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> morality and self-restraint. ... and hope. Note the lack of hope among so many skeptics. Start talking to them about the future and you quickly discover tha

by api 12y ago

> morality and self-restraint. ... and hope. Note the lack of hope among so many skeptics. Start talking to them about the future and you quickly discover that not only is life meaningless and success essentially random, but human civilization is doomed to extinction due to ecological overshoot soon so who cares... This lack of hope can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. It causes people to disengage and stop investing in the future.

borkabrak 12y ago
I'm a humanist, and it has made my worldview much, much brighter. I don't walk around with a load of guilt anymore. The things that happen to me are not "God" punishing me for something my great^n grandparents did, but effects with causes, some of which I can control. I get out of bed. I believe in myself. It's nice. It's hopeful. It makes sense.
- api 12y ago
  Unfortunately religious guilt often gets replaced by secular neo-Malthusian doomsday ideology. That might not be your experience but it seems to be common. It plugs into the same port: "forgive us nature for we have sinned... we have overshot our ecological carrying capacity..." Another thing about secularism that bothers me (and I am not religious) is the strong negative association with birth rates. Look up the statistics. The more rational your worldview is the less you reproduce, to the point that most very secular nations are in demographic decline. Difficult investments in the future such as child rearing seem to be replaced by an evolutionary dead end Epicurean lifestyle. I'm not arguing that everyone should join the Quiverfull movement, but it bothers me that fertility is inversely correlated to a rational worldview. Darwin is clearly on the side of fanaticism and superstition, in that if there is any genetic basis to these traits we are strongly selecting for them. Even if there is no genetic basis, beliefs propagate most strongly from parent to child so we are certainly culturally selecting for fanatical religious ideologies in the long term. A higher proportion of tomorrow's children will be the product of today's fundamentalists. I suspect this is why severe religious ideologies are historically so powerful. Those that didn't hold them left fewer descendants. I see a connection there -- between deep pessimism and lack of fertility -- that points to some kind of psychological vacuum related to motivation and hope. Seems like when you take away myth, you take away teleological action. Actions belong to the realm of narrative -- storytelling -- not fact. This is as true in the secular realm as in the religious -- progress is a myth, not a fact. In the extreme it takes on a quasi-religious tone in the form of "the Singularity" and similar ideas. Even companies have myths, and startup founders often have to put on at least a little bit of a guru hat. You also seem to take away the idea that one can stand up against overpowering adversity. It's certainly true that humanity faces difficult challenges, but those who have secular worldviews seem to easily default to hopelessness the minute their logical analysis turns up a probability of success that seems less than 50/50. Perhaps there's something adaptive about the craziness of faith... it causes us to actually try in the face of seemingly insurmountable adversity.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - enraged_camel 12y ago
    I'm not convinced that lack of religion and pessimism are correlated at all. In my experience, religious people are as likely to be pessimistic as non-religious people. The latter may be more cynical, but those people were almost always religious at some point in their lives and their darker attitudes are caused by their disillusionment about religion, rather than by lack of religion. I think you have some deeply rooted misunderstandings about the relationship between religion and fertility. Religious people have more kids primarily because most organized religions frown upon birth control. It has nothing to do with hope or optimism and everything to do with the fact that they are having sex just as often as non-religious folks but are much more likely to conceive. Another reason is that non-religious people tend to be more independent in their thinking and they question and resist social pressures -- and even economic incentives -- to have kids. Atheist couples are much more open to sitting down and having a conversation about whether they want kids and, if they do, whether they are ready. As for religion and evolution... I don't even know where to begin. Just because you're popping out child after child doesn't mean those children are likely to survive, prosper and reproduce. That is traditionally why people have felt the need to have lots of kids: you didn't know how many of them would live long enough to have kids of their own. It is only very recently that modern medicine has significantly decreased child mortality and increased lifespans. This is yet another reason why developed countries have lower birth rates. The bottom line is that your entire narrative seems to be that lack of religion leads to pessimism, which then leads to lower fertility, and this is somehow going to have evolutionary implications. To anyone who is knowledgeable about any of these topics, this is just sheer, unadulterated nonsense.
    - nitrogen 12y ago
      Religious people have kids because of a commandment to "multiply and replenish the earth". There are lots of religious families with six or more children, all spaced two or three years apart using birth control. It has been demonstrated repeatedly that higher education is correlated with lower birth rates, all the way down to sub-replacement levels. This is indeed a problem for anyone who wants to promote secular policies in a democracy, if they quickly find themselves outnumbered in a few generations (assuming that "conversion" to secular politics happens at a lower rate than the non-secular birth rate). That is how I read the parent comment.
drzaiusapelord 12y ago
Says who? All of the atheists I know tend to have some like of Star Trek-like futurist beliefs. Or watered-down Tim Leary beliefs of mind expansion and space migration. Also, its probably not in our best interest to pretend that extinction events don't happen. If anything, if we're seeing some paranoia, it might be healthy paranoia. Imagine if Al Gore was a "everything happens for a reason" type person and didn't care to invest his political life into the environment. Instead he fought to popularize global warming and has helped moved policy forward. Policy that will probably make a difference to our grandkids. There's a lot of middle ground between the optimism of 72 virgins and the strawman doom-and-gloom person you describe. The most hopeless people I know tend to be conservative religious types for whatever reason. "Get while the gettings good" seems to be their collective motto. Who cares about the future when Jesus/Buddha/whoever is coming back any day now!
- api 12y ago
  I think we are firmly in YMMV territory here. :) I always noticed that at academic conferences the casual greeting seemed to be agreement about the impending human die-off due to global warming / ecological doom / whatever.
- JoshuaDavid 12y ago
  Correction -- all of the atheists you know who vocally express their beliefs have Star-Trek-like beliefs, or other generally optimistic beliefs about the future. The atheists who think that there's a significant chance that we'll manage to wipe ourselves out in the next century generally aren't going to vocalize those beliefs, unless there's something actionable that can be done about it (though I don't think I actually know anyone who thinks that ecological overshoot is a real threat to civilization, much less humanity). I think you see the pessimists on both sides of the secular / religious divide. The difference is that pessimism is generally low-status and frowned upon in secular groups, meaning that pessimists in those groups are generally not very vocal about their pessimism.
existencebox 12y ago
It's an empowering sort of hopelessness, though, at least for me. It's a dark world, with lots of horrible people, and humanity seems to only make bad or worse choices, but at the root of things, they are OUR choices, so it's for us to work our asses off to fix them. Even if success is essentially random, if you try more you'll succeed more. I've always felt that it was disingenuous to not look at all the terrible aspects of the world head on, but I also see no reason this shouldn't be a tool for those who can see it, depressing as it may be.

by api 12y ago

borkabrak 12y ago

I'm a humanist, and it has made my worldview much, much brighter. I don't walk around with a load of guilt anymore. The things that happen to me are not "God" punishing me for something my great^n grandparents did, but effects with causes, some of which I can control. I get out of bed. I believe in myself. It's nice. It's hopeful. It makes sense.

api 12y ago
Unfortunately religious guilt often gets replaced by secular neo-Malthusian doomsday ideology. That might not be your experience but it seems to be common. It plugs into the same port: "forgive us nature for we have sinned... we have overshot our ecological carrying capacity..." Another thing about secularism that bothers me (and I am not religious) is the strong negative association with birth rates. Look up the statistics. The more rational your worldview is the less you reproduce, to the point that most very secular nations are in demographic decline. Difficult investments in the future such as child rearing seem to be replaced by an evolutionary dead end Epicurean lifestyle. I'm not arguing that everyone should join the Quiverfull movement, but it bothers me that fertility is inversely correlated to a rational worldview. Darwin is clearly on the side of fanaticism and superstition, in that if there is any genetic basis to these traits we are strongly selecting for them. Even if there is no genetic basis, beliefs propagate most strongly from parent to child so we are certainly culturally selecting for fanatical religious ideologies in the long term. A higher proportion of tomorrow's children will be the product of today's fundamentalists. I suspect this is why severe religious ideologies are historically so powerful. Those that didn't hold them left fewer descendants. I see a connection there -- between deep pessimism and lack of fertility -- that points to some kind of psychological vacuum related to motivation and hope. Seems like when you take away myth, you take away teleological action. Actions belong to the realm of narrative -- storytelling -- not fact. This is as true in the secular realm as in the religious -- progress is a myth, not a fact. In the extreme it takes on a quasi-religious tone in the form of "the Singularity" and similar ideas. Even companies have myths, and startup founders often have to put on at least a little bit of a guru hat. You also seem to take away the idea that one can stand up against overpowering adversity. It's certainly true that humanity faces difficult challenges, but those who have secular worldviews seem to easily default to hopelessness the minute their logical analysis turns up a probability of success that seems less than 50/50. Perhaps there's something adaptive about the craziness of faith... it causes us to actually try in the face of seemingly insurmountable adversity.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- enraged_camel 12y ago
  I'm not convinced that lack of religion and pessimism are correlated at all. In my experience, religious people are as likely to be pessimistic as non-religious people. The latter may be more cynical, but those people were almost always religious at some point in their lives and their darker attitudes are caused by their disillusionment about religion, rather than by lack of religion. I think you have some deeply rooted misunderstandings about the relationship between religion and fertility. Religious people have more kids primarily because most organized religions frown upon birth control. It has nothing to do with hope or optimism and everything to do with the fact that they are having sex just as often as non-religious folks but are much more likely to conceive. Another reason is that non-religious people tend to be more independent in their thinking and they question and resist social pressures -- and even economic incentives -- to have kids. Atheist couples are much more open to sitting down and having a conversation about whether they want kids and, if they do, whether they are ready. As for religion and evolution... I don't even know where to begin. Just because you're popping out child after child doesn't mean those children are likely to survive, prosper and reproduce. That is traditionally why people have felt the need to have lots of kids: you didn't know how many of them would live long enough to have kids of their own. It is only very recently that modern medicine has significantly decreased child mortality and increased lifespans. This is yet another reason why developed countries have lower birth rates. The bottom line is that your entire narrative seems to be that lack of religion leads to pessimism, which then leads to lower fertility, and this is somehow going to have evolutionary implications. To anyone who is knowledgeable about any of these topics, this is just sheer, unadulterated nonsense.
  - nitrogen 12y ago
    Religious people have kids because of a commandment to "multiply and replenish the earth". There are lots of religious families with six or more children, all spaced two or three years apart using birth control. It has been demonstrated repeatedly that higher education is correlated with lower birth rates, all the way down to sub-replacement levels. This is indeed a problem for anyone who wants to promote secular policies in a democracy, if they quickly find themselves outnumbered in a few generations (assuming that "conversion" to secular politics happens at a lower rate than the non-secular birth rate). That is how I read the parent comment.

drzaiusapelord 12y ago

Says who? All of the atheists I know tend to have some like of Star Trek-like futurist beliefs. Or watered-down Tim Leary beliefs of mind expansion and space migration. Also, its probably not in our best interest to pretend that extinction events don't happen. If anything, if we're seeing some paranoia, it might be healthy paranoia. Imagine if Al Gore was a "everything happens for a reason" type person and didn't care to invest his political life into the environment. Instead he fought to popularize global warming and has helped moved policy forward. Policy that will probably make a difference to our grandkids. There's a lot of middle ground between the optimism of 72 virgins and the strawman doom-and-gloom person you describe. The most hopeless people I know tend to be conservative religious types for whatever reason. "Get while the gettings good" seems to be their collective motto. Who cares about the future when Jesus/Buddha/whoever is coming back any day now!

api 12y ago
I think we are firmly in YMMV territory here. :) I always noticed that at academic conferences the casual greeting seemed to be agreement about the impending human die-off due to global warming / ecological doom / whatever.
JoshuaDavid 12y ago
Correction -- all of the atheists you know who vocally express their beliefs have Star-Trek-like beliefs, or other generally optimistic beliefs about the future. The atheists who think that there's a significant chance that we'll manage to wipe ourselves out in the next century generally aren't going to vocalize those beliefs, unless there's something actionable that can be done about it (though I don't think I actually know anyone who thinks that ecological overshoot is a real threat to civilization, much less humanity). I think you see the pessimists on both sides of the secular / religious divide. The difference is that pessimism is generally low-status and frowned upon in secular groups, meaning that pessimists in those groups are generally not very vocal about their pessimism.

existencebox 12y ago

It's an empowering sort of hopelessness, though, at least for me. It's a dark world, with lots of horrible people, and humanity seems to only make bad or worse choices, but at the root of things, they are OUR choices, so it's for us to work our asses off to fix them. Even if success is essentially random, if you try more you'll succeed more. I've always felt that it was disingenuous to not look at all the terrible aspects of the world head on, but I also see no reason this shouldn't be a tool for those who can see it, depressing as it may be.