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The difference between religion and other groups is that it provides an impenetrable shield to those who wield it, and virtually anything can be deflected a-la

The difference between religion and other groups is that it provides an impenetrable shield to those who wield it, and virtually anything can be deflected a-la > God's ways are mysterious fashion. Any differing positions appear as attacks against the person's religion, which - when it carries sufficient argumentative power - can shake the foundations of the person's world model. This, in turn, prevents them from accepting the differing position because such events induce fear and shut down mental faculties, effectively putting a person in a fight or flight mode. Furthermore, it prevents people from maturing and accepting integral parts of the human condition, such as the permanence of death, it provides a false sense of security that renders people incapacitated from taking meaningful action (God will find a way if God wills it), and finally gives a false sense importance and grandiose to puny humans who live in utter ignorance of their own insignificance in the medium (NB humanity scale) and grand scheme of things. To reach the solution that you point to, society needs to accept that free-will is an illusion, and that is inherently incompatible with Abrahamic religions.

rayiner 5y ago
> The difference between religion and other groups is that it provides an impenetrable shield to those who wield it, and virtually anything can be deflected Yeah, other groups have this as well. I once had the temerity to observe that Bush did a lot to quell anti-Islamic sentiment by appealing to other people of faith in post-9/11 speeches. I recounted my own experience as a brown guy with a Muslim name living in the south in 2002-2003. An acquaintance, a young white atheist lady, told me that I needed to “educate myself” about the “damage” that “Islamaphobia does to brown people in America.” I didn’t even engage further because it was clear I was dealing with someone’s quasi-religious belief. Everyone has belief systems and everyone’s belief systems necessarily include things taken as axiomatic.
- iammisc 5y ago
  Haha same. Been informed by so many white liberals as to how I should feel, one wonders if they think they'd make a better brown man.
  - forgingahead 5y ago
    Yeah it's been crazy to experience - white liberals lecturing minorities on how they should feel or think is itself extremely racist and insulting.
    - PartiallyTyped 5y ago
      I'd use prejudiced over racist since the same 'allies' are often very homophobic, biphobic and transphobic.
      - iammisc 5y ago
        Nah they're just racist. The thing is a white liberal can become a homosexual should they choose to have sex with someone of the same sex. They can even theoretically become trans. No matter what a white man or woman does or how they feel about attraction or their gender.... He or she will never be brown. Sorry I'm not putting up with this intersectionality shit.
        PartiallyTyped 5y ago
        People don't choose to be gay/lesbians or trans, and there's tonnes of evidence in support of this.
        iammisc 5y ago
        Sure. But if I, a straight man, slept with a man, then I would become a homosexual by definition. Or if I pursued becoming trans. Now it's unlikely I'd do this but theoretically it is part of the set of possible actions.. There is no action a white man or woman can take, not surgery they can pursue, that will make them brown.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
“ society needs to accept that free-will is an illusion “ The funny thing about pushing the ‘free will is an illusion’ argument is that it sounds exactly like a faith argument. How is one going to ever prove that free will does not exist when most of us are running real time experiments during most of our waking hours. For some reason, the universe gained consciousness even though it could have outputted zombies that would never argue whether they are not zombies :)
- mbfg 5y ago
  >> How is one going to ever prove that free will does not exist if i can perfectly predict what you are going to do before you realize what you are going to do, that would be at the least an indicator. Can we do that? not at present. Is there research results that pushes that idea somewhat? Yes. Is it conclusive enough, no way. But i don't think you can rule it out either.
  - klipt 5y ago
    If free will doesn't exist, what's the point in arguing with someone predetermined to believe in free will? They have no free will to change their mind!
    - PartiallyTyped 5y ago
      That assumption lies in ignorance of how our brains work. The gist is that we have some world model that arises out of the structure of the brain and the chemical state of it. Your mind doesn’t change because you have free will. Your mind changes because you have collected a sufficient amount of experiences that alter the state and structure of the brain. You don’t learn stuff because you “decided” I will learn this and that and I will store it in my brain somewhere. All your learning is actually involuntary because as you accumulate experiences, your synapses get positively or negatively reinforced and that causes the learning. You may choose to study something but you don’t choose which exact information gets stored and where. Instead, when trying to recall something your brain probes its world model and tries to find the circuit that triggers the correct response. So why would anyone argue that free will doesn’t exist? Because it gives people the opportunity to prove their world model, see the inconsistencies, experience new trains of thought and rewrite their brain. But no person who is not open to the idea will ever get to accept despite mountains of evidence because for most people, the idea of free will is so integral to their world model, that any challenge feels like a threat to their very foundation, which causes cognitive dissonance, and the shut down of executive functions that process information logically. Our brains have two competing circuits, one that tries to break the mould and challenges everything, and one that tries to be grounded and conservative. Cognitive dissonance occurs when the former is pushing the latter around but the latter has trouble coming to terms with reality and falls in denial.

rayiner 5y ago

> The difference between religion and other groups is that it provides an impenetrable shield to those who wield it, and virtually anything can be deflected Yeah, other groups have this as well. I once had the temerity to observe that Bush did a lot to quell anti-Islamic sentiment by appealing to other people of faith in post-9/11 speeches. I recounted my own experience as a brown guy with a Muslim name living in the south in 2002-2003. An acquaintance, a young white atheist lady, told me that I needed to “educate myself” about the “damage” that “Islamaphobia does to brown people in America.” I didn’t even engage further because it was clear I was dealing with someone’s quasi-religious belief. Everyone has belief systems and everyone’s belief systems necessarily include things taken as axiomatic.

iammisc 5y ago
Haha same. Been informed by so many white liberals as to how I should feel, one wonders if they think they'd make a better brown man.
- forgingahead 5y ago
  Yeah it's been crazy to experience - white liberals lecturing minorities on how they should feel or think is itself extremely racist and insulting.
  - PartiallyTyped 5y ago
    I'd use prejudiced over racist since the same 'allies' are often very homophobic, biphobic and transphobic.
    - iammisc 5y ago
      Nah they're just racist. The thing is a white liberal can become a homosexual should they choose to have sex with someone of the same sex. They can even theoretically become trans. No matter what a white man or woman does or how they feel about attraction or their gender.... He or she will never be brown. Sorry I'm not putting up with this intersectionality shit.
      - PartiallyTyped 5y ago
        People don't choose to be gay/lesbians or trans, and there's tonnes of evidence in support of this.
        iammisc 5y ago
        Sure. But if I, a straight man, slept with a man, then I would become a homosexual by definition. Or if I pursued becoming trans. Now it's unlikely I'd do this but theoretically it is part of the set of possible actions.. There is no action a white man or woman can take, not surgery they can pursue, that will make them brown.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

“ society needs to accept that free-will is an illusion “ The funny thing about pushing the ‘free will is an illusion’ argument is that it sounds exactly like a faith argument. How is one going to ever prove that free will does not exist when most of us are running real time experiments during most of our waking hours. For some reason, the universe gained consciousness even though it could have outputted zombies that would never argue whether they are not zombies :)

mbfg 5y ago
>> How is one going to ever prove that free will does not exist if i can perfectly predict what you are going to do before you realize what you are going to do, that would be at the least an indicator. Can we do that? not at present. Is there research results that pushes that idea somewhat? Yes. Is it conclusive enough, no way. But i don't think you can rule it out either.
- klipt 5y ago
  If free will doesn't exist, what's the point in arguing with someone predetermined to believe in free will? They have no free will to change their mind!
  - PartiallyTyped 5y ago
    That assumption lies in ignorance of how our brains work. The gist is that we have some world model that arises out of the structure of the brain and the chemical state of it. Your mind doesn’t change because you have free will. Your mind changes because you have collected a sufficient amount of experiences that alter the state and structure of the brain. You don’t learn stuff because you “decided” I will learn this and that and I will store it in my brain somewhere. All your learning is actually involuntary because as you accumulate experiences, your synapses get positively or negatively reinforced and that causes the learning. You may choose to study something but you don’t choose which exact information gets stored and where. Instead, when trying to recall something your brain probes its world model and tries to find the circuit that triggers the correct response. So why would anyone argue that free will doesn’t exist? Because it gives people the opportunity to prove their world model, see the inconsistencies, experience new trains of thought and rewrite their brain. But no person who is not open to the idea will ever get to accept despite mountains of evidence because for most people, the idea of free will is so integral to their world model, that any challenge feels like a threat to their very foundation, which causes cognitive dissonance, and the shut down of executive functions that process information logically. Our brains have two competing circuits, one that tries to break the mould and challenges everything, and one that tries to be grounded and conservative. Cognitive dissonance occurs when the former is pushing the latter around but the latter has trouble coming to terms with reality and falls in denial.