5 ms·

A truly heretical idea is probably defined by how much of a shock it is to you if you hear it for the first time. Ideas like "the scientific method is wrong" or

A truly heretical idea is probably defined by how much of a shock it is to you if you hear it for the first time. Ideas like "the scientific method is wrong" or "people should not be treated as equals" are heretical in the sense that they go against the orthodoxy, but they are not new ideas, and we have solid responses to them. In a sense, they are part of the orthodoxy's FAQ. They are accounted for in the orthodoxy, and don't present any real challenge to it. Those kinds of ideas aren't really heretical, they're actually kind of bland and non-threatening, philosophically. At the very least, not challenging. In order to find a heretical idea, you'd really have to find something shocking. Not just distasteful, unfashionable, or rude, but alien and disturbing. Something that must be destroyed (or at least reckoned with) in order for you to avoid losing a lot of sleep, or having a major crisis of identity. By definition, those are not ideas you and I can sit here and list off.

Zigurd 5y ago
Not all novel things are "shocking." But all the edgey rubbish people think will get them unjustly cancelled are not novel at all. As you say "they are part of the orthodoxy's FAQ." Which evidently a lot of people do not read. These ideas can be disturbing, or alien. But they can also be just unexpected.
martythemaniak 5y ago
I wish more people made this distinction. Despite endless debates over "cancel culture" I can't think of a single shocking idea that's come out of it, it's just endlessly recycling old ideas.
jl6 5y ago
Sure, it’s easy to not be shocked by something you’ve heard before, but there are plenty of people who haven’t heard plenty of things before (cf. “today’s lucky 10,000”), so many people must still be regularly encountering ideas that seem heretical to them.
ogogmad 5y ago
I don't understand the distinction this comment is making. Can somebody give examples to show why it's useful? If it's not something you can list off, examples of past heresies and non-heresies would be OK.
- msla 5y ago
  Some people seem unable to conceive of a human existence not ultimately founded on a religious belief system. They can accept the idea of people having different religious beliefs (that is, the heretics doomed to Hell) but the idea of people who don't have a religion at all apparently throws a massive error, which leads to them uttering such nonsense as the insistence that atheism is a religion, and their utter inability to separate the concepts of "not believing in their god" from "believing their god doesn't exist" in their minds. The more advanced cases are the ones who insist, as an apparent matter of dogmatic faith, that people who claim to not have a religion are Satanists who will rape and murder for lack of an explicit Commandment telling them not to.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    When people say that atheism is a religion, at least the ones I know mean something like this: First, atheism answers at least some of the same questions as religions answer, though it gives different answers and in different terms. Second, atheism isn't provable by scientific means. Some believe it more firmly than they have evidence for. Third, at least some atheists seem to hold their atheism in a religious way; that is, with a religious fervor and intensity. Some even seem to be "evangelists", determined to spread the "good news" of atheism. That's what (at least some) people mean when they call atheism a religion. They don't literally mean that atheists believe in some god; they mean that people hold atheism in a religious way.
    - seba_dos1 5y ago
      > they mean that people hold atheism in a religious way And how many atheists actually do that? I think what GP meant was more about people who just somehow can't imagine being religionless (and "the more advanced cases" paragraph hints it very strongly), not about people who point out that some atheists hold their atheism religiously. Anyway, your points seem wrong to me. After Wikipedia - "Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities." Absence of belief does not answer any questions by itself, and considering its provability doesn't even make sense at all. What you said may make sense for the less broad definition ("In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities"), but that's not what "atheism" usually means without any further qualifiers. For me, atheism is a natural consequence of realizing that I have no more reason to believe in existence of any particular god than any other fictitious being - and even if I did assume that a god exists, I would still have a hard time choosing which god is it, as there are many contesters and none of them has any obvious advantage when it comes to believability. There are many believable reasons why religions exist, but none of them implies that any religion is actually true (to the contrary, the history of some well-known religions seems to make it pretty clear that they were products of human culture).
throwaway2474 5y ago
I have always been fascinated by ideas that are heretical but also likely to be true. Unfortunately, like you say, they’re hard to find and therefore a lot of them I feel like I’ve “discovered” myself. Can anyone recommend places to discover more of these (books, forums, or thought patterns)?

Zigurd 5y ago

Not all novel things are "shocking." But all the edgey rubbish people think will get them unjustly cancelled are not novel at all. As you say "they are part of the orthodoxy's FAQ." Which evidently a lot of people do not read. These ideas can be disturbing, or alien. But they can also be just unexpected.

martythemaniak 5y ago

I wish more people made this distinction. Despite endless debates over "cancel culture" I can't think of a single shocking idea that's come out of it, it's just endlessly recycling old ideas.

jl6 5y ago

Sure, it’s easy to not be shocked by something you’ve heard before, but there are plenty of people who haven’t heard plenty of things before (cf. “today’s lucky 10,000”), so many people must still be regularly encountering ideas that seem heretical to them.

ogogmad 5y ago

I don't understand the distinction this comment is making. Can somebody give examples to show why it's useful? If it's not something you can list off, examples of past heresies and non-heresies would be OK.

msla 5y ago
Some people seem unable to conceive of a human existence not ultimately founded on a religious belief system. They can accept the idea of people having different religious beliefs (that is, the heretics doomed to Hell) but the idea of people who don't have a religion at all apparently throws a massive error, which leads to them uttering such nonsense as the insistence that atheism is a religion, and their utter inability to separate the concepts of "not believing in their god" from "believing their god doesn't exist" in their minds. The more advanced cases are the ones who insist, as an apparent matter of dogmatic faith, that people who claim to not have a religion are Satanists who will rape and murder for lack of an explicit Commandment telling them not to.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  When people say that atheism is a religion, at least the ones I know mean something like this: First, atheism answers at least some of the same questions as religions answer, though it gives different answers and in different terms. Second, atheism isn't provable by scientific means. Some believe it more firmly than they have evidence for. Third, at least some atheists seem to hold their atheism in a religious way; that is, with a religious fervor and intensity. Some even seem to be "evangelists", determined to spread the "good news" of atheism. That's what (at least some) people mean when they call atheism a religion. They don't literally mean that atheists believe in some god; they mean that people hold atheism in a religious way.
  - seba_dos1 5y ago
    > they mean that people hold atheism in a religious way And how many atheists actually do that? I think what GP meant was more about people who just somehow can't imagine being religionless (and "the more advanced cases" paragraph hints it very strongly), not about people who point out that some atheists hold their atheism religiously. Anyway, your points seem wrong to me. After Wikipedia - "Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities." Absence of belief does not answer any questions by itself, and considering its provability doesn't even make sense at all. What you said may make sense for the less broad definition ("In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities"), but that's not what "atheism" usually means without any further qualifiers. For me, atheism is a natural consequence of realizing that I have no more reason to believe in existence of any particular god than any other fictitious being - and even if I did assume that a god exists, I would still have a hard time choosing which god is it, as there are many contesters and none of them has any obvious advantage when it comes to believability. There are many believable reasons why religions exist, but none of them implies that any religion is actually true (to the contrary, the history of some well-known religions seems to make it pretty clear that they were products of human culture).

throwaway2474 5y ago

I have always been fascinated by ideas that are heretical but also likely to be true. Unfortunately, like you say, they’re hard to find and therefore a lot of them I feel like I’ve “discovered” myself. Can anyone recommend places to discover more of these (books, forums, or thought patterns)?