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Becoming more religious has helped me identify religious tendencies in the secular world. Ideology doesn’t imply supernatural deities, and some worldly phenomen

• deleted 5y ago
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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.
      • Retric 5y ago
        Dropping the end of that quote completely changes the meaning it’s. "the part of theology concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind" It’s a separate idea from simple questions of the afterlife. Buddhism is really interesting here because there was such a wide range of different beliefs involved some of which fit that idea and others don’t. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_eschatology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_eschatology
        • lolinder 5y ago
          It doesn't completely change the meaning, it drops a subset of the meaning. Eschatology encompasses both types of ends. The OP seemed under the impression it only involved the end of the universe/world.
          • Retric 5y ago
            AND is not OR, but I understand your confusion.
            • lolinder 5y ago
              You're assuming that the author was writing with mathematical precision. Dictionaries rarely are. Here's an alternative definition from Merriam Webster: > a belief concerning death, the end of the world, or the ultimate destiny of humankind
• brailsafe 5y ago
  I think religion does imply the organized belief in a supernatural deity vs in a secular ideology it's unorganized belief in a somewhat connected set of ideas which are debated more discretely between people who want to. Seems silly to say that engaging with a secular ideology is the same as being in a religion.
  • presentation 5y ago
    I think OP’s point is exactly that a lot of secular ideology in practice doesn’t get debated discretely; most people don’t want to and have already ossified their opinions, even/especially if they don’t really understand why they believe what they believe.
  • tonymet 5y ago
    Which person is more committed to a religion: someone who goes to a sermon 1 hr / week, or someone who watches the news for 3 hours / day? The news content will contain the same ideological elements of the sermon: where you come from, what you should believe, what you should do with your life, what is right / wrong.
    • CyberDildonics 5y ago
      News is made up of things that literally happened and often have video proof. Religion is made up of things that did not happen and have no evidence. If something does have evidence of being true, it is called history. You are confusing obsession and focus with religion.
      • cloverich 5y ago
        Many are interpretations of what happened. take the covid - pericarditis link. is it that the fda is investigating reports of slightly elevated rare side effect? or is it that the vaccine may be more harmful to kids than the virus but the government is forcing you to take it anyways. both are actual headlines. One is ideological reinforcement masquerading as news — that’s what op was getting at. Watch enough of that stuff and the real world will become ever more difficult to see.
• __s 5y ago
  I don't see how being an atheist means someone lacks the ability to recognize ideology. Religion may help because it gives practice putting boundaries on ideas which are obviously ridiculous. You can't go around pushing everyone to follow Deuteronomy for very long Overall these pitfalls can be avoided by following some principles: reject taboos, seek more information, avoid metaphor, accept that some things you can't know
  • TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
    Atheism also doesn't guarantee that one does recognise ideology. OP is correct. Religion is a subset of ideology, and not being religious does not in any sense guarantee that one isn't trapped inside an ideological frame. But OP is wrong to suggest religion is a cure for this, or even a workable substitute. Ideological thinking is a template - a kind of psychological design pattern. It may well be innate, and can only be sidestepped by learning a different set of philosophical habits. Collectively, we don't have that. Neither critical thinking nor science do the job. They do other useful jobs, but teaching how to avoid tribal identification among followers and competitive authoritarian individualism among leaders - the real core of all ideologies - isn't something they're designed for.
    • __s 5y ago
      Agreed, I was specifically responding to their last line which casts a blanket assertion
• keithnz 5y ago
  the secular world is simply the things that are not connected with religion, to talk about it as a "thing" that needs anymore definition than that doesn't really make sense. It doesn't make sense for "secular" to define itself anymore than that. There may be groups of secular people who develop the kinds of traits you are interested in, for instance secular humanism. But the "secular world" is just those things that are not connected with religion and secular things don't really anymore traits other than that.
  • rootusrootus 5y ago
    I agree with this. It seems like OP taking the position that everyone is in fact religious, even when they say they are not. This is a position I see many religious people take, and I completely disagree with the premise. I also don't really consider myself an atheist, either. Ignostic is accurate. Maybe that's worse ;-)
    • tonymet 5y ago
      I'm trying to convince secular people, especially atheists, that they are in every way religious. That most of their beliefs are taken on faith. They have a value system of virtue and vice (usually implied), and they have deities ( forces, persona & phenomena that affect their life in a supernatural way).
      • Tainnor 5y ago
        Well, you're wrong. A value system is not a set of beliefs. I think it's important to treat people fairly. But I don't believe that the "universe" or whatever cares about fair treatment of people. What matters to me personally or what I find ethical has nothing to do with any sort of deep truth about the world. I like ice cream, that doesn't mean that I ascribe any metaphysical importance to the taste and texture of ice cream. I also don't have "deities" or anything that affects my life in a supernatural way, and I'm not sure what gave you the idea that secular people (in general) do - maybe you talked to a bunch of esoteric-minded people, or to the kind of environmentalist that turns nature into some sort of mystical deity, but that's not every secularist (nor every environmentalist). Maybe you should try talking to actual atheists instead of strawmanning them.
• whatshisface 5y ago
  >Few people understand that most religions e.g. Judaism and Christianity have an apologetic discipline – a deliberate arm open to debate. Open to talking about it, sure, but the crucial element that separates apologetics from real debate is that one side is forbidden from changing their mind. In religion there is a rule overshadowing the exchange of ideas that says, "no matter how convinced you are, or how weak your own case is, you should stick with it, because it's virtuous to stick with this belief no matter what."
  • _-david-_ 5y ago
    Individuals, including religious people, frequently change their mind. Have you never met a person who used to be religious, and I am not just talking about raised religiously but actually believing, lose their faith? The idea that religious people are religious just because they don't want to change their views is ridiculous.
    • 8note 5y ago
      Apostasy is a death penalty offence for some religions, and the cause of a fair number of wars in other religions. Its certainly frowned upon in general
      • _-david-_ 5y ago
        I am talking about religion in general in the West (since that is what the article is about). People frequently stop being Christian for example.
        • whatshisface 5y ago
          Yes they do it, but that's clearly against the rules of their religion. You can only decide that a religion is not true while not practicing that religion, because curiously they all have the same virtue-associated principle of never reaching that conclusion.
          • 5y ago
• pdonis 5y ago
  > 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. Not all secular beliefs are ideologies. I think there are two key common factors between religious beliefs and ideologies that call themselves "secular": First, people don't acquire the beliefs by considering and weighing evidence; they acquire them by being told them, usually at a young age, by people they trust, and making them part of their identity. That's why people are so resistant to changing such beliefs. Second, the set of beliefs acquired in this way is not just a few isolated ones, but a whole network of beliefs that cover every aspect of life and are all asserted as justification for each other in what amounts to a logical circle. That's why it's so hard to penetrate such a belief system and get people to doubt it, even if it flies in the face of easily obtainable evidence.
  • tonymet 5y ago
    Let’s be honest, most people don’t have the time to weigh the evidence of say 90% of their beliefs. They go to school & watch television, and generally adopt the beliefs of their surroundings. And believing that religious believers accept 100% of religious belief without reasoning about them is a misunderstanding.
    • pdonis 5y ago
      > most people don’t have the time to weigh the evidence of say 90% of their beliefs. Most of the "beliefs" you refer to actually don't have to be beliefs at all. They have no practical consequences; they don't change anything about what the person who claims to have them actually does. Such beliefs don't have to have their evidence weighed because they make no practical difference. When people say they "believe" them, they don't mean they're actually using them to decide their actions; they are just signaling. For most beliefs that do have practical consequences, people do weigh evidence for them. However, this does suggest a clarification to the characteristics I gave for religions and ideologies: that they start from beliefs that are in the "don't have practical consequences, so saying you believe them is just signaling" category, but then use them to justify beliefs that are in the "do have practical consequences, so should be judged by weighing evidence" category.
• smoldesu 5y ago
  > 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. I don't think that's necessarily true though. Religion is synthetic: it's practice, it's discipline and existence is rooted in how easily it can be synthesized in different communities. Man can exist without knowledge of God: that's the very premise that fueled colonialism and, to an extent, feudalism.
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• yibg 5y ago
  I care less about codifying beliefs than about if those beliefs are true or not. I may not have the cognitive tools to recognize all the secular ideologies that I have adopted, but at least there are mechanisms in place to examine if aspects of them hold up to reality or not.
• thegrimmest 5y ago
  I think there's a big difference between belief and dogma. While I agree there is lots of secular dogma, not all secular belief systems are dogmatic. If your belief system is constructed in a fundamentally evidence-based and emotionally-detached manner, then even your core beliefs should be open to challenge and question. I don't think most members of large institutionalized religions are willing to seriously entertain that their core tenets are wildly mistaken, otherwise they are in serious danger of becoming atheists.
• Shorel 5y ago
  > Few people understand that most religions e.g. Judaism and Christianity have an apologetic discipline – a deliberate arm open to debate. That's just a trick religious evangelizers use as bait to unleash their barrel of canned answers. And boy, you really have a lot of ammunition to use. But, and this is an important but: In the end, it is all just rhetoric to justify what you already believe and are unwilling to change.
  • selfhoster11 5y ago
    > That's just a trick religious evangelizers use as bait to unleash their barrel of canned answer How is that different from what the atheist side offers? The fact is, the big questions in life tend to be complicated to figure out, so canned answers are a practical way to not devote your entire lifetime to redeveloping the conclusions from scratch. Ideally, you'd also do some due diligence and try to figure out whether they agree with reality as you understand it. There's a reason why we use caching in computer science. Cached answers should of course be invalidated in cases where they are found to be incorrect, so one should remain open to the possibility of being wrong about their beliefs (though just how open, is a subject of individual opinion).
    • Shorel 5y ago
      > How is that different from what the atheist side offers? That one is easy: we don't pretend we have the answer to everything. In fact, that's the first thing we say. Is the sun going to appear in the sky tomorrow? Probably yes, as far as I know, with 99.99999 certainty, but it is never 100%. Pure theological questions are answered by me with: is that even a useful question? I don't even care if a god exists, because so far they have been unable to interact with the world in any meaningful way. And you people worry so much about your next life, you are forgetting to live this one.
• Animats 5y ago
  We see religious tendencies in the secular world because we really don't know what we're doing running the secular world. Nobody really knows how to organize an economy to work well. All the plausible systems have failed at some point, often in unexpected ways. "Free markets" are just turning loose an optimizer that optimizes for - something. Central planning just pushes the problem back to the planning level. Combining the two for political ends tends to produce strange results because economics has very poor predictive power. This uncertainty tends to drive people to faith-based positions. That doesn't work either, but it satisfies some basic human need.
• manmal 5y ago
  You obviously can find a lot of topics which people don’t have time thinking about, so they copy rituals and belief systems from their parents, other attachment figures, or even the media. The sources of those beliefs are decentralized though, and the individual person can pick beliefs which suit their whereabouts, environment, and sub culture best. Religion however is a centralized source of belief systems, which comes with problems: - One size fits all solution leads to problems like this: Oh your best friend is gay? Too bad, our 2k year old manifest says they are bad people/subhuman/sick. (This makes me SO angry) - Central authorities can and will exploit their power if possible: Witch hunts, crusades etc - Self-actualization is constrained by a fixed set of rules: Tolerable in times where basic needs are often not met and are more urgent, but becomes an issue when 95% live better than a Pharao.
  • snypox 5y ago
    I resonate with your comment very much. I always felt like some religions could be less poisonous if they were willing to change, or at least somewhat follow the actual morality of certain eras. For instance, in 2021 most people already realized that being gay is not evil. Most religious people I know tend to think otherwise.
• hackyhacky 5y ago
  > 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 a poisonous reversal of reality, to the extent that I wonder if you're just trolling. Fact is, more religious people, especially the evangelical Christian sect that is most vocal and influential in America, is not about examining implicit beliefs, nor is it open to debate. It's about falling into line, and adopting a strict set of ideological beliefs that are not negotiable. In fact, religion is often explained in terms of faith as an opposition to analysis: after all, if your first principle is that you believe in something, why question further? In contrast, modern secular culture, although not immune to tribalism and ideological blindness, is much more open to building belief through analysis and understanding, i.e. the scientific method.
  • tonymet 5y ago
    Did not intend to troll. The “cognitive tools” are the ability to discern which beliefs are religious in nature: taken on faith, ritualistic, ethical , etc. Again I’m not saying that religion is better or worse. Actually this is a defense of religion as a framework for defining belief. I’m arguing that secularism when taken on face value lacks the tools to recognize it’s own belief system.
    • samhain 5y ago
      I agree with the parent, you’re argument almost appears disingenuous to the point of looking like a troll or bait. This perspective is substituting any belief with a religious belief which is a false equivalency. It’s unfortunate that the grandparent is the top comment right now.
      • tonymet 5y ago
        Can you share profound beliefs that you don't believe are religious in nature? I know trivial beliefs e.g. today was 85º – we can agree that calling those religious would not be useful.
        • 5y ago
• guerrilla 5y ago
  > 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 it did that, it wouldn't be able to use it a source of social control. What we have is a society of true believers, that's why they can't see it as a religion, it's just reality to them. I really don't think you can be a true believer and call your religion anything but "reality," especially a "religion." Anyway, there have been some attempts at documenting American religion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_religion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_religion > 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. I think there are still a few people who aren't religious and I don't really think your criterion here is the most useful. It just begs the question.
• simondw 5y ago
  > 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 Or maybe you have a different definition of "religious" than I do? But no, it must be that I lack the right cognitive tools. Sheesh.
  • colechristensen 5y ago
    There is a different and better way to put this: most people are completely unaware of the foundation of irrational nonsense that their worldview is based on. (yes, even, or especially so if they base their worldview on rationality) If you are a member of a religion, the things you have “faith” in are right there in front of your awareness. If you don’t have religion, the metaphysics/mythos/philosophy your reality is based on is often never acknowledged. The “super rational” can be the worst at denying this and best at handwaving away anything that doesn’t fit into their sense of reason.
    • p_j_w 5y ago
      >most people are completely unaware of the foundation of irrational nonsense that their worldview is based on Maybe I live in some kind of intellectual bubble, but me and the vast majority of my atheist friends are all too aware of the fact that the rationality ends at some point, so I've gotta disagree with this pretty hard. In fact, I'd be hard pressed to find anyone I know personally who thinks it's rational all the way down.
      • tonymet 5y ago
        can you elaborate on this? This is the kind of philosophical analysis that I think most secular thinkers lack. I know there are rigorous atheists who are capable of understanding their ideology, but they are few
        • Tainnor 5y ago
          So? Most religious people are incapable of understanding their own religion, too.
• deleted 5y ago
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• wolfretcrap 5y ago
  From my person experience, religious people have scammed/hurt me to the most in life and business.
  • meowster 5y ago
    I don't know what happened, but did religion make them do it, or did bad people use religion as an excuse?
    • chakkepolja 5y ago
      Religious people often think they are righteous as long as they follow set rules of their religion. They are not often very smart either. Just to note that preistocracy tends to be corrupt in almost all religions.
  • d0100 5y ago
    Considering the sheer amount of religious people, this would hold true for most people This also makes it a less important
• 8note 5y ago
  A lot of the secular world is just neoliberalism, which is pretty clear about what it is and how you criticise it. Other branches are definitionally critical of various binary systems(all of the LGBTQ things), describing them instead as continuous systems, or even complex planes. I don't think such definitions are very useful. They're very limiting since the world is full of edge cases, and your ideology is unlikely to handle all of them well, but is also likely to require you to handle some of them poorly
• sudosysgen 5y ago
  I understand what you're trying to say and I appreciate it, but religion and ideology are two very different things despite influencing each other.
• Jedd 5y ago
  > Becoming more religious has helped me identify religious tendencies in the secular world. Do you believe that becoming religious made you smarter / more aware, or that it made you more eager to seek reassuring comparisons outside your religion? > The secular world would benefit from adopting more formal definitions of their belief system. Benefit whom? The 'secular world' is perhaps not as centrally organised as you may believe or wish for. (We meet at the Fox & Hound every second Wednesday.) Whether this is inconvenient for members of the secular world, members of various fantasy clubs, or both - is hard to say. Personally I don't feel that a codification of my understanding of the universe (I struggle to think of it as a belief system, as that has connotations of faith and rigidity in the absence of evidence) is necessary. I do undeniably like the idea that my understanding of the universe (roughly) aligns, AFAICT, with that of other intelligent people I know, or whose works I see or read - but I'm not sure that's the same thing. > 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. Do you accept that perhaps intentionally non-religious people may not be as dumb as that assertion demands?
  • tonymet 5y ago
    > Do you believe that becoming religious made you smarter / more aware As in it's equipped me with mental models to understand which components of secular life are acts of faith & ritual vs reason. > 'secular world' is perhaps not as centrally organised as you may believe or wish for Nor is it uniform. But there are some overt and some covert aspects. the covert forces benefit from being nebulous. One reason religions are so open to attack is that they have a clear identity and value system (not necessarily good, but at least clearly stated). If you think about it, you can have a healthier relationship with a religious opponent– as long as you have equal power, you can oppose each other in a healthy way. The secular world is applying all sorts of demands & social pressures on you, and there's no way to oppose them, because secular ideology doesn't have an identity, an institution or value system open to attack. It's like fighting smoke or a swarm of bees.
    • kwinten 5y ago
      > The secular world is applying all sorts of demands & social pressures on you, and there's no way to oppose them, because secular ideology doesn't have an identity, an institution or value system open to attack. It's like fighting smoke or a swarm of bees. That's because there is no such thing as "secular ideology". It's a meaningless phrase.
• colechristensen 5y ago
  I have been thinking a lot about region and ideology and what i’ve come up with is that the tendency to form these strong ideological behaviors is a feature of humanity and organized religion is a sort of evolved (perhaps in a meme more than a gene way) response to this tendency. Essentially groups and ideas survived better when there was an organization and social rules built up around this human tendency. Left unchecked reckless nonsense ideologies spring up too easily, an organized religion gives this human trait an outlet (and often becomes an unchecked wreckless ideology itself, but... less often). Or in another sense, the big organized religions are the winners in a centuries long evolutionary race of ideas. The nonsense ones destroy themselves eventually, the less nonsense ones survive and spread (seriously, judaism is thousands of years old and has a health code, much of which in context is decent advice).
  • 7952 5y ago
    Imagine you could go back to 0AD. And you ask the people why droughts happen, or why people get sick, or why volcanoes explode. Ask them why they are a slave, or a master. There were religious answers to all these questions. God's were just the best explanation going for why things happened. And over the next 2000 years science slowly chipped away at that. And then the origin of species was published. To the point where in 2021 most people will have answers based on science. Even religious people. Science has won the battle of ideas again and again. Religion has retreated into faith and existential fear. And slowly but surely science will shine a light on that fear.
• dqpb 5y ago
  > 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. Religion has one fundamental cognitive device - faith. It’s not a tool, it’s malware.
• brightball 5y ago
  When I finally sat down and read the entire Bible, one thing that jumped out at me again and again is how often it warns against idolatry. When you start to see the level of obsession people have over certain topics, it’s hard to call it anything else.
• opportune 5y ago
  Your recognition of explicit vs. implicit ideology is addressed by Slavoj Zizek in some of his work. He generalizes ideology to be mostly a set of assumed or unstated beliefs and ideas which are so internalized they are not even consciously recognized. Could be good further reading for those further interested in the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek_bibliography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek_bibliog... One of the main points of Zizek regarding ideology, relevant to what you said, is that as religious ideology has waned in importance, other ideologies have taken their place, yet because they do not come from religions we do not recognize them as ideologies, though they are. But ideology has always existed in this form, in the background. It is just without religion taking a forefront in life that the importance of other ideologies has grown. Anyway, I bring it up because I do not think it is possible for us to explicitly address all ideology. Ideology is part of the human condition, not in a metaphysical sense, but because we have only limited abilities to perceive and understand the world - finite lifetimes, limited senses, limited cognitive abilities. We must make assumptions and generalizations, take things for granted, and trust people and ideas so that we can spend our time thinking about other things. Why? Because it's exhausting to explicitly address all ideology. I'll give you some examples: Country, Culture, Government, Justice, Love, Fairness, Ownership, Work. In discourse we take on only limited slices of what these concepts mean, yet we take their existence and high level concepts for granted (though one person's concept of fairness may not match another's). These are heavy, complicated topics in themselves. > 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. Depends on how you define religion. In my opinion what separates religion from philosophy or just ideology, is claims regarding the supernatural and divine. You can absolutely appreciate religions for their wonderful philosophy and theology while rejecting what I would consider very core parts of what makes one a believer in a religion, like belief in supernatural events or divine beings.
  • tonymet 5y ago
    I agree with you , and have been influenced by Zizek. We assume religions are primitive , but it’s likely that they are advanced stages of earlier ideologies. I’m expecting contemporary / secular ideology to evolve into a formal religion with canon , priesthood etc
• amelius 5y ago
  > 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. How would that statement apply to your god? And would they be religious?
• civilized 5y ago
  > Few people understand that most religions e.g. Judaism and Christianity have an apologetic discipline – a deliberate arm open to debate. They have arguments that they make to nonbelievers. That's not the same as being genuinely open to debate.
• shsbdncudx 5y ago
  One of successes of religious text like the bible is how skilfully it leverages our ancient psychological needs. I don’t think it’s purely a semantic argument though, religion is predicated on the supernatural whereas ideology isn’t.
• blackearl 5y ago
  > 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. Hubris is a sin. I'm sure someone with your sharp cognitive tools can recognize that.
  • tonymet 5y ago
    I literally mean a toolkit of mental models, like quantum physics vs classical. Believing one or the other doesn't make anyone better – they both have applications.
• andrepd 5y ago
  Christians, Muslims, etc, cannot even agree among themselves what their "belief system" is! I think you're overestimating how well-defined people's religious beliefs are, especially the average person's.
  • mrone 5y ago
    Muslims agree on who God is and who are his prophets.
    • aloisdg 5y ago
      > and who are his prophets. Well this one may differ if you ask a Sunni or a Shi'ite.
      • erklik 5y ago
        > Well this one may differ if you ask a Sunni or a Shi'ite. Prophets are the same in both denominations. I am not sure why you think otherwise.
    • andrepd 5y ago
      They routinely kill each other over religious differences, so goes to show how much they agree.
• betterunix2 5y ago
  "Few people understand that most religions e.g. Judaism and Christianity have an apologetic discipline – a deliberate arm open to debate." Just want to point out that Jewish apologetics is not the same as Christian apologetics. Christian apologists are working in furtherance of the Christian goal of converting everyone to Christianity. Jewish apologists are working only to prevent other Jews from being swayed by the arguments made by other religions (primarily those from Christian missionaries, who often target Jews specifically). That aside, what makes you think apologetics represents an openness to debate? I cannot speak for Christians, but Jewish apologetics only exists because other groups are trying to lead Jews to conversion to another faith, and apologetics holds little value within the framework of Judaism itself. What non-Jews think of Judaism is irrelevant because proselytizing is not a requirement (it is not forbidden, but it is also not encouraged and conversion is a deliberately difficult process). Judaism certainly has an openness to debate, but the debate is within Judaism itself -- what is the right way to practice the Jewish religion? What is the right way to interpret and understand Jewish holy books? Judaism is not open to debates about the need for Jews to practice Judaism; the covenant between Jews and God is an axiom.
  • rsj_hn 5y ago
    > Jewish apologists are working only to prevent other Jews from being swayed by the arguments made by other religions (primarily those from Christian missionaries, who often target Jews specifically). The Judaism when the Talmud was written was a fanatically proselytizing sect, as is clear if you read the talmud. They created seed outposts all over the Roman empire of new converts, as they sought (and obtained) special dispensation to be the only religion allowed to proselytize in ancient Rome and they had an active missionary service travelling all over the world seeking converts. These missionary efforts were quite successful, spreading judaism to the far reaches of the Roman Empire, creating enclaves of newly converted Jews in the major cities of the Western world. It is these enclaves that were most receptive to Christianity during its initial expansion, and in that period when Christianty was considered another sect of Judaism, the Christians also used the special dispensation given to Jews to gain converts. This created tension, where some of the Jews complained to the Roman authorities that these Christian Jews were not real jews and thus should not be allowed to proselytize under the dispensation alloted to jews. This information also forms the backdrop that helps understand early Christian history. For example, in the first apostolic council recorded in acts, what was meant by saying "Moses is preached in all the synagogues" when referring to new converts in Corinth, Rome, and Ephesus. It is because those new converts were either fully converted jews, themselves converted a few generations previously by Pharisee missionaries, or they were in some other stage of the conversion process, and so they, too, met in Synagogues, even in places like Ephesus, and thus the early Christian missionaries just went from Synagogue to Synagogue all over the Roman Empire, winning over the descendents of converts in communities that were previously won over to judaism. The Pharisee missionary work is also mentioned in the New Testament, when Christ accuses the Pharisees, saying "You travel over land and sea to make one convert and when you do, he is twice the son of hell that you are." This missionary program was so successful that much of the Talmud was written by the children of new converts, in new communities all over the Roman Empire. Rabbi Hillel's famous retort to a man demanding to know the meaning of the Talmud while standing on one leg was in a debate that was attempting to convert his (gentile) questionner to judaism. In fact the background to many of the famous passages in the talmud were attempts at conversion and evangelization. Knowing that is an important part of understanding these passages. These jewish communities also provided sancturary to fleeing Jews after the Romans expelled them from Palestine in the wake of the third revolt - they were taken in by the descendents of new converts created by Pharisees, and these cities became the seed communities of jews in Europe and North Africa. But it is true that modern Judaism does not try to convert others and has become a racial identity as much or moreso than a religious identity, however this was not the case for those rabbis when the mishna was compiled or when the oldest portions of the Gemara were first written.
• Igelau 5y ago
  > 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 had something interesting to say, why'd you have to go and close it out with flamebait?
  • tonymet 5y ago
    Fair enough what's a better wording. I'm trying to convey the mental models that are more natural in the religious world and lacking in the secular world (outside of philosophy )
    • d0100 5y ago
      > it just means that you don’t have the cognitive tools to recognize the secular ideology that you have adopted. Maybe: "it just means that you haven't recognized the secular ideology that you have adopted"?
    • 7952 5y ago
      A better explanation is that those mental models are in fact universal. Things like bias, magical thinking, and dogma exist in all fields of humans life. Science included. But why stop there? Why not question the biological basis for those phenomena? Why not try and understand why we do those things. Light the candle and shine a light on the darkness.
• meroes 5y ago
  Religion is more easily codified because it does not change as quickly as the secular world. I do not think codification is realistic or desirable tbqh.
• flyingchipmann 5y ago
  It's so funny when people intentionally define anything as kind of religion in order to fit their worldview. Take it this way, scientific thinking/method is about a system to analyze. It can be used analyze anything(yourself, math, religion). It's like a function, where you put input data and try your best analyze critically to get an reasonable output. And it can even be used to analyze itself!(like higher order function). And sometimes u produce solid results(maths, physics), sometimes u don't (whether god exists). You start to learn what's scientifically provable, what's not provable. There is a difference between the process of analysis and analyzed results. And that's where so called 'atheism is just a religion' got it wrong. No, it's not about getting a result. Scientific method is a way of processing information. It's about the process, not the result. It's not about believe the god exist or not(the result). It's about find out a way to prove (process). And it's perfectly fine if u can't produce a solid proof(provability). 'I don't know' is perfectly fine. You don't even have to believe, use the scientific method to analyze, do you best to deduce, and move on to the next topic. 'Religion' is just a topic to study. If people can't really grasp how scientific method and critical thinking works, they would never move past 'to believe' or 'not to believe'.
  • BackBlast 5y ago
    You seem to believe that the scientific method and religion are mutually exclusive. I'm going to split out some terms here. Scientific Method, Academic Science, and Secularism. The latter two are connected to atheism, at least in this era, and are more in line with ideologies and I do not desire to further address or describe them in this post except to say that they do not have a monopoly on the merits of the scientific method. To speak of the method itself, which is religion agnostic and, as you say, it is a function to provide information as well as the ability to duplicate results. I would append that applying the scientific method to religion works, and that you can, indeed, learn as well as duplicate results through it - as well as reject results that do not work. A major challenge is that the resultant artifacts aren't readily transferable or inspectable. Many secularists get hung up on this and say it's an invalid application. Essentially that only what the eye can see or the hand can measure is real. I can't really show you my happiness, or peace, or share with you the the depth of experience or knowledge that heals and transforms. I can tell you about it, about how Christ can lead you to peace. I can describe the inputs and results, the complete formula, and then you can walk it and experience the fruits first hand. Another part of the challenge is that lack of transferability also applies to the instrumentation. I can't provide you a properly calibrated conscience, or the concept of true humility before God like I could a measure of mass or distance. It's all internal to you. Experimentation on that is time consuming and difficult. Some people run experiments with improperly calibrated instrumentation and then fail to get the expected results.
• eezing 5y ago
  You’re arguing semantics. For many Americans, religion implies the existence of god. Your definition of religion is too vague for debate.
• Haiatu 5y ago
  "One aspect of religion I appreciate is that these aspects are well codified and debated – i.e. much more explicit." They are not well debated in a sense that it would be called reasonable in a normal and educated world. Thats why we call it believe. Its much easier to say 'whats written in a book from some people from some 2000 years ago is true' and start to philosoph around it than actually not stoping questioning until there is a real truth to it. My discussion with a very religios person stoped after i realizied they are convinced that stuff in that book is relevant and true and moving the debate of it to 'our old people studied it and gave those learnings to future people'. Interesting to read that for you, becoming more religiuos made you aware of other religious tendencies. For me it actually started in school with discovering group dynamic and then after that, questioning religion which lead me to being non religious and i'm very very aware of how other cognitive biases and media and co are forming us. The biggest problem you might not understand in your world of codified: 'the other believe system' is universal and doesn't need to be codified its just that you might need to discover it for yourself or accept the truth yourself. Ah it sounds much more spirital than i wanted it to be. Effectively my family/friends are normal good people. We don't identify us through religion and we don't hurt each other. We basically are all on the same planet, we know who birthed us but we don't know why. Single wall of truth: the big bang. Single simplest rule: Don't harm others / don't do things you don't want others to do to you. And actually, certain states have very well defined law books which answers a ton of questions. Even slightly weirder ones that if someone had an accident with a car, to a degree both parties can be in fault. Its basically us wo build our believe system through living together.
  • 7952 5y ago
    An interesting thing to consider is that most religious people do not really believe with much conviction. They can clearly see that scripture is not literal truth and that there is no scientific evidence. So religion becomes about faith and faith becomes virtuous. But a Roman citizen 2000 years ago didn't have faith. They just knew that God(s) exist. It was obvious, self-evident and compelling. The greatest thinkers of the time really believed. Most Christians talk about faith and belief because that is the only thing left that science hasn't overturned. Our understanding of the world is dominated by science not religion. We won (mostly).
• brodo 5y ago
  Yuval Harari makes a very similar argument in “Sapiens”. I really recommend reading it. It’s an eye opener.
• Jare 5y ago
  That's some serious mental gymnastics you're doing there! Al lot of what you call "religious tendencies" are just cognitive and organizational tools. Religions use and codify (some of) them in their own ways, and other aspects and approaches to human life use and / or codify in their own ways too. Whatever leads you to wish for more structure and codification in your life and the world that surrounds, and you find them in religion, that's fine. Other people find them in military life, others in self-discipline, others in ascetism, others in their professional career, etc. But trying to impregnate your religious beliefs and choices onto everyone else is, I think, just trying to justify and shut down your own doubts. If you don't see this then, if I may put it this way, you may lack certain cognitive tools to recognize it.
  • the-smug-one 5y ago
    To me, it sounds like they really hit you on a sore spot :). What OP talked about regarding ideology reminds me of the stuff that Zizek talks about. I'm no philosopher, but the thought that ideology has subsumed religion doesn't seem too far fetched. We, as a species, do seem to have a tendency to form religions and hold different biases.
    • dudeman13 5y ago
      Eye rolling on a claim that "X is religious" when it can be just a simple "X is a cognitive and organizational tool" seems fair to me. Specially when religious people are so fond of calling something religious when that something has nothing to do with religion
      • furgooswft13 5y ago
        Many secular people are very fond of pinning all the worlds problems on religion, so I think it's fair to use the term back at them when they constantly act in the same exact ways they decry. It clearly hits a nerve too.
• baby 5y ago
  I don’t know. That sounds like a lot of overthinking.
• cconcepts 5y ago
  This is a good summary of what I think Douglas Murray was explaining in this discussion with Sam Harris: https://youtu.be/yTtuCNPebDE https://youtu.be/yTtuCNPebDE Namely; "we may be in the midst of the discovery that the only thing worse than religion is it's absence"
  • tonymet 5y ago
    Shame you got downvoted. Although it's not conclusive that absence of religion is worse than religion itself, there's tons of evidence for it (e.g. communist & fascist atrocities, medical experiments) – I'd wish that secular believers were more self-critical and introspective. My biggest concern of modern culture is the sense of inevitability. That progressiveness by definition is beneficial, without any sort of reflection. May things have regressed, and we should take account of the many benefits and setbacks.
    • cconcepts 5y ago
      Progressiveness for its own sake is weird attitude western culture is buying into. I have posted this quote before on HN but you might find it relevant: "In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it." G.K. Chesterton - The Drift from Domesticity
• DrBazza 5y ago
  > 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. Are you saying science method is a secular ideology then? Nothing else is required to analyse, understand and explain the world around us. Nothing.
• bildung 5y ago
  You are confusing different concepts: ideology and religion. Ideologies are a set of ethical/moral assumptions about what is right and just, i.e. they are about human practice, about what humans ought to do. Religions are ideologies, but they are also a set of beliefs about the world itself, about the physical and metaphysical reality - which are thought as true a priori. This part is almost universally wrong, as we could learn by a competing concept: science. Ideologies can only be falsified insofar as they base their arguments on statements about human nature - these can be questioned empirically.
  • trashtester 5y ago
    That is what I used to believe, too. More recently though, it seems to me that ideologies DO have a pretty strong impact on what people believe about the world itself, especially by people who have a tight coupling between their identiy and the ideology. At the very least, this seems to apply to both sides of the current right/left divide in the west. For instance, if I ask you to predict how climate change will affect the world over the next 300 years, and your response lies in what is predicted by the 5% most optimistic climate scientists, you are very likely to be on the right. On the other hand, if your response corresponds to the 5% most pessimistic, you are very likely to be on the left. As ideological polarization, an increasingly large part of the population will fall into one of theose extreme groups, which I interpret as a way that the ideology promotes beliefs that are not supported by science. It seems to me that the underlying motivation is that people who believe axiomatically that a free market is good, see global warming as a threat to that belief. The leftists may believe the opposite because they see the free market as evil, or just to oppose the right. There are plenty of other cases where ideologies cause beliefs that are not well founded in "real" science, even though there may be plenty of ideologes that promote them. Some beliefs are so sacret that any challenge to them will be punished as evil/heresy, which itself is a clear indication that the ideology does not value open inquiry. I would even go so far as to see some of the principles and ideas involved as somewhat metaphysical. Capitalists can see the "invisible hand" in such a light, while leftists seem to imagine some sort of oppression to determine every social interaction (not very diffrent from how Christians in Europe believing that demons were virtually everywhere). In the end, I think it is about the people following a given ideology. It used to be that atheist were a relatively small minority composed of mostly people with an above-average level of scepticisim to ways of thinking not supported by hard evidence. But as the percentage of non-religious people increase, more and more poeple that have a religious inclination become "atheists", and those (I think) may be much more likely to accept incredible (literally) statements as fact, with little or no evidence.
• dgb23 5y ago
  The same cognitive defense mechanism that prevents me from being religious (which I wanted, tried but couldn’t) also prevents me from adopting ideology.
  • andrewclunn 5y ago
    I very much doubt this. 99 times out of 100 someone who says they are a-political, ascribe to some form of moral relativism, or don't have an ideology, very much are, aren't, and do. They either: 1) Lack the introspection to see it and are unaware of what they take on faith. 2) Are knowingly lying in order to appear more open minded than they are. 3) Are actively undergoing a crisis of faith period in their life where they are looking for a new foundation to replace one that has recently failed them. Put some skin in the game. Own your assumptions.
• amcoastal 5y ago
  While your points are good your last paragraph projects a lot of weaknesses onto your readers. Do you believe you're the first person to come up with these points and realize them? Or perhaps that someone could have taken an opposite approach of yours -- moving from very religious to non-religious and can see the same behaviors? And then you continue to assume the only way forward is to perpetrate that behavior. All while claiming other people don't have the cognitive tools you do. I'm amazed this comment didn't get downvoted.
  • u8mybrownies 5y ago
    I read the last paragraph analytically, as in the Sapir Whorf hypothesis. It can be difficult to identify that one is in a religion if one assumes that it will call itself one. In this case, missing the “cognitive tools” could be a precise way of describing the shortcoming.
  • chii 5y ago
    > while claiming other people don't have the cognitive tools you do. I'm amazed this comment didn't get downvoted. it's the HN psuedo-intellectualism. Most HN readers tend to believe in their above-average intelligence, and that their view point comes from a place of rationalism and superior intellectual capability to analyse the world. I myself, also fall into this category.
    • tonymet 5y ago
      What bonafides are needed to think ?
  • roenxi 5y ago
    Being religious isn't a weakness, it is an inevitability. A human mind is very limited and not up to the challenge of understanding everything - people have to accept most of their knowledge through social proof. Once social proof is involved religious-looking structures evolve rapidly. It isn't a matter of having or not having cognitive tools, it is that the tools necessary to avoid faith and community can't exist. At least without a level of change that shatters what it means to be human.
• tomjen3 5y ago
  >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. That is Marxist false consciousness and should not be brought up in a debate. As for the difference between the two, for me a religious belief is one that is without evidence, a non religious belief is one that has some evidence for it, even if it is still wrong (e.g if you believe in the misama theory and so avoid stinking food you are less likely to catch a food born illness). I do agree without you that it would be better if we adopted some better understanding of the secular beliefs, but that would also cause a lot of infighting because not everybody who hates the current system wants to replace it with the same and they may hate each other more than they hate the current system. As an example: Malcom X and MLK. They didn't want to be under the boot of Jim Crow. They disagreed about what they wanted and how to get there.
• throwaway210222 5y ago
  > 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. There is no mechanism by which the ABSENCE of a belief in your parent's invisible sky wizards becomes just evidence of an alternative belief system. Not believing in the tooth fairy does not make my understanding and endorsement of say, the periodic table, an equivalent, dogmatic, religious, ineherited-from-parents belief. The two are not the same. One is better.
  • ehvatum 5y ago
    The issue is seen when it comes to the question of what intolerance a secular person will not tolerate.
    • simondotau 5y ago
      You are alluding to the Paradox of Tolerance. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
  • everdrive 5y ago
    I think the original statement was just too strong. Generally, people are religious even if they claim to be otherwise. I do however believe that truly non religious exist, but that most people are religious or spiritual in their thinking.
  • xinniethepooh 5y ago
    I'm always amazed when people bring up things like "the tooth fairy", "magical sky wizard", "flying spaghetti monster" as some sort of intellectual taunt to show the ridiculousness of somebody's belief. It's the Dunning-Kröger in action; people like you believe that somehow our universe, reality, the nature of humans, are perfectly definable. What you're not realizing is that the concept of God goes beyond any attempt to rationalize; I don't use rationalize in the context you're thinking, but in the mathematical concept of rationality. Language, how we code information into words, is based upon rational polynomials whose coefficients and values take on the alphabet; binary systems being something you may be familiar with. As soon as you codify 'God' as something rational ('sky wizard?') you imply a limit and impose boundaries on a limitless and indescribable entity. But if you're trying to just mock people for believing something you don't understand, that's fine too, I've always found the most insecure and least intellectual to be the ones that try to show others how "smart" they are.
• Angostura 5y ago
  > 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. That sounds like twaddle. It could just be that the person recognises their secular ideology - and knows that it doesn't constitute a religion.
• mannykannot 5y ago
  > 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. An alternative view, and one that, IMHO, is favored by Occam's razor (to name just one cognitive tool), is that both religious and secular ideologies are consequences of a more general human nature.
• ud_0 5y ago
  > 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. The label "not religious" doesn't mean anything. People use it to refer to atheists, in which case you are alleging that atheists by definition don't have the tools to understand their own position - which is absurd. Others use the term to refer to minimally-practicing members of a faith who basically only show up to places of worship when there is an official event, in which case you argue that these people don't understand the reasons why they avoid their own religion until they become active practitioners. > The secular world would benefit from adopting more formal definitions of their belief system. First of all, a secular world doesn't preclude the population from being religious. Having a secular world that is explicitly separate from religion only means that society itself is not regulated by religion. If by secular world you mean the percentage of the population who is atheist or agnostic, then you're not talking about a specific belief system. You're talking about a diverse group who have chosen to not believe in deities, and that often extends to not believing in the supernatural altogether. The allegation that this absence of belief happens without reflection is simply untrue. On the contrary, being an atheist is still a thorny path to take, even today. It doesn't happen passively. > In the secular world these aspects exist but they are implicit, making them difficult to debate and attack. When you say that these aspects are well codified in religion, what you really mean is that specific religions have behavioral codices that members must adhere to. The consequences of non-adherence depend on the religion and the society. But when you look at different religions, these codices are all quite different. As soon as a population contains more than one religion, what you are touting as a benefit quickly becomes just as impossible as if you were dealing with an atheistic society. What you find difficult to debate and attack is non-uniformity in general. I consider that a plus. You are of course completely correct that a diverse society can appear more nebulous, and in some ways individuals can have a much harder time finding a path in life if they, well, have to actually go and find a path. This is a consequence of the freedom to choose. Systems that don't give you those freedoms are assigning a path to you from on high, or at least they heavily constrain your choices. No doubt some people would prefer that. But the benefit of living in an open society is that you have the option of choosing to be religious, and you are free to choose any religion and any flavor. A secular society doesn't take that away in any form, it just means that your religion doesn't get to make the rules for people living outside of it.
• antiterra 5y ago
  I don’t see it as a fault that we can retarget our believer minds to reinforce a secular worldview. Nature itself can foster a sense of humility and wonder. We can have faith in the fundamental laws of physics. We can recognize that our remote existence suggests we should take care of each other. We can recognize that we cannot fully remove bias or error in our observation and conclusions in the same way someone religious might believe we all are imperfect and sin. Even so I am far less dogmatic in my worldview and conclusions than I ever was a religious person. To imply that my lack of religion is somehow a religion itself just hilariously misses the point.
• kazoomonger 5y ago
  I think the issue you're facing in thinking that these aspects exist but are implicit is that you're looking at the world through religion-colored glasses, which distort the way you're viewing things. I'll admit that in the absence of religion, some people pick up ideological causes and treat them as a religion. However, I'm interested in knowing what "rituals, origin stories, deities, saints, priesthood, blasphemy, vice & virtue" you think I have.
• Tainnor 5y ago
  > The secular world would benefit from adopting more formal definitions of their belief system. It's called (analytic) philosophy.
• TomSwirly 5y ago
  > 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. Such an ego! "I alone know the truth about the universe! The rest of you are lacking in cognitive tools, i.e, stupid."
• mynameisash 5y ago
  > most religions ... have an apologetic discipline – a deliberate arm open to debate. Is it generally seen as an arm open to debate? I have a very religious friend who has gotten into apologetics in the last 6mo or so, and he explicitly describes it as "defending the faith." That seems much less drawing conclusions from evidence and much more drawing evidence from conclusions. Maybe he's an exception to apologetics, though, as I know he has some admittedly extreme views in some ways.
• tonymet 5y ago
  Just wanted to say thanks for everyone who participated it was a really interesting discussion and example of “apologetics” bordering between religious and secular belief. I learned a lot from people. I saw a few comments interpreting the last line as snarky or condescending. I just meant that my experience helped equip me with tools to understand the world better, like learning a new language or programming language does. There are other paths e.g. through philosophy that many seculars pursue as well.
• hallgrim 5y ago
  Is it possible that becoming religious has not equipped you with helpful models, but rather it has led you to project your approach to understanding the world onto others? That last paragraph really screams that. I’ve had and witnessed many discussions between believers and non-believers where the believers just couldn’t fathom the possibility that a secular person could honestly say “I don’t know” instead of blindly believing something
• Siira 5y ago
  > One aspect of religion I appreciate is that these aspects are well codified and debated – i.e. much more explicit. In a liberal bubble in an atheist society? I remember the South Park episodes on the prophet, and I remember my countrymen executed for "insulting" the said prophet. At least the "cancel culture" chills some racism. > 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 can understand the simple fact that all us humans being shitty doesn't imply that some aren't even shittier? When we say someone is "selfish," it means they are more selfish than a majority of people.