7 ms·

You don't inherit secularity. I mean you do, but children copying their parents is not the only way ideas spread. Otherwise secularity would never have spread i

You don't inherit secularity. I mean you do, but children copying their parents is not the only way ideas spread. Otherwise secularity would never have spread in the first place. (That's if we accept that it makes people disinclined to spawn offspring, and that this was always the case and never changes.)

somenameforme 1y ago
Of course it's not the only way ideas spread but it is the most relevant. Parents' religion (and many other values) are, by a very wide margin, the most predictive traits for determining what those traits will be in their children. This is one (of many) reason why having children is so rewarding. The idea of 'transferring ones consciousness' into something is nonsense - at best you die and then have a chatbot that does a questionable imitation of you. But with children you directly transfer many of your genetic and physical/mental characteristics, and you can then instill your environmental characteristics into them. It's about as close as you can realistically get to 'transferring your consciousness.' Interestingly this, like many things, also only becomes even more true as we age. Depending on your age, you might find yourself having more similarities with your own parents than you might care to acknowledge, depending on your relationship with them.
- card_zero 1y ago
  It's not the most relevant. The enlightenment spread secularity. Books spread secularity. Childless hermits can write those. Come to think of it, religions spread through childless hermits writing books, too.
  - somenameforme 1y ago
    Yes, it literally is, and this isn't ambiguous. You can find a zillion studies contrasting the religion of people to those of their parents. For instance here [1] is an overview from Pew. 84% of adults who were raised in e.g. a completely Protestant home are Protestants themselves. That strong of a correlation simply doesn't leave room anything else to significantly matter. If you then isolate that sample to situations where both parents were Protestant and also talked about religion a alot, 89% of their children ended up as Protestant! For a religion like Islam that integrates even more significantly into one's life (and correlates very positively with good fertility rates), these figures are going to be even higher and getting within statistical noise of 100%. [1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2016/10/26/links-between-childhood-religious-upbringing-and-current-religious-identity/ https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2016/10/26/links-betwee...
    - exe34 1y ago
      any idea how secularism started at all? by your logic, it should have been snuffed out before we even knew about it.
      - somenameforme 1y ago
        Largely by a mixture of hypocrisy and commercialism. Catholicism has struggled mightily with this issue throughout its history, and is a big part of the reason that Protestantism even exists today. Get it, "Protest"ant? When people claim to hold values, and then act in apparent contradiction of those same values, it doesn't exactly inspire one to themselves adopt those values. And that's been a major player, especially in the West, for the past ~70 years where you have politicians wearing religion on the coat of their sleeve, and then going and killing hundreds of thousands of people over what is overtly about oil, economics, and geopolitics - lofty moralistic rhetoric notwithstanding. Then you have things like the pedophilia scandals high within the Catholic hierarchy, made even worse by coverups. This is probably why religions like fundamental Islam, Haredi Judaism, and so on are even more heritable. Those who follow such religions tend to very much live their proclaimed values. For instance I really don't agree with people like Khabib Nurmagomedov on many of his values, yet he lives those values, even when they hurt him in the short-run, and I find it very inspirational. I can only imagine how young (or older for that matter) Muslims see him. Integrity in life is just so important.
        exe34 1y ago
        is secularism a result of hypocrisy in the flock in this scenario?
        somenameforme 1y ago
        Definitely, our children do not learn so much from our words as much as from our behaviors and actions. Religious individuals like to claim that the decline in religiosity drove a decline of morality in society. I think it's rather the opposite - that a decline of morality in society drove a decline in religiosity. It's like a parent trying to teach their child about healthy eating while they down cokes, chips, and sweets every day. That kid is going to be much more likely to, himself, end up downing cokes, chips, and sweets than he is to eat healthy. And for his own kids, he may not even bother with the pretext of healthy eating.
  - exe34 1y ago
    or indeed men in robes frothing at the mouth about men in dresses.

somenameforme 1y ago

Of course it's not the only way ideas spread but it is the most relevant. Parents' religion (and many other values) are, by a very wide margin, the most predictive traits for determining what those traits will be in their children. This is one (of many) reason why having children is so rewarding. The idea of 'transferring ones consciousness' into something is nonsense - at best you die and then have a chatbot that does a questionable imitation of you. But with children you directly transfer many of your genetic and physical/mental characteristics, and you can then instill your environmental characteristics into them. It's about as close as you can realistically get to 'transferring your consciousness.' Interestingly this, like many things, also only becomes even more true as we age. Depending on your age, you might find yourself having more similarities with your own parents than you might care to acknowledge, depending on your relationship with them.

card_zero 1y ago
It's not the most relevant. The enlightenment spread secularity. Books spread secularity. Childless hermits can write those. Come to think of it, religions spread through childless hermits writing books, too.
- somenameforme 1y ago
  Yes, it literally is, and this isn't ambiguous. You can find a zillion studies contrasting the religion of people to those of their parents. For instance here [1] is an overview from Pew. 84% of adults who were raised in e.g. a completely Protestant home are Protestants themselves. That strong of a correlation simply doesn't leave room anything else to significantly matter. If you then isolate that sample to situations where both parents were Protestant and also talked about religion a alot, 89% of their children ended up as Protestant! For a religion like Islam that integrates even more significantly into one's life (and correlates very positively with good fertility rates), these figures are going to be even higher and getting within statistical noise of 100%. [1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2016/10/26/links-between-childhood-religious-upbringing-and-current-religious-identity/ https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2016/10/26/links-betwee...
  - exe34 1y ago
    any idea how secularism started at all? by your logic, it should have been snuffed out before we even knew about it.
    - somenameforme 1y ago
      Largely by a mixture of hypocrisy and commercialism. Catholicism has struggled mightily with this issue throughout its history, and is a big part of the reason that Protestantism even exists today. Get it, "Protest"ant? When people claim to hold values, and then act in apparent contradiction of those same values, it doesn't exactly inspire one to themselves adopt those values. And that's been a major player, especially in the West, for the past ~70 years where you have politicians wearing religion on the coat of their sleeve, and then going and killing hundreds of thousands of people over what is overtly about oil, economics, and geopolitics - lofty moralistic rhetoric notwithstanding. Then you have things like the pedophilia scandals high within the Catholic hierarchy, made even worse by coverups. This is probably why religions like fundamental Islam, Haredi Judaism, and so on are even more heritable. Those who follow such religions tend to very much live their proclaimed values. For instance I really don't agree with people like Khabib Nurmagomedov on many of his values, yet he lives those values, even when they hurt him in the short-run, and I find it very inspirational. I can only imagine how young (or older for that matter) Muslims see him. Integrity in life is just so important.
      - exe34 1y ago
        is secularism a result of hypocrisy in the flock in this scenario?
        somenameforme 1y ago
        Definitely, our children do not learn so much from our words as much as from our behaviors and actions. Religious individuals like to claim that the decline in religiosity drove a decline of morality in society. I think it's rather the opposite - that a decline of morality in society drove a decline in religiosity. It's like a parent trying to teach their child about healthy eating while they down cokes, chips, and sweets every day. That kid is going to be much more likely to, himself, end up downing cokes, chips, and sweets than he is to eat healthy. And for his own kids, he may not even bother with the pretext of healthy eating.
- exe34 1y ago
  or indeed men in robes frothing at the mouth about men in dresses.