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> To give one example, I now believe non-Abrahamic religions (or a lack thereof) should be entirely illegal. If you actually believe something is true, trying

> To give one example, I now believe non-Abrahamic religions (or a lack thereof) should be entirely illegal. If you actually believe something is true, trying to compel people to believe it is a very counter-productive measure, because it doesn't convince people to believe it – they may outwardly pretend to believe, but inwardly they'll rebel against the compulsion; compelling people to believe something is sending the message "my arguments are no good which is why I have to resort to force". I remember my mother trying to force me to go to Mass as a young teenager – it did nothing to endear the Catholic Church to me, and to the extent I have any sympathy for it nowadays, that's in spite of her influence not because of it You see this in Iran – the government makes it a crime to leave Islam, with the result that only around 40% of the population really believe in Islam any more; most of the remaining 60% will pretend to believe (to escape persecution) but in private they don't. [0] (Tolerated religious minorities–Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians-are less than 1% of the population.) While I have no doubt some of the decline of Islam in Iran would have happened anyway, for similar reasons to secularisation in the West, I think the Iranian government's attempts to force Islam on people (and a very authoritarian interpretation of it at that) have likely accelerated the decline of Iranian Islam, and it would probably be in a healthier state today if the 1979 Revolution had failed [0] https://theconversation.com/irans-secular-shift-new-survey-reveals-huge-changes-in-religious-beliefs-145253 https://theconversation.com/irans-secular-shift-new-survey-r...

antibasilisk 4y ago
>If you actually believe something is true, trying to compel people to believe it is a very counter-productive measure, because it doesn't convince people to believe it – they may outwardly pretend to believe, but inwardly they'll rebel against the compulsion This isn't the case at scale, people are more likely to believe something if it is normalized for them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments
- skissane 4y ago
  > This isn't the case at scale, people are more likely to believe something if it is normalized for them. How then do you explain the case of Iran I cited? Islam enforced as the state religion, leaving it is punishable with death (at least in theory), and yet there has been a huge decline in Islamic belief over the last few decades. That's evidence against your position. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments In those experiments, only a minority of test subjects adjusted their expressed belief in response to social pressure; and only a minority of that minority appeared inwardly convinced in doing so. So this experiment doesn't support your position – putting aside the question of whether a highly contrived experiment is actually generalisable to ordinary human social behaviour.
  - antibasilisk 4y ago
    >How then do you explain the case of Iran I cited? Islam enforced as the state religion, leaving it is punishable with death (at least in theory), and yet there has been a huge decline in Islamic belief over the last few decades. That's evidence against your position. 'more likely' isn't the same as 'nobody leaves'. If you compare similar statistics between secular countries and conservative ones, it's quite clear that more people remain religious in the conservative countries. >In those experiments, only a minority of test subjects adjusted their expressed belief in response to social pressure It doesn't have to be a majority.

antibasilisk 4y ago

>If you actually believe something is true, trying to compel people to believe it is a very counter-productive measure, because it doesn't convince people to believe it – they may outwardly pretend to believe, but inwardly they'll rebel against the compulsion This isn't the case at scale, people are more likely to believe something if it is normalized for them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments

skissane 4y ago
> This isn't the case at scale, people are more likely to believe something if it is normalized for them. How then do you explain the case of Iran I cited? Islam enforced as the state religion, leaving it is punishable with death (at least in theory), and yet there has been a huge decline in Islamic belief over the last few decades. That's evidence against your position. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments In those experiments, only a minority of test subjects adjusted their expressed belief in response to social pressure; and only a minority of that minority appeared inwardly convinced in doing so. So this experiment doesn't support your position – putting aside the question of whether a highly contrived experiment is actually generalisable to ordinary human social behaviour.
- antibasilisk 4y ago
  >How then do you explain the case of Iran I cited? Islam enforced as the state religion, leaving it is punishable with death (at least in theory), and yet there has been a huge decline in Islamic belief over the last few decades. That's evidence against your position. 'more likely' isn't the same as 'nobody leaves'. If you compare similar statistics between secular countries and conservative ones, it's quite clear that more people remain religious in the conservative countries. >In those experiments, only a minority of test subjects adjusted their expressed belief in response to social pressure It doesn't have to be a majority.