them in a church let it happen. My only rule is when they ask me what I believe I will not lie to them. But they can be religious if they want.
  • baby 5y ago
    Honestly I don’t know. My parents were not religious and so I’m not baptized and never went to church. It’s like when people ask me: didn’t you miss not having a brother or a sister? Well how can I miss it if I never had it? Instead they had friends and we did camping trips, and dinners, and bbqs, and we went to the movies, and to the acquarium, and stuff…
• hilbertseries 5y ago
  It’s interesting how you’ve written so much here and not given what concrete example. Makes it very difficult to examine your argument, when you simply state that secular ideology is religious. I think it’s worth noting the definition of secular is: > denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis.
  • tonymet 5y ago
    Money, medicine, “tolerance”, “racism”, politically incorrect language, natural selection, “the self,” public figures (CEOs, scientists, figureheads), celebrities, recycling, wearing masks, the super bowl, the oscars, the multiverse, the big bang, psychotherapy, anti-depressants, over-eating & dieting, conspicuous traveling, visiting nature, architecture. You can throw those into the religious categories e.g. virtue, vice, deities, origin story etc. I should also mention “original sin” – you can guess examples of those – in america that would be “racism”. I’m not taking good / bad position just applying religious lens to secular lifestyle.
    • tonymet 5y ago
      and I forgot two qualities that are both states of being & virtues: love & happiness.
    • IggleSniggle 5y ago
      These things typically fall under the umbrella of “culture,” of which religion is one defining aspect, to greater or lesser extents.
    • pjc50 5y ago
      ... cheese, machine screws, steering wheel covers, arriving on time for appointments, the CIA, and Thursday. Have we left anything out?
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• gameswithgo 5y ago
  >The secular world would benefit from adopting more formal definitions of their belief system. Just as the religious world contains Christians, Jews, Scientologists, Muslims, Hindus, et cetc" with sometimes radically different ideas, the secular world too has a great many different people with different belief systems. >If you believe you are not religious, it just means that you don’t have the cognitive tools to recognize the secular ideology that you have adopted This is just a sort of tautological argument, wherein you adopt that "to be religious" is the same as "to have a belief system". Given that axiom, you are right! I'm a fairly militant atheist but I have no problem accepting that I have a belief system, an imperfect one too. I just don't think there is a god.
  • tonymet 5y ago
    > the secular world has many different people agreed and the world would be more navigable if they adopted distinct names, garb & beliefs the way the other religions did. If you think about it, every thanksgiving debate was really a religious debate among people who didn’t clarify their membership.
    • franklampard 5y ago
      No?
    • kevstermcgee 5y ago
      > agreed and the world would be more navigable if they adopted distinct names, garb & beliefs the way the other religions did. Athiesm is to religion what not collecting stamps is to a hobby. We aren't the ones creating an imagined reality. We're just saying until there's substantive evidence to support the existence of a deity we probably shouldn't assume one exists.
      • throwamon 5y ago
        You imply from your comparison that atheism is [not belonging to a group with a shared belief] and then say "we" [belong to a group with a shared belief], which is clearly self-contradictory. I strongly agree with the first part, but not with the second. There are certainly atheists who wouldn't agree with what "we" (you) are "just saying".
• paulpauper 5y ago
  This is a commonly held view among the punditry. But the author ignores the obvious counterexample: all the division in the 50s, 60s, and 70s such as over desegregation, civil rights, abortion, and the Vietnam war, despite higher rates of religiosity. You cango farther back: the civil war. America has always been deeply divided.
  • godelski 5y ago
    I think the obvious counter example is the fact that there's a lot of political extremism in the bible belt. The extremism seems to be more homogeneously distributed where lack of religion isn't.
• simplify 5y ago
  There are religions, there are ideologies, and there are tribalisms. Tribalism is the underlying cause of most of humanity's bad behavior. And unfortunately, it creeps into religions and ideologies more often than not. In other words, as the article states, rationality is not going to increase as religion decreases. Tribalism is a fundamental human tendency, and few religions / ideologies address it correctly – if at all.
  • krmboya 5y ago
    I know at least in Christianity tribalism is addressed. One instance where Jesus says love your neighbour, then the listeners ask him who should be considered a neighbour. He responds with a story about a Samaritan who goes out of his way to help a Jew robbed and left for dead, as an example of a good neighbour. Jews and Samaritans at the time despised each other.
  • K0nserv 5y ago
    I have a theory that tribalism is simultaneously the most important condition for civilisations and also often their undoing. The great filter[0] argues that it’s unlikely for a civilisation to reach the stage where it can visit other star systems and this is why earth hasn’t been visited by aliens. Tribalism is a fundamental component in starting on the road to a modern civilisation, without it there is not capacity to innovate as all individuals are occupied with gathering food and finding shelter. Only when humans settled down in groups did we have the ability for some individuals to be freed from the toil of daily life to invent things. In any case, if you assume this tribalism is crucial for civilisations to get started, then all alien civilisations would have had the same component. However, while tribalism is crucial in the earliest life of a civilisation I think it’s detrimental later. In particular, it makes tackling global challenges like climate change difficult and in the presence of word ending weapons it makes total destruction likely. We’ve already seen examples of this e.g. inaction on climate change because China won’t do their part and with the mutually assured destruction of nuclear weapons. So in essence I agree with you and because tribalism is an evolutionary trait I expect it will also be our undoing long term. 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter
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• gogopuppygogo 5y ago
  Blaming the trend of declining religious faith in the American people is as easy as blaming replacement migration. How about we talk about declining standard of living, wealth inequality, and rules that apply only to the working class while the political/wealthy classes live their best lives. The existing system is broken.
• sebringj 5y ago
  Is it bad to point out the obvious? The way people process and vet information seems to be fundamentally in opposition and tied to their political party, reinforced by machine learning silos, diametrically opposed tv networks and further fueled by hostile nations tinkering with narratives. Let's not forget, without "he who shall not be named", this wouldn't have been possible.
• sudosteph 5y ago
  > In his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King Jr. wished that “one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.” The very idea that a nation might have a creed—a word associated primarily with religion—illustrates the uniqueness of American identity as well as its predicament. That was a quote from the _Reverend_ Martin Luther King Jr, no less, so it's fair to say he knew the connotations and chose that term deliberately. Honestly, it still bothers me when I notice how often leftists will quote King, while never acknowledging the role that Christianity played in his work. He was an extremely well-trained Baptist Minister, with a doctorate in systematic theology. For whatever reason, I don't really see the modern Social Justice types taking many cues from Baptist Theology these days.
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  • angrais 5y ago
    You've confused me. Are you saying that "leftists" cannot quote king because he was Christian? Why's that matter? Also, quotes can be used for many purposes outside of their origin, e.g., love thy neighbour, etc.
    • sudosteph 5y ago
      No, I'm saying that I know actual leftists (not sure what your quotes are for) who will only post King quotes when the topic is "White liberals are unhelpful" and "anti-capitalism", typically only posting quotes which don't include religious terms. Then, they will unironically claim that his legacy is being erased by the folks who only ever quote him from "I have a dream". To which I say: yes - his legacy is being erased when you intentionally ignore important parts of his character and works. But erasing his Christianity is especially egregious, given how fundamental that aspect is to his entire philosophy and life. His theology is inseparable from his philosophy, and a massive influence for both his anti-capitalism/pro-poor people campaigns and for his racial reconciliation work.
• sidlls 5y ago
  > Few people understand that most religions e.g. Judaism and Christianity have an apologetic discipline – a deliberate arm open to debate. The range of permissible debate is quite narrow in reality, and usually start from an assumption that the core tenets are more or less true. > If you believe you are not religious, it just means that you don’t have the cognitive tools to recognize the secular ideology that you have adopted. You're basically defining all belief as religious belief. You're welcome to it, but it's not particularly useful or constructive. And suggesting those that don't have the belief haven't actually thought about it, or lack the tools to do so, is a bit antagonistic, really.
  • manmal 5y ago
    I had an otherwise enjoyable conversation with a just recently-turned-religious person. As soon as core tenets, as you nicely put it, where up for discussion, conversation came to a screeching halt. People who think the ten amendments must be strictly followed have a lot of cognitive dissonance to resolve, and reasoning is not welcome. The same person asked me into great detail why vaccinations should be a good idea, and expected me to provide all the answers. We both remained at our positions - she‘s now contemplating homeschooling her kid because of mask requirements, and I still don’t believe in a religion that says my gay friends need to become straight.
    • friedman23 5y ago
      You can't think of anything you believe in that if someone came to you to "discuss" you wouldn't react instantly negative and start calling the other person insults?
      • sidlls 5y ago
        Why bother? I don’t hold any belief strongly enough to merit such a reaction, though I might react negatively for other reasons. For example, past experience showing the insincerity of their own debate tactics and a lack of patience for rehashing it all yet again.
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• mrwnmonm 5y ago
  I don't think religion is declining at all.
  • mrwnmonm 5y ago
    I remember one time there were two articles on the front page of HN. One says "If you want to be more productive, be more happy", then you scroll down and you find "If you want to be more productive, be more depressed". Take a look at this article for example https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/aug/27/religion-why-is-faith-growing-and-what-happens-next https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/aug/27/religion-why-is... Determining if religion is declining or rising is more complex than just making a poll.
• Proven 5y ago
  In my experience, while American conservatives have become more moderate over years, socialists have gotten worse and more extreme in every which way.
• dnndev 5y ago
  My observation shows it has less to do with religion and more with the large influence of the media (not just the news) TV, radio, news, internet, personal voice - comments posts such as hacker news. People would have never connected before social media, tv, radio to align in mass. Religion has been more about social that faith for decades. Now people have another option - internet and social media.
• hnct 5y ago
  We are all tribal by nature and need a sense of belonging and gravity. Something to hold on to. As the author suggests, religion was this anchor until recent times.
• osrec 5y ago
  I think most belief systems, religious or otherwise, sort of boil down to: "believe what you need to believe in order to get through life with some sort of meaning". Otherwise things can get a little too bleak in our heads...
• bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  So I figure there should be a possible version of Emo Phillips' best God joke ever https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/sep/29/comedy.religion https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/sep/29/comedy.religio... available for American politics.
• anoncow 5y ago
  This thread has derailed.
• stephc_int13 5y ago
  The good old correlation is not causation clearly applies here. IMHO, religions is at the same time archaic and something deeply rooted in human nature, but like many primitive instincts it can be mastered.
• tasogare 5y ago
  > Secular belief contains rituals, Wearing a mask, new weird handshaking, lockdowns. > origin stories, Not a leak lab, I repeat NOT a leak lab. > deities, saints, Pr Raoult. > priesthood, Doctors, CDC members. > blasphemy, This post. > vice & virtue just as religion does. (Not) taking the vaccine, (not) wearing a mask. It's crazy how fast a new religion can globally emerge nowadays.
  • 8note 5y ago
    Is it still a religious belief if you can conclusive tell that the god exists? Otherwise, example gods and religions include sitting on chairs I'd agree that things like the stock market, cryptocurrency, JavaScript, hating "cancel culture", having rugs on your floors, basic arithmetic, fossil fuels, laughing at jokes, having an Instagram, having teeth, not having teeth, and so on are all religions, but religion stops being a useful definition
• kyle_martin1 5y ago
  Wokeism
• 908087 5y ago
  Most have just replaced or combined prior religion with a combination of QAnon/MAGA, conspiracism, anti-vax nuttery, nationalism, cryptocurrency / MLM schemes / Ponzi schemes / reddit pump and dump operations, various other purported get-rich-quick schemes, etc.
• chiefalchemist 5y ago
  "As _______ has declined, ______ intensity has risen." That is a natural cycle for more than religion. Look at the mainstream media. As the internet has cut into their sweet spot, they've reacted with reporting that's more binay, more sensationalized. Similar can be said of politics. Again, the internet, it enables the people to self organize, etc. And the result to politics? A louder and more extreme mindset professing how important gov is. As "movements" contract those who remain are naturally more devoted. Devotes what to believe they are relevant. Less voices triggers those who remain to be louder.
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• chriselles 5y ago
  If only the article included the shift from religious to environmental extremism.
• pessimizer 5y ago
  As religious faith has declined, computers have also gotten a lot faster, and there are far fewer three-camera sitcoms being shot. Also, the religiously faithful have become a lot more ideologically intense. I guess the Civil War and the Cold War were a relative time of peace compared to now, when pundits get yelled at on twitter. Liberals (social and economic) continue to fall for the moderation fallacy and to cite the law of averages. I guess it's just six of one and half a dozen of the other, it'll all come out in the wash, and the more things change, the more things stay the same.
• andrepd 5y ago
  The ten commandments have things to say about working on Saturdays or fucking people whom you have not married, but don't have a word on the topic of slavery (in fact it is amply condoned in the Bible, incl. by Jesus, together with myriad other atrocities). This is trash morality which you should have zero respect for. It's only understandable if you take it for what it really is: Bronze age Middle-Eastern mythology. > where the rich are told they should be generous to the poor versus telling the poor that they have a right to something possessed by the rich. But of facking course. Indeed, one of the major purposes of organized religion is keeping the masses in check. “Why peasant, perhaps you are starting to question why you toil in back breaking work and neither you nor your family will ever have any rights or anything to your name, while the lord of the manor feasts on the food that you have produced without ever so much as grabbing a plow in his life? Perhaps you even start to think that you're not so much different, you and him, that you are both human? Perhaps, god forbid, you are starting to believe that a more just way to distribute labour and rewards could be yours? That you should struggle and take what should be yours? Can't have that no! Here: - Honour your """natural""" superiors - Obey god (i.e. the priests and clergy) - Do not covet what's not yours That should do it. Obey these commandments or you'll go to hell for eternity!” How convenient.
  • vxNsr 5y ago
    > fucking people whom you have not married, This is false, it says don't covet your neighbors wife. > working on Saturdays This has been shown time and again to boost productivity immensely to say nothing for mental health. You seem to have a bone to pick but don't understand the thing you're arguing against.
    • andrepd 5y ago
      Oh, I understand alright, it's you that are already set on a conclusion and then pretend to be discussing it. > false, it says don't covet your neighbors wife. It says "don't commit adultery" too. Like I say, god almighty creator of heavan and earth and the whole universe has things to say about me and my gf fucking before we're married. I call bullshit :) And the "dont't covet" verse is also great: don't covet your neighbour's property (already this is problematic but okay), which includes: cattle, his donkey, his wife, or his servants. I don't want to worship a set of commandments that puts people on the same footing as oxen. In repeat: disgusting morals which ought to be worth zero to a civilized person.
• failwhaleshark 5y ago
  A lot of people need their tribal cults ego-boosters because they can't stand on their own two feet and need the safety of a herd. Flat Earthers, Trumpism, Bernie-ism, Tim Ferrissism, antivaxx, neoliberalism, neoconservatism, QAnon, radical political terrorism (under various religious banners), raw veganism, juice cleanse, miracle mineral solution, no maskers, forever maskers, and so on.
• seaorg 5y ago
  Religious faith hasn’t declined. It’s just re-branded.
• phekunde 5y ago
  Just curious to know, isn't religion also an ideology? Every ideology at some point turns into religion!
• grouphugs 5y ago
  this doesn't make any sense at all. have you not heard of the inquisitions and crusades? hn is seriously a bunch of pompous clowns with inflated egos, this is gonna get so funny soon, way funnier than its been
• efitz 5y ago
  I grew up in a Protestant home (southern baptist church, 3x/week + youth activities). I have nothing against religion and I like religious people, I just don’t have strong faith anymore; the older I get the more skeptical I get of everything. It always makes me grin how much secular political issue adherents act like religious people. You can just listen to the language (“climate deniers” etc., “the end is near in 12 years”, etc.) to tell that they are in the throes of religious fervor. I truly believe there’s something by wired into our brains to support this mode of belief, and that rationality is the exception in humans. The problem is that religious people (including the secular ones) are not open to rational discussion critical of their beliefs. They may be polite enough to hear you out but they’re just waiting for you to take a breath so they can butt in and correct your apostasy. They already KNOW the one TRUTH and if you don’t agree on all points, you’re a heretic and nonbeliever. You see articles from time to time how “climate deniers” should be shunned and shamed and punished for their heresy[1] (just search for “climate deniers list” or “should climate deniers be punished” or pick your issue). Same thing for lots of other issues like abortion rights[2], or gun control[3]. Christianity has had 2000 years and reformations to knock off the rough, anti-social edges. Religious doctrine has been tempered with social controls and moral codes that largely (though not completely) prevent demonizing your enemies. Far left ideologies have a century of murdering tens of millions of people that didn’t agree with them or in some cases just didn’t cheer loudly enough. When it comes to not murdering me or putting me in re-education camps, I trust devout Christians way more than I trust climate activists or gun control advocates or (insert advocate for secular left position here). [1] https://www.newsweek.com/should-climate-change-deniers-be-prosecuted-378652 https://www.newsweek.com/should-climate-change-deniers-be-pr... [2] https://www.liveaction.org/news/slate-hopes-watching-jessica-jones-will-shame-pro-lifers/ https://www.liveaction.org/news/slate-hopes-watching-jessica... [3] https://thefederalist.com/2021/06/09/la-times-writer-real-estate-listings-should-report-neighbors-who-own-guns/ https://thefederalist.com/2021/06/09/la-times-writer-real-es...
  • kwinten 5y ago
    Insane take. > Christianity has had 2000 years and reformations to knock off the rough, anti-social edges. Religious doctrine has been tempered with social controls and moral codes that largely (though not completely) prevent demonizing your enemies. Funny that you then effortlessly go on to demonize your "enemies": > Far left ideologies have a century of murdering tens of millions of people that didn’t agree with them or in some cases just didn’t cheer loudly enough. Ah yes, because climate activists, reproductive rights activists, and hell, let's throw in feminists as well, are all authoritarian Stalinists, right? > When it comes to not murdering me or putting me in re-education camps, I trust devout Christians way more than I trust climate activists or gun control advocates or (insert advocate for secular left position here). This is incomprehensibly insane. I don't even know how to formulate a response to this.
• nikolay 5y ago
  Yeah, people need to believe in something - faith is part of our human nature, and that's why it's a phenomenon across the globe. As an Eastern Orthodox, I don't need any ideology other than Orthodoxy, which defines my value system and which pretty much gives me an answer for all the good and bad happening; it's unifying, not dividing. That's why I have a hard time associating myself with any secular ideology, as they all conflict with Orthodoxy in one or many ways. I always found it funny that Republicans in the States often present themselves as Christians. Still, they don't act as such - in fact, their values predate Christ and are based on the Old Testament ("An eye for an eye," etc.) and ignore the existence of the New Testament and the teachings of Christ.
  • baby 5y ago
    Interesting. I always found religion divisive. If I don’t believe in God then I can’t really take part in all these cool religious community stuff like church, boy scouts, etc.
    • nikolay 5y ago
      Orthodox people don't try to convert others, although we're genuinely happy when others discover Orthodoxy, and priests never claim that it is the exclusive religion for salvation. Indeed, often they will tell you that when you get baptized, you get only responsibilities, and no privileges, so, it's like a coop of people helping each other thru the guidance of clergy. For example, liturgies start with the priest bowing in front of the Parish and send me "Please, forgive me, a sinner."
      • rsj_hn 5y ago
        Back in grad school I had an orthodox roomate who showed me some of their faith, and I discovered Orthodox churches have beautiful liturgies. Here is a recording of Rachmaninoff's liturgy of St. John Chrysostomus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K94ePzs14Nc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K94ePzs14Nc Also a lot of the orthodox church fathers are pretty amazing and I enjoy reading their writings. Here is Symeon the New Theologian, one of the three Great Hierarchs of the Eastern Church (along with Basil of Caesarea and John Chrysostom), from his Ethical Discourses: "I learned from Scripture and from experience itself that the cross comes at the end for no other reason than that we must endure trials and tribulations and finally voluntary death itself. In times past, when heresies prevailed, many chose death through martyrdom and various tortures. Now, when we through the grace of Christ live in a time of profound and perfect peace, we learn for sure that cross and death consist in nothing else than the complete putting to death of self-will. He who pursues his own will, however slightly, will never be able to observe the law of Christ the Savior." There is both a rich liturgical tradition and a rich literary tradition in Orthodox Christianity.
• sigstoat 5y ago
  now consider this in terms of eschatology, and end-of-the-world cults.
• TeeMassive 5y ago
  It is not the first time that certain ideologies were seen having characteristics often associated with religious faith. There this French intellectual named Raymond Aron who wrote a book called "The Opium of the Intellectuals" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Opium_of_the_Intellectuals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Opium_of_the_Intellectuals). He also used to be a schoolmate of Sarte. He goes in very great details (although this is hard to read even for me as a native French speaker) about how his intellectual contemporaries (most of them Marxists) used to believe in the same kind of myths that are usually associated with religion. The proletariat as a messiah, the Left being the road towards Progress and the inevitable fate of Humanity pass to the next stage, that in all societies History is unavoidably leaning towards the same finality, the State has replaced Providence and is seen as a guide that shepherds the people.
• sethc2 5y ago
  This seems counterintuitive to me if we assume a causal relationship. I’d imagine lessening religious faith would lessen ideological intensity. Then again when it was assumed most people were “religious”, it meant there was some higher thing than ourselves that we shared we could unify on. God however you take him, is at least a symbol of something above us, bigger than individuals, of an immaterial nature. With the annihilation of God in the public discourse, we have to find something else bigger than ourselves that we can unify around on, and the ideological intensity maybe stems from arguing what that higher thing is. Is it science, love, security, pleasure, freedom? Different people will take on an ideology of some sort, and the intensity will because one groups higher thing they think is higher than another’s. God was the trump card for highest before, but now, I’m not sure.
• betwixthewires 5y ago
  I also think that religiosity is a neurological phenomenon and is as much a part of being a human as language, music, money or tool use. Nobody, including myself, can escape it. I see a lot of talk in this thread about making the definition of "religion" meaningless by broadening it too much, but I think the definition that gets narrowed in is "the phenomenon of humans engaging in dogmatic belief." A good example of this is transhumanism, specifically, the idea that you can upload your mind to a computer. It is all but given based on our current scientific understanding that the mind is inseparable from the body, yet somehow particularly atheist people behave as if they are separate things. This is a dogmatic belief. Other closely related behaviors are ideological movements. I believe that religion is largely social in nature and driven more by social pressure and community/family and less by actual rational analysis or any other method of coming to conclusions about the world. I think it shows in the decline of traditional religion and also in the rise of what are often being termed "religions" these days by detractors (correctly in many cases, for example the Gaia worship end of times cult). When that is taken into account, the irrational behavior of swathes of people who hold as a core identity characteristic their perceived strict adherence to rationality makes a lot of sense. I know I have a religion, I don't know what it is exactly, but I'm a human so I have one. But I try to be open to any idea I hold being challenged, I'd like my belief system to be as close to the truth as I can get it, and that means ignoring social proof and being prepared to find out that anything and everything I believe is wrong. Of course, until I find out I'm wrong, I think I'm right.
  • meowface 5y ago
    >A good example of this is transhumanism, specifically, the idea that you can upload your mind to a computer. It is all but given based on our current scientific understanding that the mind is inseparable from the body, yet somehow particularly atheist people behave as if they are separate things. This is a dogmatic belief. It's unknown if such a technology will be possible one day, but I don't find transhumanism or that idea dogmatic. The human mind is of course part of the human body, but there's nothing that prescribes any particular mind must be part of a biological body. This is known as "substrate independence". If substrate independence is true, it would suggest creation of conscious machines and simulation of conscious beings is feasible. There are additional difficulties when it comes to the possibility of actually "uploading" one's mind, but it seems incorrect to say "atheists who trust science believe the mind and body are inseparable, yet here they act like they can be separated". The atheist/physicalist/scientific claim is that the mind emerges from the brain, and that the brain is made of ordinary matter - not that they're "inseparable" in the sense that there can't be such a thing as a mind without a fleshy body. It's orthogonal to "bodiness" or an idea of anything like a soul. If substrate independence is true, then a mind is a thing which must exist on some physical substrate composed of matter. It's fine if you believe substrate independence isn't true, but I don't see any dogma. Perhaps a dogma would be "substrate independence is true" without demonstrating any evidence of it, but I haven't seen that claim. This'll probably only ever be known for sure if some group actually manages to instantiate a seemingly-conscious mind on a non-biological substrate, and if it seems to pass every possible test for consciousness we can devise.
• sethc2 5y ago
  This seems counterintuitive to me if we assume a causal relationship. I’d imagine lessening religious faith would lessen ideological intensity. Then again when it was assumed most people were “religious”, it meant there was some higher thing than ourselves that we shared we could unify on. God however you take him, is at least a symbol of something above us, bigger than individuals, of an immaterial nature. With the annihilation of God in the public discourse, we have to find something else bigger than ourselves that we can unify around on, and the ideological intensity maybe stems from arguing what that higher thing is. Is it science, love, security, pleasure, freedom? Different people will take on an ideology of some sort, and the intensity will because one groups higher thing they think is higher than another’s. God was the trump card for highest before, but now, I’m not sure what is for most people.
• keiferski 5y ago
  If you are interested in this topic, I really cannot recommend reading A Secular Age by the philosopher Charles Taylor enough. It’s a huge book but the basic takeaway is this: the modern secular world is a thing that was created over the course of many centuries and cultural developments. It is not merely the subtraction of so-called primitive beliefs. The “subtraction thesis” is the predominant model of how most people (and until recently, religious scholars) interpreted the secularizarion process. This means that the same basic historical and psychological forces are at play, but they’ve just been morphed and combined in different ways. What is truly new about the modern secular world is its immanence, which basically just means it is not concerned with a “world beyond” this one, and its “cross pressures”, or the state of being aware of other viable alternatives to one’s belief system. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Secular_Age https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Secular_Age
  • tonymet 5y ago
    I'm concerned of both aspects. For one, thinking that secular belief is essential or natural – as if it's defined only by the material world and observations on it. Secular belief also assumes its universal (why wouldn't it be since we all live on the same earth). This leads to totalitarianism (with a small t)
    • tolbish 5y ago
      That's like saying math leads to totalitarianism (with a small t because that sounds more scary) because some people assume its universal and will therefore kill in its name.
      • tonymet 5y ago
        But math isn't comprehensive in belief . It's universally true but only applied narrowly
  • slim 5y ago
    It is not concerned about the world beyond, but is concerned about the future. That's why it has beliefs too
• dragonwriter 5y ago
  It’s interesting that basically no evidence is presented for the focal narrative of the piece, just generalizations and subjective impressions. I think the author is one of the many people who mistook the partisan civility that resulted from, and whose fading remnants lasted a while past, the long period of realignment covering most of the mid-to-late 20th Century in which the two major parties were not well-aligned with the main ideological divides, so that neither could too-openly invoke them without risking internal schism, with an absence of intense ideological division.
• gbronner 5y ago
  The issue isn’t so much that Americans have become less religious, it is that many fewer of them were raised in homes that had at least one religious parent. the experience of practicing a religion, even if you don’t believe it, tends to protect you from the single minded politics as religion thought process
  • Ieghaehia9 5y ago
    That theory would suggest that the less religious a country, the more religious its politics. But plenty of countries in Europe are at least as irreligious as the US[1][2], yet the same effect doesn't seem to hold there. [1] https://www.pewforum.org/2018/05/29/being-christian-in-western-europe/ https://www.pewforum.org/2018/05/29/being-christian-in-weste... [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/12/06/10-facts-about-atheists/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/12/06/10-facts-ab...
• rbrbr 5y ago
  Every time I read about grown up men and women believing in a fairytale it makes me realize how far humanity is away from being a grown up self reflected intelligent species. And I have my doubts it will change anytime soon.
• amriksohata 5y ago
  Kaliyuga
• Ambix 5y ago
  For me it was Harari who first stated that all modern ideologies like communism or liberalism are in fact just religions.
• sammalloy 5y ago
  After thinking about it for a very long time, I've come to believe that "religious faith" is ultimately a form of intellectual laziness, and every religious adherent of every faith that I've cornered after a nice meal and a few drinks has all but admitted as such.
  • dijit 5y ago
    I’m inclined to agree, though that does not preclude them being otherwise smart, kind, open etc. I think also that we as humans have “religions” that are also intellectual cop-outs in other areas. Left vs Right, Capitalism vs <<other>>, Nationalism/Patriotism vs Globalism. I find a lot of people don’t have nuance to their thinking they just blindly believe what ever they’ve settled in on, which leads to those funny “curb your capitalism/communism” YouTube videos, where people can’t defend closely held convictions.
• loopz 5y ago
  Define religion as a societal organization, beliefs as mental convictions without proofs, and faith as determination and grit towards hope and higher goals. Then by the very process of dismantling organized religion, whatever core is left, will not be average: The remaining core will be the more fundamentalist, more extreme and the annoyingly louder part. Its position in society will take time to shift though, all the while new technology platforms make such voices heard louder and wider than before. When people lose beliefs, the addicted will need something else to hold on to. In this case, the quest for riches, fame and money. So for those already rich, it only makes sense to buy up all sources of knowledge and information, such as media, education and civic spaces. Making the snake eat its tail, prevents it from nibbling your own coffers. Beliefs are governed by being infallible, which is the false core itself. Whatever direction people take, will be powered by faith. The hope for something better, wether it be in printing more currency, or less. And it makes sense for all involved not to get people engaged in anything that really matters. So it is not from the outside or from another person true faith will blossom, as faith is ever so much more than mere beliefs.
• m1sta_ 5y ago
  Atheists have faith that there is no supernatural diety.
• Barrin92 5y ago
  I think the real issue is laid out at the end >"If matters of good and evil are not to be resolved by an omniscient God in the future, then Americans will judge and render punishment now. We are a nation of believers. If only Americans could begin believing in politics less fervently, realizing instead that life is elsewhere. But this would come at a cost—because to believe in politics also means believing we can, and probably should, be better" I think the author is part of a group of largely public intellectuals in the US who have subscribed to the theory of "religion is the opium of the people, but that's a good thing". Yes, the loss of religion does away with a glue that in some sense kept a sort of false peace intact. Injustices can no longer be explained away with metaphysical explanations, superficial alliances under the banner of faith cannot be maintained. The people who stand to lose from this are the kind of people who write these op-eds. People who benefit from delaying conflict. The people who stand to benefit from the loss of religion are the people who need some justice in this world, not in the next one.
  • snypox 5y ago
    I don't know if you saw it, but Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson and Douglas Murray had a debate about this topic a few years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aALsFhZKg-Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aALsFhZKg-Q TLDW: we don't know if Peterson is religious or not but he thinks that Christianity must stay. Harris (obviously) is an atheist and thinks religions must go. Now, Douglas is interesting. He's an atheist but thinks that Christianity must stay because much-much worse ideologies would take its place. Peterson and Douglas like to prove their point by pointing to existing ideologies that are already very dangerous. Personally, I don't have any argument to offer. Since seeing this debate, I thought about this topic a lot but I still didn't come to a conclusion.
    • me_me_me 5y ago
      > Christianity must stay because much-much worse ideologies would take its place That is one terrifying statement. And I think I changed my mind about christianity being gone would make for a better world. if qanon is anything but a sample taste of possible future I sure hope christianity stays.
• ifemide06 5y ago
  We need a shared culture or believe system that will continue to shape our understanding of how we relate and treat one another. One of the primary reason we setup FaithCircle - https://thefaithcircle.com https://thefaithcircle.com - to connect Christians locally and globally.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• stjohnswarts 5y ago
  False correlation. People realizing that belief in imaginary beings somewhere out there is false is a good thing. Any correlation at the same time of a rise in people becoming political or ideological zealots has nothing to do with the failure of religion in modern science based societies.
  • plaidfuji 5y ago
    Agreed that weakening religious ideology is good, but disagree that it’s uncorrelated with changing politics. A large part of evangelical political backlash is explicitly rooted in the disappearance of religious symbolism and language from American public life. Exhibit A would be the absurd furor over Starbucks cups not saying “Merry Christmas”. The current intensifying political divide has a lot to do with devout Christians feeling insecure about their diminishing societal influence and the author manages to completely ignore that glaringly obvious fact. The interesting argument IMO is that current secular ideology seems to trend toward “ignore all religious holidays” or “remove all religious symbolism from society” when a perfectly rational and arguably more populist alternative would be to include and celebrate them all.
• j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
  Faith is fine (in god, democracy, veganism, open source or a political party - whatever). Blind faith (= ideology) is a problem.
• ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  The title of the article when I visit is "America without God" and it's subtitle is one of many sweeping statements about humanity that I've seen debated by Americans that seem a bit parochial when considering the global context.
• adaisadais 5y ago
  As religious faith has declined, comment intensity on HN has risen. All joking aside this is a pretty well-known phenomenon that folks like Hegel and Nietzsche have discussed. The Enlightenment has had its tentacles on formalized religion for over 300 years in the Western World. Nietzsche’s mad man who runs about the town telling people that “God is Dead” is not meant to be taken as a positive or light statement. Nietzsche posited that many of the key elements of modern society would cease to have meaning. Why then, if man is not created in the image of God, should man treat fellow man in any which way? What justification does one have for not harming fellow man if his fellow man is but ape? Books I loved with perspectives on this are “Enlightenment Now” by Steven Pinker and “The Rise of the Modern Self” by Carl Trueman. “You gotta serve somebody.” -Bob Dylan
  • AndrewKemendo 5y ago
    You're correct that this isn't really new territory in philosophy - but "lay" people are actually starting to see it play out at scale in society which is making them perk their ears up. I doubt we'll see Beyond Good and Evil become a NYT bestseller unfortunately.
• grasshopperpurp 5y ago
  Any pattern of thoughts that has been grouped into a discipline, whether religious or secular, can - imo - be viewed as a best effort by a group or individual that was then adopted by the group. That doesn't mean they're equal, but I think it's helpful framing. Setting aside fundamentalists, people are using combinations of these disciplines to make sense of life. Epiphanies which are liberating to me may be terrifying or unimportant to you and vice versa. The need to conform can be helpful on a societal level (particularly from a bird's-eye view) and harmful on an individual level. At some point, the individual harm affects enough individuals that there is a noticeable backlash, and we see some form of reorganization of beliefs. Most people aren't built for serious thought. Maybe someone has a better idea than I do how it breaks down on the nature/nature scale, but the average person will always be more concerned with the signaling aspects of a given belief than the belief itself. As a human trying to survive or thrive, you increase your margin for error by squeezing into a group. How you choose the group or if it's chosen for you will again depend on some combination of internal and external factors. Whether we like it or not, we're building this thing together, and it's to our benefit to be curious and compassionate about the beliefs of others. It doesn't mean converting or losing your religion, but if I understand what motivates you, I can propose comprises that work for both parties. Of cours, there will always be assholes who must have everything their way, but don't be cynical. Most people are capable of compromise, just as most people are capable of love and hope.
• ymgch 5y ago
  Can't say what's worse.
• sunstone 5y ago
  All humans have a belief system, it's part of what kept small tribes of humans together for tens of thousands of years. If you don't inherit one then you'll make one up for yourself.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• hi41 5y ago
  I think the political fervency can be explained by other factors such as the loss of jobs that moved from USA to other countries. It has created a large number of unemployed citizens who I think join political rallies to bring back the jobs.