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One of the more profound statements I once heard on the problem with modern secular philosophy was this throwaway comment I read online years ago: "Creationism

by api 5y ago

One of the more profound statements I once heard on the problem with modern secular philosophy was this throwaway comment I read online years ago: "Creationism is true if it will keep my kids off oxycontin." (I'm guessing the poster was from the rural Midwestern US.) I'm not saying I agree with that statement, but I can see where they are coming from. I found it to be one of the more profoundly honest and deep statements I've ever encountered. Secular philosophy has failed to produce enough value for ordinary people living ordinary lives embedded in the ordinary matrix of threats and opportunities presented by every day life. Religion has done that for thousands of years. Sometimes it does that quite well and sometimes it does it very badly, but at least it tries. Yes sometimes religion is full of shit, but secular philosophy and ideology is sometimes full of shit as well. One can find examples of both religion and secular philosophy promoting irrational thinking. I think things like antivax and Qanon can be blamed as much on postmodernism as religion, and I don't see any evidence that people who abandon religion automatically become more rational. Many just glom onto other forms of superstition or secular but totally insane ideas. Go read some academic philosophy. The older stuff is deeply abstract, looking down at the world from orbit and drawing a lot of deep but distant conclusions. The newer stuff is completely impenetrable to someone who has not studied the subject in depth. Very little of it is relevant to someone working a regular job and trying to raise kids. Speaking of kids... much secular philosophy barely mentions children at all, or seems indifferent to them. The fact that the central generative process of all organic life gets barely a mention in secular philosophy is to me a profound indicator of something very deeply wrong. It's like physics avoiding the subjects of electromagnetism or gravity and trying to make sense of everything else. The marketplace of ideas is like any other marketplace. If your store does not stock what people need they will shop elsewhere. If you don't like where they are shopping, it's your problem for not producing the right products. The customer is always right.

keymone 5y ago
Sounds to me like you’re saying that churches are interested in brainwashing kids because their existence depends on it, while secular philosophy as a branch of science is not an agent that could act at all. To compare apples to apples somebody should start a church of secular philosophy.
PontifexMinimus 5y ago
> "Creationism is true if it will keep my kids off oxycontin." I think this highlights that while the specific claims of religion (on the age of the earth, origin of species, existence of God, etc) may well be false, religion nevertheless can be a useful social technology. But this is a problem, because: (1) many people who might otherwise become religious adherents can't be expected to beleive what to them is silly bafflegab (they could always just pretend to, but that has its own costs too) and (2) religions tends to be really keen that new adherents actually do belief in their belief systems. One solution might be an idea Scott Alexander had, of separating true-with-respect-to-external-reality from true-with-respect-to-human-psychology (https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/15/raikoth-history-religion/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/15/raikoth-history-religi...): >Raikothin religion, sumurhe in its own language, recognizes two aspects of God, called Truth and Beauty. The existing world is a poorly ordered mishmash of these two aspects, whereas God is the two aspects artfully and perfectly combined. >Truth includes everything that actually objectively exists, in the exact way that it actually exists. This aspect is mathematical, precise, and completely devoid of subjectivity. It is symbolically associated with winter, stars, the colors blue and silver, and all the hard sciences as well as math. >Beauty includes feelings, dreams, hopes, personality, meaning. This aspect is numinous, charged with emotion, and fantastic. It is symbolically associated with summer, roses, the colors green and gold, and all the arts, especially poetry and especially especially music. >This philosophy cashes out into a formalization of two different ways of looking at things, the Elith-mirta and Ainai-mirta (Perspective of Truth and Perspective of Beauty). The sumurhe religion itself is a perfect example. In the Elith-mirta, it is a useful metaphor for the fact that some things are easier to understand using mathematics and other things are easy to understand using native anthropomorphic intuitions, as well as a recognition that religion promotes psychic health and strengthens community ties. In the Ainai-mirta, Truth and Beauty are literal anthropomorphic deities (the god Elith and the goddess Ainai) who are worshiped through prayer and sacrifice and invoked for strength in times of need.
pvg 5y ago
Secular philosophy has failed to produce enough value for ordinary people living ordinary lives embedded in the ordinary matrix of threats and opportunities presented by every day life. Religion has done that for thousands of years. There are zillions of ordinary people living ordinary lives all over the world who are largely areligious, especially in industrialized countries so this doesn't seem very accurate beside coming off as somewhat condescending. Additionally, for most ordinary people over many of the thousands of years in question, participation in the dominant religion of the time and place was compulsory.
- jkhdigital 5y ago
  The value system (and its underlying philosophical premises) which is being perpetuated by the society in which those areligious people live was crafted by religious tradition. > Additionally, for most ordinary people over many of the thousands of years in question, participation in the dominant religion of the time and place was compulsory. This is kind of a weird statement; for most of human history there was no line between religion and culture. So if participation in human culture is "compulsory" then I suppose you are technically correct, but then your statement is vacuously true.
  - tomrod 5y ago
    Rites and aesthetics have existed independent of culture -- consider the Romans, who adopted, adapted, and incorporated others' rites but left the culture mostly unchanged. I don't know that the equivalence or dominance of religion-as-culture paradigm is conclusive.
analog31 5y ago
>>>> "Creationism is true if it will keep my kids off oxycontin." The thing is, it won't.
- BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
  It would be a second or third order effect. It stands to reason that someone who is a part of a strong religious community would have a much better social life, support structure, and network. All of these things reduce the likelihood of getting addicted to hard drugs. You could also take it a step further and say that having such things makes breaking an addiction/rehab more likely to be successful, too.
  - smackeyacky 5y ago
    Drug use and abuse levels do differ between religious and irreligious folk, but one explanation for that might be regional availability rather than religion. https://drugabuse.com/featured/drugs-and-devotion/ https://drugabuse.com/featured/drugs-and-devotion/
    - toolz 5y ago
      It seems like religious people would be far less likely to seek professional help for abuse and that would skew these numbers greatly, considering the methodology. Religious community members have far more reason to avoid acknowledging their drug problem in a way that might make that information public.
    - analog31 5y ago
      Indeed, and to make it even more of a mess, regional issues also correlated with economic issues. My unorthodox opinion is that the opioid crisis started with an actual pain crisis due to the kinds of jobs that people were working, coupled with a lack of strong labor law enforcement and safety net. People were turning to pills because they were in pain.
    - native_samples 5y ago
      Surely that is circular - if religion did cause less drug addiction (and/or dealing) then you'd expect less distribution and thus availability in religious areas because there's less demand.
mannykannot 5y ago
Secular philosophy (including science) and religion address different concerns, and can coexist cooperatively so long as there is a willingness on both sides to do so. The first step in that cooperation is to put aside the question of which side is not cooperating.
joe_the_user 5y ago
Secular philosophy has failed to produce enough value for ordinary people living ordinary lives embedded in the ordinary matrix of threats and opportunities presented by every day life. I don't there's much, if any, evidence for this claim. Religion is in a steep decline in Europe but there's little evidence for more anti-social behavior. The American mid-west, where your quote comes from, in contrast is especially religious for an advance industrial area and it's noted for it's horrific social problem.
- Thorrez 5y ago
  What is the horrific midwest social problem?
  - toolz 5y ago
    Specifically I'd like to see some quantifiable data because any region (including the EU) can be claimed to have horrific social problems without anything other than subjective data to back up those claims. To be honest, I've never heard of the midwest referred to anything other than boring, which seems like it would be a strong contradiction to "horrific social problems"
  - hota_mazi 5y ago
    We can start by the fact that their political leanings have led most of these states to have the highest COVID 19 death ratios because they don't believe in vaccines, nor science.
    - Thorrez 5y ago
      None of the top 11 states by COVID 19 death rate are in the Midwest. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covid19-death-rates-us-by-state/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States The top Midwest state is South Dakota, in 12th place.
    - robbedpeter 5y ago
alfiedotwtf 5y ago
> One can find examples of both religion and secular philosophy promoting irrational thinking. Can you please give one example of secular philosophy promoting irrational thinking?
- BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
  In my own experience having debates and discussions in this day and age, there’s this pervasive notion that you can’t assert anything without some citation or study to prove your point. This isn’t necessarily bad, per se, but it does mean people are offloading reasoning about a problem to letting some citation’s abstract make the point for them. There is a massive replicability crisis in academia and we know that the publish or perish culture means null results put careers into jeopardy. It is also heavily biased towards studying things that can be measured empirically. So, here is my example, up until the mid 90’s it was widely believed in the medical community that babies could not feel pain. Anyone who has ever spent time around newborns knows that these little humans can indeed feel pain. Yet somehow, secular men of science came to the conclusion that no, they could not, and what we thought were pain responses were just reflexes. Besides, the infant wouldn’t remember it. They would perform surgeries without anesthesia on babies up to a year old. Part of the problem as to why this profoundly wrong notion held on for so long was that there really wasn’t a good way to quantify infant pain. Eventually some researchers finally got around to devising some kind of measurement and the science eventually came around. But for a good part of the 20th century an incredible amount of pain was inflicted because a scientific notion couldn’t be refuted by a non-scientific argument (of course that baby feels pain, just look at him). https://www.jstor.org/stable/3523036 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3523036 This isn’t a scathing indictment of secular values, but rather, a cautionary tale. Not everything needs to be proven via peer-reviewed papers. A lot of the human experience can still be asserted and known using unscientific or pre-scientific reasoning.
  - alfiedotwtf 5y ago
    How is your example specific to secular values? I'm sure there are many doctors who are religious. > there’s this pervasive notion that you can’t assert anything without some citation or study to prove your point Yes. That's to prevent people from making false assertions. I can't believe you're arguing that people shouldn't need facts to back up their statements.
MisterBastahrd 5y ago
"Creationism is true if it will keep my kids off oxycontin." It sure doesn't keep them off meth.
hota_mazi 5y ago
> One can find examples of both religion and secular philosophy promoting irrational thinking This is whataboutism to an absurd degree. "Yeah, religion is not perfect, but atheism is not perfect either, so they're both on par". No, they're not. > and I don't see any evidence that people who abandon religion automatically become more rational. They just abandoned an irrational belief, so by definition, they are immediately more rational.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
meheleventyone 5y ago
Given what we now know about the structure of the oxycontin problem in the US that’s profoundly depressing. It’s little to do with religious versus secular philosophy and everything to do with the political structure of society and a lack of action. Most often in the US by professed religious people at every level of the oxy trade and government.

by api 5y ago

keymone 5y ago

Sounds to me like you’re saying that churches are interested in brainwashing kids because their existence depends on it, while secular philosophy as a branch of science is not an agent that could act at all. To compare apples to apples somebody should start a church of secular philosophy.

PontifexMinimus 5y ago

> "Creationism is true if it will keep my kids off oxycontin." I think this highlights that while the specific claims of religion (on the age of the earth, origin of species, existence of God, etc) may well be false, religion nevertheless can be a useful social technology. But this is a problem, because: (1) many people who might otherwise become religious adherents can't be expected to beleive what to them is silly bafflegab (they could always just pretend to, but that has its own costs too) and (2) religions tends to be really keen that new adherents actually do belief in their belief systems. One solution might be an idea Scott Alexander had, of separating true-with-respect-to-external-reality from true-with-respect-to-human-psychology (https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/15/raikoth-history-religion/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/15/raikoth-history-religi...): >Raikothin religion, sumurhe in its own language, recognizes two aspects of God, called Truth and Beauty. The existing world is a poorly ordered mishmash of these two aspects, whereas God is the two aspects artfully and perfectly combined. >Truth includes everything that actually objectively exists, in the exact way that it actually exists. This aspect is mathematical, precise, and completely devoid of subjectivity. It is symbolically associated with winter, stars, the colors blue and silver, and all the hard sciences as well as math. >Beauty includes feelings, dreams, hopes, personality, meaning. This aspect is numinous, charged with emotion, and fantastic. It is symbolically associated with summer, roses, the colors green and gold, and all the arts, especially poetry and especially especially music. >This philosophy cashes out into a formalization of two different ways of looking at things, the Elith-mirta and Ainai-mirta (Perspective of Truth and Perspective of Beauty). The sumurhe religion itself is a perfect example. In the Elith-mirta, it is a useful metaphor for the fact that some things are easier to understand using mathematics and other things are easy to understand using native anthropomorphic intuitions, as well as a recognition that religion promotes psychic health and strengthens community ties. In the Ainai-mirta, Truth and Beauty are literal anthropomorphic deities (the god Elith and the goddess Ainai) who are worshiped through prayer and sacrifice and invoked for strength in times of need.

pvg 5y ago

Secular philosophy has failed to produce enough value for ordinary people living ordinary lives embedded in the ordinary matrix of threats and opportunities presented by every day life. Religion has done that for thousands of years. There are zillions of ordinary people living ordinary lives all over the world who are largely areligious, especially in industrialized countries so this doesn't seem very accurate beside coming off as somewhat condescending. Additionally, for most ordinary people over many of the thousands of years in question, participation in the dominant religion of the time and place was compulsory.

jkhdigital 5y ago
The value system (and its underlying philosophical premises) which is being perpetuated by the society in which those areligious people live was crafted by religious tradition. > Additionally, for most ordinary people over many of the thousands of years in question, participation in the dominant religion of the time and place was compulsory. This is kind of a weird statement; for most of human history there was no line between religion and culture. So if participation in human culture is "compulsory" then I suppose you are technically correct, but then your statement is vacuously true.
- tomrod 5y ago
  Rites and aesthetics have existed independent of culture -- consider the Romans, who adopted, adapted, and incorporated others' rites but left the culture mostly unchanged. I don't know that the equivalence or dominance of religion-as-culture paradigm is conclusive.

analog31 5y ago

>>>> "Creationism is true if it will keep my kids off oxycontin." The thing is, it won't.

BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
It would be a second or third order effect. It stands to reason that someone who is a part of a strong religious community would have a much better social life, support structure, and network. All of these things reduce the likelihood of getting addicted to hard drugs. You could also take it a step further and say that having such things makes breaking an addiction/rehab more likely to be successful, too.
- smackeyacky 5y ago
  Drug use and abuse levels do differ between religious and irreligious folk, but one explanation for that might be regional availability rather than religion. https://drugabuse.com/featured/drugs-and-devotion/ https://drugabuse.com/featured/drugs-and-devotion/
  - toolz 5y ago
    It seems like religious people would be far less likely to seek professional help for abuse and that would skew these numbers greatly, considering the methodology. Religious community members have far more reason to avoid acknowledging their drug problem in a way that might make that information public.
  - analog31 5y ago
    Indeed, and to make it even more of a mess, regional issues also correlated with economic issues. My unorthodox opinion is that the opioid crisis started with an actual pain crisis due to the kinds of jobs that people were working, coupled with a lack of strong labor law enforcement and safety net. People were turning to pills because they were in pain.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    Surely that is circular - if religion did cause less drug addiction (and/or dealing) then you'd expect less distribution and thus availability in religious areas because there's less demand.

mannykannot 5y ago

Secular philosophy (including science) and religion address different concerns, and can coexist cooperatively so long as there is a willingness on both sides to do so. The first step in that cooperation is to put aside the question of which side is not cooperating.

joe_the_user 5y ago

Secular philosophy has failed to produce enough value for ordinary people living ordinary lives embedded in the ordinary matrix of threats and opportunities presented by every day life. I don't there's much, if any, evidence for this claim. Religion is in a steep decline in Europe but there's little evidence for more anti-social behavior. The American mid-west, where your quote comes from, in contrast is especially religious for an advance industrial area and it's noted for it's horrific social problem.

Thorrez 5y ago
What is the horrific midwest social problem?
- toolz 5y ago
  Specifically I'd like to see some quantifiable data because any region (including the EU) can be claimed to have horrific social problems without anything other than subjective data to back up those claims. To be honest, I've never heard of the midwest referred to anything other than boring, which seems like it would be a strong contradiction to "horrific social problems"
- hota_mazi 5y ago
  We can start by the fact that their political leanings have led most of these states to have the highest COVID 19 death ratios because they don't believe in vaccines, nor science.
  - Thorrez 5y ago
    None of the top 11 states by COVID 19 death rate are in the Midwest. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covid19-death-rates-us-by-state/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States The top Midwest state is South Dakota, in 12th place.
  - robbedpeter 5y ago

alfiedotwtf 5y ago

> One can find examples of both religion and secular philosophy promoting irrational thinking. Can you please give one example of secular philosophy promoting irrational thinking?

BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
In my own experience having debates and discussions in this day and age, there’s this pervasive notion that you can’t assert anything without some citation or study to prove your point. This isn’t necessarily bad, per se, but it does mean people are offloading reasoning about a problem to letting some citation’s abstract make the point for them. There is a massive replicability crisis in academia and we know that the publish or perish culture means null results put careers into jeopardy. It is also heavily biased towards studying things that can be measured empirically. So, here is my example, up until the mid 90’s it was widely believed in the medical community that babies could not feel pain. Anyone who has ever spent time around newborns knows that these little humans can indeed feel pain. Yet somehow, secular men of science came to the conclusion that no, they could not, and what we thought were pain responses were just reflexes. Besides, the infant wouldn’t remember it. They would perform surgeries without anesthesia on babies up to a year old. Part of the problem as to why this profoundly wrong notion held on for so long was that there really wasn’t a good way to quantify infant pain. Eventually some researchers finally got around to devising some kind of measurement and the science eventually came around. But for a good part of the 20th century an incredible amount of pain was inflicted because a scientific notion couldn’t be refuted by a non-scientific argument (of course that baby feels pain, just look at him). https://www.jstor.org/stable/3523036 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3523036 This isn’t a scathing indictment of secular values, but rather, a cautionary tale. Not everything needs to be proven via peer-reviewed papers. A lot of the human experience can still be asserted and known using unscientific or pre-scientific reasoning.
- alfiedotwtf 5y ago
  How is your example specific to secular values? I'm sure there are many doctors who are religious. > there’s this pervasive notion that you can’t assert anything without some citation or study to prove your point Yes. That's to prevent people from making false assertions. I can't believe you're arguing that people shouldn't need facts to back up their statements.

MisterBastahrd 5y ago

"Creationism is true if it will keep my kids off oxycontin." It sure doesn't keep them off meth.

hota_mazi 5y ago

> One can find examples of both religion and secular philosophy promoting irrational thinking This is whataboutism to an absurd degree. "Yeah, religion is not perfect, but atheism is not perfect either, so they're both on par". No, they're not. > and I don't see any evidence that people who abandon religion automatically become more rational. They just abandoned an irrational belief, so by definition, they are immediately more rational.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

meheleventyone 5y ago

Given what we now know about the structure of the oxycontin problem in the US that’s profoundly depressing. It’s little to do with religious versus secular philosophy and everything to do with the political structure of society and a lack of action. Most often in the US by professed religious people at every level of the oxy trade and government.