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> 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

> 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.
- Tainnor 5y ago
  > 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 That's just mumbo-jumbo of the "not even wrong" category. If you want to make the claim that there are things in the universe that we can't ever understand and/or are fundamentally non-computable (in some mathematical sense), I can't fundamentally disagree. Nobody knows whether that's true or not. It's a long stretch from there to any notion of God, though.

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.

Tainnor 5y ago
> 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 That's just mumbo-jumbo of the "not even wrong" category. If you want to make the claim that there are things in the universe that we can't ever understand and/or are fundamentally non-computable (in some mathematical sense), I can't fundamentally disagree. Nobody knows whether that's true or not. It's a long stretch from there to any notion of God, though.