6 ms·

> A religious mind has no firewall. No, I think a religious mind has an excellent firewall against everything except the religion believed in

yissp 5y ago
Reminds me of how a rhinovirus infection can supposedly prevent sars-cov2 from taking hold https://www.bbc.com/news/health-56483445 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-56483445
mistermann 5y ago
How do you apply this theory to minds that follow Taoism?
- mdp2021 5y ago
  They are simply using the term "in demotic and in decrepit use" to indicate almost its opposite. It is not always easy to find terms (some in the end use the formula "so-called religions"); a possibility could be 'fideism', but it was "hijacked" (legitimately, this time) to mean something different. Even the expression 'blind faith' would be improper, because "faith" there may mean "grit, persistence" (where a degree and a pre-vetted version of "blindness" is functional). But certainly, if the poster used the almost-oxymoron «religion believed in», of course what was meant was very different from what the terms should have meant. To move to the positive content of that post, the idea could be simply that of "focus": when exposed to mental poison it may work not to re-enforce it by giving it attention (during rational analysis you could treat the poison as an assumption (also in broad outside logic terms: much poison comes not in form of statements), which brings the risk of reinforcing it - it is not easy to "handle with care"), and instead return focussing on the clean and let the subconscious systems at least pre-digest it. De-power ideas (etc.) by refusing attention feed. Which oddly enough, is one of the techniques practitioners had to meet.
  - mistermann 5y ago
    This is a much more substantial reply than I expected...and I'm quite sure I don't fully understand it. But I think I have a half decent idea (of what you meant), and believe that it doesn't answer my question (at least in the way I intended it) which is how the statement "...a religious mind has an excellent firewall against everything except the religion believed in" applies to Taoism specifically. The thing that I like about Taoism is that it is an extremely abstract religion, and its ~definition is....~recursively self-referential and self-"disproving" (of dogma), and all-encompassing: The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations. Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gateway to all understanding. Making "...a religious mind has an excellent firewall against everything except the religion believed in" stick to this would be an extremely impressive feat in my estimation. More likely, I suspect any such attempt would demonstrate the validity of the ideas (although it may not be realized as such, which would also demonstrate the point).
    - mdp2021 5y ago
      You are mixing up completely different things. Why? The poster seemed to have meant that "radicated beliefs hinder other beliefs". Which is trivial. That has nothing to do with religion - which may sometimes use """belief""", but is not belief - if you mixed up the (different and opposite) things, you would be using a very weak terminology. You are playing on an equivoque. Either you are attempting to take that elected subject as a belief system (what?! why?! how?! why?!), which would be contradictory with the first stanza - and would be mental poison, the actual subject ("let one now accept the false in ideas, outside formulas") -, or you take it as religion (in this case: "[We witness] there is a way, [find it]: mind you, first of all: it cannot be put in statements"), so there is no radicated belief to curb other beliefs (explicitly in the case you chose, as beliefs are things you can put in statements).
      - mistermann 5y ago
dTal 5y ago
Perhaps it is more accurate to say a religious mind had no firewall. All good hackers lock the door behind them. The people who genuinely have no firewall are not so much the overtly religious as the ones we might broadly class as "new age" - the kind of people whose sole criterion for belief is whether or not it makes them feel good to believe it. There's a lot of them.
funnybeam 5y ago
Indeed. Religion may well be the best defence against memetic attacks. And I say this as a lifelong atheist, which is a distressing thought given the amount of deliberate memetic manipulation we are being subjected to.
- rini17 5y ago
  Is that your experience that, for example Q spreads better among atheists?
  - AussieWog93 5y ago
    Communism certainly did! (I do understand some people may find this offensive, as Atheism is considered immoral or unpatriotic in the US and other countries. I'm not making moral claims about atheists; I am one - but the "death of God" did seem to lead to new secular philosophy/ideology, some of which was dangerous.)
  - danbmil99 5y ago
    That's an interesting point which got me thinking. I guess religions don't have a firewall against memes that don't compete with them. But if you've ever tried to convert somebody, once you start questioning their core beliefs those firewalls are very obvious.
- Shorel 5y ago
  The existence of Syncretism and in fact a growing number of religions, like a tree, is an argument against that. But I do agree that they deal in memetic manipulation and attacks constantly.

yissp 5y ago

Reminds me of how a rhinovirus infection can supposedly prevent sars-cov2 from taking hold https://www.bbc.com/news/health-56483445 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-56483445

mistermann 5y ago

How do you apply this theory to minds that follow Taoism?

mdp2021 5y ago
They are simply using the term "in demotic and in decrepit use" to indicate almost its opposite. It is not always easy to find terms (some in the end use the formula "so-called religions"); a possibility could be 'fideism', but it was "hijacked" (legitimately, this time) to mean something different. Even the expression 'blind faith' would be improper, because "faith" there may mean "grit, persistence" (where a degree and a pre-vetted version of "blindness" is functional). But certainly, if the poster used the almost-oxymoron «religion believed in», of course what was meant was very different from what the terms should have meant. To move to the positive content of that post, the idea could be simply that of "focus": when exposed to mental poison it may work not to re-enforce it by giving it attention (during rational analysis you could treat the poison as an assumption (also in broad outside logic terms: much poison comes not in form of statements), which brings the risk of reinforcing it - it is not easy to "handle with care"), and instead return focussing on the clean and let the subconscious systems at least pre-digest it. De-power ideas (etc.) by refusing attention feed. Which oddly enough, is one of the techniques practitioners had to meet.
- mistermann 5y ago
  This is a much more substantial reply than I expected...and I'm quite sure I don't fully understand it. But I think I have a half decent idea (of what you meant), and believe that it doesn't answer my question (at least in the way I intended it) which is how the statement "...a religious mind has an excellent firewall against everything except the religion believed in" applies to Taoism specifically. The thing that I like about Taoism is that it is an extremely abstract religion, and its ~definition is....~recursively self-referential and self-"disproving" (of dogma), and all-encompassing: The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations. Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gateway to all understanding. Making "...a religious mind has an excellent firewall against everything except the religion believed in" stick to this would be an extremely impressive feat in my estimation. More likely, I suspect any such attempt would demonstrate the validity of the ideas (although it may not be realized as such, which would also demonstrate the point).
  - mdp2021 5y ago
    You are mixing up completely different things. Why? The poster seemed to have meant that "radicated beliefs hinder other beliefs". Which is trivial. That has nothing to do with religion - which may sometimes use """belief""", but is not belief - if you mixed up the (different and opposite) things, you would be using a very weak terminology. You are playing on an equivoque. Either you are attempting to take that elected subject as a belief system (what?! why?! how?! why?!), which would be contradictory with the first stanza - and would be mental poison, the actual subject ("let one now accept the false in ideas, outside formulas") -, or you take it as religion (in this case: "[We witness] there is a way, [find it]: mind you, first of all: it cannot be put in statements"), so there is no radicated belief to curb other beliefs (explicitly in the case you chose, as beliefs are things you can put in statements).
    - mistermann 5y ago

dTal 5y ago

Perhaps it is more accurate to say a religious mind had no firewall. All good hackers lock the door behind them. The people who genuinely have no firewall are not so much the overtly religious as the ones we might broadly class as "new age" - the kind of people whose sole criterion for belief is whether or not it makes them feel good to believe it. There's a lot of them.

funnybeam 5y ago

Indeed. Religion may well be the best defence against memetic attacks. And I say this as a lifelong atheist, which is a distressing thought given the amount of deliberate memetic manipulation we are being subjected to.

rini17 5y ago
Is that your experience that, for example Q spreads better among atheists?
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  Communism certainly did! (I do understand some people may find this offensive, as Atheism is considered immoral or unpatriotic in the US and other countries. I'm not making moral claims about atheists; I am one - but the "death of God" did seem to lead to new secular philosophy/ideology, some of which was dangerous.)
- danbmil99 5y ago
  That's an interesting point which got me thinking. I guess religions don't have a firewall against memes that don't compete with them. But if you've ever tried to convert somebody, once you start questioning their core beliefs those firewalls are very obvious.
Shorel 5y ago
The existence of Syncretism and in fact a growing number of religions, like a tree, is an argument against that. But I do agree that they deal in memetic manipulation and attacks constantly.